Job/Life Advice

Ok, so here is the situation I'm in...

I dropped out of high school and was acting like a rebellious teen at the time. Then I met my girlfriend which seemed like a long promising relationship, thus reality hit me. I did home schooling, got a diploma and started a 2 year schooling in Computer Networking & Management with Brandford Hall Career Institute. After about 2 months after starting the program, I got my first IT job as a IT Technician for a school system. Mind you, I'm naturally skilled with computers/IT. So with getting my first IT job, I had to take a huge pay cut in order to take my first steps in the IT industry, which was fine. However, I had to drop college because I could no longer afford it.

After working for almost 2 years with my first IT company, I needed something more challenging. I got a new IT job as a Helpdesk Tech. With in 3 months, I got promoted to Tier 2 Helpdesk Support. Everything was going well and life was good. I got engaged and was planning a wedding.

Now I'll explain how everything changed and now I need some help... My wife is from Canada. I was from Massachusetts. We got married in August 2012, in Canada. I quit my job in August as well and moved to Canada and was there as a "visitor" with a visitors visa while my application for permanent residence was in the works. I couldn't work or do any sort of schooling there so I built my own website by learning on my own and made it with full remote support, etc just to keep my mind busy. I got approved in January as a Permanent Resident in Canada. Now it's time to provide for my family......

The job market in London, Ontario is not bad. There are openings every week for IT Support or Helpdesk support. I literally applied to every job, however not a single employer called me back. It won't bother me if I went to the interview and didn't get the job. What bothers me is I never get a call back from anyone.

Is it because I have no diploma from college or degree? I do have my Comptia A+, which I know it doesn't mean much at all. However I do have plenty of experience in all sorts of IT environments. My wife is working 3 jobs at the moment just to stay afloat all the bills we have and it's getting tougher. Personally to me it seems that they are not even bothering to call me back because they rather hire someone that got a Canadian education vs someone who moved here and is taking the "Canadian jobs away from Canadians"....

Any advice would be really grateful.

Thanks so much,
-Styo

Edit: Here is a copy of my resume:

Older Resume 1: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1nSpCJI--xiZHhJRjVmbV85R2M/edit?usp=sharing
Older Resume 2: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1nSpCJI--xibWt5cnBIbW5fQk0/edit?usp=sharing

I made a new resume. Let me know what you guys think...
Current Resume: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1nSpCJI--xiaFRSbWRYdjNtRFk/edit?usp=sharing

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Comments

networker050184

The first thing I would say is how is your resume? This is the what is going to get you calls. Not much you can do immediately about a degree and you can't change the fact you aren't Canadian, but you can make sure you are putting the best piece of paper in front of employers.

I really don't know enough about the Canadian job market to know if not having a degree is holding you back. If it's anything like the US job market it shouldn't be a big deal though.

Styo

I got some help making my resume from some friends here that I met. I posted a link to a copy of my resume...

10Linefigure

Your resume looks good but there are some people in the community that really know the tricks. You could study for the Microsoft MTA exams if you are short on time or another CompTIA Cert. But depends on what you enjoy and what the market looks like. Ask if you have any questions.

gkca

Styo wrote: »

Personally to me it seems that they are not even bothering to call me back because they rather hire someone that got a Canadian education vs someone who moved here and is taking the "Canadian jobs away from Canadians"....

The thing is that employers here are looking for "Canadian experience", which you could easily gain getting any job, although the IT support would be the best bet for sure.
Also you might want to clearly state that you're eligible to work for any employer in Canada and don't require any additional visa/sponsorship.
And finally, I would suggest looking for the jobs in the GTA and possibly moving there especially since you're fluent in Russian and Ukrainian and there are quite a bit of companies that are looking for IT personnel fluent in Russian (although French or Mandarin would be even better).

Удачи!

networker050184

I'm not a big fan of the resume. The whole first half is basically filler and the experience section is pretty light. I'd reverse that and expand on your experience. Get rid of the technical and personal sections that are fairly useless in my opinion.

