An impactful experience summary can help your CareerCircle profile show up to hiring managers and make sure that your resume highlights the most important experience for a role.&nbsp;But it can be difficult to get started trying to condense all of your skills and experience into a couple of sentences.
In this blog post, we&rsquo;re going to take you through what makes an effective experience summary and the 3 step framework you can follow to write your own. 
<h2 style="text-align: center;">What Is an Experience Summary?</h2>
 Sometimes called a <a href="https://novoresume.com/career-blog/resume-summary" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">resume summary</a> or executive summary, an experience summary is a 2 - 5 sentence synopsis of your work experience, achievements, and top skills. It is a paragraph at the top of your resume to help recruiters and hiring managers contextualize your experience.&nbsp;It is often responsible for piquing the interest of the recruiter/hiring manager enough to get them to continue reading.
Talent platforms, like CareerCircle, also use experience summaries as part of your candidate profile which helps hiring managers find you on the platform. 
<h2 style="text-align: center;">What Makes an Effective Experience Summary?</h2>
<h3> Keep It Short</h3>
Keep your summary around 2 - 3 sentences. If you have a lot of experience, you can go up to 5 short sentences. Remember, you don&rsquo;t need to follow particular grammar rules so feel free to edit the sentences down to their bare essentials.
<h3> Embrace Keywords</h3>
Keywords are the words or phrases that people use to search a database (like Google or an ATS).&nbsp;Using <a href="https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/resumes-cover-letters/resume-keywords-and-phrases" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">keywords in your experience summary</a>, and throughout your resume, helps your resume show up better when a recruiter is searching an Applicant Tracking System (ATS).&nbsp;
To brainstorm the keywords you should use, look at the requirements on the job posting. Chances are there are keywords hidden in plain sight like, &ldquo;budget management&rdquo; or &ldquo;digital marketing.&rdquo;
<h3> Tailored and Optimized</h3>
When you are working on tailoring your resume, make sure to optimize your resume summary for the particular role, too.&nbsp;You don't need to take a lot of time! Your summary should include things like 5 years of experience if the posting calls for 5 years of experience, any software tools that are specifically mentioned, languages, etc.
Remember: Your CareerCircle profile is the perfect place to house your experience summary. When you are applying for a new job you can simply copy, paste, and edit it onto your resume as needed! 
<h2 style="text-align: center;">How to Write Your Experience Summary</h2>
 Let&rsquo;s go step-by-step through writing your experience summary. In this example, we&rsquo;ll be building a summary for an implementation manager who has about almost 5 years of experience in the software-as-a-service industry, but you can apply the framework to any profession.
<h3> Start with the Basics</h3>
In the opening sentence, mention your job title or the one that&rsquo;s on the job posting, your years of experience, and a quick overview of what you do. 
<blockquote>
Resourceful implementation manager with 4+ years of experience onboarding SaaS users.
</blockquote>
<h3> Highlight Certificates and Skills</h3>
Move on to sharing any appropriate education and certificates you have (especially if the job posting calls for something specific) and showcase a technical skill or two. 
<blockquote>
Resourceful implementation manager with 4+ years of experience onboarding SaaS users. Bachelor&rsquo;s degree in Computer Science and a Google Career Certificate in IT Support with extensive experience in Microsoft Office and SQL.
</blockquote>
<h3> Wrap Up with Achievements</h3>
Pull the most impressive achievements from your resume to close out your summary. 
<blockquote>
Resourceful implementation manager with 4+ years of experience onboarding SaaS users. Bachelor&rsquo;s degree in Computer Science and a Google Career Certificate in IT Support with extensive experience in Microsoft Office and SQL. Career highlights include building an automation process to track and organize support requests resulting in a 95% customer satisfaction rate and improving retention by 54% YoY.
</blockquote>
 Don't have quantifiable data? Applying for an entry-level position? Focus more on some extra skills you can bring to the role. This can be a great time to mention softer skills like time management or communication. 
<blockquote>
Resourceful implementation manager with 4+ years of experience onboarding SaaS users. Bachelor&rsquo;s degree in Computer Science and a Google Career Certificate in IT Support with extensive experience in Microsoft Office and SQL. Skilled at managing multiple competing priorities at one time and bringing strategy to ambiguous situations.
</blockquote>
 Remember: If you find yourself at a loss, you can always start by using a tool like Bard AI. Feed in the prompt, &ldquo;Create a 3-sentence summary of this resume:&rdquo; and then copy in your resume. For more tips on how to use AI in your job search, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/careercircle/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">check out our LinkedIn</a>.
 Ultimately, your experience summary is another opportunity to highlight what you&rsquo;ve done in the past and how it relates to what you can bring to the role.&nbsp;
By taking the time to create an impactful summary, you can feel confident that you are proving your worth to every job you apply for!

