Whats A Resume Objective & When To Use It
A resume objective is, in a nutshell, the goal of your resume. It communicates your motivation for getting into a new field. As with a resume summary, a resume objective should be around 2-3 sentences.
As weve mentioned before, a resume objective is the go-to for anyone that either has no work experience or is going through a career change.
Formula to Create Your Resume Objective:
Looking to apply my at
to help .
Examples of Resume Objectives
1) So, heres how that would look like if youre a student:
- Hard-working recent graduate with a B.A. in Graphic Design from New York State University seeking new opportunities. 3+ years of practical experience working with Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, creating illustrations & designing UX / UI. Looking to grow as a designer, as well as perfect my art, at the XYZ Design Studio.
2) Or, on the other hand, if youre going through a career change:
- IT project manager with 5+ years of experience in software development. Managed a team of developers to create products for several industries, such as FinTech and HR tech. Looking to leverage my experience in managing outsourced products as a Product Owner at XYZ.
How To Include Your Professional Experience On Your Resume
Heres a three-step process of how to list your work experience so that you can make it stand out:
This should be right at the top so that anyone scanning your resume wont miss it.
2. A short 1-2 sentence description explaining what the company does.
Certainly, if you have worked in a globally recognized brand like Apple, Google, McKinseys, etc, then you probably dont need to include background information on the company.
Otherwise, add the companys name, location of the office where you worked, and a one-sentence description of what the company does.
3. Include 4-6 bullet points describing the core duties and activities you performed for the company.
Now, this is the tricky part – listing your work experience the right way.
Each bullet point here should be a one-sentence description of a duty or activity.
Most people, when writing their resume, simply list out their basic responsibilities.
Things like Managed the sales at the company & dealing with clients or Marketed company products and drove sales.
Well, heres the thing. The hiring manager knows what your responsibilities are. What they want to know is how you drove results at the company and helped take it from point A to point B.
Heres how a well-written achievements/duties/activities look like:
Whats A Resume Summary & When To Use It
A resume summary is a 2-3 sentence summary of your career. You should use a resume summary in basically any situation, unless youre a recent university graduate or switching careers .
In your resume summary, you need to mention:
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Add A Highlights Section
Modern resumes are built to be value-oriented, which requires providing information that is more achievement-based as opposed to task-based. If youve had multiple roles with varying achievements, select the top four you are most proud of and incorporate them into a Career Highlights section.
Try to avoid adding more than four as this section is meant to be the highlights of your achievements, and you dont want to create sections with long lists of bullets, creating a very boring way to read content.
Why Do I Need A Resume
- Starting Point
For a term thats in regular, constant rotation, there can be a lot of confusion over what a resume is and what one is supposed to do.
So what do you need to know to begin writing or revising your resume? Here are some basics to understand, accompanied by guidelines to follow. And as always, coming into the Career Center is your best chance to get your resume perfect.
First and foremost, the point of a resume is to get you into the interview phase of a job search. Your resume should show a potential employer that you have a college degree, most of the skills and abilities they need, and a work-related environment.
Your resume should look clean and condensed, be easy-to-skim, and cluster the most important information at the top. You should assume your resume gets 30 seconds of face time with the person reviewing it, so brevity is key: no one is reading paragraphs of information.
Most importantly, your resume should reflect you in the best light for each specific job you’re applying for. That means you may add, delete, adjust, or reword information for each separate job application to ensure youre matching the specifics of what that company wants.
As you write and review your resume, use this checklist as a guide, then come into the Career Center for a final review. Well be waiting for you!
Resume Basics: A Checklist
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Additional Information And References
Resumes focus on your previous job experiences. However, there may be times when including a skill or accomplishment that was gained outside of your work history could greatly influence a hiring manager. For example, did you win City Volunteer of the Year for your work with a homeless shelter? Or perhaps you have a useful language skill, such as being fluent in Spanish. There is a place for these types of thingsas well as a spot to include references if you chooseon your resume.
In this lesson, you will determine what type of additional information is appropriate to include on your resume.
Watch the video below to learn what to include in the skills section of your resume.
Additional skills and information
Sometimes you may want to include additional information about yourself that comes from outside of your education and work history. For example, you may want to include your fluency in another language, a special community project you coordinated or managed, or maybe even your technology skills outside of what you included in your employment history.
