Let the proclamation go forth: the resume “Objective” is dead!

It’s another casualty of this economy.

I haven’t used one on clients’ resumes in over twelve years. First, they’re usually highly predictable, thus they are boring. Second, they are too selfish. Third, they use very valuable real estate that could be used for much better information. And a possible fourth: because of the first three, they make the user seem way out of date.

On the point of them being predictable thus boring, here’s one that I’ve seen over the last 20+ years that never seems to change: “Seeking a challenging position with a growing company where I can use my many ______ skills”.  Yes, employers want to know what you want: they don’t want to hire someone who’s only lukewarm about their work or the company.

But your goal is better expressed in a Summary near the top of page 1 that uses phrases like “Thrives on teams that generate new ideas.” It’s better to use those words than to use longer, Latinate, multi-syllabic words that sound like a lawyer wrote them, as in “Succeeds in positive environments where innovation is a priority” — too passive, no pictures, no “spark” to the language. Don’t be afraid to be unique and different if it better describes how you’d jump right in and produce results right away. Those who read resumes are looking for the person who can clearly tell them why they should hire them — and hire them now.

On the “selfishness” of an Objective, they are all about you, aren’t they? “I want, I want, I want…” That’s the key thing that makes them terrible to use. Today, every communication you make during a job search should be all about the employer and their pain and how you can eliminate it. Do I need to emphasize how important that is in this economy? Let me say this again: Do I need to tell you that you MUST do this today?

Obviously, what you say about yourself needs to be true of you. If it is true, and it’s good stuff, then that’s what should come across, not only in your Summary, but in your bulleted items. Still, so many people show me their resumes with an Objective because people out there who purport to be career counselors or coaches are still teaching them and using them. That’s an outdated practice that I’ve written about elsewhere (scroll down for “Wrong, Wrong, Wrong, a rant”, from July 2009), where well-intentioned people are giving out very old information.

And on the third point, and especially today, an employer wants to read your resume quickly, wants to know right away if you are a possible interview candidate. If you take up valuable space at the top of page 1 telling them what you want, in boring language, you are then NOT taking that space to say “Here’s what I can do for YOU.” So use that precious real estate to get to the point. Don’t give history (”21 years as a Sales leader…”). Instead, give results (”Sales Professional who generates new revenue”).

Resume “Objective”: R.I.P. — but we’re glad you’re gone.

The other day I was reading posts on a job hunters’ email list serve, and saw an “I’ve landed!” email from one member. It’s always great to see such good news, so I opened the mail. The person announced his new job, thanking everyone who’d helped him during his search to “land this permanent position after doing several temping gigs”.

“Permanent”? Ouch. When it comes to work, there is no such thing, unless you’re gainfully self-employed, and even then your business waxes and wanes with the demands of the market.

Author Clifford Hakim was prescient when he wrote We Are All Self-Employed in 1994. He maintained then, and he was so right, that a new social contract now exists: gone was the idea of lifelong employment with one employer. Parts of the country have seen this reality for almost two decades, others are just awakening to it. Which means in regions where layoffs had been rare until this recession, people are still reeling from what they’d imagined was impossible: that they’d actually been let go from a company where they thought they’d be forever.

In short, they were operating as if nothing had changed from decades before. It’s tough to be hit with the reality that those days truly are gone.

A client of mine who landed a few years ago at a company doing a lot of defense research told me about the culture there, once he’d been there a while and saw the “self employed” model in action. There, when your project was winding down, you were not assigned to another project. Instead, YOU had to FIND another project within the company which would take you on. So you had to be able to articulate your value to Project Managers. And as a direct result of the culture there, everyone was very interested in everyone else’s project: How was the project going? What were the goals? What’s the funding?  If you found no project to which you could contribute, you were out the door.

Will other companies take on the same kind of approach? Only time will tell. But many are no longer managing their employees’ careers. That’s up to the employee now.

