Tips on writing resume objectives

When you are looking for a job, it is important to prepare a resume that accentuate your skills. The first step to preparing your resume is to prepare a detailed objective.

You should change your objective for each position you apply for each position you apply for. For example, if you are applying for a sales position slant your objective to reinforce the skills necessary for the position.

When preparing your objective accentuate your skill that will be beneficial for the job you are applying for. If you are applying for a job that requires working with people, accentuate your communication skills.

State your goal in your objective. If you want the job, you are applying state it in your objective. You may find it effective to state your long-term goals along with your short-term goals.

Be specific. Don't using general terms; such as you would like a career in sales. Tell what position do you want in sales.

Be assertive. Show the person looking over your resume that you know what you want and how to get it. Express your desire for the position as well as the traits you have that makes you the best person for the job.

List your skills. Then tailor the skills you have to the position. Do you have a degree? What classes did you take that help you fulfill the responsibilities of the position? Do you have previous work experience? How can this help you in the position?

When preparing your objective it is important to state your short and/or long-term goals and how you expect to achieve them. You may also indicate why you are the best person for the position. Be specific about what you want.

If you have trouble preparing your objective, contact the career center at the local college or unemployment office for additional help. You may also choose to leave the objective out of your resume. You resume doesn't require it. However, it does make it more effective.

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Making your first professional resume

Anyone will tell you one of the most important things when searching for a job is to have a great looking resume. It’s the first thing about you that comes into contact with a potential employer; not your friendly face or your great sense of style, but some words printed on a page. This is the ticket into the door and it can make you or break you.

First thing to do is make an outline. Get all your thoughts together before you just start typing away. The three main things to include on your resume are education, experience, and skills. If applicable, you may also want to include your resources and any awards received either while in school or at a previous job.

For education, you need the school name, location, and years attended. Then simply list your degree, major, any honors received, and any clubs or societies you were a member of as long as it’s pertinent. If you’re sending your resume to a law firm, they likely won’t care if you were in the track and field club, but they will care if you were a member of a mock court society.

Experience should consist of any jobs held during your adult life or any internship you held. You need the company name, location, years worked there, and the position you held. Now in your outline jot down your responsibilities there and any accomplishments you achieved there. No one needs to know about the fast food job you held while you were sixteen or the bar you worked at to put yourself through school. There will be some of you out there with no experience what so ever, who just went through college and never worked in between. For you I would suggest beefing up everything else on your resume, perhaps giving a little more detail in the other areas and adding a job objective, where you make a brief statement about your goal in the position in which you are hoping for.

For skills, keep it brief. This doesn’t mean say things such as “I answer the phone well”, or “Pleasant speaking voice.” Think of things that would be applicable to the job at hand, but don’t be super specific. You can keep it a little broad with things like “excellent communicator, experienced researcher, excellent writing and typing skills.”

Awards and resources are optional. Simply list any awards you received and where you received them. This does not mean tell about your bowling league championship; stick to academic awards or anything that showed involvement in the community. Resources should mostly be used for areas where it may be necessary to do work at home or outside the office. You can state in one or two sentences the resources you have available to you such as a home office, high speed internet connection, fax machine, network capability, etc.

Now that you have all your information down, it’s time to put it all together. At the top of the page needs to be your name, your title if applicable (such as attorney at law, physician, etc.), address, telephone number, and e-mail address. Most people like to center this at the top of the page, you may even want to make it slightly larger and place it in bold font. Now you need a line or some sort of separation between that and the rest or your resume. As for the rest of the resume, it comes down to personal preference how it should exactly be laid out. There are resume templates in many word processing programs or you can create your own. There are some general rules, though; keep it to one page, use standard typeface and size, and try to make it as clear, concise, and easy to read as possible. It can be very tempting to list every little thing thinking a longer resume will make you look more experienced, or that using a fancy font will get you noticed. This is not the case. Being able to present everything clearly and neatly will be what makes you stand out.

It’s not very important exactly what order you put your education, experience, and skills in, though it’s recommended to place your resources and awards last, if you are using them. Whether using a template or going freehand, it is standard to list your headings on the left side of the page in bold capital letters and your information to the right of it. Some people choose to use bullets to list their information; some may use simple short paragraphs. Paragraphs are recommended if you have a lot of information; it will help you keep to the recommended one page. You may not be able to list everything that you had on your outline. Now is when you will have to decide what is important and what is not. Many people have their resumes loaded down with unimportant or redundant information. Remember short and sweet is the answer.

