Master Career Counselor

Carla Hunter, President of Career Span, Inc. is a Master Career Counselor (MCC) by the National Career Development Association and a Certified Career Coach by the National Board for Certified Counselors. She is an expert in writing resumes, effective job search strategies and interviewing success. Most recently, with over 20 years of navigating the complexity of today's world of work, she published "Finding Your Place in the World of Work", a career interest inventory (2014) and CareerView, an iPad app. As a private practice career counselor and a workforce development consultant, this blog is Carla's trove of ideas, trends, forecasts, and career tips for finding meaningful work.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Resume Objective Revitalized!

Hi, all!
Think about your resume as a strategy to get the interview. That is the goal. Today, an objective must be targeted and very specific.
Typically, the worst type will look like this:

Career Objective: A position where my skills can be used and advancement desired

That header plain stinks. First, there are no "career" objective guarantees. Did you know the average professional changes jobs or careers at least eight times? An objective is to state your resume's purpose. What is that? To get an interview. My career equation for a successful resume looks like this:

Great cover letter + targeted resume = Interview (Note that I didn't say job. That is the sum of an excellent interview.)

With your strategy to get an interview in mind, I encourage a bold initiative. Get rid of the old objective and get straight to the point:

Goal→ Interview with ABC, Inc. for Administrative Assistant

That's right. State at the beginning your aim is to get an interview for the position you specified. Let the rest of the resume support your goal. Maybe this new strategy will hit the mark and you'll receive what you asked for. Are you ready for what you want?

2 comments:

  1. Very informative article! I feel career counseling is essential for all age groups. I use http://www.careersuccessions.com. They have great online workshops, career coaching and a great guarantee.

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