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Just another resume critique

Trancewalker

Hey all! I know it's commonplace here to post resumes for critique. I think it's all pretty good except for the most recent position which looks/reads like a huge cluster. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I'm not actively looking, but just trying to get this mess in order.Edit: Uploaded as PDF.

ScrubbedResume.pdf

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Comments

srabiee

I understand that you are more concerned about the content than the formatting, but could you please upload the resume in PDF format? I think that would help tremendously.

Trancewalker

No problem!

210mike

Off the top of my head

- formatting needs to be changed to the following order:
--Summary
--Experience
--Certifications
--Education

Generally once you have professional work experience you education and certs don't go at the top of the resume anymore.

Replace the Objective and Synopsis field with a Summary statement.
Remove Personal Accomplishments and References Available on Request.

The work experience content is pretty good, it needs to be expanded a bit. Tell me what you did and what your actions accomplished. You did that on some of the points, but not all.

slee335

i'm no expert but one recruiter told me to have a skills section more for keyword searches when company do them. i have my certs on the bottom on my resume but i notice it gets overlook. a lot recruiter call and ask do you have this i'm like yes. it seems they mostly look on the first page just my observation.

aderon

One thing I would recommend is cutting down on the amount of content you have on your resume. I know it's hard to limit, because you want to show all the various things you did and the technologies you've worked with. But, no one is going to read 40+ bullets for a single job entry.

To start, try to cut it down to at least 9-10 bullets per job MAX. That's still quite large, but it's at least a starting point. Read each line individually and decide "What does this add to my resume? Why is having this line on my resume important? Is this one line going to interest a recruiter into reading more or is it merely there taking up space?" If you don't feel the line has that kind of strong impact on your resume, then remove it or change it. Stick to quantifiable accomplishments and stay away from "I did this, I did that, I did this, I did that".

An example, of how to improve one of your bullets so you can get a better idea:

Decent: "Responsible for IT purchasing and contracting"
Better: "Developed strategic suppliers and negotiated contract agreements to reduce the number of vendors from 150+ to a group of 65 core partners resulting in cost savings due to reduced administrative costs as well as quantity price breaks."

The first one is missing a quantifiable measurement and only explains what you did, not what you "accomplished". The second one identifies the accomplishments: "cost savings", "reduced administrative costs", "price breaks" and provides a quantifiable measurement: 150 vendors to 65. An even better example of quantifiable measurement would be if you showed the amount of cost savings (i.e., cost savings of $10,000, price breaks of 30%, etc).

Anyways, I hope this helps and good luck!

TLDR: 10 quality bullets built around showcasing your "accomplishments" in a quantifiable manner is better than 40+ bullets that don't.

636-555-3226

Quick comments:
Put the certifications after each other to save space. Certx, certy, certz, certa, etc.

Too long. Whatever job you're submitting it for, trim the fat and make it targeted towards that job. I prefer 1-page, max, but def. no more than 2. Some hiring people like long & detailed, my preference is short & concise.

Also you seem to hop around a bit. You'd need to address it in the interview; I'd address that in a cover letter, too, to keep them from eliminating you based on that.

aderon

636-555-3226 wrote: »

Quick comments:
Put the certifications after each other to save space. Certx, certy, certz, certa, etc.

I agree with this. Also perhaps splitting the list into three columns (left, middle, right), with 3 certs per column.

Something like:

Certifications.jpg

Trancewalker

Thanks for all of the great advice so far. I definitely see that moving certifications and education to the bottom would be beneficial. I also like the idea of quantifiables for each bullet point. I'll update this and repost.

210mike

Trancewalker wrote: »

Thanks for all of the great advice so far. I definitely see that moving certifications and education to the bottom would be beneficial. I also like the idea of quantifiables for each bullet point. I'll update this and repost.

I want to clarify a bit about this and my advice.

Generally when providing a resume directly to a job you're applying for I like to put the education and certs at the end. The exception to this is your first entry level job where you're probably getting hired based on education and not prior work experience. There is quite a bit of merit though creating a different resume format for posting online for recruiters to see. Without speaking poorly about recruiters, the closer to the top of the resume the skills keywords, certifications, and other keyword goodies are, the more likely they'll be seen.

Think of resumes as constantly changing, living documents. I never submit the same one twice. I tailor each resume to the job posting I'm applying for, and I also have a generic catch all, so full of key words and IT lingo your eyes will bleed, resume for posting online for recruiters to search. Not saying anything bad about recruiters but you need to make sure you're really really easy to find.

My general rule of thumb is you have about 30 seconds for whoever is reading your resume to decide they need to talk to you. I love to include key words from the job posting in my cover letter and summary statement.

Trancewalker

Makes sense. I've made a pretty serious revision. I cut over an entire page from the previous version, consolidated lots of things, removed things that didn't add much value. I did leave a few bullets with lots of keywords since I know many employers scan resumes for keywords before a person even looks at it. I think it's starting to look less terrible at this point.