Resume Review Request

rsxwithslicks

Hello IT Professonals!

Happy belated New Years! I'm wondering if any of you might be willing to take a quick glance and provide some feedback/constructive criticism on my resume.

https://imgur.com/a/YnJqdkU

Thank you in advance! 

MontagueVandervort

I would remove the "Additional tasks taken on in the absence of an IT manager" section and consolidate that into the "IT Desktop Support Technician" section.

Reason: It wreaks of a lack of confidence.


Also, I would put seperate headings for IT Team Lead and System Administrator rather than packing it all into one section as you did because it's the same employer.

Reason: It takes the reader more than a few seconds to figure out what's going on, and that's enough to make some ditch the resume. Remember, you want to make it as clear and easy to read as possible.




Then in my opinion first sentence of your Summary needs a lot of help. Remember, a lot of times it's just someone who doesn't even have a technical background reading the resume.

The "over 5 years of..." is better off removed since (by the experience section) it could look like you have IT experience going back to 2007. Again, it just takes far too much time to figure out what's going on. Then it leads to thinking... "Ok, did he just throw that last bullet on there to make it look more IT-Orientated?".


I would move the last bullet up to a higher position at the very least and completely change that first sentence.

The last sentence of the Summary isn't bad though... in fact it's quite good.



Hope this helps. Was quite rushed.

paul78

I like your format. The only change that I think you may want to change is how you list your first job. It implies that you worked at Company A for a little less than 2 years because of the duration. You may want to list Jan 2015 - Present instead. And on Team Lead you could do something like "IT Team Lead (promoted March 2017)".  When I skim resumes, I tend to read pretty quickly so showing that your were promoted on the left next to your title is more likely to catch my eye.

rsxwithslicks

MontagueVandervort said:

I would remove the "Additional tasks taken on in the absence of an IT manager" section and consolidate that into the "IT Desktop Support Technician" section.

Reason: It wreaks of a lack of confidence.

I added the "Additional Tasks" section as I was not trying to mislead any hiring parties that I was doing those duties the entire time.

Also, I would put seperate headings for IT Team Lead and System Administrator rather than packing it all into one section as you did because it's the same employer.

Reason: It takes the reader more than a few seconds to figure out what's going on, and that's enough to make some ditch the resume. Remember, you want to make it as clear and easy to read as possible.

I did think about making the System Administrator position a separate entry but then thought about adding mention that I initially got the position through a temp to hire contract. The reason for mention is because I was offered the position after 160 hours instead of waiting the typical term of 500 hours. Then however I would need to add in another entry for the temp agency and it was such a short time with the temp agency that I thought it was best to leave out. I do mention it verbally in interviews though.

Then in my opinion first sentence of your Summary needs a lot of help. Remember, a lot of times it's just someone who doesn't even have a technical background reading the resume.

The "over 5 years of..." is better off removed since (by the experience section) it could look like you have IT experience going back to 2007. Again, it just takes far too much time to figure out what's going on. Then it leads to thinking... "Ok, did he just throw that last bullet on there to make it look more IT-Orientated?". 

I feel like saying I have 11 years of IT is a stretch as my initial position was a General Manager. Unfortunately there was no IT on-site and in order to save money, I learned on the job the best I could. While learning... I sparked an interest for IT and the main reason my next job was back at the bottom of the totem pole in the IT field. While I did manage the server and computers, SBS 2003 just makes me seem old and doesn't seem as relevant in today's IT world. Lol.

I would move the last bullet up to a higher position at the very least and completely change that first sentence.

The last sentence of the Summary isn't bad though... in fact it's quite good.

Hope this helps. Was quite rushed.

rsxwithslicks

First of all.. Thank you both for taking the time to respond.

I've made some adjustments and would love more feedback on if the changes helped at all. Curious to see if this first line has a better effect? 

https://imgur.com/a/cPsVhDs

paul78

A couple of suggestions now that I had a chance to read through it a second time.

1. In the summary, I usually prefer to not start a sentence with a number, plus it reads a little confusing and I don't think you need to justify that your first job wasn't directly IT related. What about starting with "More than 11 years of professional experience, specializing in ...."
   
2. I fing the phrase "... remote sites of multinational corporation with an international sister company." to be very confusing. Can you just keep it to "remote sites of a multinational corporation."
   
3. In your bullets - you tend to mix present tense with past tense - for example "Implementing cross-functional ...." and next bullet is "Optimized ..." - Stick to just one tense.
4. You also use first-person voice in some bullets and not others. For example "Streamlined user access ...." but in the previous bullet "Microsoft servers were refreshed ...". I think you ought to stick to first-person voice so it would be something like "Responsible for Microsoft servers refresh... " But for that bullet - something like "Responsible for upgrade of Microsoft servers from ....".
5.  I didn't care for the description of the last bullet in "IT Team Lead" - how about something like  "Led management and resolution of critical issues which were escalated by the team." <- I don't particular like my suggestion either but I wanted to suggest that you highlight being an escalation point to lead escalation instead of focusing that you also were doing system admin work.
6. I am focusing on your most previous job description because when I read resumes that I what I pay close attention to - and I skim the rest.
   

MontagueVandervort

Yes, I did read your response. I wish I had time to go through each item individually, but I don't. The overall response I would like to add though is this:

It may help you to try to focus on the fact that whoever is reading your resume - this is not a personal item to them. They don't know anything that isn't in the resume, so anything present should speak for itself in a clear and easy-to-understand manner. Try to picture yourself as them reading it with the understanding that they know absolutely nothing about you. I've found this helps a lot of people.

Took a look at the updated resume.

I didn't mean to suggest you should change 5 years to 11 The whole first sentence needs heavy work. You may wish to try thinking more along the lines of "Experienced NOUN (position/self-identifying label) with BLANK (number) years of ..." instead of the format you currently have.

It's even more unclear now than it was before.

The summary is the first introduction to your personality and skills. It should be concise and without any errors of grammar or spelling.

Speaking of which... you also have a formatting error in the new resume. Never cut a job (or degree/cert/achievement) between pages unless absolutely necessary. You can bump that heading into page 2 without leaving too much space at the bottom of page 1 - even if it requires an increase in font size.

Good luck

LonerVamp

I like the format, it's pretty clear and somewhat easy to read. I'd maybe cut down on bullet points for the lower two jobs to the most important, since jobs that long ago aren't nearly as interesting to me. But I could be swayed otherwise.

Likewise, you've been around as an admin for a while. Long enough that I doubt you could fit all the things you've seen into your Skills section, which to me means it should be moved down to the bottom. You can highlight major things in a cover letter, email, or during the interview process. That said, it'll mess with getting the job transitions lined up with page breaks like a previous poster mentioned, so I could go either way.

Again, just a personal preference, but I like to keep the date listed, even for jobs in the same company. In other words, moving that (promoted March 2017) out and put Jan 2015 - March 2017 next to the Systems Administrator item. That's just me looking at how long you've been in each of those roles easily. I can still answer it with how you have it, it just takes me a few more moments to do so.

Any education or courses or certifications or volunteering? I don't always look for this, but some do. In some cases, it's about continuing to paint a picture in my head of who you are as a person.

Overall, though, I like it. Gives me a good idea about what you've done and what I'll be getting.