Please Rip My Resume Apart!

So it has been at least 8 years since I have had to really update my resume, since I've been gainfully/steadily employed, but all that is changing. I could get laid off (after years of surviving the cut). I just want to be relatively ready. Any tips, criticisms, I don't care how knit-picky; POST IT UP!

Be aware: I couldn't figure out how to get rid of the third page before I made it into a PDF file.

Attachment not found.

TE_LinuxRacr.pdf

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darkerz

The second I saw the words Linux and Sr. in the same section, I can safely say your resume could have a description of a penguin in it and you'd still be ultra hireable.

I'll take a peek when I'm off work, I swear I've seen this format 3 times on this forum in the last week.

ptilsen

The format isn't bad at all. It's pretty similar to how I do mine, and probably how I would do mine if I had another five years under my belt. Overall, this resume is one of the better ones I've seen. I'm going to have to try this in a really negative tone just so it feels like I'm ripping it apart.

Remove the objective entirely. I can talk at length about this, but I won't. Just get rid of it. Same thing with your address. Telephone, name, and email are sufficient.

If your skills weren't relevant, they wouldn't be worth listing. As such, the word relevant is redundant.

You have a lot of experience that suggests your skills extend way outside of UNIX. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like it would make sense to have less than 4/5 of your skills section as UNIX. Also, skills should be short lists of few words, not a few near-sentences. Your skills are basically redundant with your experience at this point.

Try to fit every sentence in one line. You have the entire page, so there is just no reason to go to two or three lines. I don't want your life story at each company.

Company 3 and 4 are effectively the same company. I'm not sure what the situation was, but it's a waste of resume real estate to list them both and have that overlap. It will cause unnecessary confusion. If you're asked for references or details, you can provide them at that time. For the resume, just list where you worked and be done with it.

You provide, perform, manage, and deploy more than a charity, circus act, high-powered executive, and wartime Marine combined. Go through your experience and rewrite sentences until your starting verb is rarely, if ever, your starting verb twice, and certainly not three times. You have a lot of experience, so that could be tough, but you'll figure something out.

To contradict myself, I would rather see two- and three-liners than see "deployed and supported" twice and a row. At least I'm not reading those three words twice that way.

Have at least one, if you not two or three sentences of each job description show a noteworthy accomplishment. You want to illustrate that you provided real value to that employer. Your job responsibilities at each job are almost immaterial if you didn't accomplish something valuable. Your current descriptions aren't that bad at doing this, but they're a little vague and get lost between all the specific technologies and vendors.

Speaking of technologies and vendors, there are way too many technologies and vendors. A techie might appreciate knowing specific vendors, but someone in HR is going to be overwhelmed. You need to get past HR, at which point the tech interviewer will figure out if you have the tech skills needed anyway. Keep some of the big names and more current stuff in there, since it helps with searches, but don't have quite so much. "UNIX" appears ten times in your resume; "HP-UX" appears four times; Solaris appears three times; AIX and Linux appear once. You know UNIX. Guess how many times the word "Windows" appears on my resume.

It just goes back to showing how you were valuable to the organization, not just what work you did with what technologies. Maybe you improved efficiency by doing X or completed Y project ahead of schedule or under-budget. I want to know what you did other than manage UNIX systems.

Finally, despite my recommendations of actually shortening certain sections, I feel like this should be a two page resume. I mean, once you combine Company 3 and Company 4, clean up the experience, and remove the Objective, it should fit on one page. Yet, you have 12-and-a-half years of professional experience, all of it relevant to your current career. It seems like the right formatting along with maybe a more comprehensive skill section would fill two pages. I know I struggle to keep it in one page, and I'm about six years behind you. Not that there's anything wrong with a one-pager -- prevailing wisdom says you better have something damn good to show if you go to two pages.

P.S. The word "server" appears 12 times in your resume, and SAN three times. AS400 should be AS/400. "Provide tier 1" should be "Provided tier-1". Your company 5 experience is present tense but should be past, like 2-4. HP-UX should always be HP-UX, never HP UNIX (unless there is a different product and I'm wrong, which is very possible).

