What do you put at the beginning of your resume? | Hacker News Reader

What do you put at the beginning of your resume?

6 pointsKluny15 comments

You know, that first section that says "Career Objective" or something like that.

Full disclosure - if someone posts a pretty good one, I might steal it.

I just went through 30 resumes and their corresponding cover letters from applicants ranging from New York grad students to smart Nebraskans. I don't recall one with a "Career Objective" section. In fact, had I seen that, it would have earned the applicant negative points by myself and most likely also from the two other people looking at the same set of resumes. It just screams, "I have no idea what I'm doing, but this is what my high school guidance counselor told me."

shrug

What was the job for?

Salaried position for putting content into a CMS and helping others get their existing and new content web-presentable (for lack of better words)

Are you still looking by any chance?

No, not right now, sorry.

What were you looking for? What stood out to you?

Don't use Career Objective. To be really honest, no employer really gives a shit about that if at all. It is (fortunately or unfortunately) not about your objectives, but about what you can offer to the employer.

You should add a SUMMARY OF SKILLS on top. This should be able to tell me your nutshell within 2-3 seconds. Make it as specific and tailored towards the specific employer you are applying to if possible. Did I say "Be specific and to the point" ?. Anything that is abstract such as progressive minded, hardworking, passionate leader etc. is usually bullshit. Instead, use words that show what you achieved specifically for the previous employers. For example, instead of garbage such as "Excellent developer with ability to learn and code anything", you should instead say "ABC+ years of experience as a developer in building applications for clients in xxx domain using yyy technologies"

    My Goal is simple:

    Build a strong, sustainable company that sells elegant
    software capable of enthusing and delighting my customers.

    I am not interested in social media gimmickry or being the
    next flavor of the month. I believe that the best way to
    build a profitable enterprise is to create an easy-to-use
    product for the right market segment that solves a real problem.

    Build something of value and sell it. It’s pretty simple.

When I read resumes, I generally skip the "Career Objective" section. Maybe 20 years ago, when people had one resume that they xeroxed and sent round to everybody, that section meant something. But nowadays, it's always so tuned to the particular job that it means nothing, or close to nothing.

That said, I have been advised by somebody who sees dozens of resumes a day, to put such a section in my own resume. As naive as it sounds, I plan to write my actual career objectives.

I also skip the "objectives" section when I read resumes.

I don't use a career objectives section. I recommend a "Career Summary" and / or "Core Competencies" section(s). Give a quick view of what you have to offer to grab attention.

You have two objectives with that section:

1) Convince someone they want to interview you before they read the rest of your resume

2) Filter out jobs which aren't a good match for you.

For (1) you should highlight the one or two single most important things that will make a company want to hire you and for (2) you should highlight what your key requirements for a job are (do you want a job which involves a lot of travel, management, etc).

i don't know what you are supposed to put in a "Career Objective" section, but when it comes to the first section of your resume (or the thing to start with), i like to think that the most interesting thing you can put there is a short description of the path that let you where you are today. Sort of what I did here:

http://www.prtfl.io/muellerwolfram/about

maybe you can _afterwards_ follow up with a section about where you want to go from there.

please note that I just tell you what I personally think is interesting, not what is industry standard. But then again, whenever I write a resume and don't care about standards, I just listen to my gut feeling. If anything, it's something that makes you stand out...

Yours looks pretty good, Wolfram! Gave me a couple of ideas. Here's where I'm at currently, if you're interested. http://rocketships.ca/

I like that clean, well organized feel.

Always looking for ways to develop the company, the department and myself to the next level.

My motto is, in Dutch "stil staan is achteruit gaan" - in English: "standing still is getting behind".

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