Resumes!

[toddex]

What makes a really good resume!???!?!?! I am terrible with resumes! If someone has a really good resume they dont mind posting for me to..... TAKE IDEAS FROM! I would totally be thankful.

[KBF]

Are you also in a Career Planning type class and want examples? I haven't even started on mine...

But resumes are kind of personal. I don't think you can just blur out personal things, because I'm pretty sure that'd be most of the resume. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see an example so I don't make an idiot out of myself in class, but I'm not sure sharing something so personal is a good idea.

[toddex]

Are you also in a Career Planning type class and want examples? I haven't even started on mine...

But resumes are kind of personal. I don't think you can just blur out personal things, because I'm pretty sure that'd be most of the resume. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see an example so I don't make an idiot out of myself in class, but I'm not sure sharing something so personal is a good idea.

I wish those were mandatory when I was going to highschool! I mostly just want an example because I apparently suck ass at making resumes and the "Career" department's help at my campus is just using the MSword templates.

[Nomrom]

Well, I'd share my resume, but it hasn't gotten me a job yet, so I don't think it would be much help to anyone.

[Pocketa]

What makes a really good resume!???!?!?! I am terrible with resumes! If someone has a really good resume they dont mind posting for me to..... TAKE IDEAS FROM! I would totally be thankful.

1.) Not all caps, not ?!?!?!.
2.) Put the most important things first.
3.) Use a computer.
4.) No spelling or grammatical mistakes. Such as the ones I'm making.
5.) Maybe try using a resume maker.
6.) Depends on what its for. i.e. colleges, put the most important activities first.

[toddex]

Well I guess the only thing I can do is mayhaps throw my resume up for all to see and maybe get some critique action.


OK! Here is a screenshot of my current crappy resume.

http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=get&tp=555348

[Syka]

Well, a typical professional/scholarly resume lists stuff in chronological order, most recent experience first. Once you are in college and beyond, you generally leave out high school stuff. Now that I'm in a Masters program, I leave out my community college.

If you google "X-type resume" you can get a lot of information that way. I've recently started the internship search, so I googled Internship Resumes and found a TON of examples.

[Kcalehc]

Well I guess the only thing I can do is mayhaps throw my resume up for all to see and maybe get some critique action.


OK! Here is a screenshot of my current crappy resume.

http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=get&tp=555348

Not a terrible start.

Rule 1 of resumés: Don't lie, but be creative!
Don't put down anything you can't convincingly justify in an interview, they'll often know if you're making stuff up. But present yourself on your resumé as a professional. (make sure you really an type that fast consistently, they may just make you do a test!)

I'm guessing the blanked out parts are e-mail and street address. Good to include; if you're sending your resumé out electronicly (or anyways) put the e-mail on the same line (right justified) as your name in smaller text.

Include references if you've found anyone that'll volunteer, ake sure you ask them before putting their detais down! (or put "References available upon request" if you are in a hurry and don't have anyone available).

Formatting:
- Make stuff line up, e.g. the 'operating systems' bit is out of line, and makes the whole section look off.
- be consistent, e.g. your proficiencies section is formatted totally differnetly to the experience section.

Order:
You put that you can use a copier/fax before routers/hubs etc. Swap it around, if you're looking for a job with more routers/hubs than for one with copiers/faxes. Same with the top line, put which one you want most first.

Date the work experience, to the month. List them in order of most recent at the top.

Add education. Again, most recent at the top: school/institution, dates, course, overal grade/gpa.

"Bag boy"? I'm assuming you bagged groceries or similar (nothing bad about that, I once did that ;) ). Probably don't need to include that in the text, emphasise the customer service role, and the "shop floor presentation assistant" role (i.e. stacking shelves).

If at the hotel you coordinated the activities of other people (even if it's asking a cleaner to go clean something) then put that in. Leadership and people management skills are often useful.

Did your home business have a name? Use that. And you were 'self employed' not 'working out of home'. Add an approximate range for the work (in your town, city, state?), gives some impression on your willingness to travel as part of a job.

Thats all I can think of off the top of my head.

[Cyrion]

Suggestions on your resume-

Make it look cleaner; everything is running together right now. Maybe use a hanging indent on your descriptions?

Include dates on jobs.

You might want to change "servicing customers" to "serving customers." Just sayin...

Be consistent on use of verb tenses. In some places you've got worked and in others working. Without dates, that just looks like bad grammar instead of current jobs.

Don't use abbreviations like distros.

Highlight the skills and experiences you've had that apply to the specific job you're applying for. With only one page (Are resumes still under the one page rule? It's been so long since I've done a formal resume instead of the CV used in academia.) you've got to make sure you're making yourself attractive to prospective employers. The first three lines on customer support are repetitive with your job descriptions if you put dates on them. You could replace those with a statement of objective or something else that you wanted to include but didn't have the room for.