So where do you include additional skills and information on your resume? Here are some options.
References
In most of the United States, your previous managers and the human resources department can only confirm dates of employment, not talk about your performance, so your references should not include previous supervisors.
To improve your chances of getting a job, choose references who:
Try this!
Branding Statements And Profiles
A branding statement or professional profile has taken the place of the objective for most resume writers. In this brief introductory paragraph, job seekers provide an elevator speecha quick summary of their experience, skills, and attributes that describes their career and qualifications at a glance.
This introduction fulfills two main purposes at the same time: it gives hiring managers quick insight into the candidate while allowing the candidate an opportunity to use resume keywords that will get their application noticed. Here’s an example:
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Guidelines For What To Include In A Resume
When you are writing a resume, there are a number of resume formats you can choose, including chronological, functional, and targeted resumes. However, regardless of the format you select, there are certain guidelines that most resumes should follow.
Here’s information on what to include in your resume, as well as what shouldn’t be listed on your resume. There are also guidelines for resume length, font, and page margins.
What To Include In Your Resume
Now that you know what not to include in your resume, take a second look at your resume to make sure it includes all the right elements to effectively tell your story and market your qualifications and work experience. Click on the following link to learn what 11 pieces of information every professional should include in a resume.
Not sure if your resume includes any of these mistakes? Let us help! Take advantage of TopResume’s free critique today!
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Eight Tips To Keep Your Resume Concise
1. Avoid repeating information: Did you perform the same or similar job tasks for more than one employer? Instead of repeating job duties, focus on your accomplishments in each position.
2. Eliminate old experience: Employers are most interested in what you did recently. If you have a long career history, focus on the last 10 to 15 years. If your early career is important to your current goal, briefly mention the experience without including details. For example: Early Career: ABC Company — City, State — Assistant Store Manager and Clerk, 1980-1985.
3. Don’t include irrelevant information: Avoid listing hobbies and personal information such as date of birth or marital status. Also, eliminate outdated technical or business skills.
4. Cut down on job duties: Many job seekers can trim the fat off their resumes simply by removing long descriptions of job duties or responsibilities. Instead, create a paragraph that briefly highlights the scope of your responsibility and then provide a list of your most impressive accomplishments.
5. Remove the “references available upon request” line: Many job seekers waste the valuable last line of the resume on an obvious statement. Delete it.
6. Use a telegraphic writing style: Eliminate personal pronouns and minimize the use of articles when preparing your resume.
And Lets Wrap It All Up
If youve followed all of our advice until now, congrats! Youre probably an expert on how to make a resume.
To wrap it all up, lets brush up on some of the most important lessons weve learned so far…
- Use the rightresume builder. You dont want to mess around with formatting for hours before even starting to work on your resume!
- Focus on achievements. Mention your achievements instead of responsibilities, so that you stand out from all the other applicants.
- Include the must-have sections. That is, resume summary, work experience, education, and skills.
- Tailor for the job. Everything listed on your resume should be relevant for the job youre applying for.
- Perfect your cover letter. Its as important as your resume, so make sure you pay as much attention to it!
At Novorésumé, were committed to helping you get the job you deserve, every step of the way! Follow our career blog to stay up to date with industry-leading advice. Or, check out some of our top guides:
Andrei Kurtuy
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Detail Your Work Experience
The work experience section is the heart of your resume. Employers look at this section closely to determine whether your job history and prior accomplishments make you a promising candidate.
Thats why its important to detail not only your job responsibilities but also your competence in prior roles. The work experience section is your chance to show recruiters and hiring managers how you have added unique value to other companies.
The first things a recruiter looks for on your resume are the job titles youve held and the caliber of companies youve worked with. Make this information easy to find by sticking to a familiar format.
List each job in reverse-chronological order. Each job should have its own subheading that includes the following information:
- Company
Anything That Makes Your Resume More Than Two Pages
Unless you have a Ph.D. and are writing an academic CV or unless youve been working for 10-15+ years your resume should not be more than two pages.
For 60-70% of people, your resume should only be one page.
So focus on whats most important and keep the length short.
As a recruiter, Id rather see 8 specific skills that are relevant to the job Im hiring for, rather than a list of 30 general skills that youve used throughout your career but might not be relevant to the job. So make your resume laser-focused and target their needs!
