Wasted lines on your resume

Objectives vs. Summaries

Objective
My objective is to find an entry level position with a mid-size architectural firm where I can hone my design skills and advance the company’s objectives.

I often see objectives like this on people’s resumes and wonder why they are wasting two precious lines of their personal advertisement to tell me what they want to do.

First, your objective is obvious: you want to get hired. Obviously, you want to get hired for this job or you wouldn’t have applied.

Second, I don’t care if you are looking for a great career with flexibility where you can excel and lead. I only care about my objective which is to find the right person for this job as soon as possible so I can get the hiring manager off my back.

Finally, why are you wasting space telling me what you want when you could be telling me what you could do for me?

This is where a summary comes in. Call it a Candidate Summary, an Experience Summary or a Skills Summary, but I am a firm believer that the top quarter to third of your resume should be an easy to read summary of your experience and skills that will drive me to read the rest of the page.

Here’s an example.

Candidate Summary:

• Three years experience with AutoCAD, strong knowledge of Revit
• Detail oriented with demonstrated effectiveness in a team setting
• Design lead on two major projects
• Bi-lingual in Spanish

That small blurb tells a recruiter crucial information. You know some software they use. You can work with a group of people. You can speak a second language. You have experience being a leader. And, it’s easy to read. I don’t have to go dig this stuff out of your Experience section.

That’s a whole lot more useful than the Objective line above! What if you only have those two lines to use? Try this:

Candidate Summary:
Bi-lingual architect with knowledge of AutoCAD and Revit; detail oriented, strong team-player, and experience as team lead.

This two line statement takes up as much space as the Objective above but offers some truly useful information to a recruiter.

References available upon request.

Now there’s a waste of a line that you could be using to tell them something valuable about yourself. I assume that you have references. I also assume that if I ask for them, you will hand them over. So why waste a precious line telling me what I already know? Why not use that line to tell me something else about why I should hire you?