Resume Headlines: Do headlines help or hinder in compelling the recruiter to read your resume?  What you say in the headline makes all the difference.

“Writing headlines is a specialty – there are outstanding writers who will tell you they couldn’t write a headline to save their lives.” – The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership, Bill Walsh

Additionally, my LinkedIn banner looks like this:

There are benefits and risks to using a headline. On one hand, they can raise the number of times your resume appears in keyword searches. Furthermore, an effective headline can increase the number of people who will read your resume.

On the other hand, based on the wording of your headline, a recruiter can decide whether to take time to read your resume or toss it. Additionally, they take up space where concise, compelling wording is critical.

My LinkedIn Headline

For my LinkedIn headline, I chose a title that I have used for over thirty years as a recruiter and combined that title with keywords that describe my services.

The World’s Noblest Headhunter, Business and Career Builder

I had an advantage is selecting this headline.  Over thirty years of experience have demonstrated that to me that the headline is memorable and that people respond to the headline.

Headlines Instead of Objectives or Summaries

A good place to insert the headline is in place of the objective statement or a summary of skills.  I generally don’t recommend stating an objective, with the possible exception of when the objective specific to the job and the company.  For example: Objective: To apply for the project manager position available at ABC company.

Likewise, as I have written elsewhere, stating a summary of experience skills at the opening of a resume is redundant to the content section of the resume. Therefore, I would recommend a resume headline over with an objective or a summary of skills and experience.