Using these simple tips you should be able to create a professional looking resume. Feel free to make a few different ones and then decide which one looks the best or seek someone else’s opinion. A good resume will get you noticed above others and can take you far.

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How to create a resume that an employer won't miss

Sending your resume to a potential employer is like saying a prayer: you have no idea what the odds are, but you hope against hope that something will go in your favor. With many big name companies, though, thousands of applications are received for every one open position. To make matters worse, many of these large corporations now use computer screening to weed out the majority of applications. So how do you create a resume that gets you in the door, at the very least?

The first step is to closely read the job description. Consider those few paragraphs to be clues as to how to get an interview. Generally, the job description alludes to three important factors in the hiring process: what the company will expect from you in the future, what they want you to have done in the past, and what qualifications you need to have at this moment.

These clues should be the outline of your resume. Since you always begin your resume with your most recent employment or skills, the first thing the employer will see is what you are doing at your present job. He or she wants to know if you can take these skills and apply them to the open position in the future. With this parameter in mind, figure out what the company is looking for. Use the job description as your starting point and then supplement what you know with information from the company’s website. For example, one job duty may be to “develop and implement internal and external public relations/communications strategies.”

Okay, so in this job, you would need to know what the company does and how the company wants to tell the public about it. But what kind of messages will you need to communicate? If you go to the company’s website, you can learn not only what field they are in, but what the precise competitive advantage is. Every company has things or products or ethics they are proud of – the key is to learn what they are. Once you figure out what makes the company different from its completion (and why, in theory, it is better) you can begin to make your resume the picture of who the company wants to hire.

Now it is time to think hard about what you have done in the past that sounds like what this company needs. If the company you are applying to is proud of its commitment to developing drugs for the elderly (instead of, say, pediatric medicines), focus on that angle. If you are applying for a job in communications, what experience do you have with publications whose demographic is the elderly? If you are applying for a job in marketing, what campaigns have you worked on that have targeted the elderly? A research position? Do you have any history with other geriatric drugs or studies?

Let’s say the company also differentiates itself from its competitors by its near-spotless record of safe drugs. Needless to say, maintaining good public opinion isn’t easy and takes a very concerted effort from everyone in the company. Again, what have you done in the past that sounds similar to this type of effort? Have you worked with a company that needed some crisis control in terms of their media relations? Have you developed a drug that encountered some controversy, and did you have a role in the aftermath? The point is to focus on your past experiences that match the company’s points of pride/competitive advantage.

After doing your research and mentally matching up your history to what the company is looking for, it’s time to tailor your resume. Since the potential employer is looking to see if what you have done in the past can translate into a good future with Company X, you need to spell it out in your resume. Begin with your most recent or current employment, and summarize what you have done in bullet points. Don’t overlook important tasks just because they may not fit the job description, but be sure to bold what fits with their points of pride. Bold, bold, bold, and be specific about those matching points of pride! The more specific you can be, the better it looks to your potential employer. List names clients you have worked with that would be familiar to Company X, or give names of projects or brands you have worked on. Do not simply say, “Created a campaign to garner interest in issues.” Instead, say, “created a campaign for Geriatric Inc to garner a 50% feedback rate on Medicare hot buttons, such as…” The more the employer can visualize what you actually did, the more impressed he or she will be.

So far, you have learned what the company wants the future employee to by reading the job description. You took your matching skills and paired them with the company’s competitive advantage or point of pride in order to look like an even better candidate. Now, you need to assure them that you have the basic skills required for the job. These types of skills usually aren’t acquired in prior jobs, but they are more like degrees, classes or languages. For example, if a company is looking for someone who speaks French and Spanish, you probably didn’t learn that in your cubical. Instead, you took a class or have your degree in those languages. The same is true for a skill like Quark or any sort of certification. The bottom of your resume is the place to list these skills. And, again, be sure to bold the skills you have that specifically match the ones they mentioned in the job description.

