Resume Review Request

rsxwithslicks

After almost 5 years at the same company, I feel that I'm no longer learning new things. Looking for an opportunity to grow professionally and learn new/different technologies and environments. I get very rarely get responses and even less interviews. My original resume was about a page and half but a friend's friend who is a CTO says make it one page. 

I would love to get into DevOps or Cloud Administration, or IT management but currently lack the experience. I started going to community college this year to get my AS in Cyber Security.

If you have any questions or concerns, please let me know. Otherwise, thank you for taking the time to look over my resume.

LonerVamp

1. I don't buy into the obsession with 1-page resumes. You make your resume as long as you want to. If someone can't be bothered to read 1.5 or 2 pages to get a sense of whether you will meet their needs, then you're better off passing them by.

2. The outcome is something like this, where you don't have much space at all, and everything is squished a bit. Some things to get more space: indent the Technical Expertise items. You can shorten that first line by removing the "/R2" parts, and maybe even saying 2003 thru 2016 and XP thru 10 or something.

3. I really do miss objective/goal/summary statements.   (This tells you that' I'm old, lol.)

4. I also don't buy into the obsession with statistical value or ROI statements in most technical IT resumes. If you want to be a manager, BA, or get into the business side (especially sales/marketing), then go right ahead. Otherwise, tell me what you do, not what budget you just saved or revenue you think you generated by implementing a project you were assigned anyway. (There are good cases, like I actually like your WLAN and automation mentions. That's dead on for IT needs.)

4.5. That said, I like knowing how large an environment you've supported in each job, like # of employees/desktops or # of servers, # of websites, etc. Your current 6-member team gives me an idea, at least, and a place to start conversation. I like that part. Also the 50+ servers.

The more assumptions I can draw from what you've written, normally that is better when I read a resume to hire someone.

5. For your education, I like seeing a proposed date for completion. In your case, clearly you're active, but some people leave that hangning when in fact they've dropped the ball and decided to "do it later," and haven't come to terms with that realization yet.

6. I like your resume. It reminds me a bit of me many years ago. Start out on desktop for 1 or 2 years, systems admin for the rest with progression and team lead acknowledgement.

7. I usually glance down a resume first, and then read from oldest to newest so I can get an idea of your progression. That also means I usually read your oldest entries just once, and I can then focus at the top later. I wouldn't mind seeing your desktop support section smaller, as you're probably looking for a sysadmin role. For instance, cut out the "ensuring...standards" part. Remove the Mcafee email quarantine bullet.

8. I think you will get more hits when you complete your college stint. That probably holds you back from plenty of opportunities.

9. If you had any projects, that might be nice to post, even if it was a team effort. Duties are one thing, but the sorts of projects you've done helps fuel my picture of you and some conversation during an interview. Then again, if all of your stuff was maintenance and operations, that's cool, too.

10. For the optimized uptime section, I'd ask how you did that. More servers, HA, DR?  For the "refreshed windows servers" I'd probably ask if you upgraded them in place or replaced/rebuilt. The fluff at the end of that bullet isn't very necessary, but I like that you think that way.

11. I see you're getting into Cyber Security in your degree. That might explain a few of the mentions of patching, and I get it. I've been there. If you're looking for a slightly more security-slanted role, I'd look at how you maintained any AV, how you did patching (as opposed to just doing them), how you managed permissions and access for those accounts you set up/scripted.

12. I really wanted to play with your order of things, and give it some breathing space into 1.5 pages, but I honestly would just keep it as is. That said, I could see someone rearranging it and being just fine. *shrug*

x. Lastly, feel free to ignore anything I said above, especially if some items make more sense on a job-by-job app posting. Good luck, and I wish you well! I honestly do think your resume reads well for a typical growing sysadmin.

kaiju

Bullets for the current job should be in present tense while the bullets for the remaining jobs will be in the past tense. So change the tense of the first word in every bullet.

scaredoftests

Get rid of the bullets!!! Take time to write a paragraph for each job. Get rid of Technical Experience.

B.B.

scaredoftests said:

Get rid of the bullets!!! Take time to write a paragraph for each job. Get rid of Technical Experience.

I am part of the team that hires for my department and would not take the time to read your resume if you followed this advice — just my opinion/advice. 

scaredoftests

I was told by a HR person that bullets are a curse on a resume. I have always followed that rule. My resume (in my humble opinion), gets more calls now, then in the past. 

NetworkingStudent

rsxwithslicks said:

After almost 5 years at the same company, I feel that I'm no longer learning new things. Looking for an opportunity to grow professionally and learn new/different technologies and environments. I get very rarely get responses and even less interviews. My original resume was about a page and half but a friend's friend who is a CTO says make it one page. 

I would love to get into DevOps or Cloud Administration, or IT management but currently lack the experience. I started going to community college this year to get my AS in Cyber Security.

If you have any questions or concerns, please let me know. Otherwise, thank you for taking the time to look over my resume.

I agree with everyone else.  You need a professional summary at the top of your resume.  The professional summary gives the person reading your resume a quick snap shot of your experience.  Also, you need a professional summary for each position that you held, and I would have 3-5 bullet points. ( possibly more)  Try to focus on accomplishments, rather than the day to day job duties , when you place jobs on your resume.

A couple of other things:
1) Watch your tenses:

Please watch your past and present tenses, when you describe jobs.   On your last job you says:

Maintain, upgrade and apply necessary security updates to servers.

It  Should be:

Maintained, upgraded, and applied necessary security updates to servers.

2) Technical Expertise Watch the wording 

On your languages section of your resume you state you're proficient in Powershell, and familiar in SQL.  The rest of the technical Expertise section doesn't use these descriptions.   If you want to use the words familiar and proficient here, then I would use those same words in the rest of the technical Expertise section.

Here is one example of a great resume
 ptilsen's Resume - I consider this to be the "golden standard" for an IT resume
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B62C7HpuIwINek1aWV9KR1U1cHc

Once your resume is polished, you will be able to find work quickly.  You have alot of experience. 

LonerVamp

Yikes, if some resume came at me with a paragraph (or more) for each job, I'd be very annoyed and I'd likely miss content. Isn't that what a cover letter is for? Also, which would I rather read? A syllabus/TOC of 35 bullet points or a small essay of paragraphs?

I absolutely want bullet points, as that way I can see the point of each line and even "hide" lines in my mind that I don't care about and focus on the ones I do.

LonerVamp

NetworkingStudent said:

Here is one example of a great resume
 ptilsen's Resume - I consider this to be the "golden standard" for an IT resume
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B62C7HpuIwINek1aWV9KR1U1cHc

Once your resume is polished, you will be able to find work quickly.  You have alot of experience. 

But....but....it's not one page!  Oh the horrors!  The gnashing of teeth that will happen! This person has 0 chance of ever being paid for anything ever again!

(I can't say at first glance it is a resume that screams gold standard to me, but I don't have huge complaints, and as someone who reads resumes, this gives me lots of information to work with. I do kinda like the paragraph+bullets format, especially if someone is able to remain concise, which I tend not to.

scaredoftests

and get rid of in progress in regard to education. Only put on when degree is finished..

Mike R

I had it recommended to me that for a degree show your progress. So I put 38/123 credits completed.

scaredoftests

interesting about the education...

rsxwithslicks

Thank you all for taking time to respond. I'm making some adjustments to take some of the suggestions under advisement and will post up the new one for review soon.