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Make my resume/cv awesome
Jimmy King
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Alright, it's time to tell my current employer to go to hell. First, though, I need to have a new job lined up. Doing that means having a bad ass resume. Honestly, I'm not sure it's so bad as I've never really had trouble getting interviews - it's that next part, getting the job that I usually screw up, anyway. But that's not reason to not make this thing better.
So, here's a link - My resume!
Some specific questions:
1) Bullet 3 on my current job. Is that cool like that? Should I find some way to remove the stuff in parentheses and word it some other way? If I should change that, how? I'm not sure of any relatively concise way to do it - more bullet points, perhaps, but I'm not sure that would look very good.
2) The "Personal Projects" section. Good thing? Bad thing? On the one hand, it seems kind of cheesy. On the other hand, it shows I've got an interest in this stuff beyond just having a job and I enjoy it. It shows that I work with this stuff on my own to learn more and can work with many different technologies.
3) My current job I have shown as all one long term of employment. In reality, I got hired and then laid off 6 months later. Then I was hired back just over 6 months after that. I assume combining them into 1 thing is the better route to go, since it looks better and allows me to not duplicate a bunch of crap.
Now, related but not directly on my resume, is the portfolio question. I am of course willing to show source code for the personal projects as a sort of portfolio and proof that I can really do this stuff and do it fairly well. What is the best way to actually get this to employers and get them to look at it, if that would truly be of any help at all? I of course have websites up that they can see functioning, one has the source code for most of these available for download, a couple of these projects are in a web accessible svn repository (and any others can obviously be added). Is this the best way to go about it? Should I put this stuff on a CD that I bring to interviews? Should I forget about the idea because no employer gives a shit anyway?
Damn, I just noticed this is the 3rd or so active resume thread currently. Must be something in the air.
Update: Shortened version
So, here's a link - My resume!
Some specific questions:
1) Bullet 3 on my current job. Is that cool like that? Should I find some way to remove the stuff in parentheses and word it some other way? If I should change that, how? I'm not sure of any relatively concise way to do it - more bullet points, perhaps, but I'm not sure that would look very good.
2) The "Personal Projects" section. Good thing? Bad thing? On the one hand, it seems kind of cheesy. On the other hand, it shows I've got an interest in this stuff beyond just having a job and I enjoy it. It shows that I work with this stuff on my own to learn more and can work with many different technologies.
3) My current job I have shown as all one long term of employment. In reality, I got hired and then laid off 6 months later. Then I was hired back just over 6 months after that. I assume combining them into 1 thing is the better route to go, since it looks better and allows me to not duplicate a bunch of crap.
Now, related but not directly on my resume, is the portfolio question. I am of course willing to show source code for the personal projects as a sort of portfolio and proof that I can really do this stuff and do it fairly well. What is the best way to actually get this to employers and get them to look at it, if that would truly be of any help at all? I of course have websites up that they can see functioning, one has the source code for most of these available for download, a couple of these projects are in a web accessible svn repository (and any others can obviously be added). Is this the best way to go about it? Should I put this stuff on a CD that I bring to interviews? Should I forget about the idea because no employer gives a shit anyway?
Damn, I just noticed this is the 3rd or so active resume thread currently. Must be something in the air.
Update: Shortened version
Jimmy King on
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Are you not including an objective/summary because you plan to include that in your cover letter(s)?
Just for reference, I conduct interviews for a large software developer group but I am not the one who originally calls them in. This means my opinion of resumes may or may not be correct :P
I intend to probably remove a personal project or two that I don't really find the quality of code up to my current standard (stuff written 3+ years ago that hasn't been maintained/cleaned up) or that doesn't really show anything special that the other projects don't already show.
Yes, I'm of the "objectives/summaries on your resume are crap" crowd. Not that, were I hiring, I would toss out a resume that has one like some people claim they would. I just don't feel they're terribly useful. I'm applying for a developer job. I've got experience as a developer. What more could I put that explains what I'm shooting for here without turning the resume into a book on why I want to work for you/why you should hire me. I feel a cover letter is a much better place for that stuff.
The resume does seem very long - you should probably have a one-page resume. I think if you condense your duties into the most important 4 or 5, you can still convey that you wear many hats/ do many things. As it is, you're sort of "spamming" the reader with so many items on the list. You want your most impressive accomplishments to stand out quickly.
If this was just your resume being evaluated for something (like in an in-house promotion), then having lots of entries might have the desired psychological effect of conveying that you keep busy, wear many hats and are essential. In the job application context, it is more likely that they won't read any part of your resume thoroughly.
As for the "personal projects" section - the value in this section is if you have done personal projects which show talents and strengths not in your job duties - different languages, kinds of network administration, etc. If they're hobby projects using skills clearly demonstrated in the professional section of your resume, I wouldn't bother. I would only pick the most impressive 2 or 3, and keep everything on one page.
I'm happy to take a chop at spelling/grammar edits and strengthening the resume language after you pare down the resume a bit. We can play with formatting to get more space, too.
Certainly a common feeling about resumes and one that I, in some ways, agree with and am all for finding a good way to do. I have no idea how to do that without either ending up with an unreadable format or removing anything that makes you stand out and makes the resume look like a list of accomplishments and how awesome you are. When I cut this stuff down to 1 page, I feel like it becomes a bulleted list of what I did in the most boring and plain way to state it - ie. what I did, but now how well I did it or what benefits it brought the company that I did so.
