Resume Objective Statements

State What You Want to Do and What You Will Do

The key word is “objective”: what’s the next step in your career? How will your skills benefit the company? How will these two things merge?

Notice that an objective written as “to obtain a position with ‘X’ company or in ‘Y’ field” doesn’t fit the above descriptive category. There’s a reason for that: it’s not a good objective.

Your entire resume is marketing you: your abilities, accomplishments, goals and the partnership you intend to establish with the prospective employer. Most HR managers reveal that when reviewing resumes, they look for:

• Skills and accomplishments fitting the needs of the position
• An understanding of the company and the position
• A demonstration of thought backing career choices

The objective is the slogan, if you will, that encapsulates all of this.

In this article, we’ll provide a number of resume objective statements that you can use as a starting point for crafting your own marketing slogan.

Resume Objective Statements

Remember to position your strengths and desires with what the company’s advertised needs and goals are, but keep the resume objective brief. Sounds like a high wire balancing act, doesn’t it? Not if you remember to be descriptive. Generalities say nothing about you and thus, prospective employers will tune out.

New Careers or Changes in Employment

This category covers a vast number of opportunities. From the high school student wanting to make a professional impression and the higher education graduate seeking new employment, to the stay-at-home parent re-entering the workforce or the professional switching career paths, it’s easy to position yourself attractively with resume objective statements.

Consider these examples:

• To gain an understanding of how to provide good customer service, stage merchandising and obtain knowledge of the day-to-day retail operations of Hot Topic.

• Mature professional with small-business accounting knowledge seeking part-time employment with start-up firm or family-run establishment needing reliable, accurate and innovative financial management abilities.

• Recent marketing graduate seeking an event marketing position requiring high energy and crowd stimulation ability. Executed viral marketing campus campaigns for iPod and Budweiser; responsible for coordination of basketball pep rallies and promotions.

• To expand experience in child education and craft experiential learning techniques through tested methods and the new philosophies of KinderCare.

• Communications professional experienced with coordinating writers, photographers and fluctuating advertising dollars desires to create and structure Web content for a progressive multi-topic information site.

Accelerated Career Path

Same rules apply here: resume objective statements should be brief, descriptive and focused on the needs of the company.

• To obtain a position as a purchasing manager in the health care industry, utilizing 14 years of success in cost control and inventory regulation.

• IT professional with eight years of project coordination, programming and lead rollout execution seeking management opportunity and team-building potential within a corporation or small business requiring in-house technical facilitation.

• Plant manager and quality control specialist desires to apply 20 years of manufacturing expertise to expand product development and efficiency as a company executive.

• Successful broadcasting account executive with 89 percent client retention rate and 10 years experience aspires to structure a focused team and increase close ratios through a director of sales position in the areas of communications or publications.

Key Points to Remember

• Use keywords and language found in job advertisement. This will demonstrate that you’ve paid attention to what the employer needs.
• Tailor each resume objective to fit the position. HR managers can see right through "assembly-line" resumes.
• If you can’t provide a direct benefit statement objective, consider doing a professional summary to showcase abilities and accomplishments. Those re-entering the workforce or changing careers often find this to be more helpful.