When you are job hunting, there are several stages you will go through, assuming that you do pass each stage. To begin with, your resume needs to pass its first inspection, and not be discarded straight away. This means that it has to be well formatted, and be of interest to them. The company has probably received a great number of resumes for the job they are advertising, and if yours doesn’t look interesting, they may toss it into the “no” pile, no matter how qualified you are for the position.

Once your resume has passed round one, you will be invited for a first interview.  On completing that successfully, there could possibly be a second and even a third interview, with each successive interview being more detailed. After the interviews, you hope that you will be offered the advertised job.

So what is the aim of your resume in this process?
The purpose of your resume is not to get that job, it is to be given an interview with the company.

Yes, you read that right, the only aim of your resume is to give the company some idea of your qualifications, and to cause them to be interested in meeting with you. Bearing this in mind, you may be writing your resume a little differently now.

Since your resume is probably the first contact that you have had with this company, so you need it to make a favorable first impression. This may seem very difficult when there is so little flexibility available in a resume, but there is one section that is yours to control – the resume objective. By creating an interesting objective, the chances are very good that your resume will stand out from the majority of others that the company has received, and your resume will easily move into the interview pile.

Why would this happen? Because many people do not even write a resume objective, or they write a weak one. So this gives you the opportunity to shine. This means spending time on the writing, reworking it until you are really satisfied with the results, certain that it will make a good strong statement and have your resume move to the interview pile.

Remember that the resume objective is probably the first thing someone will read of your resume, so make them want to meet you, make them give you an interview, and then at the first interview for this job, you will be able to impress them with your personality, your skills and your abilities.

A few other reminders – make sure that your resume does not have any spelling errors or any grammatical errors in it. You should be aware that when someone is reading your resume, they are really looking for reasons to discard it, to remove it from those of interest. Don’t give them any reason to do this, especially something so obvious as a spelling mistake. You need your resume noticed for good reasons, not thrown out because of silly mistakes. So check it thoroughly, ask a friend to check it again as well, as you never know what they will notice that you missed, despite your close scrutiny.

Make sure too, that every thing that you write is accurate, with the correct dates, and so on. You do not want to be denied that important first interview based on errors you didn’t see in your resume.

Provided you do a thorough job in these areas, and you have the qualifications that the company is looking for, then there should be no reason why you should not be given that first interview.