Resume Advice

Hey guys, I will be graduating in less than 2 months and am beginning to send out my resume. I need some advice on my resume. I know some server administration experience but in a small scaled environment(max 40+ users managed). I want to eventually become a Sys Admin and transition to an AWS Cloud Admin.

Attached is my resume:

Example Resume.pdf

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DatabaseHead

Short and sweet, one of the better ones posted on here.

What you offer where you want to go

Education

Experience

Really like the easy read of it. Managers have 0 time to read through a pile of words, less it more and you my friend accomplished that.

Midnite8

I have been told that it is VERY unlikely that I will find a place that offers me a Jr. Sysadmin position right out of college, regardless of the server administration experience I have.

My plan is to try and find a company and learn as much as I can at the Desktop Support technician/master the role and slowly try to ask for more "responsibilities" to move up eventually to an administrator position.

The trick is at interviews is to smoothly let the hiring manager know I am looking to grow from my position and if there are no opportunities I probably will try and find another place that does have opportunities, unless I can't find one then I guess I will try to work there for about a year and move on..

koz24

Midnite8 wrote: »

I have been told that it is VERY unlikely that I will find a place that offers me a Jr. Sysadmin position right out of college, regardless of the server administration experience I have.

If we all listened to the negative voices none of us would get anywhere. Some people can't land a gig so they go around telling others that they can't do it lol. If you get an MCSA in Servers I don't see why you can't apply to Jr. Sysadmin roles. Experience check, certified check--go for it.

As an example the place I worked at before hired a Jr Linux Admin right out of college. He only had his BS Degree, Linux+, and some internship experience.

Midnite8

I haven't come across a Jr. Sysadmin listing so far and I live in the heart of Silicon Valley, SF. I definitely will eventually get the MCSA but at this time, I just don't have time to do it because it just takes months and months. Right now I am just trying to find ways to search for jobs, not sure how effective/ineffective popular job search websites are(Monsterjobs, dice, indeed, etc).

Was just thinking... any benefits at this point to knock out some smaller/easier certs like CompTIA+, A+,etc?

EANx

Midnite8 wrote: »

I have been told that it is VERY unlikely that I will find a place that offers me a Jr. Sysadmin position right out of college, regardless of the server administration experience I have.

Your resume stated you're looking for desktop support. As a hiring manager, I wouldn't consider you for anything but what you state you're looking for. Unless you really want desktop support, I suggest to reword that.

"Adept ability" is awkward, suggest rephrase.

Do you have any actual certifications? the resume doesn't seem to indicate that you do.

AverageJoe

EANx wrote: »

Do you have any actual certifications? the resume doesn't seem to indicate that you do.

Yep, same question.The Cisco lines in the education section make me ask "how come no certs?" If there are no certs, I'd probably drop those lines to avoid the question. If there are certs, they should be listed.

Midnite8

EANx wrote: »

Your resume stated you're looking for desktop support. As a hiring manager, I wouldn't consider you for anything but what you state you're looking for. Unless you really want desktop support, I suggest to reword that.

"Adept ability" is awkward, suggest rephrase.

Do you have any actual certifications? the resume doesn't seem to indicate that you do.

I can change the role I am looking for but I am just not seeing any positions open for Jr. Sysadmins, which is ideally what I am really looking for.

Will rephrase that "adept ability" as well.

No I do not have any actual certifications, I will remove those Cisco lines.

I Want to prepare myself for these two important questions that will most likely be asked at a desktop support/jr. sysadmin position.
For example: hiring manger asks a problem and wants me to tell them my troubleshooting process... My question is...:

Is there a "right" troubleshoot process or is it depending on the individual?
And:

What is the "proper" way to address/handle problems with people?

Any other suggestions?

EANx

Midnite8 wrote: »

Is there a "right" troubleshoot process or is it depending on the individual?

There is definitely a "right" troubleshooting process and it always depends on the person asking the question. That said, there are three ways of doing troubleshooting. I assume you're familiar with the OSI model.

1) Bottom-up. Start with the physical-layer and troubleshoot to layer 7, aka the application layer
2) Start at the top, layer-7 and work your way down to the physical layer
3) Based on the symptoms, try a few standard troubleshooting tricks (ping, trace route, etc.) and if those don't give you something to go on, then start at either 1 or 2 as seems appropriate.

I'll give a candidate credit for any of those three answers. The key is to appear methodical and to seem to have a plan.

Midnite8

Yes, I am familiar with the OSI layers. That would've been my first answer in my troubleshooting process.

If I change the position I am looking for to Jr. SysAdmin, what types of responsibilities should I be putting down instead of desktop support duties such as what I have currently? Is Tier-2 support considered some sort of Jr. sysadmin. I understand that most jr. sysadmins essentially do basic support tickets/1 step elevated support and possibly some ADUC/Group policy stuff.