your resume, show me it

[redsage]

I'm about to start looking for work again, but it's been rather a long time. The last time I had a job was five years ago. As such, my resume-writing skills are a little rusty. (I think I'll be doing a skills-based resume this time anyways, a new concept for me. With my long stretch of unemployment - I've been in school, but still - a skills-focused approach seems wise.) I'm doing some looking online, but the general examples I've seen feel a little disconnected to me. It would help a lot if I could see the resumes of people I know, have some idea of their achievements and skills, etc.

Post your resume here for me? Comments screened by default, let me know if I can unscreen (and if you're looking for work, mention that in case someone reading the comments happens to know of a job you might fit). Anything you can tell me about your resume is welcome too - why you chose a specific format, things you chose to leave off, things that you changed, any specific feedback you've gotten over the years.

If you hire people, I'd be happy to hear any comments you have on the resumes you've looked over - what made you want to interview someone, what made the trash in 5 seconds. I'm doing research online already so I'm getting a general idea of this, and yet anything my people have to offer is welcome input.

Thanks.

Comments

[t3knomanser.livejournal.com]

Here's mine. Emurse is also a great tool for building/hosting the resume. No reason to screen this. I'm not lookin' for work, but my slightly out-of-date resume is no secret.

[iki-maska.livejournal.com]

Neat and clear is obvious but less common than you'd expect. I used to modify my resume to focus on the position, but found that a good resume is a good resume. I have only done recruitment for government (which is somewhat different), but I tend to go for the lowest risk choices rather than the most amazing. Get lots of people who judgment you trust to read your resume.

While you may not encounter "selection criteria", most people fail to understand the difference between saying they know something and *showing* they know something through example. Compare "I known brain surgery" with "I used brain surgery daily from 1997 to 1999 on numerous cases including the new methods developed by Dr Frankenstein" .

Show how you understand how your work fits into a team: that you're a team play and not an elitist prima-donna. "I assisted Dr Death by doing the tedious stuff when needed as we were really busy...".

We once sifted through a stack of 300+ applicants for five jobs. Any means at all was used to sift down the cull pile, if you weren't relevant on page 1, too bad.

[thorfinn]

Feel free to unscreen - it's a public website.

http://goh.id.au/~david/

Two part structure - the front HTML page, which is really a "web flier", and then the resume itself is linked to towards the bottom, available in a zillion formats (original version in HTML, other versions auto-generated mostly via OpenOffice). I haven't really made a lot of effort to make it look extremely pretty - I mostly get jobs via recruitment agencies, and they act as a resume reading filter anyway. If I was applying direct to companies, depending on the company, I may do something a little different, but probably not. To some extent, the "a zillion formats, informational, but not pretty" is a particular intentional statement - I'm a technology expert, not a graphic designer or arts-creative type.

When I apply, I bounce through the resume, along with some sort of short cover note/letter. Depending on the job ad, I'll tailor the cover letter to specifically mention and point out things that might relate to the position in question. Especially I try to get into the head of the recruiter, and answer any questions they might have.

:-)

As far as hiring people goes - presumably I've written a job ad. Presumably I have a job ad that actually says what I want in some fashion (i.e., "key selection criteria", or at least a description of the role, or at minimum, a list of buzzwords).

The basic thing is, the easier someone's resume is to match to the job ad, the more likely I am to want to interview someone.

Cover letter helps - if the cover letter tells me they've read the job ad in question, and have clearly demonstrated that their skillset (as shown in resume) matches the ad, and have answered any obvious questions I have, then I'm probably interested in interview.

[samajh.livejournal.com]

I read resumes regularly (sorry, I don't have a copy of mine on hand- if I remember I'll send one from home) and there are a few things that stand out. First of all, make it neat. It has to be correct grammatically, and have no obvious spelling errors (you'd be shocked at what I've received for professional positions).

Preferably it has all pertinent information in a page or two- no books please. I enjoy reading resumes that are tailored to the job reqs- arrange it so that I can easily see how your skills match what I'm looking for.

That's generally enough to get you over the first hurdles in my book. It's really hard to tell from the outside how much an employer wants someone Exactly like their job description, and how many would consider anyone within a range (this is much more common.) I think it's still possible to get hired for a position that you don't match exactly - but you may have to wait for them to get past their first round of looking.

[tyrsalvia.livejournal.com]

What are your thoughts on "I" statements and sentence fragments? Specifically, while I like to use bullet pointed phrases to describe job duties and skills, sentence fragments presented as sentences with a period at the end often really grate on me. Many if not most "objective" statements seem to be in this format, i.e. "To secure a position that utilizes my necromancy skills and terrorizes children."

I am much more comfortable with an objective statement that looks more like this: "I am seeking a position that utilizes my necromancy skills and allows me to terrorize children." Is this acceptable? I know that at one point, the common wisdom was to avoid "I" statements on resumes, but I've heard that this is changing.

[nancyblue.livejournal.com]

I'd show you my CV, but I don't think it would be all that useful to you :) My husband, however, was profiled in a book on how to get a tech job because of his resume. You might ask him.

