Again - Resume Critique

rwmidl

I did this about 6 + months ago, but I thought I would brush off the resume and see what you guys think. I've got 12 years experience so I know the resume does get a bit long (not sure how much more I could consolidate things).Resume.doc

Essendon

Apart from commenting about the formatting and the length of the resume, I dont have much to add. You could easily condense this into 2 pages by making more efficient use of white space (or is the formatting farked in this TE version resume?) and getting rid of the very first IR job you've had. If you do this, at the beginning of the resume, add a one-two line Profile/Summary section that explicitly states you have 12 years experience doing blah blah blah. Highlight the fact you are experienced. Club Education with the certs too. Just me 2 cents.

N2IT

Essendon wrote: »

Apart from commenting about the formatting and the length of the resume, I dont have much to add. You could easily condense this into 2 pages by making more efficient use of white space (or is the formatting farked in this TE version resume?) and getting rid of the very first IR job you've had. If you do this, at the beginning of the resume, add a one-two line Profile/Summary section that explicitly states you have 12 years experience doing blah blah blah. Highlight the fact you are experienced. Club Education with the certs too. Just me 2 cents.

I cruised through it fairly quickly but I didn't see any quantative bullet points. When you discussed the ISO 9000 quality auditor piece you should of mentioned how much defect prevention you provided and how it saved the company X amount of dollars. That was a perfect opportunity to show the reviewing company how you can save their company money and how you bring measured value.

I also don't care for 3 pages. If you have to cut some of your descriptions down to 3 bullet points then I would consider it. I'd also try to bring it up a level, it almost seems to granular.

Overall I think it's solid you just need some numbaz called out in your resume.


I would also consider labeling your resume system adminstrator and clustering your 3 jobs with a heading grouping all the dates. Maybe call out System Adminstrator 9/08 through present. I'm assuming the system integration analyst postion has some SA duties.

Tech support specialist bring that down to 3 bullets at most. Honestly who cares you are in a much higher level place now. The bottom job is the same unless you feel you can leverage the experience to help you get where you are going. I would bring that down to 3 bullets as well. Again try to bring it up a level unless you can provide a quantative bullet point with some measurable data.

Essendon

Fair points there from Patrick too.

N2IT

One more thing don't start off with the certifications. I would recommend starting off with a summary titled professional qualifications or professional overview.

I always build my resumes with tables and not with tabs. Tables make it easier to control the pagination and give the text more structure. You can always hide the word table if you want to go bullets.

Sorry I keep chatting I would also take away the political science from your degree. It provides no value, just state bachelor of science from so and so university and leave it at that. If they ask tell them, sometimes they will assume it's a computer science degree or something else.

Another way to get more real estate is to select show different first page under the design tab in the headers and footers contextual tab. Keep the size it is now, but bring it down a few sizes on the succeeding pages. That way you can keep the tight look with your headers yet gain more real estate.

And another

You list your footer with your information stacked on top of each other. You should bring it out

from this :

name
email
phone

to this: name | Email | Phone

Run it horizontally.

Everyone

As someone in my 13th year in IT now, these are the ones I can really dig into.

You have enough experience to warrant 2 pages, but spilling over onto a 3rd page and only using half of it looks bad.

Your contact information should be at the top of the page, not in a footer. You only need it on the 1st page too, it's just wasting space having it on every page.

Don't put "CISSP, MCSE" after your name, you have them listed in your certifications section, no need to have it twice.

You should have a summary. As Patrick said, put it at the very top of your resume.

You could save some space on your certification section, just list them as "CISSP, GCIH, GSEC, Security+, MCSE: Security, MCTS" They'll all fit on one line. If someone needs to know your cert #, they'll ask for it.

As Patrick already stated, use tables to space things out neatly, a bunch of tabs/spaces looks bad.

It is good that you are listing accomplishments, this is one thing a lot of people forget to do. It is very valuable to have them on there. To save space and get things looking a little nicer, use paragraphs for your responsibilities, take out the bold "Key Accomplishments", and move your accomplishment bullets directly under the responsibilities paragraph.

Everything I've said so far should easily bring you down to 2 pages. I'll link my resume again for a visual example. Resume 2011 - Messaging - Example.doc This format has worked well for myself and others.

I've been contacted through LinkedIn by companies like EMC, IBM, and Microsoft, multiple times already this month, not to mention the misc recruiters e-mailing me 2-5 times a week, and I'm not even looking for a job. I'm not trying to brag here, just trying to show you how well this format can work for someone with your level of experience. I think I was working on my resume and getting into this format at the same time you were last working on yours.

As a side note... new job not working out, or just trying to keep things up to date?

rwmidl

Everyone wrote: »

As someone in my 13th year in IT now, these are the ones I can really dig into.

You have enough experience to warrant 2 pages, but spilling over onto a 3rd page and only using half of it looks bad.

Your contact information should be at the top of the page, not in a footer. You only need it on the 1st page too, it's just wasting space having it on every page.

Don't put "CISSP, MCSE" after your name, you have them listed in your certifications section, no need to have it twice.

You should have a summary. As Patrick said, put it at the very top of your resume.

You could save some space on your certification section, just list them as "CISSP, GCIH, GSEC, Security+, MCSE: Security, MCTS" They'll all fit on one line. If someone needs to know your cert #, they'll ask for it.

As Patrick already stated, use tables to space things out neatly, a bunch of tabs/spaces looks bad.