[pendell]

Here's mine (http://people.delphiforums.com/pendell1/resumedemo.doc), stripped of its contact information. I just signed a job offer with a company using it last week that pays close to $100K a year.

It was written professionally for me (at a cost of $150) by the folks at
CareerBuilder -- it conveys the same information as I had on my original resume, but jazzed up the fonts and modified the layout to make it more attractive.

I note in passing that both monster and careerbuilder offer free resume advice to anyone who uploads a resume to their sites, and the upload is similarly free. If you want them to rewrite it, of course, it will be very expensive.

Important things about a resume:

A) Put in the contact information that I took out for his demo out of respect for my wife's desire for privacy. Employers need to know how to contact you.

B) You're just starting out, so your resume is going to look a little different than mine. Try to keep it down to less than two pages.

List
A) Your name and contact information.
B) Everything super-neat about you that qualified you for the job (your mad skillz). In one paragraph, explain exactly why YOU are qualified to do this.
C) Since you're just out of school, your education comes next. Mention any special things like high GPA, *** laude, special awards and honors etc.
D) Supporting evidence for B above. Jobs you've held that directly apply to what you're applying for. If you're out of high school without work experience, list school experience or school projects or projects you've done on your own time. Give your manager a reason to hire you!

As you can see, I've only worked at one company since 1995, but I've had many different responsibilities. So each 'responsibility' is listed just as if it were a job, allowing me to emphasize my skills.

I keep two resumes: A "grey" resume that lists everything I've ever done, and 'targeted' resumes that are aimed at specific markets. I can do this because, as a 15-year career veteran, my 'grey' resume is 12 pages long, and no one wants to read that. So I trim it down to 4 pages with only those jobs that most specifically pertain to the position I'm applying for. The resume you're seeing is aimed at C++/Java development, so I've left off the three years I spent as a Smalltalk developer, the two years I spent as an operations research analyst, and a year as a substitute teacher.

I had to do this even when I had just graduated from college, so I had four resumes: A resume targeted at development, a resume targeted at system administration, a resume targeted at tech support, and of course the master resume, that all the targeted ones are built from. I'm not lying -- a resume is not meant to be a full summary of everything you've ever done from birth till now. Instead, it is an advertisement. It's purpose is to answer one specific question the employer has: "Why should I hire you?"


Remember, the employer has a big stack of resumes to go through. You can make yours stand out by

-- put the important stuff for the job right up front and emphasized. Don't make the employer have to hunt around to *guess* why you're the candidate -- she's got hundreds more files. If she has to guess or it isn't clear, she'll just toss it.

-- keep it short, brief, and to the point. Your manager is a busy person. Don't waste it. Long, meandering resumes turn people off and send it straight to the ash can.

-- Make it fun to read! I don't mean make it humorous. I suggest googling the hundreds of resumes out there and realize your employer looks at hundreds of these, and they all look the same. BLAH.

Look at resumes and find the ones that catch the eye and draw you in and make you *want* to read them. Make it exciting in a professional sense -- don't put something silly in that will mark you as unprofessional, but choose your fonts and your coloring like a newspaper article, to catch the eye of the reader and draw them in.

Those are general comments. I'll specifically look at your resume and post next.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[pendell]

Looking at your resume ...

1) Recommend breaking it out into two different resumes,
one for customer support and network, the other for clerical.

On the customer support resume, lose the typing skills
and the 'fax machines'. That isn't hardware.

On the clerical version keep the software stuff, as it's
a useful additional skill.

As mentioned earlier, say "distribution" rather than
"distro".


2) As said earlier, put dates up.


3) On your customer service /network tech resume, put
Home Run PC business front and center. That's exciting!
It makes you stand out!

Did the business have a name?

Build it up. Each of your entries should have a paragraph. Make
it three or four sentences and make it sound *sexy*.
Imagine you're writing the flavor text for an NPC in a
campaign. Something like:

"Network Troubleshooting business: Founder and CEO of <company
name here, if it was incorporated>. Repaired personal computers <what kind?>,
installed networks, and performed troubleshooting for customer base of <how many
people bought your services?>, including <some of the more important clients, if
the reader would know who they are. If you did work for your school, for example, say
"educational establishments">"

Really, the fact that you started and ran your own business is impressive. Talk about that.
Not more than a single paragraph, but really play that up and put it front row center.
It's exceptional. It says you're more than just a bag boy or another teenager. You've
got initiative, intelligence, creativity, and technical skill. You've done some good
stuff -- put it up in lights where everyone can see it!

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[toddex]

Well thanks for the tips everyone, currently rebuilding this piece of crud using your helpful info.

[Miklus]

Well I guess the only thing I can do is mayhaps throw my resume up for all to see and maybe get some critique action.

OK! Here is a screenshot of my current crappy resume.

http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=get&tp=555348

This is just the CV and not the whole application, right?