In this blog post, we’re going to take you through the 3 step framework to write your own experience summary.

How to Write an Impactful Experience Summary

In this blog post, we’re going to take you through what makes an effective experience summary and the 3 step framework you can follow to write your own.

After a teenage dream of becoming a forensic psychologist, Nykyta Arnold, Product Owner and Business Analyst here at CareerCircle, switched gears in college.
Being an athlete (she played soccer and was a cheerleader) she was pretty immersed in the exercise science and kinesiology world so when she transferred to Georgia State, she declared her major as Kinesiology.
Kinesiology is a more medical-focused course and Nykyta ended up taking courses in subjects like neuroscience and cardiopulmonary sciences. &ldquo;A lot of people who have a Bachelor&rsquo;s go on to be a physician&rsquo;s assistant or they go into nursing. And it began to feel like the right path for me so I fully intended to go into the healthcare field,&rdquo; she shared when asked about her early career aspirations. After getting her undergraduate degree, she worked in a hospital and began getting her hours to become a physician&rsquo;s assistant. Before long, she got accepted to graduate school.
Then life threw her a curveball. 
<h2 style="text-align: center;">When a Graduate Student Becomes a Working Mom</h2>

In the semester that grad school was due to start, she found out she was pregnant with her oldest child.
While her school was in New York, her family and her support were in Georgia so she decided to take a break and stay in Georgia.
&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a very hands-on program, but I took what I could online after he was born. But then I became a single mom. When that happened, I realized that working 12 hours in a hospital and doing what I had to do to succeed in the medical field wasn&rsquo;t going to work for me as a single parent.&rdquo;
She ended up moving in with her parents and was working multiple jobs to make enough to support herself and her son. &ldquo;I started working at doctor&rsquo;s offices and places here and there. I had, three part-time jobs to equate to enough money and I just finally got to the point where I needed one job with set hours and benefits. My brother-in-law was working at a staffing firm at the time and he ended up introducing me to this whole new career path.&rdquo;
A tip for you: Never underestimate <a href="https://builtin.com/career-development/professional-networking" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">the power of your network</a>. The people you surround yourself with could be the key to your next career path. Talk with the people in your life about what they do for work and how they like it and be honest with them about what you&rsquo;re looking for. You never know what doors it could open for you!
While she was working at a staffing firm in Georgia, her territory was actually in Texas so she had to build relationships virtually with her clients in order to be successful.
&ldquo;This is the most important part of my journey because I look back on it and it makes me really proud. My pay was $500 a week before taxes. As a single parent, I was coming home with essentially nothing, but we had uncapped commissions. I knew that I had to work really hard in order to do what I needed to do.&rdquo;
But Nykyta is particularly skilled in working hard and making things happen. &ldquo;So technically with a $500 a week salary, I was making $26,000 annually. But by the end of my first year, I had actually made $75,000. It was 2016 and it was the most money I had ever made in my life.&rdquo;
That was when she realized that she was really good at this.
Since then she has worked in the staffing industry in a few different positions. She began working with MSPs (Managed Service Programs, essentially outsourced management of contingent workforces) and moved into positions, like Strategic Manager, where she was managing people as well as programs. 
<h2 style="text-align: center;">Understanding and Enforcing Boundaries at Work</h2>