In that way, Hakim’s book’s subtitle, How to Take Control of Your Career, is absolutely right. By shaping your attitude — and your job search– around the fact that you have to find your market and focus your message, then find your customer (employer), you are taking initiative. Continuing to think of work in this new way will get you as close to “permanent” as you can ever be.

When job hunters strive to make their resumes fit a “proper” format, and thus sound flat and colorless, I cringe. When job interviewees turn quiet and obedient in an interview practice, I wince. Somehow, someone, somewhere must have told everyone there was/is only one way to do a resume, do an interview, and the lesson stuck.

And now a paragraph that seems to have nothing to do with the previous one: Human beings love stories. From the dawn of time, we’ve sat around the fire, listening to stories. Today, it’s sitting around the dining room table on a December holiday, or on the commuter bus with a Kindle, and yes, next to the fireplace curled up with a book — each taking in a story. Family treasures include stories of how great-great-great grandma came to this country, or how grandpa moved everyone west for more farmland, or how Mom went back to get her GED. It must be in our DNA.

So why do we stop telling stories when it comes to job search? It should be the opposite. Employers have pretty much the same DNA as other humans, and need to hear your stories. I don’t mean the one about Grandpa, I mean illustrations of how you have been successful. As I like to say to my clients, “Don’t tell me, show me. Show the employer.”

So the candidate who says “I am a good manager” is telling me. It’s flat, blank. But the candidate who says “Let me give you an illustration of how I manage. When I came to the team, three of our best people were about to quit. I sat down with each of them, then the rest of the team. I listened a lot, talked about what I could change and not change, and negotiated with them to stay at least three more months to see if they could live with my proposed changes. They agreed and we made those changes — I didn’t want to lose my top producers. One thing I did was increase the bonuses for ‘biggest increases for the month’. Not only did those three stay, they increased their performance AND the rest of the team moved up, too. It was fun to hand out those bonuses, which cost only 10% of the increase the team gave us! Now it’s the most desired team to be on, in the whole company. I believe I can bring that same kind of management style to you here.”

Wow!

As that candidate tells that story, the interviewer is picturing him sitting down with his people, talking with his people, and then is eager to here where the story goes. The story’s payoff is the success (increase in performance/$). THIS is what makes the candidate the one who gets the second interview and third and the offer.

It’s the same with resumes: job hunters have to get away from making their resumes sound “proper” or legalish or tepid. Spice it up with successes and before-and-after info. Put in a juicy quote from your manager or a client. Use numbers as numerals, not spelled out — a “rule” I love breaking. Then go crazy on your LinkedIn profile by repeating your key words over and over again. Do what gets results — calls for interviews — and do interviews that are alive with stories — not what’s “proper”.

So what’s your story?

Recently I spoke with the spouse of a prospective client, something I welcome because I can answer questions from their perspective. Given that I use a certain process, during which things tend to happen at certain points, she was asking “So when would he have a resume?” and “When would he be interviewing?” Behind the questions, certainly, was some amount of anxiety, given the economy and, I’m sure, family finances.

One thing I always remember is that when I work with individuals, I’m really working with the whole family, because it’s the family that’s hurting from the loss of income, and it the family who benefits when the person lands the new job. What she wanted was guarantees. I would love it if I could give those. But there are just too many variables to honestly be able to do that: what’s going to happen this week in the stock market, what will the candidate really do with his or her weekly goals, and so on.

One thing I can guarantee is that using a job search process that has been refined and constantly tested by many others, the chances are high that a candidate’s search will probably be shorter and less painful. I can guarantee that sometimes how a hiring manager thinks can be unpredictable, that aspects of the search will make no sense at times, that using today’s technology will help a candidate, and that trying to find a good job without networking is extremely difficult.

In other words, I can guarantee frustration and hard work until the candidate hears the wonderful words, “We’d like to make you a job offer.”

