I'm in need of a resume critique

CodeBlox

I was about to send my resume to a cisco partner for an "entry level" position and thought, why not post it here to see whats wrong with it first. It mostly reflects helpdesk work because that's all that I've done as far as jobs go. That and customer service. See the attachment please! Joel.Jackson.Resume - TE.doc

ptilsen

There are a few big problems, mostly with formatting. Ultimately, you goal needs to be to get this to one page. It's not that two-pagers aren't feasible, but you don't have enough relevant professional experience to justify two pages. Even if you did, you would absolutely want to fill out the second page.

To start, you have inconsistent line spaces. Some sections are followed by multiple line feeds. You'll want to keep this at just one to preserve space. On Experience, you have multiple lines between the heading and first item.

Remove dates from certifications. They do not add value, and in fact probably take it away.

Key Competencies and Professional References should go away. Non-specific soft skills are not needed as you have both relevant hard skills and professional experience.

Education should go at the end, after experience, since you have professional experience. It should also be most recent to least recent. You might consider removing TNCC if you did not obtain a degree. If you did obtain a degree there, you will want to adjust your description.

Your "highlights" section should be transformed into a "Skills" section. It would want to be a more concise enumeration of skills; stick to technologies, and valuable ones. For example, "various user applications such as internet explorer, adobe reader/acrobat" is a lot of unnecessary words followed by programs that don't really add value.

Alternatively, you might replace it entirely with a "Summary", which is 2-4 sentences describing you. It will capture some of the same information and give quick insight into your skillset and career level. If you do this, you will want to make sure your experience section captures all of your relevent experience.

The Top Secret clearance is important, but I wouldn't put it in it's own section. I would change "Certifications" to "Qualifications" and add Top Secrect there.

I would cut out one of the bullet points on Farm Fresh, and keep them all at one line. Since it's not career-relevant, you only want it there to show a long history of employment. In two years, you won't want it at all. For now, you want to minimize how much space it uses.

On your experience, you seem to be doing this format:
Department, employer
Job title, location [tab] date
The inclusion of department is redundant and wasteful, and you want date to immediately follow employer so the resume filtering applications don't mess things up. You also want the location to precede job title for the same reason. Meaning:
Employer [tab] date
Location
Job Title

You can also drop location if that takes up too much space. Location of previous job is not really useful to an employer, but some of the filtering systems do look for it. Alternatively, you can use a table to put experience on the same lines as job title and location:
Employer [tab] date
Location | Experience description
Job Title | Experience description
[nothing]| Experience description
[nothing]| Experience description

Anyway, that's a relatively minor issue. The important thing it to get it to one page. After that, you'll need to look at some improvements on your descriptions.

On your helpdesk description, I would transform the first bullet into a job descirption summary (much like the resume summary). Make it 2-3 sentences describing the job's functions and responsibilities. Follow this with 2-6 bullet points describing significant accomplishments. In particular, you want to show something that brought value to the organization. Try to show anything you did that stood out, rather than just anything you did.

Overall, it's not bad. A few formatting fixes and tweaks and it will be great.

matt333

take out the professional references.. way to many spaces and alot of what ^^ he said. maybe lines to separate the sections at least thats what i did and i think it looks good

CodeBlox

Thanks, I'll make these changes ASAP! Surprisingly, with the resume as is, I got a callback from a company. I missed the call as I was at work but will call them back tomorrow.

cyberguypr

Very good assessment from ptilsen.

I'll add the capitalization of brands/products. It's a pet peeve of mine that would automatically triiger an express trip to the circular file. In my eyes that shows lack of attention to detail.

And what's with the verbs? Current job uses past tense while old job doesn't.