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Most Employers Do Not Require References Up Front
Employers and recruiters are sorting and sifting through hundreds of resumes to determine which candidates make the first cut and get an interview. During this first pass, they are not likely to contact any references. It would not be efficient to contact references during this stage. They would only waste time. They will want to talk to you first before putting in the effort to reach out to anyone on your behalf. If after the interview the recruiter or hiring manager would like to contact any references, they will ask for them. At this time , it is appropriate to give a reference page.
Next Steps: Tailoring Your Resume To The Job
Now that you know what sections to put on your resume, let’s talk about its content.
It’s essential that any information you’ve mentioned on your resume is relevant to the job.
We really cant emphasize enough how important it is for you to check every section you have put on your resume and make sure each one is tailored to the job/position you are applying for.
Why?
Because the hiring manager wants the job seeker that’s applying for THEIR position, not sending a mass application to 50+ different companies.
So, heres how youd tailor your resume to the job youre applying for. As step #1, take a look at the job ad and identify top requirements and skills.
Lets use the following ad as an example:
As you can see, the most important requirements are:
- 5+ years of experience in the field
- Skills in Copywriting, Photoshop, and email marketing
- Practical experience creating and optimizing landing pages
Now, you need to make sure you mention all of these in your resume, in whichever section theyre relevant.
Now that you know exactly what to put on a resume, we thought it would be helpful to also cover what NOT to put on a resume.
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Space On Your Resume Is Valuable Real Estate
Typically, a resume should be limited to one page unless you have an extensive work history. Because resumes are short and concise, the information you choose to include must be relevant and essential to the position you are applying for. References on resumes are a waste of space. You would be much wiser to include a little extra job history or an additional skill set. List out previous experiences including specific responsibilities and results.
Name And Contact Information
At a minimum, your contact information section should include your name, phone number and email address. Depending on the type of job youre applying for, you might also include a link to an online portfolio or professional website.
An example contact information section might look like this:
A common practice is to use your name as the title of the page, formatted so that employers can easily identify your name and contact information first.
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Resume Summary Or Objective
Your resume summary or objective should be a short, one to two sentence section that briefly explains who you are and why youre qualified. Carefully review the job posting for clues on which of your technical and soft skills will be most important and relevant.
Resume summaries and objectives are slightly different, and you should choose to include one or both depending on your background and the position youre seeking. A resume summary will describe your work experience, while a resume objective will state your short-term goals.
A summary is good if you have at least some work experience that can be quickly summarized. An objective statement, however, is better suited for those who have recently graduated from high school or college, or who otherwise have limited job experience.
Your resume summary could say:
Thoughtful construction laborer with over five years of experience helping manage teams toward successful and safe completion of housing projects.
Your resume objective could say:
Recent graduate eagerly looking to expand construction labor experience with a growing contractor.
In both your resume section and your summary, its important to avoid talking about topics more suited to a job interview, such as how much youre hoping to earn.
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The Purpose Of A Resume
Many job seekers assume that the purpose of a resume is to provide a full overview of their professional history.
Instead, the goal of your resume is to convince employers youre worth interviewing. To that end, your resume is a valuable tool you can use to highlight your experience to prospective employers.
If your resume provides a concise summary of your relevant qualifications and skills in a format that makes your ability to handle the work as clear as possible, you will get more interviews.
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Find Out How The Program Works With Your College
If you would be participating in the Disney College Program after graduation, you can skip this point. If not, however, the Disney College Program is something you definitely need to discuss and confirm what the plan would be if you are accepted with your college.
When I applied for my first Disney College Program, I knew my school did not give credit for it as an internship. I thought this was fine because Id just take more classes the semester I came back, or over the summer, and Id be all caught up while still spending half of my sophomore year at Walt Disney World.
I applied, got accepted, told my advisor about the program, and was directed to the financial aid office to triple check on something I had not even considered- The terms of my scholarship. Without taking classes or getting credit for an internship for a semester, I would have been breaking the terms of my scholarship that allowed me to afford to go to my college in the first place.
With no way to budge on that, I was forced to decline my offer from Disney. So, speaking from personal experience, sort out the plan with your college before you apply to save the emotional highs and lows of the application process.