Of course, always proofread your resume as a last step and be sure to include your contact information. By now, you have a sheet of paper that lists your prior jobs and experiences, with the most recent being first on the list. Under each entry, you have bulleted the most important skills or duties, and you’ve bolded the ones that specifically match what the company is looking for. You’ve even incorporated key words from the job description, and you have been very specific and used names of clients or campaigns whenever possible. Not only do you look like an ideal candidate, but you’ve already done a lot of research for the interview that you are sure to get.

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Building a resume through volunteer opportunities and hobbies

Many people shy away from placing volunteer work and hobbies on a resume. While they probably think that the work they do is important, they may also feel that a potential employer will not. Many worry that employers will view placing these kinds of tasks on a resume as the sign of someone who lacks any real skills at all.

However, quite the opposite can be true. If an individual is performing volunteer work on a regular basis or has turned a hobby into a nearly full-time job, these tasks can actually help you land the job of your dreams. Knowing how to explain these duties on your resume will show prospective employers the true depth of your skills and talents.

Volunteer Work

Most people know that volunteering can be a great way to network. You meet people from different industries and fields that you might not usually meet. In addition, volunteering often exposes us to tasks and responsibilities that are different from our daily routine. It is these new tasks that are learned through volunteer opportunities that can expand a resume.

For example, someone who is an accountant but who also volunteers in a nursing home on a regular basis is expanding his resume and his range of potential employers at the same time. By simply putting on his resume that he volunteers 15 hours a week in the business office of a nursing home, he has opened the doors to jobs that otherwise might be closed.

This individual can explain his accounting experience on his resume, but he can also explain that he understands the intricacies and details of maintaining financial records in a medical facility—which are often much more scrutinized than in some other venues. This piece of information would probably open up job opportunities working in the financial sector of the medical industry simply because this person already has a basic understanding of the responsibilities involved. Many employers look favorably on a person with prior experience because they require less on-the-job training.

Hobbies

A hobby may seem a little more difficult to work into a resume. The idea of tinkering with old cars in the garage may not seem very important at all. However, the skills acquired from fixing up and showing old cars might be just what your next employer is looking for.

For example, if you regularly fix up and show antique cars, you learn the internal workings of the cars. You also learn how to work within financial and mechanical limits to get the cars running. Finally, you learn how to show the car to other car enthusiasts—especially if you have ever won any awards.

For a person working in mechanics or engineering, these skills can be invaluable. In addition, for a person working in marketing or public relations, the idea of knowing how to present your cars and actually win awards can certainly show you understand the nuances of grabbing people’s attention.

While restoring antique vehicles may bring enjoyment on the weekends, it could also help you land a job that you had never even thought about. The trick to using volunteer work or hobbies on your resume is to know how to explain them.

Writing the Resume

When placing volunteer work or a full-time hobby on your resume, include it in your work experience like any other job. Put the work in chronological order, listing your title (if any), along with your duties and responsibilities. Also, if you have received any awards because of your volunteer efforts or hobby, be sure to list those.

The real key to making your volunteering or hobby experience a part of your resume is to do just that: make it a part of your resume. Do not be ashamed of your volunteer work. The experience it gives you may just be what gets you the job of your dreams.

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Tips for writing a resume while still in college

So you have been a “professional” college student for some time and you’re ready to attempt landing that first important job that will help launch that career you’ve been preparing for. There are some simple things you can emphasize and a few things to beware of when preparing your resume.

For starters, resumes can be a challenge because ultimately they need to simple. The ideal resume concisely and effectively conveys your education, job history, activities and achievements to the potential hiring manager in one short and sweet page. It’s best to list these items in a chronological order. Give your name, address, phone number and state a job objective. For example, “To gain practical work experience in the field of marketing and promotion” is clear and to the point. It also helps to target a specific position. A common mistake is to use the same blanket resume for applying to a multitude of jobs. Remember, one size does not fit all! You will need to tailor your objectives and the types of relevant information you include to fit the job you are seeking. Employers can tell if you are using a cookie cutter resume or if you haven’t done your homework about what line of business they are in. It doesn’t send a very positive message. If you can’t spare a few moments to customize your resume submission, why should a hiring manager spend more than a few moments considering you for the position. The key is to let your resume serve as your calling card so you will definitely want it to be a polished reflection of you (and show your attention to detail).

