Could someone look at my resume and tell me what kinds of jobs I should be applying for?

CowShark

Long story short: My fiancee got a job in Seattle. We had been living in Texas. I want to get a job in Seattle.


...but after I got my college degree (BA in Comp Sci--the BA because I bombed out of Calc 2), I couldn't figure out how to get a job with it, then I fell into a fun thing doing Quality Control at a place that produces DVDs, and sat around there for 6 years. Now I've been looking for a job, and I haven't been receiving a lot of interest, and I am starting to fret a lot about it.

I've been looking at Software QA jobs, because what I do now involves a some black box QA, but I haven't heard back from anywhere I've applied. I've started studying Java and playing around in Eclipse making doodads for Android, because it seems like something to mention on an application where they want someone who can get their head around some code, and I feel like I'd be reputable at something like that since I used to study it?

Job sites like Monster and even Craigslist postings where they link to an external site leave employers' contact info pretty obfuscated, so I've only managed to follow up on a couple jobs--the lone place I heard back from (where I'd applied for a "Junior QA Engineer" position) said they thought I'd feel "too senior" for the position. But I just want to get a job in/around Seattle that's light on manual labor or food preparation!

Strangers of the internet, what do I do with a resume like this? What kinds of avenues are good plans for the long-distance job seeker? (I've been sending resumes with my fiancee's address, because Texas seems to be a strike against me already)

CowShark
Address
Phone Number

Experience:
<DVD Post-Pro Company> February 2006 - Present
Quality Control Lead - DVD/Blu-ray Department
● Responsible for checking and troubleshooting programming, audio, video, and subtitles
● Team lead for up to 7 people, providing all QC job training
● Wrote or rewrote all training materials for the QC department
● Created quality control process for Blu-ray discs, used for all of <Company’s> Blu-ray catalogue
● Managed work flow for the Quality Control team in the DVD/Blu-ray department
● Consult with other departments to establish uniform functionality across DVDs
● Consult with subtitle department on standards and guidelines

<Title Research Company> December 2005 – February 2006
Typist
● Copied text from various documents to various other documents
● Typed up to 80 wpm

<Temp Agency> June 2005 - December 2005
Quality Control and Exceptions
● Checked phone shipments, matching massive quantities of serial numbers against
shipping forms
● Worked with shippers to resolve issues with orders
● Handled errors from various departments
● Managed inventory related to faulty orders
● Rerouted in-transit shipments
● Assisted other departments as necessary

Education:
[College] May 2005
BA, Computer Science with a Minor in English

Skills:
Proofreading – extensive experience reading in a proofing capacity for various projects
Programming – college level experience with C++, PHP, Java, x86 Assembly
Photoshop – experience manipulating images (for subtitles/DVD Extras)

bowen

You have a nice generic resume there. One comment I have is moving skills to the top, you want to grab their attention on what you can do, not where you've worked. I'd remove the "can type up to x wpm" unless you're looking for data entry. Just highlight more responsibilities at the job, any praise, so on.

You want to curtail it to what you're apply for and the company you're apply to. If you're going for a QA position? Do a QA centric resume like you've got here. Programming? Programming centric, make the QA stuff take a backseat.

Have you tried big names? I know there's a few in Seattle. Microsoft is one of the big ones near Seattle (not sure how far Redmond is from where you are).

Biggest question I have is : What do you want to do? Career path should be important, and not just something to pay the bills here.

CowShark

Well if I could bag a software QA job that'd be lovely, but it seems like many places want a dude to have experience using one scripting/programming language or another to do automated tests, and where I work, the only watchword is functionality. Partly, I'm posting this to find out if anybody knows I am barking up the wrong tree. Preliminary applications to jobs haven't been going so well!

Mainly I am interested in paying the bills and reuniting with my sweetheart. I am not entirely concerned about my career path as much as I am just finding something interesting and stable that I'd be able to do for a while, like how I'm 6 years into my current position. If I could land something anywhere around, Kirkland, Mukilteo, Bellvue, Seattle proper--I am a hoss on the road.

I would make the commute.

Iceman.USAF

Honestly I have no idea what you do from reading your resume, or how you've positively impacted your company. You need to tailor your resume to every job you apply for.

I don't mean to come off callous, but you really need to sell yourself. I think there's a lot of potential in what you say you do, it's just not on the paper.

CowShark

I check the programming on DVDs to make sure they work correctly. I watch the video, listen to the audio, and read the subtitles to make sure they're all as they should be. If not, I source the problems, find the person(s) responsible for providing those things to the DVD authors--or the DVD authors themselves--and get them to fix the problems, then I write reports that tell everybody what needs to be fixed next time we run the DVD through Quality Control.

