I did everything "wrong" with my resume. I must have read about 100 different resume "guides" of what not do to. My resume had four different things in it of "what not to do." The sad thing was, my interviewer told me they had been looking for over a year and had a stack of resumes. Mine stood out and I keyworded it. I made a 2 column resume and used a template I found. The left side column was a small column with keywords (VMWare, Security+, Windows Server) and then the right was all of the details. Mine was also in color. The key was, it could be printed in grey scale and legible. I found one other resume in the stack of about 200 that was identical in format to mine. The only difference was my coloring. Even in grey scale mine stood out next to his and no one was the wiser it was the same tempalte.
My other problem was I sent the resume the first time to the HR person with cover letter but sent it in a DOCX format. The problem? They only had Office 2000! 2000! I didn't hear anything back so I followed up a few days later with the same resume but in PDF format also. I got a phone call the next evening to come in for an interview. They couldn't open my original resume.
After I got hired the interviewer, now boss, wanted me to review the resumes and see if there was anyone else we would like to have. I scanned all of them and the sad things was they were all the same resume template. Nothing stood out. You had some guys with 3 years of work experience and 3 pages. Another guy had a master's degree in Computer Science, multiple certifications. He way surpassed me for skills and qualifications but he could not write.
The other kicker for this job? It was listed as a System Administrator job. It turned out I would be the CIO and the only IT guy on staff. Starting salary they wanted to pay, $23,000/year which is laughable. They conceded that they would pay me quite a bit more and although I was on the low side of the averages, I did get a $5,000 raise this past year. If I can average around that every year I'll be right on track to be near the average in a few years.
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I did everything "wrong" with my resume. I must have read about 100 different resume "guides" of what not do to. My resume had four different things in it of "what not to do." The sad thing was, my interviewer told me they had been looking for over a year and had a stack of resumes. Mine stood out and I keyworded it. I made a 2 column resume and used a template I found. The left side column was a small column with keywords (VMWare, Security+, Windows Server) and then the right was all of the details. Mine was also in color. The key was, it could be printed in grey scale and legible. I found one other resume in the stack of about 200 that was identical in format to mine. The only difference was my coloring. Even in grey scale mine stood out next to his and no one was the wiser it was the same tempalte. My other problem was I sent the resume the first time to the HR person with cover letter but sent it in a DOCX format. The problem? They only had Office 2000! 2000! I didn't hear anything back so I followed up a few days later with the same resume but in PDF format also. I got a phone call the next evening to come in for an interview. They couldn't open my original resume. After I got hired the interviewer, now boss, wanted me to review the resumes and see if there was anyone else we would like to have. I scanned all of them and the sad things was they were all the same resume template. Nothing stood out. You had some guys with 3 years of work experience and 3 pages. Another guy had a master's degree in Computer Science, multiple certifications. He way surpassed me for skills and qualifications but he could not write. The other kicker for this job? It was listed as a System Administrator job. It turned out I would be the CIO and the only IT guy on staff. Starting salary they wanted to pay, $23,000/year which is laughable. They conceded that they would pay me quite a bit more and although I was on the low side of the averages, I did get a $5,000 raise this past year. If I can average around that every year I'll be right on track to be near the average in a few years.