The MicroTrain Blog

You know that paragraph you're supported to put at the top of your resume? The "Statement of Purpose" or "Objective"? Yeah. I'l going to tell you how to write one of those properly.

First off, I want to tell you want not to do, mostly because it's easier on me and should help you understand the value of a good opening statement.

I don't call it an opening statement lightly. Like a lawyer's opening statement in a courtroom, this is what frames the rest of the conversation. A good opening statement won't really tell you anything: it's not there to present evidence or give testimony (that's what the rest of the trial is about), but to say "here is my argument: keep an eye out for the following things..." If a lawyer is setting you up to show that their client is innocent and couldn't have possibly committed the crime, this is where that happens. If the lawyer is saying their client is not guity by virtue of insanity, this is where it gets spelled out.

Imagine you're in the jury and lawyers skip the opening statement and the defense just starts bringing out people to show that the defendant was in another state at the time. So what? Oh! It means that the defendant couldn't have possibly committed the crime from Canada. 

So the jury is everyone reading your resume (HR, the hiring manager, the hiring manager's boss, etc). You don't want to make them work to figure out what you do or who you are (i.e. reading the experience and education sections only), but you want to start them off by explaining who you are and allowing the rest of your resume to prove that statement. Just like in a trial, the lawyer makes a statement and spends the rest of that trial trying to prove that statement to be true.

So what shouldn't your opening statement be? Let's get the worst offenders out of the way first.

1) "The purpose of this resume is to obtain a job at a blah blah blah..." Yeah. We know. The purpose of this resume is to get a job. That's the ONLY purpose of a resume. No one writes a resume for fun. You don't hang out with your friends and drink a beer and write resumes, do you? No. So let's dispense with the obvious.

2) "Blah blah work at a great company with a high level of opportunity..." Again, duh! Until you show me the resume that says "I wish to work at a bad company where there is little opportunity for growth or fun..." I think we can just assume that you'd rather work someplace that didn't suck.

3) Anything that that sounds like what you want. As a hiring manager, I don't care about you. Sorry, but it's true. I don't care that you are looking for a job, that you are looking for a great opportunity, etc etc etc. Personally, I think if you are going to write this kind of statement, just stop hiding behind the veneer or politeness and just say what you mean: "The purpose of this resume is to get a job at a company with great benefits and pay where I'm not really expected to do much more than play Farmville all day and make personal phone calls." I mean, if you're opening statement is anything like the first two statements, that's what the hiring manager will read into it, anyway.

So what should you put in your opening statement?

1) An overview of who you are in relationship to how it affects the organization. I don't really care if you're motivated and smart. I care if you're motivated and smart at work and like to get things done. I don't care if you are sweet, good-natured and concerned for the well-being of others... unless you're talking about your experience in customer service.

2) Adjectives and adverbs. Describe who you are. You don't have to be Shakespeare, but you should define your style, the idea of what you strive for, and how you see yourself. These are words you can't really use in the rest of the resume, so use them here.

3) Be a good match. Make yourself sound like someone who should work at this company. Looking for a job at IBM? Sound serious, diligent and obsessed with numbers. At Google? Sound creative, smart and curious. At Nordstroms? Sound customer-obsessed. You want to sound like the company you want to work for. Go to their website and read up. Use the words they use to describe themselves and see how well they describe yourself. 

4) Be unique. If you can read your opening statement and can imagine anyone other than yourself as the person being described, try again. Remember, the HR/Hiring manager are going through 100 resumes to find the person they want. You need to stand out. You need to be authentic and real. You need to be you, just with the volume turned up.

Once you've established who you are, use the rest of the resume to prove it. Make sure you don't make any claims in your opening statement that aren't shown in you experience or skills.

This is how you can make that short little paragraph work for you!

Here's the problem: There are jobs out there, but there are a lot more people looking for jobs than there are jobs. Even entry-level jobs are getting hundreds of resumes.

A hiring manager would go blind trying to sort through all these resumes (and she's already got a full-time job), so the task gets passed to Human Resources. The problem here is that HR doesn't know as much about the job as the hiring manager. So the hiring manager wrote down all the thing she thought the new person would need to do and all the requirements that person would need. HR dutifully wrote all that down and turned it into the want ad you saw on Craigslist.

Remember, HR doesn't know anything about project management or office management or server and networking security, they only know what the hiring manager told them. So when faced with the daunting tasks of sorting through 100-plus resumes to find the dozen or fewer that will get passed to the hiring manager, the HR person just goes by what was on the ad.

This is something we can work with. If HR just wants to make sure that every resume they pass on to the next level meets the requirments, we have to show that you meet requirements.

How? 

A table.

In your cover letter, after your introductory paragraph, you need to insert a tw-column table that lists everything the ad said they wanted, and your experince and skills at each one. Like this:

Note that I copy and pasted the left-column straight out of the want ad. Don't play around with the wording or try and get tricky.

Also, don't worry if this means that your cover letter goes longer than one page With a table that point-by-point spells out why you are a perfect match, HR will love you, since you are doing their job for them.

You aren't here to get the job, you're here to get the interview. And this is how you get past HR's filters to make to to the hiring manager. The best part is that few hiring managers will throw your resume and cover letter out because you look like a great fit. You will be worth the hour it will take to confirm that fit in an interview.

Use this and you will increase the number of phone calls and interviews you get.