Resume review to see if I should change it...

Okay, here's mine with minimal changes to names and locations, a few errant spaces between lines got in while editing.

Points to note - aside from jobs 4 and 9, nearly all my work has been contract assignments, so what may look like job hopping really isn't. But try explaining that to some clueless temp agency worker who doesn't know JACK about IT.

Shoe Box IT resume

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Danielm7

Just doing a quick pass a few things stick out. First, if you don't want the "clueless temp agency worker who doesn't know JACK about IT" to make a mistake about your contract jobs, then make it obvious that they were contract jobs. You could put "contract position" or something similar on each role that you were a contract so they can easily see that you don't job hop every 3 months.

Lose the "references available upon request", everyone knows that already.

Some people might disagree, but as a guy who's age is likely pretty similar, I'd drop the date next to your college work, it only makes you look older. Especially when your IT work started in 2003.

Also, not sure if the different font sizes was intentional to bring less focus to your older jobs, but it makes it look more like you copy/pasted the 2nd half of your resume from another file and never corrected it.

I'm not a huge fan of the 1 page resume "requirement" that some people feel the need for, but 3 pages for all mostly desktop support type roles can likely be brought down to two without too much effort.

636-555-3226

Lot of job hopping. Make sure you note you were a consultant or contractor for each of those or else you're going to have some 'splainin to do

Shoe Box

Thanks for the ideas so far. You're both right, I have always felt that "references available upon request" was unnecessary, and adding the words "contract assignment" next to the employment dates would help shorten some employer conversations. I have had to explain the contract assignment thing many times.

I intentionally use a bold font for the headlines, like the company and job title and dates, then regular unbolded font of the same kind for the descriptions.

Danielm7

As for the fonts, this is what I'm seeing in Word 2013
http://i.imgur.com/eRy6q2M.jpg
the more recent jobs are twice the size of the older jobs.

Shoe Box

Oh wow, yes, it is not like that in my copy, everything is the same size font (the smaller size), just with headlines bolded. I made it in Word 2010, as a .docx file, I wonder why it shows up to you with one page in much larger type.

jibbajabba

Danielm7 wrote: »

I'm not a huge fan of the 1 page resume "requirement" that some people feel the need for, but 3 pages for all mostly desktop support type roles can likely be brought down to two without too much effort.

Nah I think that time has passed - At almost 40 years old I'd struggle to keep it to 3 pages .. If I'd include all certs I'd probably fill half that lol

Shoe Box

At nearly 3 pages, my IT resume is stretching back to 2003, in my previous life as an Electronics Technician. I probably don't need to go back that far, but when I was starting out I felt the need to fill the history and show a learning and job progression curve. I should probably trim it back a bit. I also think maybe I should include my status as a veteran on it, maybe after the college degree, just one line. It could replace the "references upon request" line.

SpetsRepair

Like others have said the short term contracts usually end up hurting us in the long run

But try explaining that to some clueless temp agency worker who doesn't know JACK about IT.

That's true im tired of getting interviewed by people who have to test me, meanwhile they don't know what ftp is actually used for

srabiee

I agree that contract work should be specifically labeled as such. Perhaps list the contract and contract length under the date range for each position that was contract work.

Try expanding upon your professional summary a bit more, maybe get a few more sentences in if you can. ptilsen has a really good one, I will link you to it below.

Within the professional experience section, each job description should begin with a high-level overview of your daily duties and responsibilities, and then use bullets to highlight special achievements, projects, promotions, etc. Don't rely solely on bullets like this. I will link you to a resume that's a great example on how to format and write this properly.

I agree with the others that 3 pages is quite lengthy, I usually recommend capping it at 2, but I understand if you feel that you can't cram everything into 2 pages. But that also brings up the question regarding just how much past experience we should be listing as IT professionals, especially once we exceed the 10 or 15+ years experience mark. I don't know the answer to that, but it's definitely a good topic for debate. I suppose a good rule of thumb would be to remove the oldest stuff that no longer directly pertains to where you are at now. IDK

Within your bullets, try to vary your language a bit more than this and write as academically as possible. For example, I noticed that you used the terms "provided" and "setting-up" excessively and consecutively. The thesaurus is a great tool for avoiding this. I will also link you to a list of IT action verbs.

This is an excellent resume guide with example resumes, a huge list of action verbs, sample summaries, etc:

http://www.filedropper.com/resumeguide

This thread contains a fantastic example of a properly formatted and written resume (ptilsen's resume):

Resume time

Someone recently uploaded this document regarding the "STAR Method" of writing resume content. You may want to take a look at it and see if it helps you.

http://www.filedropper.com/starmethod