While Nykyta is skilled at making things work on the job, there is one role that left her reeling.
&ldquo;When I was brought into one particular company, I was told to manage an account that already had a great relationship. When I got there, there was actually no relationship at all. Nobody had heard of the company I was working for. The client contact I had been given wasn&rsquo;t even with the company. When I approached leadership about it, I was essentially told that it was actually my job to make a relationship.&rdquo;
That was easier said than done. It was the midst of 2020 and, as many of us remember, business relationships, sales, and hiring were at a standstill.
&ldquo;I felt like I got set up where I was never going to be able to succeed. There were major metrics and goals that I was given to hit, but then no support or resources to hit those goals.&rdquo;
But it was more than that that led Nykyta to leave that role.
&ldquo;They hired somebody that ended up making a couple of sexist comments about women. I told HR about it and they had a talk with him, but the comments continued. The final straw was when he made a comment about my natural hair as a Black woman.&rdquo;
She was able to find a new role before she left, but she continued to share her concerns with the company up until her exit.
&ldquo;I felt so off-kilter at that time because I didn&rsquo;t know if I was being too sensitive or if I should have stuck it out for longer, but then a couple of months after I left, some people on the management team reached out to me to apologize for how they handled the situation. I felt really validated and it helped me to see that it&rsquo;s always the right thing to say something even if it feels uncomfortable in the moment.&rdquo;
A tip for you: Sexist and racist comments are never welcome and standing and speaking up when someone says something offensive is the right thing to do. It will likely be uncomfortable and could leave you feeling vulnerable, but there are resources to support you. If you need suggestions for how to call someone out (or apologize if you say something offensive), check out <a href="https://www.careercircle.com/blog/post/how-to-embrace-inclusive-language-in-the-workplace" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">this blog post</a>. 
<h2 style="text-align: center;">Her Path to Product Management</h2>

Thankfully, she didn&rsquo;t have to stay in a troublesome role for long. She ended up making another shift when she began working as a Customer Success Manager at HiringSolved, a software tool that used AI to help search ATSs more effectively. &ldquo;I had never worked in Customer Success before, but the stars really aligned. I understood staffing so it was really easy for me to advocate for the customer&rsquo;s needs. Inadvertently, that role set me up for my job here at CareerCircle.&rdquo;
As a Customer Success Manager, Nykyta went above and beyond and not only provided support to customers but also played a key role in working with the development team to guide the software development toward the goals of its users.
Here at CareerCircle, she works as a link between the development and business teams to make sure that our platform is meeting the needs and goals of all of our users, both hiring teams and candidates. She gathers requests, maps them to the skills and bandwidth of the team, arranges timelines and roadmaps, and more.
A tip for you: You may be preparing for your next role right now and not even realize it. Think about the extra tasks that you take on or the projects that spark the best work from you. When you&rsquo;re ready for the next step in your career journey, consider how those projects could be a career.
While it&rsquo;s still a new role for her, she is taking each day as she always has: An opportunity to learn something new and do something different.
While Nykyta has always learned on the job, she is looking into more traditional training opportunities. &ldquo;I do think I&rsquo;m going to go for a certificate or do a course because I&rsquo;ve definitely got the on-the-job training, but I&rsquo;d like to go back and do a by-the-book training and see how I can merge the two.&rdquo; 
<h2 style="text-align: center;">If Nykyta Could Give You One Piece of Advice&hellip;</h2>

&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be afraid of change. Don&rsquo;t count yourself out just because <a href="https://www.careercircle.com/blog/post/so-you-feel-unqualified-for-the-role" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">you don&rsquo;t have the experience</a> or you think you&rsquo;ll mess up. If you have the opportunity to make a change and try something new and it appeals to you, do it.&rdquo;
She also wants you to remember to have confidence in yourself to figure out what you need to do to be successful. After all, you never know where a change will lead you, but if you can carry confidence, compassion, and inner strength into the workplace, there&rsquo;s no doubt you&rsquo;ll end up in the right place. 
If you&rsquo;re ready to take the next step on your career journey, <a href="https://www.careercircle.com/candidates" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">join the CareerCircle community here</a>.&nbsp;
For more career journey stories from the CareerCircle team, check out our posts with&nbsp;<a href="https://www.careercircle.com/blog/post/careercircle-career-journey-cecily-guggisberg" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Cecily Guggisberg</a>. <a href="https://www.careercircle.com/blog/post/the-power-of-a-leap-of-faith-a-careercircle-career-journey" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Daniel Pugh</a>,&nbsp; and <a href="https://www.careercircle.com/blog/post/saying-yes-to-a-different-path-a-careercircle-career-story" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Courtney Remaley</a>.

