Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room

IT Resumes

(1/3) > >>

Stoic Joker:
    So it's occurred to me as we're looking for a new body here in IT, that apparently they don't teach people how to do a resume properly in schools these days. And it seems that most people are going with the best friends interpretation of marketing tactics advice of doing as much embellishing as possible ... Which more often than not backfires horribly during the interview when the applicant goes blank after getting hit with a probing question regarding listed skillset 'X'.

    With that thought in mind - given the large cross section of talent we have here - I thought it might be nice to get a discussion started about what to and not to do when creating a resume for an IT position. I'll start by listing some of the don't I've encountered in the past few weeks:

Don't put things you are interested in learning in a list of existing skills.
Don't put certifications you are planning to get under existing skills.
Don't leave large unexplained - multi year... - gaps in you work history.
Don't get wordy trying to make limited experience sound like more than it is (Especially for an entry level position - which this is).


And on the other/do side:
Do keep in mind that the first person to see your resume is unlikely to be the guy that is in charge of IT, so lighten up on the technical jargon and just be friendly, concise, and professional (especially in the cover letter). If you come across as cocky, aloof, or arrogant...the rest of your resume won't matter.

Do research the company to find out what they do so your resume can be tailored to their needs.

Do list other skills (in short) that you have in your background that could be relevant to what the company does. Any idiot can clamp an end on an Ethernet cable, but if you have a background in construction...there's a good chance you can also handle the hard part which is to get the cable across a building and then down through a wall ... Without damaging the building. If the company systems control machinery, an mechanical background might be nice to mention (assuming you actually have one).

Anyhow, I'm running out of time. But I wanted to see what other folks thought about what makes a good IT resume.

40hz:
Do research the company to find out what they do so your resume can be tailored to their needs.
-Stoic Joker (August 21, 2014, 03:23 PM)
--- End quote ---

This. This. This. :Thmbsup:

I haven't once sat in on an interview where somebody didn't ask a question or two to determine if the applicant had at least some clue about who the company is and what it does. Most management types (who usually have the final say when it comes to making a hire) find it insulting (to say the least) when someone walks in the door looking for a position and knows absolutely nothing about the company.

So do some research. With Google there's no longer any excuse for not taking the time to find who you want to work for.

That and don't lie. Especially about degrees earned, certifications held, schools attended, or companies worked for. These can all be easily checked  - and nowadays they often will be. Even if they don't catch it prior to hiring you, it's an unexploded bomb waiting to go off. Most companies have very strict policies about falsifying information on an application or during an interview. Most places make it grounds for immediate dismissal if/when discovered.

The first Fortune 500 I worked for had such a policy. I sat down the hall from a 7+ year veteran employee who was well respected and very good at what he did. Things were going swimmingly for him until top management started considering him (without his knowledge) for a major promotion to a deputy director position. Background checks were the norm for such positions because directors were responsible for overseeing contracts.

That's when they discovered he didn't have the MBA he said he had. While he had attended management grad school, he never finished his degree. He had only completed about a year before quitting.

He was out the door that same day.

Lesson: When it comes to your job: Don't lie. About anything. Ever. :tellme:

KynloStephen66515:
Personally, every Resume/CV I send out is tailored to that industry, which means I can also make sure that I only include jobs relevant to that sector on it. 

In regards to leaving gaps in work history...I actually just lie there...I have no intention of asking those companies for references so I simply extend the dates a little bit so they don't look like I was working for X months, then unemployed for X months :P

app103:
Personally, every Resume/CV I send out is tailored to that industry, which means I can also make sure that I only include jobs relevant to that sector on it. 
-Stephen66515 (August 22, 2014, 04:34 PM)
--- End quote ---

Sometimes unrelated jobs in a different sector can demonstrate skills that would be valued in the sector you are applying for a job in.

For example, I was once a courier dispatcher (transportation industry). That doesn't seem all that related, if I were applying for a job in the banking industry, until you see the skills listed beneath it and see that I was required to demonstrate a fair amount of accounting skills.

So, my advice isn't to alter your employment history, but to list the skills beneath each job, that are relevant to the job to which you are applying.

If I were applying for an accounts receivable/payable job, they probably wouldn't care about my map reading skills from that courier job, but they would be interested in the daily AR/AP duties that job required. So, I would leave out the maps and list AR/AP.

And if I were applying for a job where I would be required to manage people, I would list how I supervised a team of about 150 drivers.

Every job requires a variety of skills, and it's those individual skills that are important (not the job title or sector), and nearly every job has at least 1 skill that will be relevant to whatever you are applying for. Sometimes it just requires a bit of thinking to see it, so you can list it.

Stoic Joker:
^This!! And as an example, the comment I made in the first post about construction experience was based on one of the interviews, and a high percentage of why the applicant that was selected, was selected. They hadn't put it on their resume...but it came out during the interview. And since I've run into several situations where an understanding of how a building was constructed had a direct impact on the requirements for a solution ... This definitely peeked my interest.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page