By Tasha Schlake Festel
Before the odd or juvenile email address, before the typos and misspellings and inconsistencies in language, tense, or formatting, before the irrelevant “interests,” and before the pattern of job hopping, one thing that can lose a candidate a job before even being considered is a bad Objective.
When it comes to writing an objective, take the advice of John F. Kennedy when he [almost] said, ‘Ask not what the company can do for you. Ask what you can do for the company.’ The last thing any recruiter or hiring manager wants to read is a candidate’s self-serving needs or interests. We all know that everyone wants a job where he or she can grow and learn and realize his or her full potential. Obviously any candidate’s objective is to get a better job. That’s why they’ve applied to begin with! No need to state that front and center on a resume.
For example, how does this Objective grab you?
Objective: To gain a challenging position in my field where I can further my skills and learn more about the industry.
What a waste of space! The recruiter or hiring manager evaluating that resume has learned exactly nothing about the candidate, except, perhaps, that the candidate is not interested in contributing, but rather interested in gaining skills/money/education and possibly moving on once said selfish goals are accomplished.
If a candidate is going to include an objective, it must be company focused. Objectives should never be self-serving for a candidate. An objective should indicate how a candidate will apply his or her skills in a particular area to help a company reach its specific goals. It takes work, but an objective should be specific to each job search. It should state concisely how a candidate’s skills will benefit the company.
A busy hiring manager or recruiter will spend about 5 seconds reviewing a candidate’s resume. If they don’t see the skills or keywords they’re looking for right away, the resume will be rejected. This is how an Executive Summary – a high level summation of a candidate’s skills and strengths – might make a hiring manager or recruiter pause, and give that resume a second look.
Executive Summaries, unlike Objectives, are teasers for a resume. A good summary could be the “hook” to keep someone interested. A recruiter can read in a few bullet points if a candidate is right for the job he or she looking to fill. The recruiter doesn’t have to sort through the details listed in each position a candidate has ever held. If the summary is on target, recruiters are happy to read on, but no one likes to hunt and peck through paragraphs of text for the skills required. This is especially true in tech resumes which can go on and on and on in painful detail.
Candidates should evaluate their resumes as if they were hiring managers before sending them out. Which would you prefer to read? A self-serving objective? Or a summary of qualifications?