As others said, put times on the jobs and put that Home PC thing first. Do you have any education? High school or whatever? Then put that on there, below the jobs. If you had any training courses, put them on there too. Put in some language skills, if any.

It is nice that you write about the...somewhat lesser tecnical jobs. It shows that you can hold a job, meet on time and so on, but that you had greater ambition. The hotel thing also shows that you have some people skills, which is very rare in IT. :smallamused: Maybe elaborate on that a litte. Maybe they will say "This guy got people skills, let's make him a manager!".

[DraPrime]

I see one massive flaw in all of what is being done here. Simply, it's spelled résumé, not resume.

[Kcalehc]

I see one massive flaw in all of what is being done here. Simply, it's spelled résumé, not resume.

Although resumé is coming more common, simply because it fits phoeneticaly with how the word is said. Most wouldn't notice the difference I suspect in either case.

[Telonius]

As somebody who's had to sift through hundreds of the things looking for a good job applicant - this isn't a bad start.

Two of the most important things are (imo):
1. Don't get anything wrong. (Spelling, grammar, contact information, etc)
2. Tailor it to the job you're going for.

You do have a couple problems with the first thing. First line of the resume: "; with individuals and groups." If I see that, I'm moving on to the next applicant. It's not grammatical and sounds unprofessional. What you're trying to get across there is that you can work within a group setting as well as independently. Try, "Excellent training, troubleshooting, interpersonal, and problem-solving skills."

The colon after "all basic office equipment" should be a comma.

As some others have already said, put your strongest argument first. (This also goes along with "tailor the resume to the job"). Unless I'm hiring for a stockboy, I'm not interested in your job at Soo super valu. Some people find it useful to split the employment history into "relevant experience" and "other experience" sections. This does make it easier for the hiring manager to see if the applicant is actually qualified for the job, without having to search through the employment history trying to find things and (probably) getting too bored to care by the time they reach your good stuff.

You definitely need some more professional-sounding descriptions of your jobs. A common way of displaying the job is to list the job title ("stockboy," "front desk agent," etc) on the first line along with the employer and location. Then underneath it, list the job responsibilities. Don't list everything you did, just the aspects of that job that are relevant to the current one. For example, "interacted with customers" would be a possibility for "stockboy." "Answered incoming telephone calls," "Helped direct guests' questions to facilities management" might be things that you did when you were a front desk agent. "Answered client inquiries, designed systems to suit client needs, performed basic network repairs as needed" could be descriptions for your job as "owner" of ... (be sure to include the official business name of your home business, even if it's Toddex Inc.).

Do make sure you have all of your contact information in the resume. Just a few weeks ago I had to pass on an applicant who sent an otherwise great resume to our website's automatic "apply for a job here" page - but sent in a Word file with a macro where the applicant's contact info was supposed to be. When I looked at it, all I got was "<<Address book>>" instead of the email address, phone number, or fax number (which were presumably stored on the applicant's home computer). Great applicant, I'm sure - but I'm not going to take time out of my day to play private eye and track the person down.

[Mando Knight]

Here's mine (http://people.delphiforums.com/pendell1/resumedemo.doc), stripped of its contact information. I just signed a job offer with a company using it last week that pays close to $100K a year.

It was written professionally for me (at a cost of $150) by the folks at
CareerBuilder -- it conveys the same information as I had on my original resume, but jazzed up the fonts and modified the layout to make it more attractive.

If it's what got you the job, is was worth it... but $150 looks a little expensive to me for formatting a three-page document for me.

[Altair_the_Vexed]

I just went on a series of courses to help me get work, as my post was made redundant. I got a great new job, pretty quickly.

Here's what was said about writing resumés, or CVs as we call them in the UK.

You CV must be neat, and have the minimal amount of clutter. Line up all your paragraphs, don't use bold type except for headings, make sure the font sizes are consistent (the same size for each job title, or section heading, and te same size for all the body text). Use a sensible font (Arial, or Veranda, not Comic Sans!) and sensible colour (black). Print it on white paper, of good quality (80gsm or more is best).

Make a dummy CV that includes EVERYTHING you ever did, no matter how small. You aren't going to use this to send to employers, but you can use it to cut and paste stuff from.

Read the job description or advert for the post you want to get - and write a CV to show how you meet every one of the things the company is looking for.

Post: Roleplaying game designer with experience in producing pen-and-paper games under licence. Must be creative and show working knowledge of play-testing.

Your notes: Mention when I made a whole RPG campaign at your local club. Mention the RPG based on a TV show, show the research to make sure the material was canonical. Refer to creativity in both above projects. Mention the play test sessions run outside the club.
For everything you want to say about yourself and the work or education that you've done, you should work out the challenge, the action and the result, and present it that way:

Responding to player dissatisfaction with existing RPG systems, developed bespoke game in consultation with players and peer groups, delivering gaming with streamlined rules and measurably increased player enjoyment.

There's more to it than that, but those will really help your resumé to get past the employer's selection.