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!