A missing or lame objective section can get your resume a quick click with the delete key in a matter of seconds. There are quite simply too many other and most likely better resumes out there to bother. Yet most job seekers screw this one simple section up terribly.

Since your resume leads with your Objective, it should grab the reader and pull them in to want to read more. You have about eight seconds to grab them. Make each second count by being relevant and focused. Here's how:

The basics are thus: toward the top just above or just underneath your "Keyword Competencies" paragraph, put your "Objective" section which is quite simply the object of your job search, the title of the job you are seeking.

Here's a Bad Example: Most people put in a title (like "Software Developer" or, "Lighthouse Keeper" or, "Marketing Director" or "Product Manager" or "NASCAR Pit Boss" in some long droning sentence that reads like:

Objective: "Challenging opportunity as a (title) where I can effectively use my managing and sales skills in my ongoing effort to help grow an organization, blah, blah…"

This is not only boring, it’s also highly ineffective. Your resume has only so much available space and your potential reader so little available time. This sort of verbiage does not transmit key information that will widen your net.

Use the "Objective" to do one thing, focus on your objective.

Here's a Better Example: Instead of just filling out the target title as "JAVA Programmer" for instance, also list other closely allied titles that the searcher may be searching on. For instance:

Objective: "Java Programmer, Software Engineer, Application Developer, Software Developer."

Use each section in your resume to answer one question only. By putting several potential titles in the Objective heading (and leaving out the skill-set info of the first example), you tighten up your focus and you widen your net. Even within larger companies, there may be several different job requisitions at any one time. For example, it hasn’t been uncommon for a company to have concurrent openings for "Java Programmer", "Software Developer", "Software Engineer", all of which you may well be qualified for. So don’t limit yourself with your objective title. Use this space to your best advantage and you will reap much greater returns.

Summary: Even though this is an easy fix, most of your competitors in the job search process DON’T DO THIS SIMPLE THING. When you add this improvement to your resume today, you’ll find yourself out of the lost resume abyss and back in the game and closer to getting that job you really want.