Your Resume by Section Part 2 - Objective/Summary

This might seem like a silly section to focus an entire posting on, but if written correctly this might just be the most important section you will write. 

A couple of years ago, the company I was working for was bought out by a competitor.  Obviously there were a lot of duplicate employees, especially in the HR department.  In order to help us all in the transition part of the 'deal' our company made was that every employee would have career counseling available to them.  This counseling was provided by Right Management. This is a great company with a lot of stellar information, resources, trainers, etc.

One of the keys they work on in these classes is to develop for yourself a 30 second commercial.  This is a 3-5 sentence summary of your skills and career goals.  The point of this is so that anytime, anywhere you can immediately recall some impressive things about yourself and give someone an idea of how you would like to use them.

The key points to hit in your commercial are:

• Experience
• Strengths
• Accomplishments
• Why you are looking for a new job (if applicable)
• What are you looking for
• End with a question

 

For example, here is one I have been working on as of late (I've had a bit of a shift in career goals in the past month or so, so it needs updating):

"I am a seasoned administrative professional with several years' experience in various fields including human resources and marketing.  I'm a people person who loves to network and I excel at helping people locate the resources they need to help them achieve their goals.  I am currently seeking different challenges and arenas to assist people in new ways.  Do you know of any opportunities in which I can use these skills to help?"

It's a work in progress, but you can see where I am going with it.

Why am I talking about a 30 second commercial when I should be talking about the Objectives/Summary section of your resume?  Because they are so similar, you can kill 3 birds with one stone.  People struggle with their Objective.  People struggle with their 30 second commercial.  People seldom have a useful LinkedIn summary.  All of these can be similar, and useful in their own ways.  So, once you can develop one, the other 2 will be easier. 

Here are the guidelines for your objective:

• What type of job are you looking for?  (include level [senior, junior, executive], area [administration, finance, etc], and industry where applicable)
• What do you excel at (strengths)?
• What can you do for your next employer?

As you can see, very similar to the 30 second commercial.  Obviously you can use more detail in your objective, but the bones of these are the same.  So pick one, get it down on paper, then develop the other.  Since there is less detail in the  commercial, it might be easier to do that one first.  Then you can elaborate with your objective.  Using the above example, my new objective might read something like:

"Detail-oriented Administrative Professional with over 12 years’ experience in various fields including human resources and marketing.  Demonstrated networking success communicating across department levels and industry channels to discretely handle information, manage multiple projects, and liaise between various groups in order to achieve common goals. Proven expertise in program administration, project management and coordination, information management, team building, business communication, and budget development and tracking. Strong organizational and planning skills.  Currently seeking to take the skills I have and use them in new and innovative ways."

again, a work in progress, but on paper I look pretty good, don't I?  Don't forget that your resume is a fluid document.  It changes as your experience and career goals do.  This section should be reviewed and tweaked frequently so as to maximize its effectiveness. 

Now, you can take both your Objective and your commercial, and either copy and paste one into your LinkedIn Summary section, or combine them to form something new.  See, 3 birds, 1 stone. Simple.