Styo

networker050184 wrote: »

I'm not a big fan of the resume. The whole first half is basically filler and the experience section is pretty light. I'd reverse that and expand on your experience. Get rid of the technical and personal sections that are fairly useless in my opinion.

I added my older resume that I was going to use...

[Deleted User]

Your MTAs are a good place to start to determine the exact path you wish to pursue (server administration, network administration, or database administration)

iBrokeIT

I like the older resume much better, just need to drop the "References are available upon request"... thats a given. What candidate doesnt have references that are available upon request?

I am with networker050184 on the skills portion of a resume. To me its just meaningless filler when someone lists "Microsoft Exchange" as skill without ever mentioning it on their resume again. What does that even mean? Did you watch a YouTube video on it once and played around with it in a VM for 3 hours? BAM, Ive got Exchange skills! *cringe*

A few more things, drop the Technology Summary and work those technologies into your job description. Create a certifications section below your education section and start studying for more certs during your downtime. Maybe mention you are a Canadian citizen in your objective since all of your experience is in the US.

I like the formatting of the older resume. A hiring manager should be able to skim your resume in under 30 seconds or less and get all the relevant details.

Styo

Thanks for all the help/input. I really appreciate it.

I will be re-doing the entire resume and make it as detailed as possible with the ability to look it over and get all the needed info at a glance.

BGraves

My resume related suggestions...
Your font sucks, makes my eyes hurt just looking at it. Times New Roman, at least 10 point. Your name should be larger and bold, maybe 14.
Move work experience closer to the top, don't make an employer hunt for it.

Move "Education & Certification" to the bottom -
"Academics" ? How about just listing "HS Diploma" if that's what you obtained?
How did you manage to complete a 4 year high school degree in 3 years? (I don't care about the answer, someone might ask, be prepared to answer, find a way to highlight some of your strengths or something)

A+ certification - CompTIA - Year obtained
Don't list it in between two education listings, even if you obtained it there. Separate it out.

Attention to detail matters. Spend time on your resume, it's your first impression with any potential employer.

For your skills and abilities-
Why do some of the bullet points end in periods and others don't?
Why is switches capitalized and other stuff isn't?
Why is servers, routers, switches, printers capitalized, but network cabling isn't?

You don't really need to separate "technical" and "personal" skills out. You already have a heading of "Skills and abilities".
Soft skills are important, what about Teamwork? Communication skills? Writing skills? Honest? dependable? Logical? Motivated? Common Sense? Critical thinking? If you possess them, feel free to list them if appropriate....

BGraves

You've got about 3 years of help desk/desktop support experience. Maybe list that somewhere and that you're targeting that kind of job.

Oh and your most recent "work experience"

"Applying for Permanent Residence in Canada" is not a job, nor is "volunteer" work a job title.
Built a personal website with fully operational remote support? What website is it? Use any web programming languages? What kind of remote support? How many people did you support?

Maybe try listing yourself as "Self Employed" during this time, or come up with a business name? "Creator of "blah blah website".

What have you been doing since 1/2014? If nothing..better update to "Present"...
Maybe list details here about how you moved to Canada and became a resident, teaching yourself new technology, searching for a job, etc.

Overall I'd just like to say that I feel for you and your wife....and at the same time, it seems like you need to get yourself any job you can find, at least until you secure an IT job. Best of luck

mikelau13

I am not sure about London, but so that you know, here in my company (small size) in Toronto we have 20 employees, 70% of us are non-Canada born Canadians.

Few things:

1. Don't be shame to write more things in your resume to make it 2 pages long.

2. Sounds like you are applying for help desk job (which English speaking is essential) while you are only good at Ukrainian and Russian speaking? C'mon, add English (or completely remove the line "Fluent Ukrainian and Russian" so people won't feel you can't speak English).

