Should I include a career objective on my resume?

Question

These usually are overly vague and don't add much. Are there circumstance when these are worthwhile?

Answer 1

No

I have read a lot of resumes, and never saw a 'career objective' that made me want to call a candidate. In short, it won't help, and may hurt. It's your job to find opportunities that match your goals.

Answer 2

The problem I have with "Objective" is it talks about what you want. Well, as a hiring manager, given that you're a complete stranger, I don't care what you want - I want what I want!

The flip side is that it at least gives me some insight into whether or not you'd be a good match for the position I have to offer.

Answer 3

Most objectives are just HR babble-speak 'dynamic fast-paced exciting blah blah blah'.

On the other hand, if I am looking for a C++/Boost developer, and I see a resume that says "Objective: A position as a C++/Boost developer" that's very interesting to me.

So if you have a specific type of job in mind and really aren't interested in much else, then put your specific objectives on the resume.

If you don't have real specific ideas about what kind of job you want next, just leave off the objective.

Answer 4

The only time that I included an objective was when I was looking for internships and co-ops. The university that I went to had requirements for co-ops, which could either be 3 months or 6 months in duration. I included an objective on my resume to make it obvious that I had met my requirements for starting a co-op, the start quarter I was interested in, the duration I wanted, and what aspects I was most interested in.

When I was applying for full-time positions, I removed it. It became too difficult to concisely describe what I was looking for in a meaningful manner. What I was looking for in a job is something that we can discuss when talking at some kind of job fair, a phone screen, or even an interview. At this point, I used my resume to highlight my education, experience, and other qualifications and everything else would come out later.

Answer 5

The big problem I see is that your career goal doesn't match with what the prospective employer wants - especially if you want to be CEO of your own company within 5 years (say).

There's a lot of things unsaid when recruiting. The employer wants someone to "just do the job". What you want is career progression, training and a paycheck at the end of each month.

Answer 6

As a person who has hired a lot of people, In almost all cases I would say a firm NO.

I've never seen an objective statement that helped sell a candidate to me, and I've seen lots that did the opposite.

Answer 7

Definitely Yes! And further, let that Objective really be an objective.

In our hiring process, usually i go through lots of resume and as a recruiter i am pained that people don't quite write a clear cut objective and keep me guessing till the interview.

What type of Objectives make sense?

It should clearly define what type of role, company and job profile you are looking for - some examples -

"Looking for project manager position - in XYZ industry"
"Have done programming and design for 4 years - now looking to become tech lead"
"Have been in sales in industry for XYZ - now looking for outside of that industry"
"Have been in research area for 10 years, - now looking for higher management position"
"Worked as a product manager - now want to move in business development strategy"

... and so on.

Good objective statements should be very clear and rather simple. They should sound very obvious and it should make sense! If you happen to find more than 5 adjectives you are telling nothing.

The essential idea is that if you are very clear of what you want (and don't want) to do - it helps recruiter identify whether you are the one or not - and if not, it will save everyone's time including yours. This means you might NOT receive some calls - but that would be worth it.

My blog post: How (not) to write resumes.

Answer 8

The problem with CV objectives isn't just that they can be too vague; they can also be too specific.

Objectives tend to either be so broad as to be useless, or so specific that you're shoehorning yourself out of the job.

It's for these reasons that objectives are usually frowned upon. There may be an odd edge case though where they actually add value.

Answer 9

This can be tricky because it's so easy to make things worse than if you hadn't written one at all.

So, I'd build on Scott Wilson's answer: the company cares about what they want, and how you'll provide that, not what they'll be providing you:

Think of an objective as a mission statement for the relationship between you and the employer.

That way, your objective that tells them exactly what they'll get out of it.

The EntreLeadership podcast had an episode about personal mission statements with Dan Miller, author of 48 Days to the Work you Love. It says that a mission statement should be brief and tell you the what, the how, and the why.

Here's mine, for reference:

To provide expertise in software creation — design, architecture, and management.

Roughly,

• Why: To create software
• How: Expertise
• What: Design, architecture and management

Answer 10

I think that the answer is that you can but that it doesn't matter much. I usually ignore this section when I see it on a resume because it's the easiest part to fake in order to mirror what you know about the job and company you're applying to. Your experience and perhaps a longer cover letter explaining how your experience (and objectives) fit with the company are a lot more important.

At the very least, I don't think that the career objective section hurts in any way.