Systems Administrator Resume Review (DC Area)

Socom

Hi All,

First time making a sys admin resume. Just wanted to get your feedback. Also if you have some good resources for someone in my position writing a cover letter that would be much appreciated! Also do you guys think an 80K salary is fair?

Thanks!

mslab

I would consider replacing the "objective" section with "professional summary."  

If I recall the MCDST is an inactive certification.  I wouldn't list it on my resume.

Is your MCSA on Windows Server 2012 or Windows Server 2016 version?  You might want to specify this on your resume.  The MCSA acronym is "Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate" and not "server administrator."

Socom

2003 LOL. I got it in highschool.

EANx

Don't make the hiring manager hunt for what's relevant in your resume. If you don't catch someone's attention in the first 15 seconds, you may not get it back.

Get rid of "objective". Your objective is whatever position you are applying for. If the hiring manager has another they think you might be good for, but it's not a system admin position, you're already telling them "no" without hearing what it is.

Qualifications: Do you think you can add any more fluff to this section? I'd disqualify your resume simply based on this. It uses valuable top-of-the-page space and tells me nothing. Get rid of the bullets and give a paragraph of 3-5 sentences of what you do.

Get rid of "technologies", it tells me nothing regarding how long you used it or what your level of expertise is with each one.

Move "certifications" below experience. I'd think really carefully about including a long-expired cert without saying it's expired. Maybe have a line for current certs, on-progress and a last line for expired.

If you worked in the WH, do you have a clearance? If so, consider including it.

Infosec_Sam

I think most of the feedback you've already gotten is valid, but I'd like to emphasize a point that I found with the most room for improvement. I would consider listing 4-8 hard skills on the top of your resume instead of soft skills such as "high aptitude" and "communication and customer service." Reason being, every candidate and his/her mother is going to say they're a good communicator with a high aptitude, and there's no easy way for an interviewer to tell who's stretching the truth on that. Hard skills are much more valuable to interviewers, and will lead to questions that you're prepared to answer. 

Once you have those eye-catching hard skills on the top of your resume, you'll want to make sure each of them corresponds to a bullet down below in your employment history. That way, an employer/interviewer knows more about what you did with each technology instead of just that you've interacted with it before.

My vote is to re-purpose the "objective" section instead of outright removing it. I don't think it adds a ton of value to an employer as is, but if you flesh it out a bit more, you might have something much more attractive. Try to make that section a 1-2 sentence blurb about who you are and what you do - think executive summary.

Hope this helps!

Socom

Infosec_Sam said:

I think most of the feedback you've already gotten is valid, but I'd like to emphasize a point that I found with the most room for improvement. I would consider listing 4-8 hard skills on the top of your resume instead of soft skills such as "high aptitude" and "communication and customer service." Reason being, every candidate and his/her mother is going to say they're a good communicator with a high aptitude, and there's no easy way for an interviewer to tell who's stretching the truth on that. Hard skills are much more valuable to interviewers, and will lead to questions that you're prepared to answer. 

Once you have those eye-catching hard skills on the top of your resume, you'll want to make sure each of them corresponds to a bullet down below in your employment history. That way, an employer/interviewer knows more about what you did with each technology instead of just that you've interacted with it before.

My vote is to re-purpose the "objective" section instead of outright removing it. I don't think it adds a ton of value to an employer as is, but if you flesh it out a bit more, you might have something much more attractive. Try to make that section a 1-2 sentence blurb about who you are and what you do - think executive summary.

Hope this helps!

Thank you both, it definitely does. I'm having trouble figuring out what to put for hard skills since I have the technologies section. Could you give some examples? The reason for the qualifications and technologies section is more for HR or non-technical folk to be able to check off their boxes and see if I meet the requirements for the position.

Infosec_Sam

@Socom You might want to merge those two sections into a single skills section. For instance, here's the skills section form my recent resume:

• Website Hardening - WordFence & Qualys
• Dell SecureWorks Managed SIEM
• McAfee Antivirus
• Cisco, Fortinet, Palo Alto Networking & Firewall
• Policy & Procedure Management
• ForeScout Network Access Control
• DarkTrace AI Threat Detection

These are all pretty short and sweet, but clearly communicate what systems I used and what they were for. Now I'm not going to tell you that my resume was perfect, but the point about the skills section was something I heard from a recruiter, and it seemed to feel much better/cleaner once I laid it out this way.

mslab

I wouldn't list inactive certifications on your resume.  Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 are no longer relevant technologies at this point.