3. Put more technical terms/terminologies under your work experience - i.e. what technologies and skills did you used to resolve what type of problems for your previous boss? Listing a big bang of them under "skills" section is NOT ENOUGH!!! Any details about the IT infrastructure of the company that you worked on where you maintained 100+ servers? On-site service of any big name client at all? What tools did you use? What standard do you know? -- don't feel shame, write them ALL!!! To give you example - did you "support 100+ servers" or actually "support 100+ servers such that Oracle database, routing, DNS, Exchange, SharePoint, Web Farm server"??

4. Move your volunteer work and personal to the bottom because they are less important to get you hired (add a new section only for volunteer work if you want to)

5. "Canadian experience" is not super important (although it helps) as long as your previous working experience was not from 3rd world country, employers are not going to turn you down just because you worked only in USA or England, they are stupid if they do.

6. And do what BGraves suggested above.

networker050184

mikelau13 wrote: »

1. Don't be shame to write more things in your resume to make it 2 pages long.

I have to disagree here. With only two jobs to list you'd have to have done a lot of good stuff to stretch it to two pages. I wouldn't add filler just for the sake of making it two pages.

Styo

networker050184 wrote: »

I have to disagree here. With only two jobs to list you'd have to have done a lot of good stuff to stretch it to two pages. I wouldn't add filler just for the sake of making it two pages.

Before I started working in IT, I worked at Coca Cola as a Merchandiser. I didn't list it since it's not relevant to the IT industry...

Edit: Also, I'm so happy I remember this website. I used to follow this site a long time ago, you guys motivated me to get where I am today. Reading all of your replies means so much to me. Honestly, for a couple of days I thought that moving to Canada was a mistake (I had a good job in the US), but now I realize that this is just a speed bump.

I want to thank all of you for all your input/criticism/advice. You guys are honestly the best.

mikelau13

networker050184 wrote: »

I have to disagree here. With only two jobs to list you'd have to have done a lot of good stuff to stretch it to two pages. I wouldn't add filler just for the sake of making it two pages.

I think I was not clear here, i didn't mean that he need to *fill up* 2 pages, I just mean he can make it into 2 pages (well, something 1.5 page) because I guess he was forcing himself to make a barely 1 page resume.

It's not that 2 jobs making his resume short, it is if he haven't done much then his resume will be short. If he would change his resume style from "support 100+ servers" to "support 100+ servers such that Oracle database, routing, DNS, Exchange, SharePoint, Web Farm server", he can easily has a 2 pages rich content resume.

mikelau13

To add more for Styo:

Did you work for only "regarding desktop problems"? Any of them being used in mid/big size companies? Any of them requesting high security standard? Any of them being used in some professional environment such that university, hospital etc?

What "software" issues have you resolved? Any big name you can put here?

Were you working in a team environment? Did you contribute to any "project" type of thing (such that an update plan, release package, etc)?

I know some of them might sounds silly and not that valuable, but they add up.

astrogeek

Styo wrote: »

Before I started working in IT, I worked at Coca Cola as a Merchandiser. I didn't list it since it's not relevant to the IT industry...

My previous job was a truck driver, but I left it on my resume, as well as a few previous non-IT jobs. However, I focused on the customer service aspects of the job which would be relevent, not the driving a truck part. On the older jobs I didn't even mention what I did, but at least listed the dates I worked for them to show I do have a consecutive work history with no major gaps, an if you do have any gaps explain what you were doing during that time. In my opinion no work history is worse than showing some non-IT work history, especially if you don't have much IT experience to begin with.

My resume is 2 pages and I have just one IT job, so there is no hard and fast rule that yours needs to be a specific length. The main thing you want to focus on is to ask yourself, "Is this interesting to look at?" Studies have shown that a resume might get no more than a few seconds of eye time, so if it starts out boring then it won't matter what you put further down because nobody will ever get that far.

