Skills based resume?

Robertf969 · June 2015

Anyone have a good skills based resume template? Since a good amount of my experience comes from labbing its kind of hard to stick it in my work history as it would be lying and I refuse to lie on my resume. That being said its hard to get an interview unless you have what they are asking for. I think a skills based resume should give me a chance to brag about what I have done outside of the work environment and maybe get me some more interviews. I hate the skills based templates I have found on word or online. Anyone tried this approach? Should I just list a Home Lab section on my resume? I've tried putting it in the cover letter, but my buddy who's HR let me in on the dirty little secret, HR and hiring managers rarely read the cover letter until after they have decided to call you based on the resume.

DoubleNNs · June 2015

I usually just have a "Skills" section on my resume.
I have "Professional Summary", "Skills", "Professional Experience", "Certifications", and "Education" in their own sections. (Sometimes I combine "Skills" and "Professional Summary" - I have on my latest revision)

A large part of my skills are also obtained outside of work - some at home labbing and experimenting, others as by-product of a certification, some as things I've learned in a class. If it's a skill I think is strongly in-line w/ what I want my next job to be, I have no reservations of putting it on my resume. Nevertheless, I try my best to keep skills not mirrored in my Professional Experience section to a minimum.

TechGuru80 · June 2015

I have a Knowledge Areas type table with 3 columns covering operating systems, applications, programming languages. That seems to be a good way to present it and then you can go more in depth if you get a call. I put the table at the top below my name and contact information.

srabiee · June 2015

Unless you have a severe lack of professional experience, I would probably recommend leaving off anything that has to do with a home lab. This is a professional resume, after all. You do want to discuss your home lab experience during the interview, however. Alternatively, you can use the home lab to gain valuable study time and hands-on experience, and then obtain the corresponding certification. That you certainly want to include on the resume. After all, you earned it, regardless of where the experience and study time was derived. Again, you can discuss this during the interview process if necessary.

As far as a skills-based resume template, sorry I don't have one. Don't have much experience in working with anything but a "traditional" work history-based resume. Do you currently have a resume that you can upload for critique? I'm sure the forum members would be willing to critique it for you and provide valuable feedback.

Robertf969 · June 2015

I do, but I decided i'm done with IA Compliance, going to rewrite it geared towards Analyst. Interestingly enough I have a semi offer for an Analyst position that I got off of the the resume geared towards compliance (home lab for the win on those interview questions). I will revive my dead resume thread when I finish the new one.

Skills based resume?

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