College students often underestimate all that they have to offer an employer. If you don’t have a laundry list of work experiences, you can supplement your resume by emphasizing your skills and there are many that are relevant to hiring managers. Things such as fluency in a foreign language, secretarial skills, and typing (think about all those term papers you’ve prepared) are great skills to cite on your resume. Internships are particularly valuable since most internship opportunities groom college students for the reality of the working world. Similarly, study abroad classes and trips show diversity in your learning experiences and also that you are open to new challenges. If you have them in your repertoire, include them!

When listing your education, obviously you will want to list your major, but don’t forget specializations and minors also. If your GPA is strong, include it. If not, leave it out. In addition, if you have made the Dean’s list or received other honors such as scholarships you should be sure to toot your own horn as evidence of your tenacity and work ethic. List your student activities, volunteer activities and community involvement as well. You want to illustrate that you have been a well-rounded student and didn’t spend all of your time with your head in the books.

You will want to preface your resume with a cover letter whenever possible. The cover letter lets you do two specific things: introduce yourself as a viable person for hire and help you obtain your main objective, securing the interview. You want to get their attention and encourage them to take a closer look at your submission. Whet their appetite for all that you can bring their company or organization. Your cover letter should:

1) Express an interest in that particular company and that particular position

2) Be engaging and friendly as you tell them why you are the right person for the job (list your skills, past experience, etc.) State convincing qualifications and why their company interests you.

3) Try to mention a specific date when, if they haven’t had a chance to get back to you, you will follow up with them.

The cover letter injects some personality and life into your otherwise factual and impersonal resume. It can make your overall resume submission more interesting. Be sure it is well written (free of grammatical and spelling errors). If you want to really be sure, get a professor or buddy you trust to look it over for you. Four eyes are often better than two. This goes for your resume also.

The following is a cover letter example:

(Be sure to use a basic business letter heading)

Dear Mrs. Medici,

I am a senior majoring in Information Systems at the University of Illinois. I am keenly interested in IBM because of your technologically advanced products, such as your AS400 server line. I have used this equipment during a summer internship and have been very impressed with its efficiency. More than any other company I’ve researched, IBM has consistently set the standard in server technology.

Please find enclosed my resume detailing my academic and work experience for the past three years. As you can see, I have been preparing myself for entry into the computer industry by working diligently and exposing myself to a range of technical opportunities whenever possible. I hope this will serve as an indicator of my work ethic and my potential to contribute to your organization.

If you would like to contact me to set up a personal interview, I can be reached at (313) 765-9974. If I do not hear from you by Monday, November 6, I will call you.

Thank you for your consideration. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Sincerely,

Jasmine Carrington

The following is a sample resume:

Jasmine Carrington

257 Lakewood Avenue

Chicago, IL 60653

(313) 765-9974

jascar2005@hotmail.com

Education

University of Illinois at Chicago

Bachelor of Science, expected May 2005

Major: Information Systems Minor: E-Commerce

GPA: 3.65

Experience

Fall 2004 Sylvan Learning Center Chicago, IL

Tutor

• Taught basic web navigation and internet proficiencies to middle-school children

• Assisted children aged 7-9 with reading comprehension

• Facilitated practice tests and lessons in grammatical structure and punctuation

• Provided assistance with math homework, science project preparation, and art projects

2003-2004 University of Illinois Chicago, IL

Lab Tech and Tour Guide

• Aided students with computer basics and assisted them with class assignments in MS

Office applications

• Offered general guidance in student web site design and HTML coding

• Performed lab facility tours for prospective students and parents

• Maintained lab facilities through regularly scheduled virus testing and other administrative duties

Summer 2003 Candle Corporation Rolling Meadows, IL

Intern

• Served the technical staff in various capacities by rotating to different posts within their department including the usability team, server group, and application development team.

• Assisted in a company-wide intranet usability evaluation with the Candle usability team.

2002 Chicago Public Library Chicago, IL

Volunteer

• Offered assistance with the development of the main library website and online card catalog system.

• Recruited other students to participate in library events and volunteer activities.

Special Skills

Microsoft Office (Word, PowerPoint, Excel, FrontPage), basic web design, HTML, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, web navigation, research databases, and typing 45 WPM.

References

Available upon Request

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