Is something wrong with my resume?

f16jetman

Hello everyone, it would be a great help if you could read over my resume. I have applied to about 10 jobs over the past few weeks and have not received any feedback. Any suggestions would be great, thanks.

networker050184

Not a very appealing resume to me personally. You list all this experience in the Skills Profile yet I don't see any of that in your actual experience section. You say five years yet all I see is a few months worth of actual experience at a computer repair shop.

Cert logos are pretty cheesy, especially for low level ones IMO.

Not a big fan of the format and changing italics etc. Just not visually appealing to me, but that is just a personal opinion.

I'd try to work on the experience section mostly though. It's pretty bare. Try to highlight anything technical you have done in some of those past positions. Low Level Management seems like bad wording you could make sound better as well.

Cyberscum

f16jetman? You in the Air Guard out in Albuquerque? They had 16's at one point

...Resume does not grab my attention, change the format. Put dates closer to text. Add things you accomplished above the norm duties. No italics. No cert logos.

f16jetman

So, I have only 1 year of professional experience working on computers, but I have been doing it longer. I removed the logo and sorta revamped some of the other things.

My dad is in the Air Guard in Albuquerque and used to work on the 16's. I have used that user name since I was a teen.

Thanks for all the advice.

BerkshireHerd

I would move certs and education to the top. Also your skills profile has a broad range. Too me it's too broad. What does experience mean? You logged into one?

In my opinion, your trying to portray yourself as something you are not. If you did land an interview based on your Cisco and Server listed skills, could you pass a technical interview. I.E subnet this, how many hosts, what are vlans, How would you lock down this switch, what is 802.1q

I guess what I'm getting out is depending on what you are trying to do, simply your resume and only put on there legit stuff you are comfortable with..

What kinds of jobs have you applied to? Networking (Cisco)? System Admin (Windows Server) Visualization (VMware) or helpdesk?

If it's helpdesk /entry level- focus your resume on the soft skills more than technical.

Hope this helps

f16jetman

Thanks for all the help and advice. Honestly I want find a new job quick. The shop I work at now consist of only two employees and the owner. Little pay and no benefits, and frankly I do not enjoy hardware problems and doing virus removal's for uneducated computer users. I know this job allowed me to get my foot in the door of a career I am passionate about, but I would like to move forward. I am a people person and would not at all mind a help desk job as long as it is a step in the right direction.

nman99

Honestly, I would try and find a different template to work off of, start from scratch.

networker050184

Agreed with nman99. Just not a big fan of this at all. Do some searches on the forums. There have been some really nice resumes posted lately you could use as a starting point.

srabiee

Ok so going by the 3rd version of your resume, here's what I recommend:

I agree that you need to start with a proper template and go from there. This thread contains a fantastic example of a properly formatted and written resume (ptilsen's resume). You could use that as a template for your own resume and save yourself some headache.

Resume time

The resume should begin with a competent professional summary. ptilsen's summary is an excellent example of how to write this section. I will also link you to a document with some helpful information.

Regarding your skills profile section, I would rather see you explain to me HOW you are proficient in these skills, especially in a business/enterprise environment. Ideally I would recommend that you somehow incorporate this info into your professional experience and/or professional summary, and then drop the skills section altogether.

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.

You did a good job using various action verbs at the beginning of each bullet point. I would highly recommend that you elaborate on some of this info. "Set up and configured corporate client servers." What did you set up exactly? The hardware? The OS? If so, what hardware? What OS? You see what I mean?

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

http://www.filedropper.com/resumeguide

Once you get your resume formatting down and add some content, please upload your next revision so we can take another look at this.

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

f16jetman

Here is a revised version. Thanks for the info

srabiee

I'm still not crazy about your format. Too much white space overall, and way too much reliance on bullet points. You are missing a professional summary, which is crucial IMO. Some of the wording could be reworked to sound more professional.

This still needs a lot of work if you want it to draw positive attention.

Did you not like the resume template that I linked you to?