3 Ways to Focus on Your Employer’s Objectives: You will be hired to meet their challenges, not yours!

Chaos continued to reign in the Federal Government and the economy this week. No doubt, that left many people working in the Federal Government and elsewhere wondering whether it is time to get a new job. While we seek jobs to meet our needs—a roof over our heads and food for the family, for example—that is not why employers hire us. Organizations hire us to meet their needs and goals.

Although most jobseekers and employees realize employers will hire them only when they are convinced the applicant will solve their challenges, I still see resumes that state the jobseeker’s objective. An objective statement on a resume tells prospective employers what the jobseeker wants, instead of telling them what they will deliver. Employers are more interested in matching our skills and experience to their job and the business problems and opportunities they seek to address, than they are in why we want another job.

As a result, most career management coaches and hiring managers consider the once-common resume objective statement obsolete. A widely-accepted alternative is to offer a branded summary on top of the resume. A branded summary tells readers what you do—your personal brand—then highlights your skills and accomplishments.

Here are three points to consider when deciding whether to use a branded resume summary or an “obsolete” objective statement:

1. Objectives highlights your goals and not the benefits of hiring you,
2. A branded summary frames your resume as a document that gives the employer reasons to “buy,” and
3. The top section of your resume becomes its “executive summary.”

A branded, accomplishment based, summary will work for you whether you made money for a company, saved money at a public agency, or advocated on behalf of clients at a not-for-profit organization. An added benefit will be that your “elevator pitch” and “tell me about yourself” responses at interviews will be more focused.

Objective statements do not tell our prospective employers what they need to know.

The objective was intended to tell potential employers what we wanted to do, where we wanted to do the work, and what kind of organization we wanted to do the work in. Often, resume objectives read something like this:

“Objective: A challenging Customer Service role in an expanding company that will utilize my skills and give me an opportunity to grow.”

This statement would probably lead hiring managers to reject this job candidate’s resume without reading any further because:

• It does not communicate anything about the job candidate. The recruiter already knows the candidate is applying for a customer service job because the candidate sent the resume.
• It tells the manager to reject the resume if the job, in their view, is not challenging, if the company is not expanding, or if the position offers no growth, and
• It contains no keywords. As a result, an applicant tracking system (ATS), may not pass the resume on to the hiring team for review.

In other words, this objective statement told the prospective employer nothing useful. It will, at best, be ignored. Even worse, it could cause the candidate to be rejected without further consideration.

Branded summary statements resolve this problem.

Write a headline and paragraph that tells an employer what you bring to the table instead of telling the hiring team what you want.

The first step is to set the reader’s expectations using a personal brand at the top of the resume, right below the contact information.

For example, we used the following resume heading and subheading for one of our most successful clients.

SENIOR GOVERNMENT RELATIONS DIRECTOR

A leading policy advocate that influences legislative agendas at the state and federal level

Then we wrote the following accomplishment-based summary.

Campaign Leader with extensive, progressively responsible experience as an advocate on behalf of non-profit organizations. Expert at moving legislation on issues including caregiving, affordable utilities, Older Adults Protective Services, Work and Save Retirement Plan, reduced prescription drug prices, veterans affairs and the aging population.

Accomplishment Highlights:

• Led advocacy on behalf of AARP that resulted in enactment of the CARE Act of 2016, Transportation Funding Act of 2015, Medicare Part D, Pennsylvania Lottery Fund protection, unemployment compensation for older workers, PACE/PACENET, Family Caregiver Support Program expansion, long term care reform, CHIP and State Senate passage of telemedicine reimbursement legislation.
• Initiated the Citizen Advocacy Team program for AARP Pennsylvania to foster key contact involvement in the state and Federal legislative process.
• Established the Alliance for Retired Americans presence in Pennsylvania for action in key Congressional campaigns.

Would you want to learn more if your task is to hire someone that will advocate for your organization with legislators? Yes.

We communicated the benefits of hiring the candidate rather than stating that she wants to advocate for state and federal legislative changes on behalf of an organization. That’s powerful—and my client landed her dream job within weeks. You can read the complete resume here.

This is your “executive summary, so write it last.

The brand headline and its accompanying paragraph is similar to an executive summary or cover summary for a business report. It is a brief synopsis of the rest of the document. It also has to grab attention so your audience will read on. That means you may not know what to write and how to grab attention until you develop the rest of your resume content.

Concluding comments

One of the most powerful sections of your resume should be the headline and paragraph just below your contact information. It grabs attention and then tells the reader succinctly what you will bring to the table. In other words, it communicates the benefits of hiring you!