Resume for Contract Specialist

Contract specialists help vendors and clients ensure all necessary contracts are executed fairly and legally. If you’re looking for a career involving customer contact and negotiation, a contract specialist role is a great way to gain experience in a new field or company, and can often lead to long-term opportunities.

While many contract specialists have a background in law or business, others come from a variety of backgrounds and industries. However, all contract specialists share one thing in common: they must prepare a well-written resume that presents their top qualifications in contract work. Here are three tips to help you write an impressive contract specialist resume:

1. Introduce yourself with a descriptive resume objective

Employers are often busy, which is why they hire contract specialists to help them sort out contracts and other legal documents. To capture their attention quickly and get them to consider you for an interview, try writing a resume objective that highlights your top skills and relevant experience in contract work.

A contract specialist resume objective is a short statement outlining your career goals and skills. Listed underneath your contact details, your resume objective should:

• target the specific job you’re applying for
• be between 2–4 sentences long
• list your years of experience (if applicable), top skills, education, and career goals at a glance

Here’s an example of a contract specialist resume objective that successfully addresses the above points using only three sentences:

2. Highlight your hard and soft skills as a contract specialist

A contract specialist resume should include a summary of your hard and soft skills in the field. Employers want to see that you have a solid understanding of contracting laws and regulations, so add hard skills to your contract specialist resume.

Hard skills (also known as technical skills) are learned from schooling, training, or practical experience. For example, your ability to understand the legal and financial nuances of a contract is an essential hard skill to have as a contract specialist.

On the other hand, soft skills show how you relate to others in a professional setting. For instance, you’ll need excellent communication skills to explain complex contract details in simpler terms to your clients. You should also list your negotiation skills to prove you can help your client rediscuss terms if one of the parties isn’t happy with the original agreement.

Here are some of the key skills for your resume as a contract specialist:

3. Include hard numbers in your work experience bullet points

As you’re writing the work experience section of your resume, make sure you use hard numbers to show employers you’re a contract expert with accomplishments that set you apart from other candidates.

Try adding hard numbers such as the:

• number of contracts you handled
• amount of revenue you saved a company or client
• size of the teams you worked with

Instead of a generic statement like “Generated money in savings for a client,” employers will be more impressed and understand the scope of your achievements if you add specific details and numbers, like in this example:

A contract specialist's work experience bullet point using hard numbers

“Negotiated a $1.2M contract between two automobile manufacturers, resulting in drawing up legal agreements within a 24-hour period”