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From the Waters....

Tampa, FL, United States
In the late 90's, I created "The Resume Dolphin" column for the online Morrock News Digest. Thus, "the dolphin" theme continues in a new era. I'm a Tampa Bay Based Career Advisor as well as a Recruiting and Career Services professional with over 10 years of experience. I have worked while in career services and recruiting/placement to assist people in improving their job search and their marketability! With experience in recruiting and placement for Technology, Engineering, Marketing, Advertising, Sales, Finance, Allied Health and HR, I've found out much about WHAT EMPLOYERS LOOK FOR. Knowing how employers view things can help job seekers make their searches much more effective! -This blog is a way to share that info! ...And, hopefully be of help to those "navigating the waters" of the job market!

Monday, April 21, 2008

Job Search Tip: Another Reason to Avoid Objectives

We've covered why objectives don't work on resumes, why they aren't needed, and how they can cause trouble for you as a candidate. To "bring that home," I include 2 very recent objectives I've seen on resumes sent for professional positions:

A job that is satisfying at the end of the day, for both of us. To grow and be happy.
Both have enough fluff, don't they? They are trite, silly, weak, and add NOTHING to the candidate's marketability!

(It's kind of like that long party scene in the 2nd Matrix movie: why was it there?)
If the answer is to fill space, that's not something that belongs on your resume. For there are no "rules" as to how much space must be filled. And wasted space (like that movie scene,) just loses the reader's interest.

Remember that employers hire for THEIR reasons, not yours, in this "what have you done for me lately" world we now live in.

That's why objectives on a resume don't ADD anything: you aren't selling specifics and positives. Instead, people write more "polished" versions of the 2 examples above. In the process, they just "polish," not clean up or repair this resume issue. That's what objectives are: simple, useless junk that doesn't belong no mater how much polish is added.

Use your skills, education and experience to sell yourself to employers.
Avoid the junk, and let the good "stuff" speak for itself.

Objectives just get in the way.

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