Everyone

Agree with ptilsen for the most part.

Objective should go. Replace with summary. Something like "12+ years experience in Systems Administration, specialzing in Linux/Unix systems." You figure out that rest, but that should be a good start.

You don't need a skills section at all. I don't see anything in your skills section that isn't demonstrated in your experience, and that's the way it should be. Let your experience show your skills, and don't waste space listing them again in their own section. Removing that alone would probably get you down to a single page.

You're right on the edge. You either need to trim this down to a single page, or expand it out to 2 full pages. 1.25 pages is bad. Also you have a 3rd page that is blank, make sure not to leave an extra blank page when you send your resume anywhere electronically.

I'm not a fan of the lines, especially the thick ones, kind of distracting.

I'll repeat the same thing I seem to tell everybody. IMHO, bullets are for accomplishments. A small paragraph with responsibilities at each position followed by a few bullets showing accomplishments works wonders. Your resume looks average. You wouldn't stand out to me. If I was a hiring manager, you'd only get an interview if I had very few candidates to choose from. If I had many to choose from, your resume might get lost. You have to stand out from the rest. I want to know what kind of difference you made at each job, not just see that you had similar responsibilities to everybody else who's held similar positions.

cyberguypr

Everyone wrote: »

I'll repeat the same thing I seem to tell everybody. IMHO, bullets are for accomplishments. A small paragraph with responsibilities at each position followed by a few bullets showing accomplishments works wonders. Your resume looks average. You wouldn't stand out to me. If I was a hiring manager, you'd only get an interview if I had very few candidates to choose from. If I had many to choose from, your resume might get lost. You have to stand out from the rest. I want to know what kind of difference you made at each job, not just see that you had similar responsibilities to everybody else who's held similar positions.

^ This. You resume suffers of BFS (Bullet Fest Syndrome™). As Everyone mentioned save the bullets for key accomplishments that show how you brought value to the company.

Have at least one, if you not two or three sentences of each job description show a noteworthy accomplishment. You want to illustrate that you provided real value to that employer. Your job responsibilities at each job are almost immaterial if you didn't accomplish something valuable. Your current descriptions aren't that bad at doing this, but they're a little vague and get lost between all the specific technologies and vendors.

I said it last week in another post and will say it again, everyone has skills, not everyone can bring value. Show me what you can do for me and how you are different from every other techie out there.

LinuxRacr

Thanks for all the feedback folks. Keep it coming!

ptilsen wrote: »

Company 3 and 4 are effectively the same company. I'm not sure what the situation was, but it's a waste of resume real estate to list them both and have that overlap. It will cause unnecessary confusion. If you're asked for references or details, you can provide them at that time. For the resume, just list where you worked and be done with it.

I forgot to change the dates on company 4. I was a contractor for 6 months before getting hired on full-time at company 3. There is no overlap, but I wanted to fill in a possible time gap.

ptilsen

LinuxRacr wrote: »

Thanks for all the feedback folks. Keep it coming!

I forgot to change the dates on company 4. I was a contractor for 6 months before getting hired on full-time at company 3. There is no overlap, but I wanted to fill in a possible time gap.

I would still probably list it as one job. It was contract-to-hire and you were working at the same organization for an extended period of time, regardless of what organization gave you your paycheck.

LinuxRacr

Cool, noted.

Daniel333

Hey dude,

Thanks for letting us have a chance to learn from your resume.

Objective -
I'd start off by ensuring you know to always change your objective to reflect the specific job you are applying for. So there is really no comment I can make here. Generally you want to make sure it sounds like the job you're applying for.

Relevant skills – Drop version numbers unless the job specifically calls for version 10.1 or something like that. You want to stay relatively abstract here.

e.g.
I read a resume the other day where the person lists “Extensive Experience with Windows NT, 2000, XP, Vista and 7 “ then the next line listed “Extensive experience with Windows Servers including NT, 2000, 2003, 2003R2 and 2008” . This is wordy and can possibly date you. So you would be better off saying something like “Extensive experience with Microsoft Client/Server operating systems” say more with less.

