When crafting a resume, your ultimate goal is making a strong case for why you are the best candidate for the job and convincing the company that you should be called in for an interview. There are several things that you can include on your resume to make your case, including your education and training background, work experience, and awards and achievements. One thing you should never include, however, is an objective that presents your career goals.
“When applying for a job, it can be helpful to think of yourself and your skills as a product that you are selling,” explains Michael Gibbs, CEO of Go Cloud Careers. “Your resume is an advertisement about you that should present your case with the customer’s perspective in mind. When a customer buys a product, they don’t care about the product’s objectives or desires. They care about how the product will solve the problem that they are experiencing.”
Michael has spent over 20 years training people in the skills that they need to get jobs and get promoted in the cloud computing and networking space. His unique approach to training goes beyond providing technical competencies to give students elite career guidance, including proven methods of applying and interviewing for positions. An exceptionally high percentage of the students who complete the training provided by Go Cloud Careers go on to secure six-figure jobs.
“As a hiring manager, when I see an objective on a resume, it communicates to me that the prospective hire is already making demands of me,” says Michael. “The reason I’m looking to hire someone is because I’ve got a problem that I need someone to solve. If someone is already making demands, they are not a solution for me. I’m going to toss that resume in the trash.”
Replace career objectives with an executive summary
Michael recommends that job seekers provide an executive summary with their resumes rather than objectives. This communicates to the company that you understand their goals and have a plan for how you can help them to accomplish those goals.
“An executive summary shows the company how you will effectively solve their challenges,” Michael says. “An executive summary reveals what is in it for me as the company when I hire you. It shows me how you would help me as an employee.”
Consider as an example an open position for a cloud computing engineer. Someone applying for this position might include an objective that expresses his or her intention to secure “a Cloud Computing Engineer position where skills in programming, network security, and cloud-based development can be utilized for career advancement.”
By including this objective, the prospective employee accomplishes two things: First, they share that they have the same skills that every other person applying for the job also has; and second, they make it clear that their goal is advancing their own career. Neither will help them to be the top choice in the eyes of the hiring manager.
An executive summary for the same position would explain how the applicant would:
- Use his or her skills to identify the most efficient and reliable solutions based on a deep understanding of the latest technology.
- Partner with internal and external stakeholders to make sure that clients’ needs are understood and addressed.
- Work with senior management to secure and allocate the needed resources in a way that promotes ongoing profitability for the company.
Adding an executive summary to an application may take some research and extra effort, but it will pay off by allowing your resume to stand out from the others.
“Providing an executive summary can be the key to getting an interview,” Michael explains. “Once you secure an interview, you have an opportunity to show the company, face to face, the value that you can bring. Wow them in the interview and you get the job. In addition, the more value you show them, the more they will be willing to pay you within the pay range they have allocated.”
