Why An Objective On A Resume Makes You Look Old

Get your reader interested in you with an impactful, unique career summary.

The days of your resume starting out with “Objective: Experienced Executive Sales Manager seeking to ….” are long gone! If you are still using a line like that to open up your executive resume, you may as well realize that your chance of getting selected for an interview is probably long gone as well. Lose the “Objective” and replace that one-liner with a dynamic career summary that pulls the reader in and shows that you have the experience, skills, and credentials to get the job.

A career summary is a brief statement/paragraph at the top of your summary that immediately communicates your qualifications for the job. In just a few sentences, you need to be able to articulate the value you can offer, what you have that makes you more uniquely qualified than others, and why the hiring manager should call you, and only you, in for the interview. A few tips to get you on your way…

The hook…

Clearly define your goals: think about this- if you were already in the interview, what would be the top 3-4 things you would tell the hiring manager about yourself to show you are the one to hire? Now, put those 3-4 things in writing on your career summary.

The line…

Highlight your applicable experience, strengths and skills: incorporate keywords and keyword phrases that are relevant to the position you’re applying for/industry throughout your summary. If the resume is being screened by an ATS program, using the appropriate keywords will help to ensure that your resume will get selected from the pile. If you have space, you can even share an achievement that shows how you’ve increased sales or revenue, improved productivity, implemented a new program―how you’ve created value for others during your career. You can also include the job title or a little bit about your personal brand in your summary to make an even stronger connection.

Reel em’ in…

Build them up and leave them wanting to know more: you’ve made your point, now conclude your summary with a catchy phrase that shows the impact you have made in your career for your past employers.

Here are examples of what we found at the top of two resumes submitted by candidates applying for the same position with an association:

Objective: Experienced candidate seeking to work as an executive for a large company where I can grow my skills and expertise in the field.

Executive Summary: Entrepreneurial leader accomplished in designing game-changing strategies to propel growth and membership within sales associations. Valued for providing insight, evaluating current practices, identifying market trends, and achieving unprecedented results. Expertise in developing strong and sustainable solutions to maximize partner retention and affinity relations, facilitate expansion, and generate revenue growth. Capable of building strong relationships with business partners and influencing at all levels to generate results.

Which candidate would you call in for an interview?

There is nothing more satisfying than watching someone progress in their career, and a strategically-written resume is a great place to start. Recruiters and hiring managers want to be sold on you as a candidate in the first few seconds they spend on your resume―you have to be able to show your ROI with high-value information to keep the reader interested in learning more about you.

Go a step further and use your summary on your resume as the basis for your summary on your LinkedIn profile. Nobody wants to see “I am seeking a job as a Sales Executive” in the “About” section on your profile. You have 2,000 characters to sell yourself in the “About” section. Include a brief summary, some bulleted achievements, and your most relevant strengths and expertise to show all you offer in just a few quick seconds. Make it personal and creative―let the reader see who you are, how you operate, and how you can impact their organization if they hire you.

So, to answer the question in the title of this article, you need to lose the “Objective” you’re still showing on your resume and replace it with a dynamic career summary that markets you as the best fit for the employer’s needs. When written and presented the right way, a strong career summary statement at the beginning of your resume will not just introduce you to the reader, but more importantly will effectively convey that YOU are the ideal candidate for the job, right from the get-go.

How To Decide Which Job Is For You

Job Search

Glassdoor recently came out with their list of the 25 Best Jobs in America for 2015. Their criteria for the Glassdoor Job Score is based on three factors — earning potential (average annual base salary), career opportunities rating, and number of job openings. It’s a pretty nice list, from the sales engineer at #25 to the #1 physician’s assistant. It covers a lot of career fields and your own “best job” just may be on the list.
Then again, it might not.

