Job Search- At Wits End

N7Valiant

yoba222 wrote: »

A couple of points:

1. I'd avoid the word 'designer' and substitute 'architect', or maybe 'architect/designer.' Designer is often associated with graphic design, which is a low paying job for the most part.

Wouldn't that be kind of bad if they call your old employer and they didn't have the same interpretation of what the job title was all those years?

N7Valiant

scaredoftests wrote: »

Now I can see the resume! Education and Certs; Move to the end of the resume. Get rid of fraternity. My pet peeve (and most HR personal), get rid of the bullets! Write a few paragraphs of what you did.

Never heard of people criticizing bullet points.

The general theory being that people spend 15 seconds reading your resume, maybe less. So make it easily distinguishable and digestible at a glance.

scaredoftests

A human resource person told me years ago that a brief paragraph are better than bullets.

EANx

N7Valiant wrote: »

Never heard of people criticizing bullet points.

The general theory being that people spend 15 seconds reading your resume, maybe less. So make it easily distinguishable and digestible at a glance.

You haven't noticed commentary I've previously provided on resumes then. Bullets have their place but many people use them as a replacement for actual writing. It's a lazy way out and when I see a sea of bullets, I always knock the resume down.

It's true that the average resume gets less than 30 seconds but that's split between a bunch at under 15 and the one that catches my attention that I'll spend a minute or two on a few times as I whittle piles down. The key primarily is to stay out of the 90% that are immediately discarded. Things I look for in that first pass-through:

1) Misspelling in bold/italicized words or any summary. These are normally your headers or the one thing you want read. Do it right or not at all.
2) Job titles sort of related to what I'm looking for
3) Employment gaps of more than two months
4) Cert and/or education requirements
5) Red flags of immaturity (graphics, emoticons, fraternities, etc.)

networker050184

Totally disagree on getting rid of bullet points. I hate reading a resume without them. It's the first thing I scan.

scaredoftests

Too many bullets indicate laziness on a resume. Instead put bullet points in cover letters or summary letters.

volfkhat

Good Lordy...

Resume-writing is an ART.... not a Science.

If you like Bullets... then Keep them.

The End.

cyberguypr

Oh bullets! That gets me going big time.

Consider this: the Oxford dictionary states that bullet points are used to draw attention to important information within a document so that a reader can identify the key issues and facts quickly.

By blasting the resume with bullets you are completely defeating their purpose.

They expand also state that bullet points are visually attractive and make it easy for a reader to locate important information. Nevertheless, you should try to use them sparingly: too many bullet-pointed sections in the same document will mean that their impact is lost.

N7Valiant

scaredoftests wrote: »

Too many bullets indicate laziness on a resume. Instead put bullet points in cover letters or summary letters.

I can sort of see what you mean after seeing the certificates get bulleted. Could probably also leave out the daily "what I did" things unless it's relatively high level for your job title (say, adding users and verifying permissions in AD as a Help Desk Tier 1 maybe).

scaredoftests

The dates for education (omit Fall/Summer). Just the year.

Blade3D

Thanks for the help so far. I take it less bullets? 😂😂😂