Resume Critique

Codyy

Randomly decided to create a resume tonight using a template that I found online. I've never written my resume so take it easy on me, heck I've never actually had a resume. I'll be moving on from the military next year so it's time to get serious about this, any input good or bad is appreciated!

If it makes a difference, I'm aiming for a DoD civilian or contractor job, so I attempted to write it around that. Thanks!

yzT

"A self-motivated, dedicated professional with solid experience in the Information Technology Field" this statement is so common that is worthless.

You're missing technical skills. What do you know to do? What technologies have you used?

srabiee

I think you really need to expand on experience if possible. It looks skimpy.

AverageJoe

It's a great first attempt, Codyy. Format is clean and crisp. As the others have said, you should build on your experience and technical skills. I would build on the jobs you listed, especially the most recent job. For the NCOIC job -- I'd change NCOIC to supervisor or team chief or something civilians will understand, and then include what your supervisory responsibilities were in that role... did you lead a team of 5 or were you in charge of a shift or whatever it was.

You probably know, but your 4th bullet in your summary is incomplete. I think it's unnecessary as is since you already say your 8570 qualified and you list your certs at the bottom, but you might want to just combine it with the 8570 bullet so it's something like "Current industry certifications and DoD 8570 qualified" ... just an idea.

Codyy

yzT wrote: »

"A self-motivated, dedicated professional with solid experience in the Information Technology Field" this statement is so common that is worthless.

You're missing technical skills. What do you know to do? What technologies have you used?

Thanks for the feedback. I agree completely, the statement is pretty cheesy IMO, though it was in the template and I jut changed the wording up a bit. Is it best to re-word or delete it completely? I honestly would rather not even have a statement like this.

I'll work on adding the tech skills as well. My current position(pen tester) is the only one that has been fairly technical and requires the use multiple tools. The NetOps position I really just used basics of the solarwinds tool kit to monitor a couple of off-site networks, when something went down I reported it. Just a middle man really, nothing too detailed. I didn't do anything technical in the IASO position, just made people sign AUP's and uphold policies.

If any of you aren't familiar with military(or Army I should say) IT, the IT guys rarely get to do and learn their actual job title, we're usually just middle men and the civilians actually do the technical stuff ..most assignments are help desk and we may get admin privileges if lucky. I'm afraid that this may show if I get into an extremely technical discussion during an interview, so I don't want to add tech skills to my resume that I don't actually have.

AverageJoe wrote: »

It's a great first attempt, Codyy. Format is clean and crisp. As the others have said, you should build on your experience and technical skills. I would build on the jobs you listed, especially the most recent job. For the NCOIC job -- I'd change NCOIC to supervisor or team chief or something civilians will understand, and then include what your supervisory responsibilities were in that role... did you lead a team of 5 or were you in charge of a shift or whatever it was.

You probably know, but your 4th bullet in your summary is incomplete. I think it's unnecessary as is since you already say your 8570 qualified and you list your certs at the bottom, but you might want to just combine it with the 8570 bullet so it's something like "Current industry certifications and DoD 8570 qualified" ... just an idea.

Appreciate the help. I'll change up the NCOIC to Chief or something of the sort. I didn't have a team under me, just a 1 man show, so not sure that team chief would fit. I definitely see your point with the 4th bullet, I'll either delete it or combine it like you suggested. It was left incomplete because I plan to have a couple of more before next year. You may have noticed that the resume was written as if it were 2015 and I was almost or already out of the military.

Thanks again all, please keep it coming!

yzT

Either you delete it or expand it. If you decide to expand, write about yourself, a summary of your career. IMO, it's not worth for a one-page resume. Recently I bumped up this question http://www.techexams.net/forums/jobs-degrees/101186-summary-section-one-page-resume.html I asked some time ago, you can see what others have said about this.

Do not underestimate your skills, everything counts in this game.

ProtoPrime

I'm definitely a big believer in having a summary statement in a resume.
Especially when your resume isn't strong enough to speak for itself (At this point, you have a fairly generic resume and you don't have enough experience to distinguish you from the rest.)

Use that Summary statement to expound on yourself, state what you've accomplished, what makes you worthy (essentially.)

Use This as a Resource for your resume. 15 Worst WOrds to use on a resume.