Filter Job Options Wisely

Picking a career based solely on how much money you will make is not a good idea because there are a lot of other factors involved. The career opportunities and probability of employment (number of job openings) are two more factors, and for a list that covers everybody in America, Glassdoor does a good job. But narrowing down the options to the best strategies for your particular career path means you need to filter out what won’t work for you.
One place to start would be in taking a good look at your current resume to see what you are qualified to do. If you don’t want to do what you are qualified for, you have a great place to start deciding what needs to change. Look at why you don’t want to do what you are qualified for, what you may be interested in, and research how to explore that potential.
Other filters to use are location, current debt load, and family obligations. Every factor you can think of should come into your planning. Your dream job might be a nightmare if you don’t consider all the factors in your own life first.

Get Sound Advice

Choosing a career mentor who is willing to help you figure out your options is one of the best things you can do with your career plans. This is a long-term networking strategy that should be mutually beneficial. Getting a lot of advice from many sources will give a big perspective, but getting advice from someone who knows you is going to help you avoid some stumbling blocks in the path of your career.

Ask The Experts: Cover Letter and Resume Transformation

Resume Writing

Recently, I was honored to be among industry experts discussing current trends in resumes and cover letters on a Mashable Biz Chat. Tracy Edouard, Marketing and Communication at Mashable, gives us the highlights of Mashable’s #BizChats Twitter chat on how to transform your resume and cover letter for the better and you can see different professional perspectives on these questions:

Is it important to have both a cover letter and resume when submitting job applications? Why or why not?
How can someone truly make their resume stand out from the competition?
What features are important to showcase on someone’s resume? (GPA, school, skills, etc.)
What are employers and recruiters looking for in resumes and cover letters?
What are the biggest cover-letter mistakes professionals are making?
How important is design when it comes to creating a resume and cover letter?
What are the top resources available for resume and cover letter support?
What final tips do you have about creating great resumes and cover letters?

These are all good questions. And the input from the various professionals involved is valuable without a doubt. But do you know what the most striking thing about this Twitter chat is?

There Isn’t An Excuse For An Ineffective Resume & Cover Letter

We have the ability to pull experts from all over the place for a chance to pick their brains. Every expert tweeting is linked to a site with a wealth of information, and there is no reason a job seeker with access to an expert can’t get expert advice. Much of that advice is free, too!
The overwhelming consensus is that you can have an effective resume and cover letter by putting the right effort into it. Sometimes that effort involves doing the research on current trends and revamping it yourself, sometimes it takes a resume critique from a professional to help you see what needs to be done, and sometimes your best investment is in a professional resume service.
The help you need to have a powerful resume and cover letter is out there and you can find it easily, along with a wealth of career advice from experts in your field.

One Fast Way To Evaluate Your Resume

Resume Keywords

If your resume is not getting the results you’d expect based on your skills and experience, maybe it needs to be evaluated. All the information could be perfect; perfectly bland. Here’s a fast way to evaluate your resume, and it’s based on the way it will be evaluated when it reaches that VIP looking for someone to fill a position:
Pick up your resume and scan it for 30 seconds, then cover it and write down what you remember.
Actually, thirty seconds might be longer than most HR people look at it, but they have developed serious speed reading skills. What do you remember about your resume? What stands out?
Now consider that your resume is something you are familiar with — and it was probably hard to remember what you said about yourself. Imagine what it’s like to read through hundreds of resumes in an attempt to find the best candidates to call in for interviews! These people don’t know you, and they do know what they need in the position.

Be Memorable and Consistent

The keywords that need to be there are the words used in the job ad, because that’s what they are looking for. But you are offering a unique spin on that because of your individuality. Build on that uniqueness by presenting yourself with synonyms of those keywords where it’s appropriate and keep a consistency throughout your resume by answering the question in their mind:
Why should I hire you?
Another way to say the same thing is, “who are you and what do you bring to this position?” If the answer to the question in their mind isn’t obvious, then you need to work on your resume until it can answer that question with fast and clear.

When Is Imperfection Preferable?

Resumes

There are some areas of life where perfection is not what you want. Friendships don’t need perfection to be good, right? In fact, the people who pretend to be perfect rarely have a lot of friends because perfectionists keep others at arm’s length so the world doesn’t find out they aren’t perfect, after all.
Relationships are stable because we give each other room to fail and correct our mistakes. We don’t need to be perfect in order to be loved or liked. We do need to be able to admit when we are wrong and be willing to fix it.

