Evelyn Said:

What is a good resume objective statement for college student looking for a summer internship?

We Answered:

A career objective is not suitable for those who do not have a specific career objective in mind.

For someone with substantial experience who can afford to be very particular about the types of jobs they are interested in, this is a great place to elaborate on what they're looking for. For someone with little or no experience, there's just not much to say and it's best just to leave that off.

If you don't want to jump straight into your experience or education section, I've found that a "summary" or "skills summary" section at the top looks good where you can highlight the top 5 things you're bringing to the table. For example, if you're in a technical field, list the programming languages, operating systems, applications, etc that you know. Employers appreciate the concise list which makes it clear what type of job they may be considering you for.

Employers will also appreciate the lack of "filler" or things that appear on your resume which don't mean much at all. As someone who's screened hundreds of resumes myself, one less career objective such as "to get a job which challenges me to expand my skills" means one less sentence I have to read before deciding to interview you or not. Remember, employers get plenty of resumes for each position they're interviewing for so most spend fewer than 30 seconds with your resume before putting it into the 'trash' pile, so the less filler you have the less chance they're going to waste those seconds on words that didn't need to be there.

Good luck with your job hunt. If your school has a resume clinic which will look over your resume, take them up on it. The more people who look at your resume the better.