Need Help with Resume

doublehunter

Hi everyone! Need help with my resume. Been working on a helpdesk position for more than 2 years now. Browsing this forum for quite some time and followed alot of advice here on how I can break out of helpdesk and in to desktop support. After intentionally messing up my system to get in touch with the local IT and do some small talks, they told me to give them a copy of my resume. This is critical for me because I really want to get to that field and I want my resume to be flawless. Can you guys help me out to make my resume look good (format and content). I also checked some of the post here and added their input. Thanks!

Disgruntled3lf

Yo Adrien! Sorry, couldn't resist the Rocky reference.
In your professional exp section you use present tense for everything except "Created and Organized" change that to "Create and Organize".
Change "Remotely assisting" to "remotely assists"
Also under high-school change "4th Honorable Mention" to "Top x% of class". IE if 400 people graduated you'd say "Top 1% of my Class".

Here:
"Troubleshooting MS Outlook and Lync issues as well as Exchange ActiveSync for Mobile Devices
(Android and iPhone) and Blackberry."
Blackberry is a mobile device so maybe (Android, iPhone, Blackberry) even better "ActiveSync for all major mobile operating systems".

doublehunter

Hey Disgruntled3lf thanks for your reply! Here's the changes on my resume. See if it is more appealing to your eye now.Do I need to add those awards/recognition section or should I omit that?

srabiee

The formatting and layout is fine, I can tell that you read through some of the other resume advice threads. Good job!

The professional summary is concise and reads well.

Some of the bullets in the skills section is a little redundant. "Excellent analytical and communication skills." You already mentioned that in your professional summary. "Knowledgeable in deploying, configuring, and maintaining Microsoft Windows 7." You already used the terms "configuring" and "maintaining" in your summary. Redundant vocabulary.

Ideally I would recommend that you incorporate the info in the skills section into your professional summary and/or professional experience, and then drop the skills section altogether. The skills section is not very substantive anyway. "Skilled in hardware and software installation, troubleshooting, and repair." What hardware? What software? Can you install and troubleshoot App-V? How about a Barracuda Spam Firewall? I have no idea. You see what I mean?

Within the job experience section, each job description should begin with a high-level overview of your daily duties and responsibilities, and then use bullets to highlight special achievements, projects, promotions, etc. Don't rely solely on bullets like this.

In your job experience section, the first two bullets basically say the same thing. These should be combined.

"Remotely assists users with installation, configuration, troubleshooting and repair of business applications." What applications?

"Create and organize tickets according to priority for escalation to different IT groups when needed." I would focus on your technical accomplishments rather than your daily mundane duties.

"Troubleshooting MS Outlook and Lync issues as well ActiveSync for all major mobile operating systems." I recommend going into more detail about your proficiency with Exchange and Lync, and what exactly you do with these. Exchange and Lync knowledge = $$$

"Manages software installation thru System Center Configuration Manager." If you do anything else with SCCM, you should definitely elaborate on this. Again, SCCM knowledge = $$$

I would also recommend that you move the Exchange, Lync, and SCCM higher up on the bullet list.

The high school section should be deleted. You have a bachelors degree, therefore your high school diploma is implied and unnecessary.

Because of the leftover white space at the bottom of the page, feel free to elaborate on your technical accomplishments. You could also increase the font to fill up more of the page.

doublehunter

Thanks for your input srabiee! You are one of the guys that I am waiting to give feedback on my resume. Will work on that and see if I can satisfy your recommendation. As for my skills, my knowledge are very limited as working with help desk answering calls is like if it cannot be resolved over the phone, dispatch a local tech which is kinda frustrating. BTW most of the applications that I troubleshoot are company applications and not really a general tool that other enterprise uses on a daily basis. Should I still include them?

For SCCM, we have a script to run the repair if the software push on client computers fails or if it is corrupted. Do I still need to include or omit that?

srabiee

You could include them and refer to them as proprietary applications or proprietary software.

Include the script if you wrote it yourself.

doublehunter

I tried to follow your advise srabiee, dunno if you will be pleased. Do I really need to remove the skills section?

Here is the draft.

Disgruntled3lf

Yeah. I'd remove the skills section, only thing useful in there is the VPN and ticketing apps. And they'd be better described under your professional experience. What was this award for a project during your undergrad studies? Maybe some details about that if it's relevant and you have some space.

doublehunter

so should I elaborate my summary to avoid having extra spaces? The design project is not relevant in the field that I want to break in. It's more on the engineering side designing circuit in a printer circuit board.

I am currently studying for MCTS windows 7 and hopefully advance my studies to MCSA windows 7 to 8 should I include that in my resume too?

srabiee

I would still recommend moving the skills that are technical to your experience section and expand upon them. The non-technical skills can be incorporated into the professional summary or deleted. Then the skills section can be deleted. Try it and see what you think.

Within the job experience section, each job description should begin with a high-level overview of your daily duties and responsibilities, and then use bullets to highlight special achievements, projects, promotions, etc. Don't rely solely on bullet points. I highly recommend that you follow this advice. You have too many bullets as it stands. The information would be fairly difficult/tedious for a hiring manager to read through all of these bullets. Converting some of this info into a high-level overview would solve this. ptilsen's resume is an excellent example of how to do this correctly.

Because of your limited IT experience, I would recommend moving the education section up and placing it underneath the professional summary.

Don't include certs that you have not yet earned.

This is an excellent resume guide with example resumes, a huge list of action verbs, sample summaries, etc:

http://www.filedropper.com/resumeguide

This thread contains a fantastic example of a properly formatted and written resume (ptilsen's resume):

Resume time

doublehunter

I tried to follow everything that was commented here. Please see and inform me immediately for any revision needed. Really need to say goodbye to help desk now.

If I am currently studying for certification should I add that up to my summary?

For the promotion should it be under my title or under my achievements with bullets?

What about references? Are they really not necessary? I am not sure but where I'm at I think references and full info about education needs to be on your resume. Any feedback will help! Thanks so much!

srabiee

References don't need to be mentioned on the resume. Have a references sheet available and bring it with you during the interview process (including several extra copies of your resume, a pad to take notes on, a pen, etc). If they want the references sheet, they will ask for it.

Regarding your questions, don't include certs that you haven't yet earned. The promotion looks fine the way it is now. Either way will work.

The justified alignment makes things difficult to read because of the inconsistent spacing. I would left-align the text.

"Detail oriented" should be hyphenated ---> Detail-oriented

Consider moving the education section above the experience section. You have limited experience and I think it would serve you best to not have your bachelor's degree sitting at the bottom of the page.

The wording of certain sentences could be improved, but that's subjective based on my own writing style.

Get this resume out there and see how well it does.

These three sites are fantastic resources to determine what your salary (market value) should be. They also double as job search sites I believe:

Salary.com
PayScale.com
Glassdoor.com

Job search sites:

Indeed.com
Dice.com
SimplyHired.com
Monster.com
Careerbuilder.com

This one supposedly posts your resume to 50+ job search sites at once. I don't know if that includes all of the aforementioned sites or not:

ZipRecruiter.com