So like the cat who eventually comes down from the tree, her husband will land. But the part of the search that’s in his hands is how good a job he gets, not just any job, by doing the good work necessary for landing it. That’s the only thing that guarantees a candidate gets as close as they can to their goal.

The number 342 is purely random: I just happened to pick it out of the air, because there are enough job search myths that I’m sure the numbers do go that high. OK, here it is: “My job search networking groups are all I need.”

Oh, really? All those people know how to help you, and are going to take time out of their job searches for YOU? Wow!

Now you know I am a huge supporter of networking in job search, with your between-the-jobs brethren, employed folks, and others. Yes, you’ll make great contacts and get good feedback. But since when are fellow job seekers experts in your job search, especially when they are consumed with their own searches and their own agendas, and rightfully so?

Anyone who follows the discussion and banter on email list serves for job search networking groups is familiar with the characters who populate them, both helpful types as well as killing time types. There’s the bitter know-all-about-job-search guy who’s been looking for two years, and blames his inability to land on his age. Could it really be that his attitude seeps through whenever he is interviewed or makes a networking contact? Related to him is the sarcastic list serve member who thinks she should get free job search help from consultants (would she expect free treatment from a doctor before he helps her find the cure?), or who thinks he deserves a higher salary next time around “just because”. There’s the I-want-to-help-everyone person who leaves too little time for herself. There’s the person who’s landed a job so he writes emails to the group for hours each day to share his wisdom…but when, pray tell, is he working? And there is the great number of lurkers who are hoping to learn some hidden secret about search that will land them their next job.

None of those folks intends to be harmful to their fellow job hunters. But they simply cannot give the same level of attention that a counselor at a career center, or a consultant like me, gives. It’s our job to help you. We live for your success. We don’t go away like fellow job seekers do, when they land, and which is totally understandable. And whatever you spend on such services, you will get back by landing sooner, or by being able to negotiate for a higher salary.

So go to job search networking groups, of course. But don’t stop there.

Interviewing is probably when job hunters get the most nervous about their search, and some can get very worked up, as if the interviewer is going to judge them as human beings. Many people either buy books about every conceivable interview question, then attempt to memorize them, making them more nervous than before.

Or, worse, they go into the interview like a good boy or girl, and wait for questions before speaking. That’s the part I want to write about here: the good little boy and girl mode.

Unless you are under the age of, say, 12, you are no longer a boy or girl. I don’t care where you live and in what culture you were raised, being the reactive person in today’s interview — meaning the one who waits for the other (the interviewer) to do something — puts you at a distinct disadvantage. Even the hiring manager or recruiter or HR person raised in the same culture will view you as someone who looks good on paper, but who on the job will probably sit and wait to be told what to do next.

So how do you become more outspoken/more proactive for an interview? You don’t wait for the interview. You start being more that way in normal, everyday life. You may not want to hear that, but to make it in today’s for-profit and even non-profit business world, you’ll have to come out of your shell more. Keeping your successes and excellent reviews a secret will not land you the next interview, or the job, today.

Note the operative word there: TODAY. On your last job, where you may have been for 5, 10, even 20 years, you were sheltered and protected from the new winds buffeting the business world. What worked then, and “got you there” then, won’t work now. At least the quiet, “don’t notice me” part.

So when you go into an interview today, be thinking “I am a peer to this person who’s interviewing me…I have something they need…I can solve their problems…that’s why they’re calling me in to talk. So I’m going to help THEM by telling them what I can do well.” That means having a “conversation with purpose”…not just a meandering isn’t-this-nice-that-we-have-so-much-in-common, but one that starts off with you telling the interviewer why you’re a good match for the job, illustrating why you are a fit with your success stories. And it moves to a back-and-forth exchange of information. And it ends with you asking about next steps.

So they’ll be asking you questions, and sometimes you’ll be asking the question. It’s not a two-way inquisition. It’s a conversation, with the end goal being, on both sides of “let’s take this further”.

