Critique my Resume

Jad207

Hey Guys,

I feel I have a decent resume but I could use some advice on what I should improve on my resume to make myself more marketable. I am currently trying to obtain a NOC or a Jr. Admin job sometime in the near future and would like to improve everything I can to get that job. It doesn't seem like I can attach a word document as it says invalid file so I added a google docs link it my resume.

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B5jI2zC4XXCQYVVWLTdZckNTTFdOZHFqWlZGbUZkUQ

Everyone

Lots of wasted space... too much empty white space that could be used better. Could easily be a nice clean single page resume.

You need a summary.

Technical Skills can go away, keep the Clearance and Certifications. Work that software/hard and Operating Systems keywords into your experience (for the most part you've done this, so really you're just repeating information and therefore wasting space).

Take your High School off.

If you're going to list a college and degree you haven't finished yet, you may work in how many credit hours you have towards that degree.

You suffer from the same problem that it seems 99% of anyone who posts a resume for critique here does, lack of demonstrating accomplishments. Tons of bullets listing responsibilities, but nothing really showing what you've accomplished at any position you've held.

NiftySwifty

Hi, overall I think it looks good, but I do have some recommendations:

1. It may just be from the conversion to Google Docs, but there is a lot of white space. I also consider that perhaps you were working on making the two pages look full, instead of half of a second page. For people early in their career, though, I generally like to see single page resumes whenever possible. With three similar jobs over six years, many managers will likely feel like the resume is heavily padded or poorly formatted if it's taking up two pages.

2. If you're going to have a technical skills section, you should generally list the most impressive skills, or those you are most competent with, first. Listing obvious skills, are generally a red flag for me. Obvious skills (such as Office), should only be listed if you possess some special talent regarding the technology.

3. I would recommend condensing onto one page, even if it means removing some specific duties from each job. Almost no one reads all of those anyway--the only time I do is during the interview, in which case they become fodder for questions. From the resume, I read: Job titles and dates, skills list (if there is one, not always appropriate), education/certifications. I have generally made a decision to interview a person before I actually read the duties descriptions, and this seems to be common amongst the managers I've worked with in the past.

4. Careful with your tenses. Use present tense for ongoing activities in your current job, simple past tense for everything else (only resort to past perfect when necessary to make it sound right). Also, resist the urge to say "Troubleshot" when fixing your tenses.

5. Once you've entered college, it's usually customary to remove high school diploma from your resume, unless you are including it to point out some distinction: Graduated from a technical high school, graduated with honors, valedictorian, etc.

Hope that helps, please let me know if you have any questions!

Jad207

Thanks for the suggestions,

I am going to remove my high school education, try to condense my resume to one page and work on my job descriptions to show my accomplishments instead of just responsiblities. I think adding a summary is a good idea so I will try to make one based on what I've done and that I am looking towards a networking opportunity.

Should I remove my oldest job from the resume to clear up space and when is is appropriate to list technical skills on the resume?

Also does anybody have a good sample resume I can look at to see what to base it off?

NiftySwifty

I think the formatting looks alright on your current resume. I don't really know any good suggestions for a place to look for examples, unfortunately. I definitely would not remove your oldest job--at this point, you definitely want to put all of your experience there. Generally, I recommend keeping all of your old jobs on a resume, unless they are no longer relevant to your career path. You can, however, be less verbose with older jobs and just cover the high points. Feel free to post your updated resume if you'd like a new critique.

Jad207

NiftySwifty wrote: »

I think the formatting looks alright on your current resume. I don't really know any good suggestions for a place to look for examples, unfortunately. I definitely would not remove your oldest job--at this point, you definitely want to put all of your experience there. Generally, I recommend keeping all of your old jobs on a resume, unless they are no longer relevant to your career path. You can, however, be less verbose with older jobs and just cover the high points. Feel free to post your updated resume if you'd like a new critique.

Here's my resume updated with some changes, let me know if you guys think it's better than what I had and whether I need any more improvements.

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B5jI2zC4XXCQcURUQXppVU1US3FDMmJXSFZSck13dw

cloud802

I think it looks better than your first resume and its good that you highlighted some of your accomplishments on the jobs you had.

Jad207

Thanks, I will keep it this way.