Have you ever lied in your resume?
Maybe not knowingly. But most people make one silly mistake when they craft the resume. They copy someone sample resume and edit it to reflect their details. But, what’s wrong with this approach?
Following a template approach is not bad. But when you copy major sections word-to-word, that’s wrong!
A good resume is nothing but an appealing advertising copy that sells yourself to a prospective employer. Frankly speaking, writing a good resume is an art based on some scientific principles which anyone can master. Let’s start breaking the contents of a good resume into a series of steps that will help you write your own good resume.
Resume Objective Statement
Too many people simply copy past the exact objective statement from another resume. The result is, the first line of your resume screams copy past content to the employer.
Do you think that the recruiters who might have seen hundreds or thousands of resumes wouldn’t realize that you have copied the objective from elsewhere?
The first and foremost thing in a good resume is the ‘Resume Objective Statement’ or the ‘Career Objectives’ section.
As the name suggests, it is your professional objectives summarized in a sentence with the organization you’re applying to.
The objective section can vary based upon your experience and qualification. The idea is to clearly express how a particular job would help you achieving your long term career goals and why you make a good hire for the company
Tips To Write a Good Resume Objective Statement
Be Yourself
Rather than copy pasting resume objective from another resume, create your own objective. It’s your resume and you are going to do the job. So it’s your objective that should be reflected in this section- not another persons objectives.
Writing it yourself will also help you avoid cliches that recruiters have become so weary of. Not only that, you show your ability to clearly communicate your ideas by writing a good introductory objective statement.
Be Confident
You are very much confident in real life. So why not let if reflect in your Objective Statement. There are definitely many applicants like you who also think they’d be the best candidate for a particular job. Differentiate yourself by sounding confident of your skills, qualifications and experience. It really helps!
Don’t exaggerate!
If you’re starting your career or have had a history of switching jobs frequently, do not mention that you are looking for long term growth, unless you have strong conviction and convincing skills. Instead, mention that you want to incorporate your diverse experience to get the job at hand done efficiently. This will reflect confidence and tactfulness.
You need to be able to convince the employer anything that is stated in the resume. It’s difficult to justify something which is exaggerated.
Keep it simple silly!
Nobody likes to read career objectives that stretch beyond two lines. So don’t make the employer bored and stick to short and to-the-point objectives . Also no difficult sounding words. Writing dictionary words which most people do not understand doesn’t make you look smart!
Proofread, proofread, and do some more proofreading!
It amazes us that so many candidates simply do not put the time or effort into proofreading their own resumes. When you make silly mistakes like misspellings or grammatical mistakes, you appear unprofessional in front of the employer. So make sure you put sufficient time into proofreading your own resume.
Resume objective is just one part of a compelling resume. However, this section is really important since employers will evaluate your eligibility based on your goals. If your career objective is to work in the IT industry as a software engineer developing web applications, you wouldn’t fit very well into a software automation tester, would you?
Good luck!
