Critique My Resume

Hey all, I've been a member for TE for quite some time now. I owe this site a lot of gratitude for helping me over the years from both a personal and professional stand-point. Again, I'm seeking assistance from the TE community. Please critique my resume and don't hold anything back.

Thanks in advance everyone!

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Everyone

Not sure how I feel about the red header... red is an angry color.

Get rid of the Objective, replace with summary.

Not sure I like the sidebar either. References do not belong on a resume. You can have a reference sheet to provide if requested, however most places will ask you to put references on an application. Also everything else that you have listed in your side bar is also listed in your experience section, which makes the side bar a redundant waste of space and a distraction.

IMHO 3.5 years of experience is not enough to warrant a 2 page resume.

Paragraphs followed by bullets are good, but you aren't really using them properly. You have a couple sentences showing responsibilities followed by a bunch of bullets listing responsibilities. It should be a paragraph with responsibilities followed by a few bullets showing accomplishments. If you rework it and fix spacing you should be able to get it down to a single page easy.

kotan

Thanks for the advice. If I can find some spare time today, I'll see if I can rework my resume as suggested.

kotan

I am really struggling trying to fit even half of my experience into one page along with a technical overview and summary. I actually agree with you that 3.5 years usually doesn't justify 2 pages, however, I've grown faster than most into the highest possible position in the company besides running the IT department. I've grown comfortable with our entire environment of 31 servers, the network, phone systems, managing the verizon corporate account, as well as cost analysis and license management.

I will work really hard at limiting the space I'm consuming by merging my previous titles together and fix any redundant text. Then we'll hammer the new version.

kurosaki00

Everyone wrote: »

IMHO 3.5 years of experience is not enough to warrant a 2 page resume.

I wonder how true is this.
I work in a company that has millions of clients. IT is not only IT here, we run the company, OPs and Market literally looks up to IT for everything.
I do so many things, like seriously SO MANY THINGS.
I doubt that cant fit into one page.
To give you an example, both of my co workers have 10 years at least of experience, I have 2 the most.
But I landed the job.
So I think the pages are more about the quality of experience instead of time.

kotan

I couldn't agree more. I certainly do not want to overspeak my capabilities but I honestly delve into everything to some degree. During my interview, I clearly state where I fall short on experience but yet, still have exposure to various systems.

For example, I am solely responsible for our Cisco network, due to not having a network administrator. I need to either A, figure it out on my own, or B, outsource certain project that are simply above my level of expertise (while remaining intimately involved). I don't, however, want to completely ignore that I deal with cisco because of this.

Check out my new resume which has a much different style. Perhaps folks will favor this one over my previous. Advice is always welcome!

http://www.filedropper.com/johndoeresumeoption1

kotan

Thanks to the advice on this board as well as other administrators in my area, I have completely revamped my resume (with a different design, no more long sentence bullet points, etc etc). Now I'm getting a lot of positive feedback. Thank you very much for your help!

pinkydapimp

kotan wrote: »

I couldn't agree more. I certainly do not want to overspeak my capabilities but I honestly delve into everything to some degree. During my interview, I clearly state where I fall short on experience but yet, still have exposure to various systems.

For example, I am solely responsible for our Cisco network, due to not having a network administrator. I need to either A, figure it out on my own, or B, outsource certain project that are simply above my level of expertise (while remaining intimately involved). I don't, however, want to completely ignore that I deal with cisco because of this.

Check out my new resume which has a much different style. Perhaps folks will favor this one over my previous. Advice is always welcome!

http://www.filedropper.com/johndoeresumeoption1

lookin good.

kurosaki00

I dont know if its me, but I see some aligment messed up.
for example the 4000 and firewalls are extreme to the left

kotan

Ah, thanks for catching that! I wouldn't have noticed. >.<

Here is the latest and greatest thus far.

http://www.filedropper.com/resumeanon

ptilsen

Latest link is a blank file, 0 byte.

Your resume is well written and looks good, looking at the previous link. However, you absolutely can and should cut this down to one page. There are a few areas where you can cut down in both formatting and diction without seriously reducing the content you're describing. Yes, you can get away with two pages and what you have is good, but I really think you'll be better off with one page (for the record, I would offer you an interview right now if you were in the Twin Cities metro area). Two pages is hard to get away without close to ten years of experience.

First the easy ones. Take out the "References" section, which is a big waste of space. Take out your address, which is another waste of space. You can also make your name and number a header, to save a bit more space. I would take out the two "summaries" you have at the top, personally. I mean, they aren't a bad touch, but they aren't really necessary, either. Every line counts. I would actually take out the entire summary you have at the top. It's not that it's bad -- it's just not needed and not something HR wants to read, since they're already get all that from your cover letter.

I would reconsider the entire qualification highlights section. These are things that will be captured in your experience and skills sections as well as your interview and cover letter.

