Let’s talk for a minute about the “Summary” and “Objective” portions of a resume. When used well, choosing one of these resume features can really tie your experience together and present you as a person, rather than as a collection of dates and job titles. When used poorly, they either make you look like you’re trying (poorly) to pad, or like you didn’t even bother trying to learn anything about the job for which you’re applying.

It should be noted that in many cases, a summary or objective isn’t really even necessary- when in doubt, just leave it out.

The Summary

The summary is best for people with several years of experience, especially those who want to highlight skills that aren’t necessarily assumed to be part of their job descriptions. For example, if you’re a network administrator who has also managed a migration or a rollout and want to highlight that project management experience, you might say something like:

Network administrator with 7 years of progressively responsible experience in user and network support. Experienced in project management and systems migration. Supervised teams of up to 7 people.

What you should not do is use the summary to talk about how smart you are if you don’t have the experience to back it up. Don’t say things like, “Candidate possesses a deep understanding of Information Technology from a substantial perspective.” Even if you come up with a more intelligent way to say it than that, it just looks like you’re trying to make something out of nothing.

The Objective

The objective is best suited for people who have a wide variety of experience, or who are trying to change the focus of their careers, because the experience listed on the resume might not suggest what it is they’re looking to do. For example, if you’ve always done help desk but are looking to move into networking, this would be a good situation in which to use an objective, because it tells me as a potential employer to be looking at your help desk jobs to see if they’ve given you any real network experience.

First, let me tell you what not to do. Don’t use the generic “To obtain a challenging position in the field of ____ that will allow me to utilize my _____ skills.” I see 10 variations of that a day and they’re all useless! Useless, I tell you! It doesn’t tell me anything about what your goals are or what you’d like to specialize in. If you can’t come up with something better than this, leave it off.

Instead, try to tailor your objective to the specific job for which you are applying. This isn’t dishonest- you only apply for jobs that you want, so there’s nothing wrong with saying, “To obtain a position on the development team for a web-based information management system in a start-up company environment,” on the resume you’d send to a company like the software company I used to work for, and then sending the non-profit who needs a webmaster the resume that says, “To obtain a website management position at a non-profit organization focused on education.” Because in each case, it’s true. It also demonstrates that you’ve taken the time to understand the position as well as the company you’re applying to, and you’d be surprised at how many people don’t even bother with that step.

This is especially critical if you’re going to work with a company like mine- I might be looking at your resume and thinking that you’re perfect for this job order I have open that I can’t fill- until I look at your objective and discover that in fact you want to do something completely different.

Someone protested to me today that he doesn’t have enough experience to know what he wants to specialize in. Fair enough. If you don’t have enough experience to know what you want to do, then you don’t have enough experience to use an objective. It’s not strictly necessary. And everyone knows that right out of college, your objective is to get a job, and if it’s in the field you majored in, that’s a huge bonus.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 30th, 2005 at 5:16 pm and is filed under Resumes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.