Resume help needed

zenhound

So I need resume help, or at least I think I do. I never get calls back for anything, and I'm not even looking for much. Right now I'm in a terrible low end job I'd like to get out of--helpdesk would be an improvement--but am having no luck. I was out of IT entirely after the dot com bubble crashed, and am trying to work my way back into an actual career instead of a job. I'm fairly close to getting CCENT wrapped up and am hoping that will help, but really not sure what to do. I have NOC experience and even though there are plenty in the area I can't seem to get into any of them. I have a friend who works in a NOC and he gave my resume to his boss, never heard back. Obviously something about my resume is bad. Do I not have enough technical detail? Nothing jumping out I guess?

Any help is appreciated. I'm attaching it, .doc is all I have access to right now but can get it up in pdf if it's better.

matt333

I'd look into some kind of tech resume templates. resume looks very plain
summaries for each position + bullet accomplishment if any,
take out high school unless it was related to computers
take out All major requirements fulfilled, including writing of thesis. not necessary, add graduation date

zenhound

Thanks for the response.

If the format is the only problem I'll look into that. I thought dates (graduation dates at least) were pretty much verboten because of age discrimination though.

neilperry

For this I'd say one page as well. You could remove your research assistant job and play around with margins and get it to one page without issue, I'd think. I know that leaves quite a gap in your employment history however if you are asked about it, you could say this was a position you held while attending university (and the graduation date would help back this up) and you didn't find it relative to the jobs you were applying to and decided to leave it off. If they ask you about it of course you can expand.

Agree get rid of high school and I would list graduation date for your degree as well as well. I've never heard of anything about not putting graduation dates due to age discrimination.

I'd also get rid of the Summary and put in a skills section that is short and sweet.

cyberguypr

Not a fan of the bullet fest. Some of us recommend a short paragraph to present duties and responsibilities followed by a couple of bullets highlighting key accomplishments. All the experience you list covers general areas without showing me specifically which challenges you faced and how you solved them. Anyone can provide support, document, troubleshoot, etc. How did you make it count? How did your actions result in value either by saving money, improving processes, etc? That is what I am looking for on a candidate, specific projects/solutions that can bring value to the table.

zenhound

Yeah some people like bullets and some don't. I had the paragraph style and switched to this because I was told it was too much to read. God I hate resumes. I think I'll prepare two versions and see how they look.

I was definitely thinking of cutting some and switching to a one page. Will have to play with that.

The accomplishments thing is what kills me I think. I have no concept of how to do that. When you've mostly had low level IT jobs you don't get a lot of chance to accomplish things, at least anything impressive. At my current job I submitted a proposal to save at least 50K a year and it was rejected basically because it wasn't the way we've always done things (gotta love government).

cyberguypr

Bad advice. Both objective and references are not in line with current modern resume trends. An intelligent summary will be more effective. And unless you got the resumes mixed up his NOC position was from 10+ years ago.