Resume critique please

seekerN49

Hi all

Can I get some feedback on my resume?

Right now I have a cover letter which basically tells the reader what job I'm applying for, tells them that the last job I had was on a yearly contract (to explain why I dont work there anymore, its a government department that the public hates but they think has good job security). Then some project highlights from the last job and the job before that.

I attached the first page from my resume which has my work experience and education, the second page is the programming languages I have experience with and documents types that I've created. (Left over from when I was aiming for dev jobs, left it there to show breadth of skills regarding programming.)

I have a 4 year BSci CS degree, 1 year of dev company A, 5 year of infrastructure government B (desktop with sys admin/project experience). I'm aiming for desktop/sysadmin but I also apply for dev/app support/ and other stuff not really IT related but list CS degree as one of the potential degrees. (I'm not to keen on dev anymore since I had poor results when I was fresh out of school, ie: if you dont have the exact languages they are looking for then its the black hole for your resume.)

I get about a 3% call back for desk/sys jobs, another 3% for dev/app/other. Job market is around 200+ applicants for a 33k USD desktop job that was posted for a week. Pop is around 750k within an hour commute.

Just a note about my resume, the circled acronyms are a new addition. The reason is that I applied for a job once where the only concrete tech listed in the requirements was cat5,6 network experience. First time I didnt get an interview, when it was posted again 6 months later I changed my resume by adding that line and managed to get an interview. So that's why I started adding the alphabet soup.

It fits on one page, so if I add something, then I have to remove something else to make room.

thanks

-EDIT-
reply post waiting for mod approval, here a link to my original pdf in the meantime
Download file resumehelporiginal.pdf

srabiee

Hmm...it's a little difficult for me to see due to the small screenshot, but I can tell that this resume definitely needs some work. (Can you upload this in PDF format and link us to it? Consider using Filedropper, Google Drive, Dropbox, etc to host it publicly. Just make sure to scrub your PII before you do so)

I'm going to start by helping you with your resume formatting. If you need help with the content and writing, let me know.

The resume should begin with a competent professional summary. I will link you to a document regarding how to write a professional summary. Google is also a good resource on this.

Within the professional 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. I will link you to a resume that's a great example on how to format and write this properly.

Also, you have wayyyy too many bullets in your most recent job description. This is frankly a wall of text and is too tedious to read through. Some of this can be converted to a high-level overview. You will also need to club some bullets and/or edit out some of the less important information. You should limit the number of bullets for each job position to 7 or 8 max.

Make sure the beginning of each bullet/sentence is capitalized. You want to write your resume as academically as possible. This is very important, as you want to convey intelligence to the reader.

Do you have any IT certifications?

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

Someone recently uploaded this document regarding the "STAR Method" of writing resume content. You may want to take a look at it and see if it helps you.

http://www.filedropper.com/starmethod

cyberguypr

For the record, I dispose of every resume that abuses bullets they way this one does.

N2IT

I'd try to consolidate some of those bullets if at all possible.

markulous

Put your education at the top to show it off. A BSIT is a nice thing to have.

As for the rest...Try to condense this down. It is really difficult to read. Try to capitalize the beginning of each new bullet point also to allow people's eyes to scan this easier. So, pretty much what srabiee said.

seekerN49

I upped a pdf in the OP as well.
Download file resumehelporiginal.pdf

srabiee wrote: »

any IT certifications?

No certs. Last employer did not care and did not offer training or even a partial reimbursement.

markulous wrote: »

Put your education at the top to show it off. A BSIT is a nice thing to have.

I remember when I first graduated I had the degree up top, then a skills section of stuff I did during school, no work experience, and a far less callback rate than now. I could be wrong, but in my mind BScIT is just a requirements check-box that loads of applicants have. Still important enough to have it on page 1, but I think that employers care about work experience more so that's why jobs/school are chronological.


Consensus seems to be too many bullet points. Fair enough, I agree. The reason why I had that many is because when I applied for a couple of internal positions at my last job I got rejected because I did not meet the requirements. For example, if you were applying for a secretary position and the job posting listed MS Office as a requirement, then you cant implicitly assume that because of your last job you already had that experience. You had 1. put down any skill that was in the posting, and 2. it wasn't just enough to say you did it, you had to back it up ie: used MS Excel, created pivot tables, organized blah blah other excel stuff...

srabiee wrote: »

I'm going to start by helping you with your resume formatting. If you need help with the content and writing, let me know.

I'll give it a go and whittle it down some. Maybe separate them into projects, mundane/everyday stuff, and things I think I should ditch and see what you think. Couple of questions though.
- I had 5 years at my last job and only 1 in the previous, so shouldnt it make sense for it to be bigger by the same ratio since I did more stuff and had some career development/projects.
- I am loath to give up the acronyms I added. If it's in the posting then I want it in my resume or else I'll worry that either robo-sorter or a human will see it in the posting and not in my resume = tossed

srabiee wrote: »

Someone recently uploaded this document regarding the "STAR Method" of writing resume content. You may want to take a look at it and see if it helps you.

Looks good. I'll update my cover letter later using that. Not a fan of paragraphs in my resume though. If I sent out an 4 line paragraph email to a user, where in it there there is a sentance that says dont do X, I'm not surprised anymore if I get an email back asking should I do X.


Ok. So the second page is kind of neglected. The "Profile" section was added based on the guidance from my last boss. Soft-skills stuff. Personally I'd toss it. The "Experience" sections is basically what I had when I was a fresh grad. Show some progamming skills, design & documentation stuff. I still apply for dev jobs that look good but it not my main priority since I have a worse response rate and fewer opportunities then infrastructure. Which is why its on page 2 and I assume most people dont bother reading it. I could cut it out but then I would probably give up on dev altogether.

The programming stuff I'd keep. Maybe rework the format somehow? Ditch the assembly. I like the bolding of the specific languages, makes them pop out on a skim read if someone is looking for keywords from the posting. I might try adding something like that to the keywords in the Jobs section.