What should you write for your child care resume objective?

Well, the best objective statement would instantly make the recruiter fall in love with you, convince them you’re the best person in the world for a child care job, and win you a contract worth $200,000 (or more) on the spot.

Obviously, resume objectives like this don’t exist. Instead, it’s important to keep it simple.

Let’s look at a really simple and appropriate child care objective that’s perfectly adequate, although it won’t magically land you your dream job:

Enthusiastic and creative early education teacher with three years of experience working as a Child Care Worker at [XYZ Company]. Proven history of managing classrooms of up to 20 children, especially in the 3- to 5-year age range. Earned a Certificate IV in School Age Education from [ABC Education Provider] and currently hold a Working with Children Check. Seeking an Associate Teacher role with [Company Name].

This is the stock standard child care objective statement and will be what you see in 80 percent of resumes. Depending on what you want, it’s probably too long, but if you submitted this it’d be perfectly adequate for a regular child care job. Let’s take a closer look at it.

The experience-based objective statement

The resume objective seen above is all about what you’ve done — your work experience, qualifications, and most important area of expertise within child care. It serves as a basic, effective introduction to a standard child care worker resume.

Let’s inspect another example of an experience-based objective to see how the statement is structured.

(1) Dedicated child care specialist with five years of experience in kindergarten and preschool classrooms. (2) Demonstrated ability to lead up to 20 children at a time in activities including reading, drawing, singing, games, and related activities. (3) Earned a certification in Early Childhood and a First Aid qualification from [ABC Education Provider]. (4) Seeking an Assistant Caregiver position with [XYZ Company].

For comparison:

(1) Early education teacher with three years of experience working as a Child Care Worker at [XYZ Company]. (2) Proven history of managing classrooms of up to 20 children, especially in the 3- to 5-year age range. (3) Earned a Certificate IV in School Age Education from [ABC Education Provider] and currently hold a Working with Children Check. (4) Seeking an Associate Teacher role with [Company Name].

(Again, both of these are possibly too long, and you can delete any of these sentences except the first, but it’s for illustrative purposes a longer resume objective is used.)

The first sentence of each objective statement introduces your current job (‘child care specialist’ or ‘early education teacher’), says how many years of work experience you have, and gives a bit of detail on past roles.

The second sentence explains your main area of expertise. You can think of it as your best strength. For the first objective, this person is an expert at managing children in the 3- to 5-year range; for the second, it’s the ability to lead all those fun activities for kids.

The third sentence is pretty straightforward — it talks about your relevant child care qualifications. It’s probably the first one that could be removed, because you’ll be putting it in the middle of your resume anyway.

The fourth sentence is equally straightforward, summing up the actual objective or purpose — the fact that you’d like a job with the company you’re currently applying for. Whenever you make a new application, you should change this sentence based on the job description.

Now, if this sounds formulaic — it’s meant to be. This experience-based resume objective is the safest and often the most effective, but it won’t win points for creativity. If you don’t like this, the next type of child care resume objective allows for more flexibility.

The skills-based objective summary

There’s a few things that every good child care worker resume should be answering. You need to have strong skills in time management, communication and organisation; you should have past work experience in child care, especially with infants and toddlers; and you should be a patient, considerate, enthusiastic person.

Your resume objective, therefore, can focus more on your skills and what you bring to the job as a child care worker. Furthermore, especially in this industry, the skill-based objective summary should mention your best personality traits.

(It’s important to understand what ‘personality’ means in the context of a resume, however — it doesn’t mean you talk about how you like playing golf or about your favourite kind of music. Resumes aren’t dating profiles.)

Here are two examples to see what a skills-based resume looks like:

(1) Energetic and caring child care expert with enormous passion for guiding, teaching, and developing children and infants. (2) Strong multitasking and organisational skills with the ability to manage classrooms of up to 20 children at a time. (3) Seeking to boost children’s self-esteem and inspire their imagination with a caring, compassionate attitude.

(1) I am a passionate and dependable child care worker with a genuine love for children. (2) Backed by my excellent communication and interpersonal skills, I am able to manage and excited to connect with children of all personality types. (3) In my work, I am always looking to make a real difference in children’s lives.

(If you notice, the last sample of the resume objective is the only one written in first person. Using the first person is often unnecessary in the experience-based objective summary.)

The first sentence of these skill-based objectives mentions your personality traits (‘Energetic and caring’, or ‘passionate and dependable’) and also explains why you enjoy a child care job. Immediately, this makes this resume objective feel more intimate than the first kind.

The second sentence is still quite similar in stating your main area of expertise in child care, although it focuses more on what skills you bring (‘multitasking and organisational skills’, or ‘communication and interpersonal skills’).

The third sentence also contains the objective, but instead of mentioning the specific role you want, it’s about a more personal idea of how you want to benefit society ( ‘boost[ing] children’s self-esteem’ or ‘looking to make a real difference in children’s lives’).

Which one to choose?

So which kind of resume objective should you go with — the experience-based objective or the skills-based objective?

They’re both perfectly adequate. The only difference is the skills-based objective shows a little more personality, while the professional objective gets straight to the point and tells the recruiter everything relevant straight up.

It’s worth noting that the bulk of the child care worker resume will be very similar — you still need to write about your skills and experience.

Ultimately, there’s no reason why you can’t write one of each type of objective for yourself, and cycle through them depending on the company you’re applying for. If the company website radiates personality and warmth, perhaps the skills-based objective would be better. If it looks highly professional and prestigious, then perhaps the traditional objective is more appropriate.

---