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What's My Objective?

In a previous lesson, we touched upon the idea of having a career objective. Remember that the objective is a brief, one sentence explanation of your career goal appears at the top of your resume, just under your header/contact info.

Creating an objective statement can be a helpful way to align your goals and skills with the specific position and organization you are applying to work for. Half the battle of building a set of effective career documents is remembering that resumes and cover letters are superficially about you, but in reality they are about what the company is looking for. Your goal is to make it clear that what that company is looking for is you!

The idea behind your objective is to explain:
  1. what opportunity you are looking for, and
  2. how you are qualified/skilled in that position
Career objectives should be flexible and change in working according to the job being applied for. What works for one resume or application may not always be relevant to another. So think of your objective as something you should tweak or adjust for every resume you send out.

Example:

Yu are applying for a job as the manager of a call center for AT&T. Your career objective on the resume might end up looking like this:
Objective: To obtain a management position with a major communications company using my strong organizational, technological, and interpersonal skills.

Notice how this objective takes three specific skills (organizational, technological, and interpersonal) and connects them with a goal that fits the job description: a manager for a large communications company like AT&T. Having this objective tells the person reviewing my resume right away that:
1. I am interested in the specific position they advertised.
2. I possess skills that make me uniquely qualified for the advertised position.

As a result, the objective will immediately grab the reviewer's attention, and the career/educational experiences that follow in my will give more details.

Fun Fact:
In the cover letter thread, we reviewed effective templates for building strong cover letters with brief, focused opening paragraphs. Notice something about the requirements for the cover letter's intro paragraph:

Dear Mr./Ms./Dr. LastName:

Opening paragraph: State why you are writing; how you learned of the organization or position, and a summary of your qualifications.


For the cover letter's opening paragraph, your resume's career objective can be recycled, tweaked, or modified to blend into that paragraph. Building continuity between the objective on the resume and this opening paragraph of the cover letter is a way of being consistent about how and why you will excel in the job at hand.

Notice how well the example objeective fits in a cover letter to AT&T:
Dear Ms. Lang:

I was thrilled to learn about your call center's opening for an assitant manager through AT&T's career opportunities bulleten. Due to my organizational, technological, and interpersonal communications expertise, I know I can shape a progressive, cohesive team that meets your organization's mission to provide service through innovation.

This is just an example of course, but notice how you can tie core skills, strengths, or competencies together from the resume to the cover letter.

Your career objecctive and your opening statement on the cover letter are there to help you highlight your attributes that will align you with this job. However, remember that in the bullet points of your resume and of your body section of your cover letter, you want to go beyond those general skills and get more specific as you demonstrate what you can do for this organization.

When you submit your resumes and cover letters for feedback . . .
  • Include a career objective
  • Make sure that objective targets your job with relevant skills or strengths
  • Make the objective about what you have to offer (not what you hope to gain)
  • Reflect these key ideas in the opening of your cover letter