With that approach in mind, going into an interview loses most of the stress, and your confidence is higher. Now isn’t that the way to do a job search?

I often say to clients and networking groups, “Job search is an art, not a science”. Meaning, there’s no one way to do anything — the resume, the interview, networking. A big reason for this is that the process involves people, and people are never all alike. And people change.

However. Some people who do what I do, including myself, conclude that there are always newer and better ways of doing things, and if employers respond, we’re right there recommending these methods. 

So let me rant about people in my field who don’t do the right thing for clients — and who should know better. 

For example, it’s dated and it’s wrong to include an Objective on a resume today, because it screams “here’s what I want” instead of “here’s what I can do for YOU”. Yet many college career centers and state career center counselors still insist on them, which sets my teeth on edge. They are hurting their clients by doing this old-fashioned, ineffective thing, and it inflames my sense of “How can you do this to your job hunters?” The candidates show me these newly-minted resumes and I have to tell them that the resume needs complete revamping, and they are stunned until I explain why, and then when the new one we do actually works, they say, “Why do they do things the old way?” And I can’t explain without sounding angry, so I say “They’re don’t know any better.”

And some of the same people recommend using a “functional” resume, one that puts all the person’s skills at the top with some comments, and simply lists the person’s titles and employers later on. This “style” is a big red flag to HR and recruiters — their first thought is, “What is this person hiding?” HR, recruiters, AND hiring managers want to know what you did where, and when. They look for growth and building of a career in a resume, and this type of resume doesn’t let them see it. A sure way to get your resume discarded, yet resume “experts” still include these as a valid option. It’s old advice and these people should know that the retirement date for such resumes has long passed. Again, a disservice to the client.

Then you have the career counselor at a college who refuses to put the job hunter’s Education section at the end of the resume, even when the job candidate graduated 10 years ago or 20 years ago. Gotta advertise that college name! This is so wrong because the resume is not about the college, it’s about the candidate. After a year or two after graduation, the Education details go at the end. Period.

Then there’s the job search seminar leader I once heard who said to his class of newly laid-off candidates, “This whole interviewing thing is a game…you have to fake them out worse than they fake you out. There’s a winner and a loser. Make sure you are the winner. So, lie if you have to.” Wrong, wrong, wrong! This cynicism isn’t widespread, thank goodness, but the poison such a person is spreading hurts candidates. I pray this man has retired, along with his venom. The reality? Everyone can win during the hiring process, because a good match means the candidate is happy, and the company is happy. Yes, everyone can win.

And the college career counselor who tells a woman in her 30s who’s re-entering the work world after taking two years off to be caregiver for her dying mother, “Oh, don’t put that on your resume, it’s not related to your career.” Except it has everything to do with who this woman is and what she is all about: caring about others. So you’re darn right that I put it on her resume, and we did a great job of relating it to her career.

I was listening to Public Radio one day this week while driving in my car. The call-in show was about older job hunters and how they’re not landing jobs. One caller after another, almost every one formerly a professional with an office, each gave their tale of how they have been looking for a job for years or took a survival job at Home Depot, or how even Home Depot wouldn’t hire them. “I don’t see others like me in some of these places”, said a few.

Fast forward to a couple of days later. I was talking with someone who’d called about my services, and these were his comments: “I’m 60 and no one will hire me. None of my friends of the same age are getting hired. I’ve done everything imaginable to land a job, with no offers.” Yet when I probed about which networking groups this person was attending, he said “None.” Networking? “A little”. Was he using LinkedIn to see what jobs are posted, and so that he gets found by a prospective employer? “I’m on it, but I don’t use it much.”

To the radio show, I found myself yelling at the radio: Ask them what they’ve been doing in their search! I told the reporter, who was accepting what was being said, without question. Ask them if they’ve done something new each week! It felt good, but it didn’t do anything, except convince me to write this blog entry.

