Creating Concise Technical Resumes?

Mycroft-X asks: "I was polishing my resume today, preparing to fish for another job when I realized that with all the new information I put on, it was over 3 pages long! Because our industry is so meritocratic, I included such things as skills with operating systems, programming languages and various applications (sticking to major ones only). How do you deal with the fine balance between skills, education, experience and brevity in an industry that feeds off of all of these?"

Comments

Priorities

[JediTrainer]

As someone who has just gone through the process of hiring a developer to help out on our team, I think I can give you a few hints as to what got the candidates to the interview. So here's my top 10 list:

1 - didn't care about education. Looked at it, but it wasn't a requirement for me, so I completely ignored whether the candidate had a degree/diploma or not

2 - don't list everything. DO NOT make that mistake. Customize your resume for the job you're applying for. If the job posting asks for Java, write lots about Java and don't go overboard mentioning the other 15 languages you know. Otherwise the person looking at your resume might have trouble finding the word "Java" amongst the rest of it. Don't care if you're an MCSD or a Perl Guru. You can mention it, but don't take up a lot of room with that stuff.

3 - if you're going to list certifications, be precise. I've seen resumes that said "Java certification", but didn't mention which particular one, or even whose certification it was. It could have been Sun's program or Joe's Java Palace, as far as I could tell.

4 - do not list every single trivial API and technology you know. Too many resumes throw out every acronym out there (as we've seen in marketing) in an attempt to catch my eye on the ones I want the candidate to know. Generally, either the person's talking out of their ass (and they don't really know all of this stuff), or they've dabbled a bit in all of them but haven't mastered any. Not good. I can't tell you how many resumes I've seen that had lines reading like: "ASP, JSP, XML, DTD, ADO, COM, JDBC, ..." and it goes on and on. Meanwhile I can't find what I'm looking for in there because I'm blinded by the acronyms.

5 - I know I said this before, but CUSTOMIZE your resume for the particular position you're applying for! I don't care about every OS and word processor you know how to use...

6 - list experience and list it well. Focus on the times you've used the technology that you're being hired to work with. If I'm hiring you for Java, I don't want every detail about your Visual Basic experiences.

7 - do not list every technology you have a passing knowledge of. Show only the stuff you know really well. The rest can come out in the interview. If I read a resume, I assume that the person knows what they're talking about. For example, if you mention JDBC in the resume, I don't want to hear in the interview that you're not all that comfortable with databases (or worse, I catch a mistake in the answer to a question I asked because they were trying to cover up the fact that they really didn't know this stuff), or that you haven't a clue what a transaction is.

8 - do indeed shorten it and format it nicely. Too many resumes I've received have been ugly and hard to read, and that only agitates me. I try to have patience, but sometimes it's a bit frustrating.

9 - following that, I know this one's offtopic completely, but proofread once, twice, three times and THEN have someone else proof it too. One mistake (grammar or spelling) I might overlook, but two and the resume goes back to HR. I hire programmers who pay attention to detail and take the time to do things right.

10 - did I mention customize your resume for the position? Good. Do it. No more than 2 pages.

Once at the interview, I ask questions about the contents of the resume. If the candidate made it to the interview and they hold up to the questions, then the only thing I check after is their attitude. Lots of energy and enthusiasm wins, even if that candidate has a little less knowledge/experience than another person. A willingness to learn and grow is also a big plus. I also ask about other technologies not on the resume, but they're more out of curiosity and I don't give the answers the weight I give what I just mentioned above.

I wish you the best of luck! Happy hunting!

Re:Priorities

[KyleCordes]

That was a great post. However, I have heard some ideas on that contradict some of your comments, from people who specialize in (and are very successful at) getting developers hired. The alternative ideas I put in below are targetted towards getting senior developers, technical leads, etc. hired.

[1 - didn't care about education.]

Some hiring managers have resistance to hiring someone without a certain level of higher education for high level positions - so make sure to list it accurately and where they will find it.

[2 - don't list everything. DO NOT make that mistake. Customize your resume for the job you're applying for.]

Customize and focus, but try to leave other stuff in there. You never know where it might end up and whether they might have been asking for X but get really excited when they see you also know why.

[4 - do not list every single trivial API and technology you know.]

