How to Write an Objective Statement For a Resume

Many job seekers include a short reference on career objective in the resume. Adding a career objective statement helps to reflect the position you are applying for, the type of company you prefer, the experience and qualification you have and the value you can offer to the company at a glance. Usually this power statement reference is only with one to two lines of texts.

Having a clear career objective reference in the resume will greatly improve the result of getting an interview. By providing a reference of your qualifications and profession identity, the hiring manager will be able to quickly match an appropriate position for you.

How to write an objective statement for a resume? Here are some guidelines you can follow when working on your career objective summary.

1) To improve the effectiveness of your resume, you need to consider how much you want to customize your resume to match with a particular job requirement. If you are responding to a specific position in the advertisement, you should integrate the exact job title and keyword phrases used in the ad into your resume power statement.

2) Being as specific as possible with the career objective reference and offer a high-impact summary of what you can offer to the potential employer.

3) Avoid the common mistakes made by many job seekers. The most usual mistake made in writing an objective statement is being too general and vague. You can avoid falling into this same trap.

• Don't use general statement such as "looking for challenging and rewarding position." The hiring manager will need to think hard to figure out which positions will be able to give you a challenging and rewarding opportunity.
• Don't focus on your career ambitions and aspirations. You should avoid using phrases such as "position that will grow my career and skills." You need to change it to "position to add values to operations" in order to show your values to the company.
• Avoid the use of personal pronouns such as "I" or "me," and only with very minimal use of articles such as "a,"" an" or "the." You should use simple sentence structure and straightforward language. For example if you write "I like to seek a technician position in ship welding," you should change it to "seeking technician position in ship welding."
• Don't waste any precious space in the career objective summary for unnecessary particulars. Only include those very specific items that will create high-impact results.
• Make very sure that your resume and its objective power statement is free from punctuation, spelling and grammar errors. Get someone to proofread it if you do not want your resume to end up in garbage.

4) Here are some samples of resume objective statements. For entry level engineer position Engineer, seeking position in manufacturing engineering where excellent troubleshooting and technical knowledge can add values to operations

For experience accounting position Senior Accountant, position in auditing field where 12 years of experience in accounting skills and management can enhance efficiency and profitability to company

Conclusion: Adding a reference on career objective in your resume will not land you any job interview automatically. However it will provide the potential employer a high-impact summary of your background quickly. If you tailor your career objective summary according to a particular job requirement as posted in the advertisement, the hiring manager will perceive that you have a perfect match with the job requirement. This will tremendously improve the opportunity to be called for an interview.

By Steve Wong