Updating The Résumé

[bjarvis]

I spent a chunk of last night working on updating my résumé... it's been seven years since I've last redrafted one and my old one was in bad need of an update.

I've absorbed much résumé advice over the years: some advice is solid ("craft it for the job you want, not the one you have") while some of it contradictory ("never exceed one page" vs. "you're not applying at McDonald's so 2-3 pages is fine"). At the moment, I'm still sifting through my activity reports of the past five years or so to distill a small list of good examples of project management, staffing coordination and management ability, but I hope to have a largely finished product by the end of the weekend.

Does anyone have any recommended web sites on résumé construction? I'm open to additional ideas on formatting and style.

Comments

[bearfinch.livejournal.com]

I've had the same dilema - my resume is 7 years old and everyone tells me something different about what will get an employers attention.

[cmhcub4u.livejournal.com]

Well for highly professional resumes, I think that two pages are very much the norm from what I see.

[ciddyguy.livejournal.com]

Some things I've been told, and some of it was last year.

No more than 2 pages are fine for most professional resumes, some exceptions are in the teaching profession and one or two others that I can't recall (generally I think those are refered to as CV's instead). This is especially true if you need to highlight many skills sets, projects and have a longish job history (read, more than 3-5 jobs in a 10 years period), that kind of thing. Trying to cram it onto one page will just clutter it up and make it hard to read.

Some things that have been suggested to me recently,

Use an objective at the beginning, a simple sentence to make this statement.

Then a list of your qualification highlights, bullet point each highlight. I use a simple dash for mine. title it with all caps, bold.

All caps, bold, Relavent Experience and skills (or what ever is aprropriate for you) to delineate the rest of the resume.

Space and then in catagories such as Sarbox compliance (bold, but mixed case), list each relavent project or skill used to obtain needed goal. bulletting each skill, project accordingly

Leave a space between each catagory for a little white space

have your name on the top of the second page

Work history can be near the bottom with your schooling and any community work you might've done. With schooling that's more than 2-3 or so years old (in my case, my last major school took place between 1993-1995), leave off the dates and do not go back further than 10 years for it will date you badly, especially now that you and many of us are in our late 30's early 40's (I know you just turned 40 if I recall)

So far this resume seems to be working OK and it's gotten me many of the temp assignments I've had, which have lead me to a few interviews on my own too.

But to again emphasize,
do not go back more than a decade,
use bullet points for emphasis.
Leave off education if more than 3-5 years ago
And try to stick to no more than 2 pages, name on top of second page.

Hope these help

Oh, I also do all caps, bold for work history, community work and education

But as far as resume sources, I wish I knew of some to recommend.

[excessor.livejournal.com]

As a hiring manager, I can tell you what catches my eye (resume-wise):

- Do you use the term "responsible for" because it's too ambiguous. Start all your accomplishment bullet points with action verbs like led, completed, oversaw, supervised, created, coaxed, minced, cajoled, whipped, pled, bled, performed, or blew. If you can back up any of your accomplishments with reports or graphs, so much the better.

- Use metrics if you can. "Led my team through three ISO 9001 audits with only three minor discussion points" is better than "ISO 9001 compliant." Even better: "Increased my group's productivity by 45% over eight months in call ticket resolution." I ALWAYS ask about productivity numbers because I'm interested in the folks who think to speak in my terms.

- Use a decent typeface. Let other people check for spelling and double- or missing-word mistakes. Be consistent in your resume.

- Do not include your photo. Do not include things like your weight, your height, your general health condition, or your religious affiliation. While all are important, hiring managers do not want this material on your resume for fear that anyone can come back later and claim that a hiring decision was made on illegal grounds.

Good luck.

[abqdan.livejournal.com]

I can tell you when I'm hiring technical people, I want a summary of their actual skills on the first page, then their most recent experience. I don't read more than a couple of pages thoroughly; and indeed, I generally don't bother if they haven't hit all the main points in the job description on the first page.

I'm much more interested in what they achieved (reduced downtime on mail server by 20%) than what they know (expert in blah blah). I rarely take much notice of industry-issued qualifications - particularly those from Microsoft! For the most part, experience and achievement is far more important than passing tests.