Some Things Must Be Perfect

As endearing as a mistake can be in a friend, there are times you don’t get a do-over.
Resumes are a perfect example of this, because there isn’t a relationship established yet. Spelling errors aren’t going to get you much more than a ribbing from your grammar-Nazi friend, but that same error will get your resume cast aside by the HR person assigned to fill the position. The HR person is going on a quick first impression based on your resume, but your friend is looking at your mistakes in context of your friendship.

Make Sure Your Resume Meets Professional Standards

If your resume isn’t resulting in job interviews, ask that grammar-Nazi friend to help by giving you a resume critique. People who have professional standards for writing got there by making lots of mistakes and correcting them, over and over again. The problem isn’t that your resume is imperfect. It’s that you haven’t dealt with the imperfections yet.
Resumes need to meet professional standards that cover more than spelling. Polishing your resume so it shines with perfection is a perfect way to prove you are worth considering for a position. Once you are at your new job, you can share some imperfections with your new friends.

Look At Your Resume With New Eyes

Resume Writing

One of the best ways to fix your resume is to look at it like the recruiter or HR person will be looking at it. Do you think they read every word of every one of the multitude of resumes that cross their desk? I doubt it.
Most of the time a resume submitted online will be filtered through an applicant tracking system (ATS) that will break down the formatting and assign relevancy to the content so it can be searched using keywords that match what they are looking for. Once the resumes are filtered for relevancy and they have the applicants who are most likely to fit their specifications, it’s the human’s turn.

Here’s What Happens When Your Resume Is Read

Imagine you are that weary reader of resumes, picking up one more and hoping this is the last. What do you look for? You look for the answer to your questions:

Who is this person?
Will they be able to do the job?
Will they fit in the company dynamic?

How long will it take you to skim the pages and find the answers to your questions? Not long — professionals skim pretty quickly. Most estimates of time spent looking at submitted resumes are measured in single digit seconds. That means your resume needs to be easy to read. If you look like a good fit, they will call you in for an interview and find out more about you.
There are many ways to write a resume (here are some samples) and they all are easy to skim quickly. They are written for both the computer (ATS) and the human who will be reading the information. Look at your resume with new eyes, thinking about how it will be read when you submit it to that next job. Make those changes necessary and hopefully you will be called in for an interview soon!

The Top Reason Professional Resume Distribution Works

NetworkingProducts & Services

Is anybody in your family interested in your family history? My mom is our family historian. She has our family tree going back to the 1600’s! It’s pretty amazing what she’s found out and who she has met along the way. One thing most genealogists will tell you is that researching a family tree is a lot like networking. Many families will have one person in the generation who is willing to keep all the photos and letters and information, and finding that person is like finding a treasure trove. Instead of laboriously working on finding one branch, suddenly you discover that they’ve got the connections to a whole bunch of branches and they know the people who are the keepers of the photos and letters and information for all of them.
If you are interested in finding the connections in your ancestry, you need to find the people who are already doing the research. They have already made connections you have no access to until you contact them. For example, if you never meet Great Aunt Irma, then you won’t get to see all the letters your grandma sent to her dad with the pictures of your dad as a baby.

Networking

Companies use recruiters to fill executive positions and many other types of openings. A professional resume distribution service has carefully maintained connections with many professional recruiters so that a resume goes to the right recruiters for that job seeker. The connections have already been made: These are professionals who rely on networking for their career and carefully maintain the connections between them. Instead of Great Aunt Irma keeping your dad’s baby pictures, they’ve got first knowledge of job openings, and you won’t find out about it unless you connect to the right one.
This networking is the reason professional resume distribution works so much better than a blind email blast to every company in the phone book or a hopeful query out of nowhere. If your resume is presented by a reputable distribution service, that reputation enhances your resume by association. Recruiters get untold numbers of resumes all the time. It makes sense to filter them for efficiency. The fact you recognized quality and respected professional standards weights your submission with authority.