I am the first person that worked on Blu-ray discs at my company. I had long talks with the guy who programmed them about what kinds of things we'd have to do to make sure they were sound products. We never had to fix any problems with Blu-ray discs post-release during the time I was the only person checking them. Lately, we haven't had to fix a problem with a Blu-ray disc in over a year (knock on wood).

Currrently there are 6 employees in my group (used to be 7). If we have a prospective hire, I wrote, administer, and evaluate the test to see if they've got the eyes/ears/English to cut it. I wrote all the training materials for employees performing Quality Control. I taught all but one dude in the group how things are done here. I watch our schedule, try to make sure we're working on what we should be to make deadlines, and tell my boss when deadlines are likely/unlikely/impossible. I talk to the guys who program DVDs about design stuff, like how the DVDs should function. Whenever the subtitle department writes new guidelines I am one of the people they run those by--to see if I have any input (or to help them proofread). I write long, futile emails to my boss about problems in the English scripts for shows, things that'll never be fixed because we don't have time.

How do I sell that to somebody in resume format?

dnns

If you're looking for software QA jobs, they'll be looking for experience with specific tools, e.g. Bugzilla, and processes and you don't really have any of that in your resume.

Look through the job descriptions and note down what tools they expect you to use and learn them. Then add them to your resume.

Also, try tech placement/headhunter agencies. They'll know the job climate for the area and will be able to help sell you to companies.

Figgy

Just on the resume content itself, there's a lot you can work on. Lots of simply stuff too, that employers are going to notice right off the bat from reading hundreds of resumes.

For example, stick to the same tense when listing duties at a job.

● Managed work flow for the Quality Control team in the DVD/Blu-ray department
● Consult with other departments to establish uniform functionality across DVDs

Also, use a thesaurus to break up the verbs a bit. Don't try to use longer words for the sake of it, but having "Consult" and then "Consult" is distracting.

see317

Bowen already mentioned it, but expand the skills and move that section to the top. You want interviewers to know what you can do for them, not what you've done for others.

I see under <Temp Agency>, you mention that you worked in shipping and inventory management . These are skills that I'd put down. What software did you use to track shipments? What hardware did you use to track shipments? How did you manage inventory? There's a huge difference between the Gas Station inventory (look around the store, "Meh, looks like we're stocked to me an these cookies are only a week past the sell by date") and real inventory (Check the inventory database, notice you're down to your last 4 boxes of widgets, enter an order for another dozen). If you worked for multiple companies while under the Temp Agency, you might want to consider listing them. Mention you where a contractor with Company X where your duties include ABC.

As a typist you copied documents, I don't know how the job works. Did you just get a hard copy of the documents each morning? Or were they scanned into an application that you copied them from? Did you use any specific word processor or just type them into notepad? Did you save them as .PDF(experience with Adobe Writer) or as .DOC(experience with MS Office Suite)? Did you have to enter the documents into a database or spreadsheet to show they'd been completed?

Under <DVD Post-Pro Company> you mention that you are a team lead and you said you've interviewed prospective new hires, as well as creating and grading tests to evaluate potential new hires. These are all HUGE skills that a lot of people don't have. You mentioned that you also designed and maintained training documents, put "Technical Writing" as a skill. Did you put these on any kind of knowledge base or company wiki? Those are skills too (I think on my resume I have that listed as "Maintaining and updating knowledge management systems (including Knowledgebase, SharePoint and Wiki based environments)").

What I'd suggest is you go through your resume, and anything under the jobs that you can realistically see using in another position you put that under skills.
You may want to separate the skills into sections (Maybe change "Skills" to "Qualifications"). Professional skills that tell what you've done (Team Lead, Interviewing, Training, Data Entry), Technical skills for the tools you've used to do those things (Photoshop, Office Suite, Programming using language X,Y, Z, Proofreading). This is where you'd put 80 WPM, it's a skill not just for that position but for any job where you'd be typing a lot. Also, consider things that you learned in school but haven't used much. You've got a BA in Comp Science, I'm betting you had to take some kind of database design course for that, probably some web design course to tie in with your PHP and Java course work.
Stuff you haven't used in a job can also be a skill. When was the last time a family member called you asking you to fix their computer? That's troubleshooting and maintaining computer hardware.
You fixed it by installing antivirus and an anti-malware software then running a defrag on the hard drive? That's troubleshooting and maintaining computer software.

