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Intelligent Resume Tools?
imrdkl asks: "It's time for me (and presumably a few others) to
start thinking about a career change. With 10 years of experience,
I'd like to be able to customize my resume a bit, to highlight the
experience/education which is pertinent to a given job, instead of
trying to say too much and boring the reader. Are there any tools out
there (non-web-based preferred) which help a person to create a
custom resume based (perhaps) on a small database which contains
relevant work-experience highlights?"
I would certainly hope you don't need to rely on a tool to write your resume for you. If you have the experience that you claim, you should have no problem selling yourself on an 8.5 x 11 piece of white paper. Writing a resume isn't that hard... just think of what you know and write it down, then organize it into a well grouped format and print it out.
If you need ideas, this site will give you plenty of ideas and suggestions on how to build a great resume yourself.
OK, it's web based, and Australian..
But, SEEK has an online resume builder that is not too bad. It might give you some ideas anyway.
Learn to Improvise
Check XML resume at http://xmlresume.sf.net
If you work in IT, your addiction to XML
and cutting-edge technologies will be
surely appreciated.
Automated enough ?
#!/usr/bin/perl
die "Syntax: $0 [your name]\n" unless ($ARGV[0]);
@job=('webdesigner', 'IT director', 'ASP programmer', 'VB programmer', 'FORTRAN programmer', 'CEO', 'spam hunter', 'CTO', 'BOFH','sp
ammer');
@company=('Microsoft','IBM','Compaq',"my mom's office",'my garage','a classified government agency','X-Files', 'NASA');
print "I, @ARGV, have ".int (rand(15))." years of experience as ".$job[rand(10)]." at ".$company[rand(8)]."\n";
@degree=('MBA','junior high','PhD');
@school=('Harvard','Oxford','Princeton','Bopal University');
print "I have a ".$degree[rand(3)]." at ".$school[rand(4)]." so I am more than qualified for this position.\n";
print "\n\nI must also add that I'm gay, afro-american and have some sort of physical deficiency, and my lawyer is ready to sue your
company for discrimination if I don't get this job. \n\n Thanks and have a nice day.\nSincerely yours, @ARGV\n"
-
Roses are #FF0000, Violets are #0000FF, find / -name '*base*' |xargs chown -R us && mv zig greatjustice
Odds are you wouldn't be asking if you knew LaTeX, but you can do some basic-to-intermediate categorization and conditional inclusion of entries with it.
...
If you use a macro for everything you also get the advantage of being able to easily reformat everything if you decide one format is better than another, or even if you want to format different categories of items differently.
On the down-side, you'd have to know LateX
...but not what the original poster had in mind. I have to agree with most of the replies. If you've got that kind of experience, writing a resume should be simple.
HOWEVER. What I want to see is something that will store this information, possibly in a db or somesuch, and then spit it out easily into multiple formats. The problem I'm finding now is, I've been asked for PDF, PostScript, HTML, Plaintext, RichText, and MS Word versions of my resume. So I've got 6 versions to keep up to date. Granted, it's not all THAT hard, but it's still a pain in the ass.
The ideal situation would be to stuff all the relevent information (name, contact info, objective, experience, skills) into a database, then have an automagic confragulator or whatever generate the various formats. That way, I only have to update the information one, and this automagical process can just be a link on my homepage to "Download my resume in your favorite format". Adding a format is as simple as adding an output filter for the automagic confragulator. So when someone asks for ClarisWorks for MacOS 1.0 format, you hack together the appropriate output filter, and now you can kick it out in 7 formats, instantaneously, and always up to date.
If anyone knows of something like that, it would be -very- useful.
-j
"To err is human, to forgive is simply not my policy." --root
IMO, you're better off having one standard resume that doesn't contain any bs. Potential employers might like to know that you're well-rounded and flexible in your skills, rather than a drone that specializes in a narrow range of skills. Be honest about yourself and your background, just don't drag it out.
Customization should be left to your cover letter, where you introduce yourself and put to words how your skills and experience would contribute to a company.
The lesson here: Optimize your resume to paint a concise picture of yourself; optimize your cover letter to show specific employers how you would fit in.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
When I was in college I obtained a program called resume writer, which allowed you to enter in your resume information and then choose which sections you wanted on your resume. It ran under window 3.1 so I am not sure if it is still around. It was designed for someone who was doing their first resume.
Personally I have done better since I started using HTML to do my resume. I can then use Word, Frontapge, Netscape, mozilla, or even a text editor to edit my resume. I found that the tools really did not help. It was better for me to have a simple format.
Start with Name && Address at top. Then maybe list an objective. Then skill proficencies like UNIX SUN, AIX, Programming C/C++ etc. Next jobs with bulleted one liners telling what you did in 10 words or less per task. Like ported app X to platform foo from platform bar. Lastly any thing else releveant or hobbies and clubs and maybe references. Try to keep it to one page. While people say 2 is okay, I have seen more people with 2 page resumes get passed over for jobs than 1 pagers. Only because a resume is only going to get about 5 seconds look over so it has to be concise. Don't use fancy fonts or anything that may not scan easy as some companies scan resumes into their database.
Only 'flamers' flame!
There is a nice one at http://www.seekingsuccess.com.
In word, make a resume with each section that you -might- ever use.
For sections that you might want to abbreviate, provide a second version right there.
From there, you can make a complete resume with no redundant sections - use the longer version of any sections that you duplicate. This could be the follow-up resume that you bring with you to an interview, or as a response to follow-up questions.
You can make a concise resume from any sections of the above resume as needed. Just modify this master as necessary, and pull sections that you want towards any specific application.
Sections that you might want to include in the full, detailed master, might include activities, group memberships, publications, etc... The abridged version could just allude to these.
Sam Nitzberg
sam@iamsam.com
http://www.iamsam.com
http://www.iamsam.com/resume.html
Many have stated here already: don't rely on those so-called "résumé writers". I wholeheartedly agree with this, since there is no one way of writing a résumé that works for everyone. However, there are some things to know about résumés that do apply to all.
One of the things that I remember from my tech writing class is the way most people tend to read a résumé. Imagine that you draw two diagonal lines on your average letter- or A4-sized piece of paper from each corner to the opposite corner, thus dividing the page into four triangles. Of these, the topmost triangle is always the one to be read first; if the HR droid has not found anything interesting from a quick scan of this small area, chances are your résumé will be chucked into the bin. Of course, this doesn't mean that you must cram your entire résumé into that top 1/4 of the page, but it is best if you try to place the most relevant information within that space.
Following that, I've found that the following order of items is preferred by HR people:
HTH.
In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"