On my other career website, my most popular page and topic related to the career objective. On this page, people can submit their career objective and get it critiqued by me and can read over the hundreds (and counting) of career objectives already submitted by other visitors.
Amazingly I can count on one hand the number of submissions I’ve received that I’d say would pique my interest enough to think about interviewing the person who wrote it if I was a hiring manager.
Most of the time, I’ll get a very generic submission that goes something like this:
Looking for a position with a dynamic company that offers me opportunities to move up within the company and utilize my strong communication skills and who believes in continuing education and training.
Basically it’s a statement that tells me virtually nothing about the person who wrote it and why the reader should interview them (which is the whole point of the career objective) and instead focuses on everything the person wants from the company.
I delete many of the submissions without posting them or critiquing them because are simply lazy attempts by people and aren’t worth reading. But many are ones that I’m sure are ones that are actually used in the person’s resume…and are ones that add nothing to their candidacy for a job.
Do you write your resume and your career objective in particular with your reader (ie. hiring manager) in mind or do you write it with no regard as to who is reading it or why?
I’m convinced that many people simply go through the motions with their resume and just write it because they have to and don’t pay a lot of attention to the purpose of the document ie. to convince the reader that they should interview them.
It also goes a long way I think to explain why people apply for job they aren’t qualified for, don’t manage their references properly, don’t prepare for interviews, etc. People are often lazy and go for quantity-over-quality and think that if they throw enough stuff against the wall something is bound to stick.
When you write your resume, review each statement and ask yourself “so what” until you can’t ask it anymore. Pretend you’re the hiring manager reading what you’ve written and ask yourself if you care about what you’ve just written.
Remember who your audience is (ie. who are you writing for) and remember that the people who tend to read your resume are those who can positively or negatively influence your job search and are typically searching to address a need or problem that they have ie. they need a new staff member.
How are you helping to address that need with what you’ve written?