Don't bullshit, and for the love of all that's holy don't lie.
But don't sell yourself short either.

Figgy

see317 wrote: »

Don't bullshit, and for the love of all that's holy don't lie.
But don't sell yourself short either.

Well, don't lie. But do bullshit exaggerate.

See, most applicants are going to be exaggerating. And employers are going to be expecting a certain level of exaggeration. If you're completely straight forward and honest, there is the possibility that an employer will expect your honesty to be an exaggeration. Couple notches down already.

I mean, don't say you've been to Jupiter when you can barely ride a bicycle, but you're selling yourself. Be a salesman.

Draygo

Exaggeration can be risky. You dont want to jot down that you have a good knowledge of PHP when you only dabbled in it for a year for example. You can definatly embelish around the edges.

Also cover letters. A short one paragraph on why you are awesome does help in some places.

Just from a generic standpoint, you have been to college and you do have a degree. And you have over 6 years experience in the workplace. You can apply for a LOT of positions, Make a good generic resume and for the places that you are not particularly gung-ho about working just spread the genric one around. The places that you absolutely want to work at you should tailor your application for (as people are suggesting). If you push out 100 applications you probably are not going to want to talior every single one to that particular company, especially if you are applying for hold-over jobs.

On the research company, there must have been more things you did than just type. and as others have pointed out the WAM isn't needed.

Include an email address in the header as well as your address and phone number. Make sure your email address is a perfessional sounding one. You dont want to be sniperguy72372 at gmail dot com cow.shark@gmail.com with cow and shark as your first and last name works. Add another dot and middle initial if taken.

Make sure you are including the place you were educated at, unless its a college with a really bad reputation. Sometimes being from the same school as the recruiter can put you in a favorable light, or at least give you a good topic in the interview. I dont know if you omitted that because its private and you plan on adding it in later.

CroakerBC

<Disclaimer: Whilst I am a software QA Analyst, I'm in the UK, so the below may vary>

What you were doing at <DVD Production co.> looks more like hardware/embedded systems QA than software. But I don't have enough to be sure, so the following may be a bit generic:

1. If you were leading a team of 7, then you presumably wrote up test plans/scripts for people to use while checking quality and so on; this is worth mentioning.
2. If you did anything with Test Strategies (that is, high level documentation which indicates not what will be tested, but how), this is always useful. If you have any experience with that sort of documentation, mention it.
3. If you wrote up test scripts for other members of the team to follow (click here, then do this, then check this is still in HD, then pause, then fullscreen, then check that the sound still works, etc, emphasise this.
4. Terminology. Like every profession, we've got our own jargon. When looking over CV's, the trinity for black-box testers is 'Functional' (making sure it works), 'Compatibility' (making sure it works in various browser/OS/device configurations) and 'Regression' (testing that everything that wasn't supposed to be changed remained the same, and didn't get broken in integration). If you can, fit these terms around what you did.
5. Defect tracking/management. If you were in charge of quality, you must have used a bug tracker of some sort, you must have logged a defect every now and then, you must have talked over <potential problem x> with product owners and internal/external stakeholders. Mention this. "Defect management throughout the software development lifecycle' is the popular phrase.
6. Communication. Communication is great. You already touched on this with providing test materials to your team. If you liaised with any other departments, internal or external stakeholders, mention it - 'reporting test team status to stakeholders' or similar.
7. If you used automation mention it. Automation is hot right now. Open source is especially popular (Jbehave, Selenium, Cucumber et al). If you don't have it, as many of us don't, it's not a mark against you - but if you do, businesses will see it as a fringe benefit.

All of the above might well be covered by your first bullet point of "Responsible for checking and troubleshooting programming, audio, video, and subtitles " , but as a potential interviewer, I don't know that. Did you spend five years following scripts someone else wrote to make sure everything works? Or did you do everything, from the nitty gritty testing, through writing scripts for others, up through directional planning to high level organisation? It's not clear from what you have here, and that may be an issue. You need to spell out exactly what you've done, not just to draw in a potential interviewer, but also to get past the initial HR barrier, where someone unfamiliar with the work is scanning CV's for key words before forwarding it on (see 'Functional', 'Regression', 'Compatibility', 'Automation' above).


ETA: Feel free to PM me if any of the above helps/needs clarifying. Always happy to lend a hand to someone in the field.

bowen

If you have numbers like "I saved the company $10,000 by saving bug XYZ by practices I developed while working as lead QA" those kind of things look good. Businesses like to see numbers.