Critique a pre-grad's resume

paintb4707

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=44Q6RHI9 (word format)

There's three things that concern me...

One being, a representative from the career services department in my school says that templates are frowned upon by employers and that I should re-write my resume from scratch. He claims to have previous experience in HR and speaks to employers directly to assist students with finding jobs. Can anyone hold any truth to this statement?

Secondly, one of my professors says that my profile was done incorrectly. I didn't ask him to elaborate but I assume that it shouldn't be bulleted. Instead, separated paragraph form? What do you guys suggest?

Third thing would be the logo at the top right. I didn't create it. I simply googled and copy/pasted it for a nice touch. Will this come back to bite me in the future? Should I remove it?

And as I said above, I am also working with my school's career services department on improving my resume. What I'm posting now is my current resume, I'd also like to post the revamped version when I am done with them and compare the two.

empc4000xl

Yeah I would shun away from the common template forms that are available. I have heard the same thing also. A few other things I noticed was that you have your job history backwards, it should be listed from present jobs 1st then back down to what you wanna list. Next you have all the software and skills you have, but its too wordy, try to cut it down and limit it to the hard hitters like active directory limit the entire MS office suite into just that word. Also I know advice against what I'm about to say has been posted on the board, but I will stand by it. Make a seperate resume for each job you are applying for and keep them in a binder and always have them ready when you get a call back. I have been told by several people this is the way to go, because a lot of the initial resume looking is only 30 seconds and if you have the keywords from the job description you will get that look. You also have the check marks and the bullets. Get rid of the check mark and keep it all bullets.

Netstudent

I agree, I always revise my resume for each position I apply for to make it more according to the postition.

JDMurray

First of all, there are only so many resume formats. All of the standard resume formats that HR people expect to see have already been made into templates. If you make up your own format you will likely end up with a resume that either resembles an existing template, or is so bizarrely formatted as to confuse anyone who reads it.

Next, people who read resumes for a living need to do so very quickly, usually taking no more than 30 seconds per resume. If you make it difficult to interpret your resume by using a non-standard format, your resume may get tossed by an HR person not willing to take the extra time to interpret it.

Finally, I would suggest always using a standard resume format with a cover letter, and putting all the keywords you want noticed in bold to make your resume even easier to read. This seems to have worked well for me.

Netstudent

Another tip that I was taught, is make sure your name is the biggest boldest font on the page. You want your name to stand out from the rest of the resume to help people better remember you.

paintb4707

Thanks a lot for all the input. I've been so busy between school and work I haven't had the time to make any changes. I'll definitely take everything into consideration and work on revising it.

I'm going down to career services today so hopefully I'll have another one in a completely different format and you guys can tell me which you like better.

edit: As far as the profile goes, is there anything that is/isn't necessary to be listed?

int80h

1. Your objective is crap.
2. With your skills and experience, you should have a 1 page resume max.
3. Your objective is crap.
4. Your Profile section needs to be condensed by grouping like entries.
5. Your objective is crap.
6. Under education, replace "courses completed" with "projects completed", and give examples of labs or projects you did.
7. Your objective is crap.

Also, you should re-write your objective. Its that sort of super brown-nosey politicaly correct phrases that will get any resume sent to the garbage.

shednik

I'd have to agree to you may want to shorten your resume a bit or make things fit on the page a bit better...there is some statistic that most companies only read your resume for 30 seconds or something so you always want what makes you sound the best at the top ie.. experience, certifications, etc...

Now for this...

int80h wrote:

1. Your objective is crap.
2. With your skills and experience, you should have a 1 page resume max.
3. Your objective is crap.
4. Your Profile section needs to be condensed by grouping like entries.
5. Your objective is crap.
6. Under education, replace "courses completed" with "projects completed", and give examples of labs or projects you did.
7. Your objective is crap.
Also, you should re-write your objective. Its that sort of super brown-nosey politicaly correct phrases that will get any resume sent to the garbage.

Generally I was always told to make your objective specific to what youre looking for in a job so I was told make sure you do that or omit it completely....as for int80h i think he gets the picture this thread was posted for help as in constructive criticism...i think you should try to get your point across more politely I mean there no reason to be rude and redundant. So try and be a little nicer in your posts there's really no need for that.

shednik

guess i should have read JD's post more closely about the resume scanning oh well...