[twopiearr.livejournal.com]

fellow on my list by the name of argentla actually works for an executive search firm - might have some useful info.

his journal is friends only, but he recently posted the following:

Some helpful resume tips from the point of view of a recruiter who has also been a hiring manager.

1. If you graduated from college more than a year or two ago, don't put your GPA on your resume. Same goes for academic honors. If you're a recent grad with little work experience, there's a case to be made for including it, but if you graduated in the 90s, I do not care a whit whether you were on the dean's list.

2. A number of years ago there was a vogue for one-page resumes. This vogue has passed. Unless you have little work experience, there's nothing wrong with your resume being two or three pages, perhaps longer if you have a large number of jobs or a list of specific skills, awards, or other relevant info. In fact, if you have eight or more years of work experience, a one-page resume is either suspect or very hard to read, and both of these are bad things.

3. Put your contact info at the TOP of your resume. Some clever graphic design types seem to think it's cool to artfully integrate details like their name and e-mail address somewhere on the side or the bottom. A for aesthetics, D for functionality, guys.

4. Use headers and footers. Each page should have your name, and a PAGE X of Y would be handy, too. Every word processor currently made has this functionality; please to be using it.

5. List your job duties for each of your jobs. Older jobs of the "worked at Tower Records for the summer" can get one or maybe two, but list something. Bullet-pointed lists headed with action verbs are swell. Not only is this easier to read, it facilitates keyword searches.

6. Don't waste your time pumping up workaday retail and food service jobs with clever verbiage. It does you no credit at all. If you have accomplishments of some tangible sort (if you were a coffee shop manager and achieved revenue increases), list those instead. Don't get cute.

7. If you have degrees, particularly advanced degrees, kindly list the school, the degree area, and the year of completion. When it comes to undergraduate degrees, I probably don't care what it's in, but it's nice to know. With advanced degrees, I'd really like to know the subject area, thanks.

8. Don't make your resume in Courier. Please. My optometrist will thank you for it.

9. Don't get too clever with margins. One inch all around (not 1.25 -- fucking Microsoft) is good. You can cut it down to 0.5" if need be, but more than that and things get sloppy when your file is opened on different computers with different default printers. If you need more pages, use them.

10. Learn to use tab settings and indents. If you're applying for an office job and trying to convince me you're a whiz with Word, it would be nice if your resume showed an understanding of this basic function.

11. Spell check your resume. Find a picky friend or an MLA handbook and go over your grammar, usage, and punctuation, particularly if English was not your first language. If I'm looking for an interaction designer, the fact that you don't know how to use hyphens may not be a deal-breaker, but it does make you look sloppy, which is seldom good.

[talonstrike.livejournal.com]

My resume (in Word format) is here. This is the version I used when I landed my current job a couple of months ago. I omitted several things from my skills section, mainly because my jack-of-all-trades approach to computing means I've dabbled in tons of different things, and I can't list them all. The most notable things I dropped from the most recent version were a couple of really ancient operating systems (MS-DOS is no longer relevant, my most recent Macintosh experience was OS7). I also intentionally neglected to specify months in my employment history because it allowed me to conceal a nine month gap in employment between 5/01 and 2/02.

I shrank the margins a little to make it fit on two pages. I have received six-page resumes to review, and believe me... nobody wants to read a six-page resume. Two pages is a good size. If you can't get to two pages, the resume will seem thin in my opinion, and if you go over, the reader will want to take a nap in the middle. Should my work experience expand to the point where it pushes the resume to three pages, I will either edit down the descriptions of what I did at each place, or drop the oldest professional position (1999-2001) off the end (perhaps with a note that older employment history is available upon request or some such thing; I've never done that and I don't know how well it would be received).

Aside from length, the other thing I look for is perfect grammar and spelling. I am more vicious about this than I might otherwise be because the positions I've interviewed people for are Quality Assurance positions. In my opinion, when you're applying for a detail-oriented error-checking position, making a single error on your resume is a lot bigger deal than if you're going for, say, a telephone sales position. Pobody's nerfect, but that's why you have other people look over your resume before you use it. Clean layout and readability are important, and I tend to prefer job duties to be described in fragments which begin with a past tense verb. This isn't a hard-and-fast rule, but I would recommend keeping the same format and tense for each bullet point, so for example if you say one of your job duties was "designing" a web site, then stick with the "-ing" verbs -- "registering" domains, not "registered" domains or "registration of" domains. Keeping the wording consistent makes it quicker and easier to read, and if you want someone to hire you, you want to make it as easy as possible for them to do so.

I hope some of that is helpful to you. No need to screen, though I'm not in the market at the moment.

[radven.livejournal.com]

Cherie and I have our resumes posted at: www.twostepsbeyond.com (http://www.twostepsbeyond.com)

No need to keep this screened. And feedback on my own resume is much appreciated, since I am starting to fish for more consulting work...

When I was at Palm(Source) screening resumes - I'd look for signs of non-conventional thinking or career paths. But other people would find those very same things a big red flag. It all depends what you are looking for.