As far as your resumes, I don't like the 'current' one. Everyone is an excellent troubleshooter who works well under pressure, instead you should be putting in quantifiable things such as "Improved PC repair time by xx", or something along those lines if you can. The older one is better, but the Job Objective is way too generic and boring, and doesn't even really tell the reader what type of job you are looking for. Personally I would not list high school, I don't think that really adds anything. The college course is a little confusing, was it a course on CompTIA A+ or in Computer Networking? I know you explained this in your post, but just reading the resume alone is confusing. I would probably leave out the name of the degree 'Computer Networking & Management' and just mention that you acquired CompTIA A+ underneath like how you have on your newer version.

I don't claim by any means to be an expert on writing resumes, but I really like the one I have so if you want to see it just for an example shoot me a PM.

I also just wanted to add some technical bits on MS Word, I don't know the name of it but there is a feature that will stretch the paragraph from right to left, just like how you see in newspapers. It helps it line up on the right side much better. There's also a way to make the dates align on the right side and not accidentally wrap around like you have for Brandford Hall. I'm retarded with Word and it took me about 4 years just to figure out those two, but they are handy I must say

Styo

Ok, so I made a new resume.

I made the following changes that you guys recommended:

Changed my boring job objective to something new.
Added more detailed tasks to my previous work experience.
Changed the entire font and size
Made my "Education" more specific and correct
Changed "Technology" section.

I know some of you mentioned that having a 2 page resume is not bad, but most tell me to keep it short and to the point. I put as much as I could on 1 page.

Let me know what you think, be honest and criticize it/me.

Thanks so much for all of your time and help. Means a lot to me.

BGraves

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5-wHrIEZ-lMWWRQNHFzREJLamc/edit?usp=sharing

My suggestions, don't feel pressured to take if you prefer what you have. Just wanted to provide some ideas.
1 page is definitely the way to go with this particular resume and past experience, good choice.

Might consider getting a more "professional" email address. Yourfullname@outlook.com, gmail, etc. Wherever you can find it. It's nice to have a separate email address for job hunting, you can get a lot of spam.

Modify the job title based on what type of job you are applying for, that tends to help. Perhaps add bullets in if a particular job description lists skills that you have but aren't listed in the resume. "Experience with x software or hardware"

Just wanted to give some more ideas on how numbers matter on a resume. I prefer specific numbers if I have them, reasonable guesstimate if I don't.
You can always add $ amounts of equipment you were responsible for, etc.
#'s, $'s, and %'s are good for demonstrating how you impacted a company and brought value to them.

Your biggest weakness is the past year and a half of....not having a full time job. I'd certainly try to present that in a way that shows you were continuing your education (self study), or something.

Happy to see you're working on improving this and hope you do find something soon!

mikelau13

Your new resume definitely looks much better now.

The only thing I would strongly recommended is the location of your previous jobs - add USA to make them clear.

The reason is, not all employers know where are Windsor or etc, your resume will make them feel that you are a new immigrant from 3rd world country who just became a Canadian this year, then they would think all your previous job experience you were speaking a unknown language that are not useful to be a help desk in Canada, this can greatly hurt your chance to get interview.

astrogeek

The new one looks a lot better, I would imagine that should help get you more calls, and of course hopefully a job.

You might want to think about adding some terminology in the technical section, although this is more subjective. The reason I mention this is that it can help your resume get picked up in online searches if a recruiter is searching for particular terminology, for example, DHCP, TCP/IP, Ether-channel, etc. Although I personally hate listing that stuff I have it anyway mostly just to help it get caught by recruiters. I honestly don't even know if that really helped mine with getting job offers, so I'd be curious to hear other's take on that as well.

petedude

(to the OP)

And don't forget. . .

Get a few more (relevant) certs. You might have mentioned it and I might have missed it, but you should consider a multi-exam cert like the MCSA. You need to show a significant upswing in the skills department, and relatively soon.