"Buzzword bingo helps" get the job, especially if there is a human resources professional involved who doesn't specialize in the technology but can see that applicant X has 15 buzzwords that apllicant Y does not.

[7 - do not list every technology you have a passing knowledge of.]

Same as above. They might have said Java, but they have some VB apps around, and your VB knowledge might give you an advantage over the next equally good Java developer who knows only Java.

[8 - do indeed shorten it and format it nicely.]

[No more than 2 pages.]

Format it nicely, get everything vital on the first pages, but don't be afraid to have a 3 page resume if you have 3 pages of information that can get you hired.

[Lots of energy and enthusiasm wins, even if that candidate has a little less knowledge/experience than another person. A willingness to learn and grow is also a big plus. I also ask about other technologies not on the resume]

This will work for lower level positions, but to get in at a high level you need the right attitude, lots of knowledge and experience, proven value in the specific technologies the company needs, and breadth of knowledge of related areas.

Again, I am no expert in this, these are just ideas I have picked up from people who appear to know.

what I've done

[ksheff]

In the past, I have usually split up my resume into two sections. One section is an expertise summary outline. It lists the types of work I've done followed by the operating systems, languages, and tools that I have moderate to extensive experience with. This can also include any certifications you hold or professional training courses you've taken. The next section contains my recent employement history where I list about 3 of my most recent employers. For each one I give a very short description of what my job was and list a few of the major accomplishments. Be consice, but like a previous person had suggested, don't go overboard on the acronyms. It would be nice to have a customized resume for each job application. In my Technical Communications courses, the profs usually suggested a customized cover letter that would explain how your knowledge and experience matches what the company is looking for an employee.

Once you've come up with a first draft, have as many other people review it and give you feedback. Try taking it to a recruiting professional (either at a college or at an agency) and see if they will critique it for you too.

Do NOT say "I am ubergeek who can do anything".

[dmorin]

• Toss out the applications, unless it's some industry specific thing. I don't care if you can use Word and Excel. Are you looking for a secretarial position?
• List important skills up top in summary. Make sure that all skills you list are backed up by experience in the Work blocks! Don't say "Prolog" and then fail to tell me where and how you used Prolog. I will ask, and if you say "Oh, nothing much, I just downloaded a free Prolog compiler and hacked around a bit" I'm going to move on thinking that you tried to mislead me.
• You're not expert in everything you think you are. Prune. I did a PKI system 4 years ago, and haven't really touched the field since then. So it goes low on my skill set, maybe off altogether if I think I don't have space.
• If you're all over the place in your experience, then think about where you want your career going and shape it in that direction. A friend of mine with 10+ years in the biz showed me his resume the other day and asked what I thought of the "flow". It was very clear that he saw himself as a technical lead, specializing in Oracle, and all of his experience showed how he'd gotten to that position. It did NOT scream "I'm an ubergeek who can do anything you put in front of me."
• Hobbies, personal, and all that other stuff is important and people will look at it. But it doesn't have to be on the first page. If you're going on that old "Make it fit in one page" rule, skip it, I don't really think it's valid for people with significant experience. It's valid for kids fresh out of college, but that's about it. 2 pages is fine. More than 2 and you start to lose your reader, I think.
• Ask yourself "What's the thing that I'll bring to the table that is uniquely me?" Maybe your flexibility with new technologies is what yuo want to sell. Use that. Or maybe you really see yourself more as a mentor to younger geeks. Those are the sort of things that are not in the job description, but give the interviewer a good feeling for who you are over and above your technical skills.
• Time starts to become your enemy. In my position I interview people for web positions. Every now and then I see a resume that goes back to the 1980's. While sometimes it's interesting to see a person's background (you worked on military simulators? Cooool), it's not worth spending an extra page or two. Especially if there's stuff *after* that that (like education, personal) you expect me to get to.

hack, hack, hack

[The Pim]

Take inspiration from Pascal's definition of perfection. Read, revise, reread, until you can find nothing non-essential and nothing that could not be expressed more concisely. Then go to bed and do it again the next day. Convince a friend to help you. You will be amazed by the amount of content you can get onto a page, and how much better the whole thing comes across.

Unless you have a truly impressive background, and are applying for a very special position, you don't have more than a page's worth to say. Remember that in most circumstances, the hirer is looking for a reason to reject you.

PS. Don't even think about squeezing the font or skimping on margins.