Before you apply for your next position get someone you trust to take a critical look at your resume. Even if you have to shell out money to have someone prepare a professional resume for you it is well worth it. Don’t make the mistake of letting your resume get in the way of your next job. This is especially good advice if English is not your primary language.
Does it matter?
I think there is the perception out there that for tech resumes all you need is a pile of acronyms and a list of companies you worked for. This isn’t true.
Find a standard template that suits your experience
There are many good books out there on effective resume writing. There are great examples on the web. You should try to find a template that emphasizes your abilities and can be easily tailored for each position you are applying for.
If you are new to the job market, you may want to move your education section before your experiences. If you’ve been on the job for awhile you may want to trim down the descriptions of jobs you held 10 years ago.
Tech resume essentials
No spelling, grammar, or punctuation errors. Period.
Now that the tech-job market is bouncing back you may be able to get jobs with your sloppy resume. All that means is that you are missing out on better positions.
Tech grid.
Yes, you need the dumb little table that tells the HR-bots all of the acronyms that you have under your belt. AJAX, HTML, JAVA, CSS,…. Try to make this grid clear and easy to read for the humans. Try not to include every last technology you’ve come across. Only list the technologies where you consider yourself proficient. Don’t put Ant down if all you’ve done is run an ant build someone else wrote. Don’t put Tomcat down if all you’ve done is write a JSP that someone else delivered to a production box. You don’t have to be an expert on everything you put in your tech grid but you should be experienced to the point where you wouldn’t need training or mentoring on that technology.
Believe me, if you have a technology on your grid that the client cares about you will be asked about it. If you then say you’ve only had a whiff of experience with it you will not be taken seriously. Remember that a job interview is all about establishing trust. If the client doesn’t trust you they won’t hire you.
Describe how you directly affected the projects you worked on.
One recent resume I read spent 4 pages advertising for the companies the guy worked at. Entries like: “Ford Motor Company is a large automotive concern whose annual earnings exceed xxx….” Your resume is supposed to be an advertisement for you - not a brochure for others. If anything list the company and the projects you worked on in one or two sentences. What the interviewer wants to know is what did you do at that position? Try to think of specific highlights. How did you positively affect the project’s outcome?
Use metrics Use specific metrics if you can get them.
Compare:
- Team leader
- Increased performance on data tier
- Authored many articles on software process improvement
- Helped bring in the project under budget.
to:
- Lead team of 20 developers
- Helped increase performance on data tier 150%
- Wrote over 30 articles on company Wiki regarding software process improvement
- Helped my team bring in the project $100K under budget.
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