Resume statement of 'Objective' can be overdone, ineffective

DALE: Hiring managers read your Objective — or they don’t. If they don’t, then it’s a waste of space. If they do, it’s easy to be put off by the overblown language commonly put there. I just reviewed some sample Objectives offered online, and get this one: “ ... infuse my fresh and innovative ideas to support the future prosperity of your company.” Does that make anyone think, “I want to meet this guy and get infused”? No.

J.T.: Instead of an Objective, try giving yourself a title, like “Entry-Level Marketing Employee.” Then, below that, create two columns of key skill sets, with three or four entries in each column. These should be related to your area of focus and be skills you can support with the remainder of your resume — education, internships, volunteering and so on. This helps the hiring manager quickly understand your focus without the sales-y pitch of an Objective statement.

Dear J.T. & Dale: There is a company in my city that I would love to work for. I just found out that a friend of my husband is friends with the CEO. How can I leverage this? — Kelli

DALE: First, Kelli, while I’m sure you didn’t mean it this way, there is something about the notion of “leveraging” a friendship that grates on me. Perhaps I am just hypersensitive. After all, my work has allowed me to get to know a number of CEOs, and there are some people who have a kind of networking lust come over them when such connections come up in conversation. It’s creepy.

J.T.: Remember, too, that we probably are talking about a time-crunched CEO, who probably gets solicited for jobs all the time. So we must be careful how we approach it.

DALE: The first thing is to make sure that you would be an asset to the company. The “Hey, I sure could use a job” approach is doomed to fail. However, if you have ideas about how you could contribute to the company, you enter the connection process with the right mind-set — that of an ally, not a manipulator.

J.T.: Assuming your husband is willing to ask his friend to chat with you about the CEO, that will give you your first chance to talk about the company and how you might be a valuable hire. Ask the friend for feedback about the best way to approach the CEO. If all goes well, the friend will facilitate an introduction. There is a good chance that this will happen via email. If so, it will help if you put your thoughts about the company and its mission into an email to the friend. That way, he can pass it along to the CEO, who can review it and either respond to you directly or forward it to someone in the company who’s better suited to speak to you.

Don’t focus only on the CEO connection. There also is a chance that your husband’s friend knows other people at the company.  While connecting with an executive can be good, it usually is peer recommendations that get people hired.