What do you do for your resume?

I have a resume I am content with, but the thought came to my mind today. Why not create a thread where people can share their experiences with how they create their resume and what they do to keep it up to date. Do you go to a professional company that helps with your resume? Do you use an application that guides you in the process? Do you use a college's student services department to assist you in the process? I'm a bit curious as to what most of you guys/gals do. For myself, I started it with an Office template but ended up having it completely modified by myself and from my college's student services department. To upkeep it, I make modifications on my own. What do you do?

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Comments

Plantwiz

Always write it myself.
Follow the traditional method (started on a typewriter with limited fluff, so this always was a good way to keep the resume in the traditional look).
Keep it simple.

Hasn't failed yet.

I might consider a non-traditional resume if I was applying for work in a field that wasn't used to tradition, although I did have a nice marketing gig for a while and that was successful with a traditional resume and appropriate sample material during the interview.

The resume gets you in the door for the interview....then you can show your personality. IMNSHO

emmajoyce

Im finally getting ready to graduate so i just got through doing mine. I was going to use word, but my school sent me a web address to use. Its a place called optimalresume. Its paid for by the school. It is really cool. It sorta like doing your taxes with turbotax. It prompts you for everything. What i liked about it was you could move the fields around with no effort at all. I was just about to pay somebody to do mine for me. I was trying to find someone who had done IT resumes, not just "Resumes". The first person i contacted said "yes", she knew how to do a IT resume. Something in her voice however didnt sound like she believed what she was saying. So i just went with the online resume from my school. Im happy with the results. If i start getting interviews with real companies then i would be happy. Right now just getting BulSh* inquires. No, i didnt go to college 5 years to sell insurance, thank you.

royal

emmajoyce wrote:

No, i didnt go to college 5 years to sell insurance, thank you.

Reminds me of when I graduated college. I got many inquires asking me if I wanted to do things that I didn't even go to college for. One company wanted me to join their company to be a financial consultant. At the time, I was definitely not a savvy financial person. I got one wacky guy who wanted me to do a contact job across a period of about 6 months and across 5 states for $8 per hour. Heck, I saw a company trying to hire someone with 5-10 years Unix experience, 5-10 years Windows Server experience, 2-3 years Citrix experience, a bachelors degree, programming knowledge, and more for $35,000/year.

Gundamtdk

Resume creation is a continuous process. To this date my resume is always updating and improving.

I started out reading resume books to see the different formats and then type up my resume in Word.

I have taken my resume to resume advisers at employment centers and overall I am not too pleased with their services.

Resume adviser can only give you general information on resume creation, but they are not experts on IT resumes. Advisers don't know what IT managers look for in an IT resume.

It irks me that when my resume has gone through these resume advisers they miss out the common spelling and grammar errors!

T.killer

Gundamtdk wrote:

Resume creation is a continuous process. To this date my resume is always updating and improving.

I started out reading resume books to see the different formats and then type up my resume in Word.

I have taken my resume to resume advisers at employment centers and overall I am not too pleased with their services.

Resume adviser can only give you general information on resume creation, but they are not experts on IT resumes. Advisers don't know what IT managers look for in an IT resume.

It irks me that when my resume has gone through these resume advisers they miss out the common spelling and grammar errors!

i have to agree with you. it is a continuous process....i started mine when i was only 14 or 15..i did lots of stuff in school..like certs in English, maths, science and computer. after i made my own resume and felt it was alright i just added on stuff whenever i had to...

garv221

In the past I have had paid a resume writer to do mine. I believe when someone has a lot of experience it is best to have a one page resume with brief descriptions of experience. This way the candidate does not say to much or to little, leaving the rest for an interview. After looking at hundreds of resumes for potential candidates, I am convinced the more simple, short and straight forward a resume is the better.

JDMurray

garv221 wrote:

In the past I have had paid a resume writer to do mine.

I was fortunate to have one very professional recruiter rework my resume line-by-line for succinctness and clarity, and free of charge. I kept the organizational changes, as they did appear to enhance the ability of the reader to understand my twisted employment history time line from having multiple, simultaneous employers.

garv221 wrote:

I am convinced the more simple, short and straight forward a resume is the better.

And keep to conventional resume organization and style. Don't invent some unconventional, ad hoc way of formating the information on your resume. Give the recruiters your information in a familiar format that they can easily digest. Having an unconventional format will get your resume noticed, but not necessarily in a good way.

Plantwiz

emmajoyce wrote:

...... I was just about to pay somebody to do mine for me. I was trying to find someone who had done IT resumes, not just "Resumes". The first person i contacted said "yes", she knew how to do a IT resume. ......

I'm curious, What does an IT resume look like?

(side note to curiosity)
When you stick with a traditional format...it applies to any occupation. Your experiences make it the field you want it to reflect....again curious what an IT 'resume' looks like compared to a any other profession.

Gundamtdk

Plantwiz wrote:

emmajoyce wrote:

...... I was just about to pay somebody to do mine for me. I was trying to find someone who had done IT resumes, not just "Resumes". The first person i contacted said "yes", she knew how to do a IT resume. ......

