I see roughly 5-10 resumes per day and most of them have a stale objective statement at the top. A common one is something along the lines of “Seasoned professional looking for an opportunity where I can utilize my skills and experience”.
With resumes flooding the desks of hiring managers, it can be assumed that all job seekers are trying to find an opportunity where they can utilize their experience. Stating what you want at the top of your resume does not explain what you can bring to the position or things you have done to qualify you for consideration. It is time to replace an objective statement with a personal branding statement that shows your value to a potential employer.
What is a branding statement? It is not a list of your skills or job desires; it is a description of your professional attributes, the value you can provide to a future employer and things that will make you stand out from the competition. If a hiring manager asked you about your experience, you would provide him or her with a brief statement about your career highlights and the experience you could bring to the position. Think of your branding statement as an even briefer version of this.
Things to include:
What describes you as an employee? Make a list and narrow it down to the top three attributes.
What has happened in your career as a direct result of things you worked on? Increased revenue, improvements and awards are all examples of the value you brought to your job.
Instead of focusing on job titles discuss the role you played at your company. What makes you stand out from the pack? More than likely you had the same title as another employee, how did you handle specific issues or scenarios in a better way than your colleague? For example, here is a fictional branding statement created from the resume of Kevin Systrom, the entrepreneur and Instagram app developer.
“Innovative IT engineer pursued and contracted by the world’s largest IT companies including Google, Yahoo and Apple to develop and create innovative mobile web applications. Generated over 500 million dollars in revenue for those companies by developing applications including Gmail and Google Reader. Ventured into entrepreneurial territory to create and co-found Instagram, an app with over 100 million active users. My partner and I sold Instagram to Facebook for 1 Billion dollars in 2012 so we could pursue and create further ventures.”
When creating or updating your resume it may be best to finish your branding statement last. Build from your bullet points a brief summary of your career highlights. An objective statement is just that; a statement. Your goal of attaining a great job will happen when you have created a compelling branding statement about yourself.