Career Crisis! Please help with a direction and resume!

I've read a ton of things on this website and seen some amazing answers so I hope someone can assist me as well.
Bullet Short-story:

* I work as an IT Security Admin (yes my resume shows my actual job title but we know how these things are) but the only thing I do is application access management (request accounts?) and account provisioning. It's all email and front-end web based.
* I have been studying for CISSP but feel it's not the right direction since I thought I wanted to be some crazy hacker/pen tester/internet god and then I found tech exams and realized that position is filled as well!
* Okay, back to being more serious..there aren't any positions around here wanting a CISSP with minimum experience (less than 10 years). I also think I should get some more technical hands-on before pursuing something of a management certification.
* The only other thing I've done years ago was Help Desk.
* I was honorably discharged from the Army and during that time I learned Facebook. I was in IT and worked in the information assurance office but really we didn't do much except desktop support for windows migrations, did some audits for non-complaint computers that needed patched. Did a little bit of Retina Vulnerability scanning (where the audits came frrom).
* As you will see on my resume the "good job" I had with the small company only lasted a little over a month. It was working for a temp service and I was sort of a fill-in (didnt know it at the time). But during that time I spent late hours trying to play around with the server 2008 R2, hyper-v, VOIP, firewall, etc.
* Currently attending community college for a liberal arts degree (didnt want to waste transfer credits) with an IT emphasis. The server certificate I earned from the other college was on server 2003 so I have barely any hands on servers, routers, switches, hyper-v, etc.
* Have played around with Virtual Box, VMWare clients, some Linux distros, ect in my small home lab I use to have.
* My Security+ was grandfathered from 2008 - and in the army I did teach Security+ (not much technical there)
* McAfee HBSS cert was just a boot camp, have taken boot camps for CISCO routers/switches also.

I asked my current boss if there were any positions open and he wanted me to tailor my resume showing off my technical skills - and mostly the server stuff so I changed this resume.

So question 1) Based off the info above and my resume..where do you feel I should look for positions with? I don't really know what I want to do but I'm leaning more towards Servers or something in Networking.

Question 2) Changes to resume? RESUME LINK

Thank you all for the help and sorry it was so long!

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Comments

bgold87

So what is it that you want to do? You've mentioned networking, security, servers, helpdesk all in one post. I didn't read your resume, but I would say your first step is to take a look at everything you have touched and which one of those really piqued your interest. Once you have that, then you can chart your course and reach your goal.

bhankins000

bgold87 wrote: »

So what is it that you want to do? You've mentioned networking, security, servers, helpdesk all in one post. I didn't read your resume, but I would say your first step is to take a look at everything you have touched and which one of those really piqued your interest. Once you have that, then you can chart your course and reach your goal.

Thanks bgold87 for your response. I did some research on all this last night and think my initial self-assessment with going for the CISSP is a little bit much given the area I reside in. I've 'touched' routers/switches and servers; I think I'm going to go for the MSCA.

If anyone else has any feedback or can help with my resume - much appreciated!

srabiee

You really need to edit this thing down to no more than two pages. Three pages is definitely excessive. I would begin by changing the font to 11 pt, and then seeing if there's any content that can be trimmed. Once you do that, can you re-upload this in PDF format for further analysis?

instant000

Don't knock training people on the Security+ as if it is nothing.

Some people need that training. Heck, some people want that training, and will pay for it!

As far as the Resume, that IA job needs to have all of its stuff moved down to the second page, so that you can keep the title with the job description.

Also, if you eliminate some of the extra blank lines, that might help to shorten it some, also.

Also, did you modify your school dates? It would seem that you would have had the 25B school (if you have the same MOS that I did) before you started working the helpdesk. Why does it show the school in 2009? I remember that I had to minimally sign up for 6 years when I took that MOS (when it was 74B, before it was re-numbered to 25B). At least, your resume looks like 25B, it could very well be something else.

P.S.: Please connect on LinkedIn, and be sure to join the "Veteran Mentor Network"

bhankins000

srabiee wrote: »

You really need to edit this thing down to no more than two pages. Three pages is definitely excessive. I would begin by changing the font to 11 pt, and then seeing if there's any content that can be trimmed. Once you do that, can you re-upload this in PDF format for further analysis?

Thanks! I made some changes will have reply to the thread and upload it!

But here it is: Resume Changes

bhankins000

instant000 wrote: »

Don't knock training people on the Security+ as if it is nothing.

Some people need that training. Heck, some people want that training, and will pay for it!

As far as the Resume, that IA job needs to have all of its stuff moved down to the second page, so that you can keep the title with the job description.

Also, if you eliminate some of the extra blank lines, that might help to shorten it some, also.

Also, did you modify your school dates? It would seem that you would have had the 25B school (if you have the same MOS that I did) before you started working the helpdesk. Why does it show the school in 2009? I remember that I had to minimally sign up for 6 years when I took that MOS (when it was 74B, before it was re-numbered to 25B). At least, your resume looks like 25B, it could very well be something else.

P.S.: Please connect on LinkedIn, and be sure to join the "Veteran Mentor Network"

Thanks! I changed the resume up a bit I'll post a reply to the thread and post the link.

The school dates are correct, I actually put the months in there as well. Think I should keep the months? Hate to say it but that one job was really, really short so was trying to hide behind the year numbers rather than be exact.

I didnt mean to knock teaching too much. I loved doing it actually and after I get my degree its what I want to go back into maybe part-time at a community college.

I'll look into the LinkedIn - thanks again.

bhankins000

Would anyone look over this updated resume and see if there were any changes/suggestions/idea's you would make to this to make this better? Or do you think this is good?

RESUME LINK

Thanks for all your help!

-B