Nykyta Arnold made the transition from healthcare to product management...here's how she did it.

Finding Confidence in the Face of Change: A CareerCircle Career Journey

“Don’t be afraid of change. Don’t count yourself out just because you don’t have the experience or you think you’ll mess up. If you have the opportunity to make a change and try something new and it appeals to you, do it.”

Courtney Remaley, CareerCircle&rsquo;s Director of Partnership Management, loved being at home with her mom and watching her dad go to his sales leadership role. She thought that she would follow in her mom&rsquo;s footsteps. She even went so far as to write in a letter to herself in her senior year of high school predicting that is where she would be in 10 years.
But it turns out that life had some slightly different plans. 
<h2 style="text-align: center;">From a Job to a Decades-Long Career</h2>

&ldquo;I never saw myself being at Allegis for longer than five years, but it&rsquo;ll be 20 years this month,&rdquo; Courtney shared when we started talking about her career journey.
Courtney expected that her role as a recruiter for Onsite Aviation (an Allegis Operating Company) would just keep her occupied until she moved into the role she really wanted: being a mom. But it ended up being the start of a decades-long career that was filled with new opportunities and learnings that have made her the person she is today.
After working as a recruiter, she moved over to the Contract Engineering Division at <a href="https://www.aerotek.com/">Aerotek</a> before beginning to find her footing in the Sales office for the engineering division where she later went on to&nbsp; help open a satellite office in Newnan, Georgia.
When a Director of Business Operations role opened up in the Miami/South Florida area, she took her experience of running the satellite office into that role. But she realized pretty quickly that Miami wasn&rsquo;t the right fit for her.
&ldquo;There was an opportunity to go to Jacksonville, and I raised my hand and said, hey, I&rsquo;d love to get out of Miami,&rdquo; she shared. &ldquo;It just wasn&rsquo;t the right fit for me culturally so I was looking forward to a change of scenery.&rdquo;
But after some time in the role, Courtney started to question whether it was her location that was the problem or the role.
&ldquo;Deep down, I think I knew Business Operations just wasn&rsquo;t the right fit for me. It was very heavy on the operations side of things and I really missed working with customers, building those relationships and solving customer challenges in the workplace.&rdquo;
So she raised her hand again and made the move over to the national sales team with Aerotek as a Strategic Initiative Executive.
A tip for you: If a role isn&rsquo;t right for you, but you love the company you work for, don&rsquo;t see quitting and moving on as your only option. Sit down with a leader on your team and explore options for positions that might be a better fit for you.
Before long, she became the Director of Strategic Sales - Healthcare, a role that she called &ldquo;one of my favorite jobs that I&rsquo;ve done.&rdquo;
&ldquo;I really enjoy teaching and coaching people in that role and working with clients at a high level, talking about big business propositions and presenting. I just really loved being able to work so closely with people,&rdquo; she shared when asked about why she loved the role so much. 
<h2 style="text-align: center;">Always Being Ready To Say Yes</h2>