To the caller I was talking to who kept insisting on his age being the issue, I had to interrupt him to disagree with him and tell him he was NOT doing everything imaginable to get a job. Silence.

In short: older workers don’t know how to look for a job today. And: many resent that job search methods changed while they were gainfully employed — surprise!, you were sheltered from reality for a long time. And: because so many I talk to don’t want to change their job search methods, it’s my opinion that many don’t WANT to know how to look for a job today, that some actually want only pity or sympathy and want to complain.

There, I said it.

And I’ll say this: during the search, older job seekers often pooh-pooh things like texting or Facebook or Twitter to anyone who will listen, or complain that the interviewer had tattoos, or that the person who would be their boss doesn’t speak great English, or want a job just down the street and no further, or refuse to entertain any salary offer that isn’t 15% higher than what they used to make. Without realizing it, these candidates are telegraphing their “I don’t like the way things are” attitudes. To the interviewer’s ears, that sounds like “I don’t really fit in and want everything the way I want it.” Result: they’re not considered further. And they have no idea they have subtly sabotaged their own searches.

It’s sad to have to say this, but bias is a way of life. Of course there’s age discrimination in the job market against older people. There’s also discrimination based on race, youth, weight, status of the college one attended or lack thereof, previous jobs, makeup, hair styles or baldness, cologne, jeans, looks (you look like the interviewer’s ex), attractiveness (too much, too little). All kinds of dumb things color the decisions  of hiring managers. Hiring managers are human. And humans do illogical things. It’s not right, it’s short-sighted, it’s small-minded. But it happens.

Which is easier to change: that bias? Or your attitude about your search?

It’s the candidate’s job to 1) get around these hurdles, usually through networking, and 2) have so much activity going on in their search that the loss of an opportunity here or there doesn’t stall it altogether.

Author Barbara Ehrenrich, in her book Bait and Switch, decries career coaches who blame the victim, as she puts it. Well, this is one career change and job search coach who says “the victim can spend less time BEING a victim from the start”.  The 50+ year old whose litany includes statements like “I’ve done all I can” or “I apply for all the jobs I can but never hear back” or “It’s not like it used to be” and then gives up, has only just begun their search. Come on: it’s a new age. Get with it. Or you’ll be left out. Do you want a job, or what?

Why does this coach challenge her older clients’ excuses? Because once the older job hunter sees that they have more control than they think they do, through things like networking and doing more, they will be energized, and will do more to land a job the way they need to work at it today. Doing things the way they need to be done today will get them a good position.

And that’s the whole idea.

I’ve been there, on exactly this day in 2003, so I know what it’s like: you go through the motions as you put the dinner plates on the table, as you feed the dog, go through the mail without being able to read a thing, knowing that any time now, your spouse will be home and you’ll have to say, Today I was laid off.

You will have to watch their face, and your kids’ faces, as they take it in. Lost your job? Wow. Lost your job, really? The silence. Then, Are you OK?, to which you lie and say “Yeah.”

Later, you talk about the vacation or the lake house and how now we should probably change our plans for the summer, just in case. Just in case. You don’t want to say it: Just in case I don’t find another job soon.

Yes, you think, I’ll be getting unemployment, and they’re sending us to outplacement for help with the resume and so forth. We have some savings, but that was for the future, not now. What will I do? I was supposed to retire from there, or at least work another few years there. Now what?

Sure, it’s been in the news about layoffs. But you, laid off? At your company, which hardly ever has had a layoff? Isn’t this supposed to happen to other people?

You tell your friends in a day or so, and they reassure you that it’s not you, it’s the times, you can’t take this personally. Except you do take it personally, even if 50 or 500 people went with you. After all, it’s your paycheck that’s now gone.

And once you’re gone and someone else is now doing the work they made you leave on your desk, and you are driving past a Starbucks and see someone on line there on a break from work, with their company ID key card dangling off their hip, you feel envy that you no longer have a key card or a company or a job to go to. And you realize you took all that for granted.