In your experience sections, be more space-efficient with your sentences. If you are going to go to two lines, fill up at least 50% of the second line. Anything less needs to get cut down to one line. Be concise in your descriptions, and you won't have more than one or two go to two lines.

70-640 is Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist: Windows Server 2008 Active Directory, Configuration. There are probably a few suitable ways to abbreviate it, but I wouldn't abbreviate it as "AD/DNS". It is important that it turn up in searches, which it probably won't without either MCTS or Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist.

Try to be a bit more varied in your job descriptions. Four lines start with the word "resource", two with "setup", two with "responsible", and three with managed. If anything, you should simply cut out some of the lines. More of them need to be about demonstrating an accomplishment than enumerating responsibilities. Since you have mini-paragraphs describing each role, it would be more appropriate to expand them by a sentence or two, then list a mixture of noteworthy responsibilities and accomplishments.

In your Technical Expertise section, I would be less specific about hardware. "HP Proliant servers", "Dell PowerEdge servers and tape libraries", "Cisco routers and switches", etc. This is preferable even if it doesn't ultimately save much space, in my opinion. List operating systems all in one line. Your goal should be to take that entire section down by two lines. Here is a quick and dirty adjustment:

Operating Systems: Windows NT, 2000, XP, Vista, 7 Server 2000, Server 2003, Server 2008
Hardware: HP Proliant servers, Dell PowerEdge 2900 servers.
Cisco MCS 7900 series, Cisco routers and switches, Cisco ASA firewalls, EMC AX4, Brocade switches
Software: AD, Exchange 2003 -2010, Symantec Backup Exec, VMWare ESXi
Hyper-V, Blackberry Enterprise Server, HP SIM, Vamsoft’s ORF, Trend Micro
Enterprise Suite, Metafile, Infor Syteline, Sysaid, Microsoft WDS, WSUS, Office
Networking/Protocols: DHCP, DNS, TCP/IP, SMTP, FTP, VPN, ICMP, NAT, SNMP, POP3, LAN/WAN, SAN

All this said, you will have to consider different resumes based on what job you're applying for. You have a lot of specific technologies that could be kept specific, generalized, or removed based on the job. If you applied to my organization, for example, you could but a whole line each off of software and hardware and not really lose anything.

I was able to make a mock version of your resume in one page by doing all of the above. I simply cut a line out of each job description and cut the ends off two-line sentences that didn't take up most of the second line. I'm not really seeing anything substantive on the original that isn't still there, but obviously those job descriptions should be more thoroughly rewritten.

I know you have a lot of experience, skills, and accomplishments you want to show on your resume. However, your resume is not meant to be an exhaustive, all-encompassing summary of your career anymore. Your resume and cover letter, combined, should give a good overview of your skills and experience and highlight some of the big advantages you might have over the other candidates. The interview is where you can really get into any depth needed.

kotan

Reading this from my phone so i'll keep this short. Thank you for this incredibley detailed overview. When things slow down tomorrow, I'll give this a real shot and repost. I look forward to applying these changes.

kotan

Alright, I was able to jump on this early today. First of all, thanks again for really criticizing my resume because I'm liking the outcome of this single page option. It seems to be something much more bearable to read, even while sifting through 50 resumes. I decided to keep the address as I feel employers may like the option to see where I currently reside, but made it a single line. Despite some minor grammatical flaws, have I finally gotten it?

http://www.filedropper.com/resumeanon_1

kotan

Oh, even better. Instead of "Address" and providing the full blow street address. I've changed this to "Residence: City, State". I think that's more...to the point.

Everyone

Getting better I guess...

Ditch the Operating Systems, Hardware, Software, and Networking/Protocols sections. You have most, if not all of those keywords worked into your Experience sections. No need to list things twice.

Consolidate all those responsibility bullets into a paragraph, then use bullets to list a couple accomplishments below that.

kotan

I actually really like the current layout as far as OS, HW, SW, Net/Prot, etc. I also worked pretty hard to avoid any form of long sentencing due to the readers simply skimming past such blocky content. Eliminating bullet points to acquire paragraphs seems like I'd be headed in the wrong direction. Not to say the idea is wrong, but I don't think that would be a good fit for my flavor of resume.

I'm not sure how I feel about the redundancy point you make. I'm do see your point. However, I really want to give readers the ability to summarize at the top and read further into my experience at the bottom. Hmm...

ptilsen

kotan wrote: »

Eliminating bullet points to acquire paragraphs seems like I'd be headed in the wrong direction. Not to say the idea is wrong, but I don't think that would be a good fit for my flavor of resume.

This.

While complaints of bullet fest can be valid, the truth is many individuals in the hiring process like to be able to skim through a resume and get the gist of it. If you're all paragraphs, that's hard to do, and you may well get overlooked.