While Courtney loved working as the Director of Strategic Sales, when MarketSource (an Allegis Operating Company) reached out about a role that would oversee collaboration across numerous Allegis OpCos, her interest was piqued.
&ldquo;It felt like a really unique opportunity to help MarketSource grow by leaning on relationships that I had built over the years while making new ones across operating companies. I didn&rsquo;t know much about it, but I was flattered that I was asked to come over and help with that piece of the business. I&rsquo;ve always been the person who says yes to opportunities, whether it&rsquo;s a new territory, a new role, or just a growth opportunity. I want to say yes. And so I did!&rdquo;
That drive to say yes stemmed from her relationships with her mentors, including her dad whose footsteps she was now fully walking in. &ldquo;All the mentors I&rsquo;ve had have always guided me to say yes to things more than you say no, because as soon as you start saying no, people stop asking.&rdquo;
It didn&rsquo;t take long in her time at MarketSource for a new opportunity to come knocking.
&ldquo;I made a point to stay in contact with Kim Sneeder [Managing Director of CareerCircle] over the years since she had mentored me in my role as a Director of Business Operations and I have always looked up to her.&nbsp; She explained that CareerCircle had started a partnership with Grow with Google and asked if I was interested in making the move. Naturally, I said yes.&nbsp; It was a great mix of leadership, client engagement, and operations!&rdquo;
After spending time with MarketSource, Courtney learned she really enjoyed working for a smaller OpCo so the opportunity to work for CareerCircle, which is the smallest in Allegis, was something she was excited about. She loved the idea of having a voice that could initiate change and the opportunity to get a lot of things done faster.&nbsp;
A tip for you: There is a major difference between large and small companies and both have their pros and cons. When you&rsquo;re on your career journey, and especially when on the job hunt, consider whether a larger company or a smaller company is better for you and your needs.
She was also looking forward to working for a company with a mission that was close to her heart.
While she wasn&rsquo;t a stay-at-home mom as she had imagined when she was younger, she was a working mom. As a working mom, she understands the needs of working parents when it comes to their professional development and moving into a role that better helps them provide for their families.
&ldquo;Working at CareerCircle meant being able to work from home and find a semblance of balance in my life as a parent and as an employee. In my previous jobs, I was on an airplane every other week. Now I can give quality work to my job, but still be here for dinner with my kids. It does mean being really disciplined with my time, but that discipline means that at the end of my workday I&rsquo;m a mom 100%.&rdquo;
Moving to CareerCircle also helped Courtney reconnect with skills and passions that she hadn&rsquo;t used in her last few positions. She was really excited to build something from scratch and she realized how much she enjoyed working with that ambiguity and taking a little bit of direction and guiding a team through a strategy to get them to the next level.
A tip for you: Taking the time to understand yourself can make a major difference in your career. Consider the deeper root of why certain requirements are important to you and focus on that &ldquo;why&rdquo; in your job search. 
<h2 style="text-align: center;">Learning From Every Step of the Way</h2>

When asked about her career journey, Courtney highlighted how much she has focused on learning from every opportunity she has had. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think I&rsquo;d be where I am today without all of my jobs. You learn from each of your experiences the things that you like and the things that you don&rsquo;t like. If you have a good leader or a good job, you learn what you want in the future and how to go for it. If you have a bad leader or a bad job, you learn what you don&rsquo;t want to emulate.&rdquo;
She suggests that everyone embraces learning from every step of their journey as well as saying yes to more opportunities that feel right. It also never hurts to have mentors and advocates fighting in your corner.
&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve had several bosses along the way who have been so supportive in not just helping me learn, but advocating for me to take on new roles and responsibilities. They were even there to tell me when they thought I was making a mistake and having that trust and honesty has been so valuable in my career and my life.&rdquo;
While Courtney staked her claim at Allegis, her dedication to continual growth meant that she always had a new challenge on her plate.
We hope that her story inspires you to grab the opportunities that are presented to you and thrive in your career, no matter what your original career goals were. Don&rsquo;t underestimate how much satisfaction can come from knowing who you are and what you want out of your role&hellip;even if it means moving around. 
If you&rsquo;re ready to take the next step on your career journey, <a href="https://www.careercircle.com/candidates">join the CareerCircle community here</a>.
For more career journey stories from the CareerCircle team, check out our posts with <a href="https://www.careercircle.com/blog/post/careercircle-career-journey-cecily-guggisberg">Cecily Guggisberg</a> and <a href="https://www.careercircle.com/blog/post/the-power-of-a-leap-of-faith-a-careercircle-career-journey">Daniel Pugh</a>.

Don’t underestimate how much joy can come from knowing who you are and what you want out of your role…even if it means moving around.

Saying Yes to a Different Path: A CareerCircle Career Story

Don’t underestimate how much satisfaction can come from knowing who you are and what you want out of your role…even if it means moving around.

Saying Yes to a Different Path: A CareerCircle Career Journey

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Staff Writer

144 Articles

How to Write an Impactful Experience Summary

Finding Confidence in the Face of Change: A CareerCircle Career Journey

Saying Yes to a Different Path: A CareerCircle Career Journey