There is no way around this pain. And yes, I will tell you although you don’t want to hear it, you will go through all the other stages of loss and grief. Someone has put names to them because they are real, and you will experience every one of them. It’s necessary. Go with it.

But know this: you will get through it. It won’t be easy, and you will be challenged in ways you never knew. But: you will find others in the same situation who have moved through the first steps, and their example tells you that you will move ahead just like they have. You’ll find that networking group that fits and maybe a coach to help you avoid the rocks and rapids and you’ll meet new people who will be glad to meet you and who you’d never have met if you were still working. And you’ll learn about the job market today, and you will begin to burn with something new: a ferocity about what’s ahead. And you’ll begin to believe it, no matter what the headlines say: that you will find a new job, maybe even a better one than you had.

Years from now, in your new job or maybe the one after that, you’ll still remember the date of your layoff, especially if you were at your company a long time. But the pain will have faded. And you will have a good, or very good, or even great new job. You still see friends from back then, who were laid off with you, and they’ve made it past, too. And you’ll get to enjoy the lake house again and at the little shop in the town nearby, the one that sells cabin decor and shoelace licorice and shot glasses with moose and loons on them, they will have one of those inspirational magnets that says “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right”, and you will smile. Because you learned you can. And everything is OK.

Too often I see people in job search, upon hitting a snag in their search, suddenly develop thoughts about another career. Sometimes this is sparked by a jaunty ad on TV about courses beginning at a nearby school, with programs that promise instant employment. The job seeker thinks, “Maybe if I do that job, I’ll get back to work sooner and with less pain.” So they stall their search to explore The Alternative Career, getting lost in the requirements for various positions, doing salary research, and checking out job postings. They imagine their lives simpler, more rewarding. They see themselves having happier days on the job and more placid evenings.

Perhaps looking at postings for a job they picture for themselves gives solace to them because the postings they’ve been applying for haven’t borne fruit.

Whatever it’s called, it is a symptom of “the grass is greener” syndrome. It’s an escape from reality break.

Once, about 25 years ago, I had a new sales job that was extremely pressured, and every day I faced training in methods and technologies that were foreign to me. There was constant studying and paperwork. It seemed I would never learn everything, and that I would never be competent enough to succeed. I was miserable. One day for lunch, I went with some of my colleagues to a sandwich shop where, after placing my order, I watched with envy as the young woman deftly made my sandwich. She wrapped it up, marked it with the price code, handed it to me, wiped her hands, and went on to the next sandwich. Total competence. Simple success. And a complete contrast to my agonizing, groping job existence.

In that moment, I totally envied her. Her job was so simple! She had the satisfaction of making her customers happy, she succeeded in every step of the job, and she had no paperwork or goals to account for. She went home at the end of the day with not a care in the world. Sure, I made two or three times what she did, but right then, I was willing to give that up for what looked like career nirvana.

Fortunately, I finally began to “get” my new job, and the pieces began to fit. My hard work was paying off. While I still went to the sandwich shop, and still had admiration for this sandwich maker, I realized that my envy of her rose and fell depending on how I was doing at work that day. It became a barometer for me, and even when I left that job for another, I’ve often thought of that sandwich maker as an example of an escape from career reality that I badly needed at the time.

Of course, I would have quickly become bored making sandwiches. But the thought provided me with enough of an escape that it was healing in a way. So I understand when the Operations Manager begins to think about nursing, or the Corporate Trainer goes online to sign up for a course in engineering.

To those who are enjoying some escapism, I’d say: It’s OK. It’s normal. But don’t leave a career that still has promise for a possibility that may not be much more than an escape from reality. To test out the new idea, you should do some real research of that alternative career before jumping ship: talk with lots of people who already do the job, to learn about it from the inside. Otherwise you could be leaving behind a worthy career that you’ve built so well over the years — for grass that won’t stay green.