Student Job Link's Resources

Common practice in writing resumes dictates that you put an objective line at the beginning, just after all of your contact information.  While the objective line may not be necessary for people who have been in the workplace for a long time and have lots of experience and credentials, it is important for people with less experience or who are just getting out of college.  We’re going to focus here on writing a good objective line.

First of all, when I say line, I mean line.  An objective shouldn’t be more than one sentence.  The idea is to distill your goals into only a few words.  Also, those words have to relate some things about yourself that would make a prospective employer want to meet with you for an interview.  A new graduate on the job-hunt might have an objective that reads:  Objective - To utilize skills gained from both my previous experience and education to embark on an exciting career.

Let’s break that down.  

First of all, you are highlighting your skills in your resume.  For example, you may work part-time and have some previous office experience (the details of which will be listed in the Employment Experience Section), and you want a prospective employer to know that your skill set is better than other applicants.  

You also highlight your education because, being a fresh graduate you may have done a lot of hands-on stuff at school (again, the details are listed in the Education Section of the resume).  

The last part, embark on an exciting career gives the impression that you want to be in the business for a long time.  

In one sentence, you have given cues about what you would bring to the company and how serious you are about getting into the industry.  

So, when writing your own objective, think about what it is that sets you apart from other potential applicants and highlight that.  Also, a good objective will lead the reader from that sentence to other parts of the resume.  

The example above mentioned skills acquired from experience and education – this will leads the reader to the experience and education sections to find out about these skills.

Feel free to use a variation of the above objective (or use it word for word if you want), but make sure that the promise that you set up in this sentence is paid off in the rest of the resume, and make sure that it applies to the type of position that you are applying to.
 
More resources:
A website with various sample objective statements: http://jobsearch.about.com/od/sampleresumes/a/sampleobjective.htm

A bit more about objectives: http://www.bestsampleresume.com/info/resume-objective.html