That's exactly the goal of the personal projects section. My professional experience is primarily Perl, some Tcl, and a very, very, tiny bit of .net and basically all web apps. The personal projects section shows java, non-web apps, clients to web services, etc. Things that I have not done or have done very little of in my job.
Definitely would be appreciated. My spelling is generally strong and my grammar usually isn't too bad, although can frequently use some help in the "abuse of commas" area. I'm sure there's some work that could be done to make it better specifically for a resume, though.
I know you did a lot, but I would cut down to no more than four bullet points per job, then use the interview to elaborate.
Also, I'm viewing the doc online, so it may not show, but you should turn your contact info into a header if it isn't formatted like that already, so that they can keep track of the pages and have your info in case they lose the first page. I've seen this happen first hand in my last office. People get lazy and stuff just falls behind a desk, and no one bothers to reprint if there's another seven applications in front of them who are also qualified.
absolutely. they do keep digital copies, but if you look on something like monster.com or careerbuilder for a job, your resume is faxed to the office in which it was sent. FAXED!
as soon as HR gets the resume, they print off a copy to give to the hiring manager. He or she usually doesn't see the digital copy, and in past jobs after the resume is filed with the application, both in a digital file and hard copy, your original sent copy is shredded and deleted. It's always good to have contact info on every page.
Also, under tech skills, I didn't look very hard, but if you have any certifications (including your degree) they need to be listed before your skillset. A lot of HR people will look for keywords in the skillset for initial sorting, and you want to end up in the good pile, and unfortunately many of them are told "the main pile gets anyone with "X" cert. on their resume at the top.
I would still list them. I used to not list anything I had until I realized that the only calls I was getting were from staffing companies instead of the actual companies. I met with a counselor who told me about all of this HR stuff, and started listing certs first, and within two weeks I was getting better offers. I'm just saying, a complete lack of certs can sometimes, unfortuneately, get your resume thrown to the bottom of a pile.
1) Best place to put the certifications? Good way to list them? Put them up with the hardware and software tech stuff? Down by the education?
2) I'm thinking the CMS stuff and perhaps the Diet Tracker thing are the best to remove from the Personal Projects section. The ASP.Net version of the CMS was planned for removal anyway, the code is nothing I want to show potential employers anymore. The Perl CMS is decent quality code, but it's what I do at work, so doesn't really show off anything new. The Diet Tracker thing was also on its way off of the resume, the back end code is pretty shit and the web front end is shit, the separate SOAP client is fairly decent, but nothing particulary special.
That would leave a C#/XNA game, a non-web app perl script which is fairly useful, and a somewhat complex Java/j2ee app.
Check them out, if just for the resume stuff. I'm not saying their resume is the way to go, but it will help you think in a new way.
I removed the less impressive/cool/different from what I do at work personal projects. I removed some of the fluff bullet points, although there are still several for my current job, but I seriously do a fuck ton of stuff here since I've essentially taken over for 4 or 5 people who have left, and several of the wordier bullet points have been shortened but hopefully retain all of the same information.
It is now about 1.5 pages. 1 page just isn't going to happen without making the resume total shit, imo.
just something i noticed.
ouch. good catch. "of" is so small I didn't see the little red line in word telling me I had done something retarded.
I mean, lots of people do lots of stuff.. not many people do it well.
I completely agree with what you're saying and that should be the goal, but apparently I have no idea how to do so. I sit down, I write code, it works. Sometimes there's a bug, I read code, I fix the bug. Did I save the company $100000 or $5? Who knows? Did I write the code really fast? In most cases, I feel I did, and everyone seems surprised at how fast it was done. Writing code quickly doesn't mean that you wrote good code quickly, though. Obviously I can't end every bullet point with "and my manager said I did this really fast and the code was very good." I DO have dollar values for what some of these projects where I am the sole person responsible are worth, and some of them, yes, we would have lost them if I were not involved. Again, though, "$100,000/month customer who had worked with me previously on this project until I moved on was going to drop us until they learned that I was getting involved again because they felt I would save the project" is not really something that should be put as a bullet point, I think.
To me, putting that I was the lead developer on these things shows that I must be pretty good. If I sucked at it, I wouldn't have been put in a lead position, I hope.
In all honesty, while I like to think I'm a pretty decent developer, at least average, my strong point is in really learning how the systems work, understanding what is going on under the hood, and being able to catch bugs that have slipped by in the past or figure our exactly what is causing a bug and see possible solutions to that and implement them. My second strongest, I think, being that I get the code written very quickly and it's not total shit after doing it quickly. How would I express that through these bullet points without having a paragraph explaining how big the job was and how awesome I did at it for each one?
A resume is meant to list your jobs you were hired to do and what you can do well, but not brag about how good you are at it. That's what you references and interviews are for.
I agree to an extent to that, where possible, it should not just list what you did but make you sound awesome for doing it. But, as my above post says, I don't feel there's a whole lot of room to do that while keeping things a reasonable, readable length.
I bolded the part that completely agrees with my post.
Also, if i have 100 resumes on my desk, and 99 of them talk about what people did, and 1 of them says things like"
"Rated 'Exceeds Expectation' in 4 out of 6 categories in 2/2 performance reviews"
"Joined project XXX which was past deadline, completed the project, and retained $100,000 / month client"
Well, I know who I'm going to call up.
To each his own, but to me that just sounds like a lot of overhyped stuff you'd get on a company flyer that you ignore when you're looking for specific skillsets.
edit: to be fair though, I can see it being a little more useful in a high volume sales based position, just not in IT