Writing a Good Technical Resume?

SuperMallen asks: "As a newly minted hiring manager, I've spent the last few weeks plowing through the large pile of resumes for one of my open positions. The varying formatting and quality of the resumes has stunned me. People do everything from a short list of jobs and positions to essays on each and every project they ever thought about in a job. Everyone seems to subscribe to the 'here's a giant pile of technologies I'm familiar with at the top' school, but I usually ignore this and go straight for their past work history and glean from there. Surely the Slashdot community can help point out what makes for good formatting and content in a technical resume. I'd love to also see some good sample resumes people have used in the past, and any good websites or book recommendations on how to write these effectively, so we can all spend less time reading and writing bad ones."

Comments

I know your pain.

[onion2k]

I've had occasion to read through stacks of Curriculum Vitea (I'm English) in my job. It's truly a soul destroying task. I don't have any links to samples but experience has taught me one universal truth: Long lists of skills mean nothing. People put everything they've ever heard of. It comes to the interview and it goes along the lines of "You know Perl well? No, but I walked past the Camel book in a library once.". If there isn't any mention of using the skill then the chances are the candidate hasn't ever used it professionally. I've updated my CV to put jobs and key projects with a description of the skills used in each first now.

Specify the format

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, first of all you should realise that every applicant is just trying to please you. So if they write the CV in a certain way, they do it because they expect you to like it that way. How do they know? Well, they go by the few clues that they have, the most important ones being the job announcement and the company website.

> People do everything from a short list of jobs and positions to essays on each and every project they ever thought about in a job.

If you think that the variety makes it difficult to compary CVs, you can specify a certain structure. The easiest way to do that is a web front end for entering the CV information, with some guidelines on how many details to give. Just look at the CV generator at monster to get the idea. For applicants that can be a pain (unless you use e.g. monster), so you may lose some, but if it makes your work easier, it might be worth it.

> Surely the Slashdot community can help point out what makes for good formatting and content in a technical resume.

That depends on what you are looking for. I like to see a clear (and appropriate) structure, because structure is so important in IT. Many HR people look for fonts and spelling etc, but I always found that a bit superficial. Instead have a look for good command of the english language, which is not at all too common :-).

Oh, and BTW: all these requirements also apply to the job ad. You get what you deserve. So if your job ad is a huge unformated pile of bullshit bingo and TLAs, don't complain about the declining quality of resumes!

filters suck

[MikeFM]

The problem with resumes these days, IMO, is that you have to both make a resume that'll get through the automated filters many companies use and still be grabbing to the human that eventually will read it. Filters throw out anything without the right keywords so you have to cram your resume with lots of keywords. Obviously, like web pages that are stuffed with keywords, this leads to resumes that are long and ugly. Then you feel your resume is to long and repetitive so you feel the need to trim out details in your work and education history.

I always feel the need to explain not only what I know but also how well I know it and how recently I've used it. This is helpful I think but leads to a resume that some people throw out as simply being to verbose.

Then my girlfriend says my resume is ugly so she wants to spend a lot of time picking the right fonts, paper, etc despite the fact that the nicer looking version is actually harder to read. I hate resumes. Why don't we use one of the available XML-based formats for passing around resumes.

My ex was a headhunter...

[ozmanjusri]

She helped me put my resume together, and it's never let me down. The format is:

Identification & contact details. (address, phone etc)
Date (so they know the resume is current)

Summary blurb. (Use this as your "hook" if you have anything to brag about.
"On our last project I was instrumental in our team's successful cure for cancer, elimination of world hunger and the establishment of Unreal Tournament as the nation's premier sporting event."

Bullet point listing of key competencies.

* Brain surgery
* Microsurgery
* Lisp coder
etc

One or two paragraph summary of experience, most recent first.

August 2005 - Current:
Crowd controller for Rammstein.
Acting as a human buffer to crazed fans, I successfully protected the band from encroachment and injury on 37 separate occasions. A strong commitment to workplace safety was demonstrated by my use of a rubber-shielded baton, while my leather and vinyl attire coordinated well with the band's homo-industrial stage antics.

July 2004 - August 2005:
Speech Writer for Tourettes' Debating Team.
etc

The key is to get ALL of this up to a couple of your most recent gigs on one page. That'll give the reviewer a good chance to assess you and shortlist you without having to wade through reams of paper, so keep it al brief and to the point.

Once you've got that part done, you an start listing other experience and qualifications on the following pages, then finish up with references. As well as a list of names and contact info, it's a good idea to include a couple of juicy quotes from referees.

References
"T Person was the most effective human speed-bump this company has ever employed. His great bulk would have been enough to stop a rocket propelled tank."

Good luck...

Re:Insist on XML, that'l sort em out...

[MikeFM]

Never found an employer that actually accepted that format - unfortunately.

Re:I know your pain. (not exactly)

[gosand]

Long lists of skills mean nothing.

Hmm, well, not exactly. If you only put down the skills that you have that are your best, you may miss opportunities. I have gone over many resumes, interviewed a lot of people in my day (probably 50) and have been a hiring manager. I like seeing a list of their skills grouped by their level of understanding of the subject. If using Linux is a must-have skill, but I don't need a guru, I might be willing to look at someone who has a decent understanding of it. I have talked to people who said "yes, I have used Unix". My next question is always "What shell do you use?" If I get a blank stare, I already got my answer. But it is much easier for someone to learn MORE about Unix than to have never used it at all. I don't have a problem with people putting everything they've ever used on their resume, as long as they qualify it. Oh, and aren't stupid about it... listing all the versions of Windows you have ever used is silly. I put on mine "MS Windows - 3.11 through XP" That covers it.

Yes, that can maybe be gleaned from job descriptions and whatnot, but things like programming knowlege can't always. I have a CS degree, and used to do programming. But I have been involved in QA and testing for my whole career of 13 years. I still have the various languages I am familiar with on my resume, with the caveat that my experience with them is fairly low. Of course, I still get people asking me about programming jobs, probably because they don't even READ my resume and probably have someone keyword matching on it.

I can tell you, finding technical QA people is difficult, so I make sure to point out on my resume that I do have a technical background. It makes a big difference when interacting with the programming team to have a CS degree. I can read Java and pretty much figure out what is going on, but I wouldn't want to have to write anything in it. I know enough to leave that to the experts. But if my job involved writing some Java, it wouldn't be too far of a leap for me.