I'm curious, What does an IT resume look like?

(side note to curiosity)
When you stick with a traditional format...it applies to any occupation. Your experiences make it the field you want it to reflect....again curious what an IT 'resume' looks like compared to a any other profession.

I have dabbled with different resume formats.

I had one resume version that listed all my tech skills like C,C++, HTML, etc. But I found that with my skills listed I had no room for other stuff like employment history. I ended up taking my list of skills out.

T.killer

its best to have a one page resume..the last thing your boss would want is to flip pages. so just stick to the important stuff and keep it simple.

computerguy9355

To all of you

1. Try to keep your resume under two pages, do not go over that.

2. You have to think like you are an employer. Ask yourself, how much time would you spend looking at a resume ? I spend less than 40 seconds looking at a resume because i have lots of other work to do. It is very IMPORTANT to have a organized resume!

3. Do not put your personal e-mail address on your resume. For example, shootingstar@gmail.com. Put something like John (your first name). Doe (your last)@gmail.com or whatever.

Kaminsky

T.killer wrote:

its best to have a one page resume..the last thing your boss would want is to flip pages. so just stick to the important stuff and keep it simple.

I completely disagree with this idea. I hear it everywhere and it's just plain wrong.

I am a contractor and change jobs frequently and it is my resume that gets me the next job and to date I have been in continuous contract employment for four years now so my resume has obviously got something going for it even though it is 3 full pages long.

I have been on both sides of the interview table and your resume does only 1 single thing: - get you to the interview and then give the interviewer a framework to ask you questions about yourself.

Your resume is your sales pitch selling you and your potential services.

The real trick to a resume that works is getting the interviewer's interest immediately so listing things like where you went to school, how old you are, what your first ever job was, what your second ever job was is all irrelevent to the poor guy who has to wade through 100 of these resumes so he can pick 5 for interview.

What they want to see straight away (within 10-20 seconds) is how good a fit to the job you are so they can decide which pile you go onto as they are sifting through. The keeper pile or the "not good enough fit / way over qualified and will leave in a few months / lives too far away so will have issues getting to work each day / really messy resume / not easy to understand so I really cant be ar sed to read through it" pile

The keeper pile then gets sifted through again with more attention paid to the finer detail of who to interview and who to reject.

Now, You can see, it's vitally important you sell yourself really really quickly.
What I do is have my name large top center with address and contact details in small text below it. First section "Profile" - a 2 x 4 line paragraph of text giving a brief description of my skill set and experience. This is a real sales pitch and written as if someone is telling them about you. ie "it support professional with x years experience supporting ....."

After this you go into relevant work experience, most recent first. Brief descriptiong of duties and a bullet point or two of key achievemtents in that post. Equipment you have worked on, etc. Depeding on how long you have been working, this section can go for a couple of pages easily and shouldn't be ommitted even if someone in a resume service who has read a book on how to do it tells you to keep it to one page! Your relevent previous experience is vital at this stage. Jobs that have no relevence to the job theoretically should be left out but they may have given you certain skills that you could bring to bear even though they are not directly relevent so think carefully before ommiting them.

Lastly, follow up with a bit of education and qualifications and then a bit about you personally. Personal achievements, anything unusual you do in your spare time. Reading books, watching tele, going to the cinema is something everyone does so leave them out.

Test your resumes out on your family and friends and watch their face as they read it. If you see them getting bored quickly, rework it. If you see it keeps them reading (even though they arnt really intersted in reading it at all) then you have cracked it.

A good resume takes years and years to get right. This is easy to do yourself so don't just think that because someone calls themselves a "Professional Resume Writing Service" that they know any more than you or that their version of your resume will get you a job. You could quite easily read the book they read and produce the same crap results.

Just imagine if you were the person who had 100 resumes to go through and select 5 for interview as well as get on with your normal daily job. What would induce you to put any particular resume on the keeper pile. ( begging on a resume is not allowed

)

Olajuwon

Years ago, when I was looking for job, a recruiter strongly criticized my resume layout and he proceeded to give me the sample resume of his most successful contractor. I followed the format and I had no problem getting interviews after that. I turned down many, many interviews.

garv221

Olajuwon wrote:

Years ago, when I was looking for job, a recruiter strongly criticized my resume layout and he proceeded to give me the sample resume of his most successful contractor. I followed the format and I had no problem getting interviews after that. I turned down many, many interviews.

Post the format

T.killer

Kaminsky wrote:

T.killer wrote:

its best to have a one page resume..the last thing your boss would want is to flip pages. so just stick to the important stuff and keep it simple.

I completely disagree with this idea. I hear it everywhere and it's just plain wrong.

I am a contractor and change jobs frequently and it is my resume that gets me the next job and to date I have been in continuous contract employment for four years now so my resume has obviously got something going for it even though it is 3 full pages long.

I have been on both sides of the interview table and your resume does only 1 single thing: - get you to the interview and then give the interviewer a framework to ask you questions about yourself.

