Jeremy Johnson has a new guest blog post this week on why he thinks the resume objective statement is dead.
Jeremy is a recruiter in Kansas City for EHD Technologies, a recruiting, staffing and managed services company serving the IT, Engineering and Automotive industries.
You can also follow him on Twitter at jsquaredkc
The Resume Objective Statement is Dead
Well, maybe it’s a bit of an overstatement to say that the objective statement is officially dead. It’s definitely on the ropes, and not putting up much of a fight, but the thing just won’t go down – at least not for good. As a recruiter who looks at lots of resumes each and every day, I still see plenty that start off with an official objective statement. Here’s why I firmly believe that the resume objective statement should be cast to the dust bin of history.
The biggest problem is that the majority of objective statements are vague and self-focused. They don’t tell the person reading it how you can help them. They usually go something like this, “I’m seeking a permanent position with a dynamic organization that allows me to use my skills and experience to contribute to the bottom line and allow for career advancement.” And I just thought of that off the top of my head. Yes, I’ve seen a lot of them.
With so little time to grab your audience’s attention, this is a complete waste of space and doesn’t help you at all. In fact, most of the time the objective statement is simply passed over. I usually don’t read them anymore because experience has taught me that I’m not going to find what I’m looking for there. Also, keeping anything on your resume that’s self-focused is a mistake. Companies don’t care what you want. They care how you can help them, fill their needs and solve their problems.
I do see a fair number of objective statements that are customized a bit, and may even state the specific types of opportunities the candidates is looking for, targeted industries and relevant experience. The problem is, though, that if it’s still under the title of “Objective Statement” it’s probably not going to get much attention.
Another unintended consequence of the objective statement is that it just comes across as outdated and old-fashioned. It’s just not worth leading off with.
A better approach is to write a “headline” or short summary statement. The headline is more of how you’re branding yourself to your audience, such as Software Architect or Quality Engineer or Manufacturing Operations Management. I call it a headline because it functions like a headline in a newspaper: it grabs the attention of the audience with something that’s of interest to them. So, the resume headline has to be specific and audience-focused.
The summary statement on the other hand is a very short paragraph – maybe 2-3 sentences – focused on branding yourself much like the headline but with a little more depth or context. Again, it has to be written in a way that your target audience would be selfishly motivated to read more.
You can also combine the two. I’ve seen this work quite well, where someone will have a headline and immediately underneath it a short summary statement.
Both the headline and summary statement are like a broad umbrella under which the rest of your resume information is expected to fit. In other words, your audience will expect that the rest of the resume will be consistent with the headline or summary statement – just like you expect a news story to be consistent with its headline.
There are too many things in the job hunt that you can’t control, so if you can control something, I’m a big advocate of doing it right. Instead of making the first thing your audience sees on your resume as something vague, selfish, old-fashioned or irrelevant, lead off with something that will pique there interest. So, if you haven’t killed off the objective statement on your own resume, it’s time to put it out of its misery.