And it's clear you know Unix by your skills list, what else can you do? Clearly cater this to the job but try and show that you can bring more value. Chances are you know RedHat, Active Directory, LDAP or any number of database tools. You might want to demonstrate that a bit more. Clearly as a Unix guy you must also rock at Perl, BASH, Ruby etc. This is a great spot to show that.

Education -
Cert should be listed separately. Plus, you need more certs. With your Unix experience you should be able to snag Linux+/LPIC-1 and CIW:Perl in a couple of weeks. Please go do that.

Unachieved degrees can hurt resumes. Either give it a “I wasn't in it for a degree” spin or drop it.
Secondly, explain what you did at these places.

e.g.
Joe Schools of Hard knocks (2008-Current)
Coursework included: Server repair, Perl Scripting, IT Security and Java Programming
Degree: Ongoing personal enrichment only

For your job list, I really would like to see the value you brought, not just what you did. Mangers want to see the words “improved, reduced, increased” every bit as they want to see “responsible, provided and managed”

The next thing you need to add is your professional organizations and volunteer work. These are very important to certain types of people. So get it on there. Join a Linux users group, volunteer at the library to teach Word/Computer repair etc.

I'll close by saying your Linux experience is extensive. Certify your experience a bit more then show how you can bring more miles to gallon than the other leading brand and you've got a winner.

LinuxRacr

All,

Here is my updated resume based on earlier feedback. It is still a work-in-progress (like the summary statement), but I believe I am headed in the right direction.

Attachment not found.

TE_LinuxRacr2.pdf

ptilsen

Looking better, but did you do accomplish anything in particular other than approving efficiency by scripting manual, repeatable processes?

LinuxRacr

I guess I need to expand my idea of what I can state as accomplishments.....

The company I work for has designed our IT department so that everyone has a very narrow scope of responsibility...Just like a big corporation. It makes career growth interesting.... In order to grow, you have to take training for stuff you will never use there, or move on...

ptilsen

LinuxRacr wrote: »

or move on...

Most likely this.

I realize it can be tough, but think about how your day-to-day impacts the rest of the organization. Even if the scope of what you do is narrow, the impact can be great.

If you started doing a sub-par job, how would it impact the organization? Would there be significant financial loss? If so, you are in turn bringing value. You just have to figure out how to phrase it.

LinuxRacr

Thank you. I have some ideas about where I need to focus.

LinuxRacr

Here is another revision of small changes I could think of.

Attachment not found.

TE_LinuxRacr3.pdf

Everyone

Looking much better.

LinuxRacr

Thanks for the help everyone. I've gotten all kinds of calls from my new resume....

Everyone

LinuxRacr wrote: »

Thanks for the help everyone. I've gotten all kinds of calls from my new resume....

It makes quite the difference doesn't it?

LinuxRacr

Yes, this is awesome! I need to put it out on a few more sites. I got 5 inquiries just today while I was at work... not to mention the 4 or 5 yesterday... All from putting my resume out on one site.

LinuxRacr

Hmmm... To cover letter or not to cover letter...

Essendon

LinuxRacr wrote: »

Hmmm... To cover letter or not to cover letter...

I reckon you should. While many recruiters dont give a f about a cover letter, but you'll see some job ads requiring a cover letter. You want a job, you do everything possible to ensure you get it quickly.

ptilsen

Essendon wrote: »

I reckon you should.

I'm inclined to agree. "Back in the day", I used to apply to jobs without cover letters. I remember applying to jobs I would be a perfect fit for, and never receiving any communication back, despite having a great resume. I definitely started getting a lot more interviews and offers once I started writing cover letters.

Now if it's a recruiter or the job ad says "send resume", you can probably get away without a cover letter. If, on the other hand, the job ad says "send cover letter and resume", you absolutely must send a cover letter.