Your resume is your sales pitch selling you and your potential services.

The real trick to a resume that works is getting the interviewer's interest immediately so listing things like where you went to school, how old you are, what your first ever job was, what your second ever job was is all irrelevent to the poor guy who has to wade through 100 of these resumes so he can pick 5 for interview.

What they want to see straight away (within 10-20 seconds) is how good a fit to the job you are so they can decide which pile you go onto as they are sifting through. The keeper pile or the "not good enough fit / way over qualified and will leave in a few months / lives too far away so will have issues getting to work each day / really messy resume / not easy to understand so I really cant be ar sed to read through it" pile

The keeper pile then gets sifted through again wih more attention paid to the finer detail of who to interview and who to reject.

Now, You can see, it's vitally important you sell yourself really really quickly.
What I do is have my name large top center with address and contact details in small text below it. First section "Profile" - a 2 x 4 line paragraph of text giving a brief description of my skill set and experience. This is a real sales pitch and written as if omeone is telling them abut you. ie "it support professional with x years experience supporting ....."

After this you go into relevant work experience, most recent first. Brief descriptiong of duties and a bullet point or two of key achievemtents in that post. Equipment you have worked on, etc. Depeding on how long you have been working, this section can go for a couple of pages easily and shouldn't be ommitted even if someone in a resume service who has read a book on how to do it tells you to keep it to one page! Your relevent previous experience is vital at this stage. Jobs that have no relevence to the job theoretically should be left out but they may have given you certain skills that you could bring to bear even though they are not directly relevent so think carefully before ommiting them.

Lastly, follow up with a bit of education and qualifications and then a bit about you personally. Personal achievements, anything unusual you do in your spare time. Reading books, watching tele, going to the cinema is something everyone does so leave them out.

Test your resumes out on your family and friends and watch their face as they read it. If you see them getting bored quickly, rework it. If you see it keeps them reading (even though they arnt really intersted in reading it at all) then you have cracked it.

A good resume takes years and years to get right.

you know what. i respect your opinion and i mite even try out your ideas....its good to get ideas and tips from other people.

Slowhand

I've written my own resume for as lon as I've been searching for work. The first thing I did was look up some tips and tricks, and I got a lot of different advice. "No more than one page", "as many pages as it takes", "don't do this", "do that". I ended up realizing that I had to find the style that best suited me, and tried to find the advice that made the most sense. Here's what I found that has proven useful in my case:

1. Don't write things like "able to multitask", or "good problem solver". Things like that tend to look like fluff. Instead, write "completed 3 mission-critical projects under budget and on time in the last six months", or "implemented a new anti-spam solution for my organization, cutting down junk mail and potentially harmful or unwanted mail by 30%". Basically, list what you've done, what's been proven; don't list things you think you can do or things that you haven't done yet.

2. Keep your resume succinct, but don't fall into a pattern of only doing bulleted lists or single-word and single-phrase descriptions. Instead of writing an entire paragraph dedicated to your work with routers and switches, try to cut it down to something leaner, like: "VLAN configuration, ACL updates, and creation of custom subnets part of day-to-day tasks in current position as systems engineer". Not a perfect example, but it gets to the point without overcomplicating the information.

3. Write your resume the way you'd write a book or a short story. The person reading your resume should be able to pick it up and instantly begin getting an insight into you and why they should hire you, then get more and more interested in and excited about hiring you, the more he/she reads. It has to have a gripping beginning, (such as a well-constructed cover letter or statement of intent,) a solid middle, (listing your experience and qualifications,) and a memorable finish, (such as your particular achievements, certifications, and education,) that'll serve to back up all the experience and qualifications you listed in the middle. Like a good essay or short story, each part should transition into the next, and be enticing and interesting enough to make the reader want more once he/she's finished reading. Your resume isn't a chore, it's your autobiography, but in a very particular format. Dedicate the same attention and interest in writing your resume that you would any personal project that serves to enrich your life.

And that's my long-winded explanation of how to write a succinct and effective resume.

royal

garv221 wrote:

Olajuwon wrote:

Years ago, when I was looking for job, a recruiter strongly criticized my resume layout and he proceeded to give me the sample resume of his most successful contractor. I followed the format and I had no problem getting interviews after that. I turned down many, many interviews.

Post the format

Yes, please post the format.

garv221

Kaminsky wrote:

T.killer wrote:

its best to have a one page resume..the last thing your boss would want is to flip pages. so just stick to the important stuff and keep it simple.

I completely disagree with this idea. I hear it everywhere and it's just plain wrong.

I have learned a lot from hiring/firing people and looking through resumes. When I am in hiring mode and looking through hundreds of resumes, I prefer a one page, the last thing I want to do is spend time reading a novel of a resume. Like I posted above, in my experience a one page leaves a lot of things to be discussed in an interview. Alot of resumes that were two pages had a technical skills section (which I think is stupid) that took up space. The majority of the skills should be a given and anything left out in that section is then assumed not possessed.