It is good that you are listing accomplishments, this is one thing a lot of people forget to do. It is very valuable to have them on there. To save space and get things looking a little nicer, use paragraphs for your responsibilities, take out the bold "Key Accomplishments", and move your accomplishment bullets directly under the responsibilities paragraph.

Everything I've said so far should easily bring you down to 2 pages. I'll link my resume again for a visual example. Resume 2011 - Messaging - Example.doc This format has worked well for myself and others.

I've been contacted through LinkedIn by companies like EMC, IBM, and Microsoft, multiple times already this month, not to mention the misc recruiters e-mailing me 2-5 times a week, and I'm not even looking for a job. I'm not trying to brag here, just trying to show you how well this format can work for someone with your level of experience. I think I was working on my resume and getting into this format at the same time you were last working on yours.

As a side note... new job not working out, or just trying to keep things up to date?

Combination of things (job wasn't as advertised and also keeping things up to date). One day I'll write about the job...

LinuxRacr

Listen to "Everyone". I followed the advice of "Everyone", and have been getting several inquiries, and have had several interviews lately. After viewing his resume here, I have some ideas for yet more changes to my own....

ptilsen

Some good advice in here already. I won't get into any specifics until it's cut down to two pages. IMO no IT resume should ever be more than two pages, even with 30 years of experience and eight degrees and 20 certifications. Keeping it within two just forces you to think about your real achievements and highlight those for prospective employers. Besides, with your certs and experience you should be highly employable even if you have to cut out decent content. To be honest I'd interview you without more than glancing at your resume (realistically, you'd be interviewing me, but my point stands).

Edit: Not that you really need it, but are you planning on finishing MCITP:SA or EA up? Not sure why you have two of the three when you could upgrade the MCSE, but either way you're one or two tests away from completing it. MCTS just doesn't look as good as MCITP on a resume.

rwmidl

ptilsen wrote: »

Edit: Not that you really need it, but are you planning on finishing MCITP:SA or EA up? Not sure why you have two of the three when you could upgrade the MCSE, but either way you're one or two tests away from completing it. MCTS just doesn't look as good as MCITP on a resume.

Yeah I'm working on the 70-646 now to finish off my MCITP:SA as we speak. I was making good strides to having it done about 2 years ago, but after taking to 70-680 and 640 I took the two SANS courses/tests then a few months later got on the CISSP track. Once I finished my CISSP last May (tested in March and was fully endorsed by May) my brain was fried. Late last year I did the 642 (which was a whole pile of suck). After I'm done with it, I may go ahead and go for the EA. Oh and my MCSE is on 2000, so I couldn't upgrade to MCITP.

rwmidl

Ok guys, thanks for all of your advice. I've taken various comments/suggestions and did a complete re-work of the resume yesterday. Using tables really made it easy. A few questions I have on my re-write:

1. I have some bullet point bleed over from page 1 to page 2. I don't think I can do anything about it.
2. For certifications, do you think I should bold the certification name (ex: Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) or leave it as is. The reason I'm thinking of bolding it is for the name to stand out for HR/whomever.
3. In my second listed position, in a bullet point I have listed an award I received. Should I break out the award to another section?

Anonymouse.pdf

N2IT

Here are some modifications I would make.

Change summary to Professional Summary or Professional Overview

I would make sure I at least write a complete 4-5 sentences worth of information making sure you call out where you are at now and where you are going. Something like "Multi-Certified, highly experienced system administrator with 12 years of experience managing, securing, etc servers".


As far as your name goes I would List your name center and bold in large font. Then underneath I would like address|email|ph number|linkedin|whatever

Glad you put your security clearances in there.

I would bold experience before you start listing your jobs like you did for certs, summary and clearance.

The top job you just started so you are going to have to somehow bring that into the other positions.

Example



Senior System Administrator and then capture your start date as a system admin from the 3rd job down. August 2009 - Present
Here list your title for you current job with date range of Jan 2012-present
List job information

System Integration Analyst March 2010-Jan 2012
Description

System Admin August 2009-March2010
Description

etc with the other two jobs.


The reason I want you to capture the information like this is to bring attention away from your start date and your short stint at your current position.

If you want you can email me your resume and I can run track changes on it and send it back.

It's early I can look at it later on and give you more information.

NightShade1

why not creating a sub forum for this? there are people asking over and over for their resume critiques

rwmidl

N2IT wrote: »

Here are some modifications I would make.

Change summary to Professional Summary or Professional Overview

I would make sure I at least write a complete 4-5 sentences worth of information making sure you call out where you are at now and where you are going. Something like "Multi-Certified, highly experienced system administrator with 12 years of experience managing, securing, etc servers".


As far as your name goes I would List your name center and bold in large font. Then underneath I would like address|email|ph number|linkedin|whatever

Glad you put your security clearances in there.

I would bold experience before you start listing your jobs like you did for certs, summary and clearance.

The top job you just started so you are going to have to somehow bring that into the other positions.

Example



Senior System Administrator and then capture your start date as a system admin from the 3rd job down. August 2009 - Present
Here list your title for you current job with date range of Jan 2012-present
List job information

System Integration Analyst March 2010-Jan 2012
Description

System Admin August 2009-March2010
Description

etc with the other two jobs.


The reason I want you to capture the information like this is to bring attention away from your start date and your short stint at your current position.

If you want you can email me your resume and I can run track changes on it and send it back.

It's early I can look at it later on and give you more information.

Send me a PM with your email and I'll shoot it over to you.