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Marketing Yourself as an IT Jack-of-All-Trades?
ultimatemonty asks: "As an IT professional looking for a new job, I'm trying to figure out how to market myself as a 'jack-of-all-trades' IT worker. I'm currently employed at a medium sized university as a video conferencing specialist. I'm good (competent) at many IT related tasks (Linux server management, programming, Windows/Linux desktop support, video conferencing support, etc...), but specialize or excel in none of them, sort of like the lone IT manager in a small shop. What kinds of jobs would the you look for with this kind of work experience, and how would you market yourself (design your resume, cover letter, and so forth) to prospective employers so they get the full-breadth of your capabilities, without over-stating your abilities?"
Oh wait! You said Jack of all trades! My bad! I thought I saw 2 'f's there.
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
If you list a bunch of divergent technologies on your resume, and you describe yourself as a jack of all trades, employers basically see you as a junior admin with exposure to a lot of different technologies that really doesn't know all that much (especially given the huge number of resumes out there that list technologies in the "skills" section because the applicant once read about it in a magazine or something).
Tailor your resume to fit each specific job you apply for. If the job is Windows heavy, emphasize your Windows work on your resume. If the job is Linux heavy, emphasize your Linux work. Also, don't just list what you know, list what you've done. Tell them about your big project that saved the company $10 million. That sort of thing holds a lot more weight than telling them you once logged in to a VMS machine.
Basically, employers don't need to know and don't care about the full breadth of your capabilities: they care about what you can do for them. Do not just shotgun a laundry list resume to a thousand different companies, make sure each resume you send out specifically addresses how you can fill the need the company has, as evidenced by their job posting.
as a generalist, you could qualify as "sysadmin" at a smaller shop, which because of their IT budget, usually means "guy that knows how to do everything for us". I'd emphasize creative problem-solving abilities and a drive to arrive at good solutions quickly.
Of course, you'll want to avoid coming off too arrogant -- no one wants to hire an I.T. jackass-of-all-trades, but we all know a few!
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I found myself in a similar situation, and found a place that suits me perfectly. It's a small development shop. I'd definitely recommend trying to find a smaller company; the smaller, the more freedom you have to use all your skills. Seems the larger the company, the more specialized they believe their IT folks need to be. The smaller, the less particular jobs are a specific person's responsibility. Just my two cents.
"Actually, I enjoyed this in the same vague, horrible way I enjoyed the A-Team" P. Opus
When we do technical interviews, our policy is that anything on the resume is fair game to ask questions about. So, if someone comes in with a laundry list, we'll try to find a question to ask about some obscure technology they say they're proficient in (nothing too tough, just something that someone who knows the technology would know). This will tell us how much they're trying to puff themselves up.
We'll also ask progressively harder questions in each category that we have expertise in just to see what they do when they start becoming unsure of themselves or just flat don't know the answer. We are much more impressed by someone who simply says "I don't know" than someone who tries to bullshit us. If you don't really know a technology, don't go around pretending that you do.
Some people don't want to be experts - I have absolutely no desire to be an 'expert' at anything. I am a generalist and have found a few roles where that is a bonus. And where there isn't a "need" for a generalist, I can go in to a specific role and branch out, letting my general skills help out where they can.
..." - I don't like the implication there. I am very competent, but I would find it exceedingly difficult for me to become "great" at any one part of my knowledge. I don't like to focus on one thing - I read multiple books at a time, I watch movies and read at the same time, I listen to music and surf and cook. I move from Windows to Linux to databases to development to application support to web to systems management many times a day, and I do them all well. Not everyone is made to become GREAT at things. I am a poster child for ADD and I think it's a great skill.
"If you really are competent then the step up
Not everyone wants to be an expert, and I don't think that should detract from their usefulness - like anything, you just need to find the right spot to apply your skills.
We emerge from our mother's womb an unformatted diskette; our culture formats us. - Douglas Coupland
It better be short, it better list what they are looking for at the top, and your first sentence needs to make them want to read more.
I believe this might be a US thing. Here in Australia, multi-page Resumes are the norm, and if you don't have enough information on your Resume to give the person reading it a fairly good idea of your skills and experience, they'll just bin it.
As an Australian, working for a US company, that has to interview US applicants, I find the "one-page Resume" to be incredibly frustrating. There's never enough information included to tell anything useful about the applicant unless it's either a) an applicant who's very new to the industry or b) an entry-level job like L1 helpdesk where applicants don't really need many skills past a pulse. This means I have to do, at the very least, a preliminary phone interview to find out whether or not the applicant is even worth bringing in for a "real" interview - an annoying and time-consuming proposition (doubly so for me since I have to line-up timezones appropriately to call people in the US).
Contrast this to the Resumes I receive from Australian applicants, who typically include academic qualifications, industry qualifications and job histories *with details* of responsibilities, achievements, skills gained, procedures, etc. Sure, there's a one-page summary that has a brief outline (what an American applicant would call the whole Resume) but it *also* includes more in-depth information allowing me to get a good feel for how the applicant has spent the last few years of their working life, in terms of gaining/exercising skills and experience.
The end result is that I can spend 30 - 60 seconds looking at each Resume's summary page, to quickly weed out people who are clearly unsuitable (eg: Electrical Engineering degree, about 30 years old, last 3 jobs in another country, applying for a L1 helpdesk job), then go back and spend 2 - 10 minutes for each Resume in the remaining pool finding the people who actually look suitable for the job, and make the shortlist for interviewing. Thus, by the time I actually get around to calling them in for an interview, I am already reasonably confident they have the requisite skills and experience, and the interview becomes about a) *verifying* (as opposed to discovering) their technical abilities (easier, relatively speaking) and determining whether or not they have the right attitude and personality.
I have yet to see a "single page Resume" that has told me anything truly useful about an applicant. A page's worth of bulleted previous employers, boilerplate "skills" and "responsibilities" one-liners, and "achievements" of maybe a sentence or two each, just doesn't have enough meat in it to determine whether or not an applicant is capable (purely from a skills and experience perspective) of doing the job. Subsequently, I've ended up getting in further contact with some applicants who were clueless and, I'm sure, missing a few that would have made excellent employees.
Slashdotters, what's it like in the UK, Canada, etc ? What style of Resume is typical in those places - just the one-page summary, or a one-page summary backed up by a relatively detailed explanation ?