Does my resume suck?

hex_omega · December 2010

I am not that experienced and just starting out in my career. Also, I never finished college so I know the education section is a bit lacking. Any suggestions would be welcome. Is the layout OK? Do I need to be more specific with my job descriptions?

What kind of position could I expect to move up to if I earned a CCNA to go along with my MCSA? I think around early 2012 I will start looking at what opportunites are out there. Could I shoot for Desktop Support? Maybe Junior Admin?

Please lay into me. Don't be afraid.

tbgree00 · December 2010

I just went through the job hunt so some advice that would be relevant. You list the MCSA but don't seem to have any server experience. Be prepared to answer questions about that. If it is lab experience or in class that is a good enough explanation. Also remember to write your resume for the job. If you are applying for a windows job put that in there as much as possible.

mikej412 · December 2010

List your most recent education first. If you've got college most people will assume you have graduated high school (or at least got a GED). Maybe lead with your Certifications since you said you didn't graduate from college -- that gets your MCSA out there sooner and may keep someone reading your resume longer.

Unless your Microsoft and CompTIA IDs can be used for certification verification, they are just taking up space -- eh, so leave 'em in until you have something else to use that space.

What did you do between college and that first job you have listed? A gap leaves the person reading your resume to wonder if you spent time in jail for grand theft auto -- or if you spent that time playing grand theft auto.

The descriptions of your experience look good and made it through my first glance -- and held up when I went back and spent more time. But I'm not a grammar freak. No typos jumped out from the page.

If your resume is in a pile with other resumes for specific jobs, the summary will work. Just make sure you have something that's related or important for the specific job. If you're familiar with the TCP/IP protocol suite you can tell me how many bytes are in an IP packet source field, right?

I've read lots of "help desk skill summaries" on resumes and found the only thing Cisco related in the rest of the resume was the CCNA under certifications. Since I may wind up doing technical or peer interviews, I'll usually go with the resumes that have a "bit more Cisco" in them so that we'll have something to talk about during the interview.

On the other hand, don't type a laundry list of skills from a certification topic list. If the person has no job experience with any of the listed skills, I just assume it's someone playing resume buzzword bingo and move on to the next resume.

Sometime is may be safest if you feel like you're stretching for a job to go with an Objective section than a Skills Summary section. Tell the person reading you want job XXX and your best reason why you think you should be considered.

But if you don't have a specific job target in mind, then your "generic resume" with a Skills/Summary section is better than a generic objective like, "I'd like to use my XXX Certification and YYY Degree to get a job to pay the bills and promote world peace."

Your resume doesn't suck -- but you need to punch up that Summary since it's the first thing someone will glance at. Once I got past the high school diploma, you're resume was quite okay.

Does my resume suck?

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