Proposal: Add objective field to root level schema

[mikeschinkel]

Purpose

To provide a dedicated field for expressing career goals and job search intentions in a clear, concise format. While the schema currently includes basics.summary for background information, there's no standardized way to express forward-looking career objectives.

Use Case Examples

Here are several examples of how the objective field would be used in practice:

{
  "basics": {
    "name": "Jane Smith",
    "email": "[email protected]"
  },
  "objective": "Seeking a senior software engineering role focusing on Go development in a cloud-native environment"
}

{
  "basics": {
    "name": "Michael Chen",
    "email": "[email protected]"
  },
  "objective": "Looking to transition into technical product management at a healthcare technology company"
}

{
  "basics": {
    "name": "Sarah Johnson",
    "email": "[email protected]"
  },
  "objective": "Recent computer science graduate seeking entry-level position in machine learning engineering"
}

Proposed Schema Change

Add a new top-level field:

{
  "objective": {
    "type": "string",
    "description": "A concise statement of career goals or job search intentions",
    "maxLength": 400
  }
}

Rationale

1. Distinct from Summary: While basics.summary covers professional background and experience, objective serves a different purpose by explicitly stating career goals.

2. Recruitment Value: Many recruiters and hiring managers specifically look for clear intention statements when screening resumes. A standardized field makes this information easily parsable.

3. Schema Simplicity: Implementing this as a simple string field maintains the schema's clean design while adding significant value for job seekers and recruiters.

Implementation Notes

• The field would be optional
• Recommended to keep content brief (hence the 400-character limit suggestion)
• Placed at root level for easy access and visibility

Migration Impact

This addition is backward compatible and requires no changes to existing resume documents.

For theme authors, this presents an opportunity to enhance their themes by incorporating the objective field in a prominent location. Theme authors can maintain backward compatibility by gracefully handling cases where the objective field is not present, while still providing an optimal presentation when it is included. This approach allows for a smooth transition as users gradually adopt the new field in their resume documents.

Discussion Points

Would appreciate feedback from the community on:

1. The appropriate character limit
2. Whether this should be at root level or nested elsewhere
3. Any other potential considerations I might have missed

Relationship to Previous Proposals

This proposal builds upon and supersedes Issue #418 ("Add 'objective' to basics") from April 2021, which raised a similar need but with less detailed specifications. While #418 suggested placing the objective field within the basics section, this proposal advocates for a root-level placement for several reasons:

1. Career objectives are distinct from basic personal information and deserve their own top-level presence in the schema
2. Root-level placement provides better visibility and easier access for parsing
3. This approach maintains cleaner separation of concerns between personal information and career goals

The suggestion in #418 to add desired_job_title as an array could be considered as a separate proposal, as it serves a different purpose from the career objective statement and might warrant its own discussion.

Given the more comprehensive nature of this proposal and its detailed technical specifications, I'd suggest closing #418 as a duplicate of this issue instead of vice-versa.

Thank you for considering this proposal.

[mikeschinkel]

I will be happy to add a PR if you are willing to accept this.