Good luck...

- chris

Two Cents

[xot.livejournal.com]

one key to resumes is to remember the purpose of the resume is NOT to get you the job, but to get you the interview.

It is a dance of trying to stand out enough that you'll be noticed, but not so much you'll be filed in the circular file without a call back.

Resume - PG 1 - Postable

[incorporealgirl.livejournal.com]

Aimée Renée Frye
PO Box 505
Saratoga, Ca 95071
(805)284-4381
Email: afrye@ucsc.edu

Career Objective
To work in an energetic environment where teamwork and personal achievement are rewarded.

Work Experience

Research Analyst: (December 2004 – July 2007) University of California Santa Cruz, Arts Division. Performed monthly audit and reconciliation of research funds in FIS. Responsible for monitoring, projecting, and reconciling financial activity of research related accounts consisting of over 300 awards. This included cost projections, reviewing, and examining fiscal transactions for appropriateness and consistency, monitoring spending patterns. Responsible for final closeout direction and meeting fiscal year deadlines. Administered extramural, intramural, matching, participant support, gift, and unrestricted transactions that include complex budgetary criteria. Performed monthly audit and reconciliation of research funds, prepared adjusting entries, and monitored payroll transactions. Reviewed all documentation before forwarding to Financial Administrative Services and Transactions Office, Accounts Payable, and Purchasing for appropriateness and accuracy. Conducted meetings with faculty to discuss award spending and administration.

Financial Affairs Assistant III: (July 2004 – December 2004) University of California Santa Barbara, Electrical & Computer Engineering. Responsible for financial management of departmental and extramural accounts. Performed monthly audit and reconciliation of general ledgers. Assisted Personnel Administrator and served as PPS backup. Responsible for monitoring, projecting, and reconciling financial activity of departmental accounts consisting of 30 departmental cost centers. Used on-line systems to produce monthly financial statements for department accounts which include cost projections, reviewing, and examining fiscal transactions for appropriateness and consistency, monitoring spending patterns, and producing graphical and statistical reports on request. Responsible for final closeout direction and meeting fiscal year deadlines. Provided support to the Contract & Grant Analysts in the administration of extramural, intramural, matching, participant support, gift, and unrestricted transactions that include complex budgetary criteria for a very large multifaceted academic department. Performed monthly audit and reconciliation of general ledgers, initiating adjusting entries as appropriate using the applicable university forms, and balancing departmental ledgers. Also served as Purchasing backup.

Accounting Assistant II: (July 2003 – July 2004) University of California Santa Barbara, Chemistry. Worked closely with department’s contract & grant and budget area. Served as financial assistant providing accounting and bookkeeping functions for general funds, contract & grant funds, gifts, and income accounts. Responsible for daily data entry of expenses. Knowledgeable of general fund accounting principals and procedures, audit requirements, accounting control practices, and federal and state agency requirements. Responsible for transactions that include a complex budgetary criteria for a large, multifaceted academic department. Tracked, posted, and reconciled expenses to general ledger for general fund, contract & grant projects, and gift accounts using GUS software. Maintained a comprehensive filing system that insured documentation for fiscal transactions met audit requirements. Processed travel and entertainment, Form 5, and recharges. Served as backup for Purchasing.

Resume - PG 2 - Postable

[incorporealgirl.livejournal.com]

Accounts Payable/Receivable Clerk II: (September 2000 – July 2003) RESON Inc., Goleta, California. Prepared invoices for customers and posted data into Expandable software to customer accounts. Maintained vendor records and calculated payments in a timely manner. Prepared statements of past due accounts for customers and assisted them with information to maintain customer relations. Responsible for processing credit card transactions and wire transfers. Assisted the controller in problem solving and maintenance of accounting records. Prepared month-end reports, which included the sales report, outstanding systems report, and inter-company account. Prepared yearly audits.



Education

• Graduated high school from San Marcos High School in 1999
• Attended Santa Barbara City College through the Advanced Student Placement Program starting my freshman year of high school
• Completed the Regional Occupation Program for Accounting at San Marcos High School 1997
• Graduated from Santa Barbara City College with an Associates degree in Liberal Arts & Economics in May 2004
• Studied abroad at Universiteit Maastricht, the Netherlands in International Business Fall 2007
• Scheduled to graduate UCSC with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Business Management Economics in June 2008

Resume/Interview Tips

[incorporealgirl.livejournal.com]

Limit to 2 pages. One is perfect, 2 is ok, 3 is overdoing it.

If you are having trouble keeping the number of pages to a minimum, limit work experience entries to the ones that are relevant to the job you are applying for. They will see your exact employment history on the application to see where your gaps were if any.

Order jobs by relevance, not necessarily by date. Chronological order is what the application is for.

Mind your tenses ie do not switch back and forth between past and present tense.

Grammar and spelling matter. If a resume does not read well or it is full of errors, I pitch it. I suggest having someone proof read it.

Avoid using I statements.

Another way to get your resume noticed is to list your skills especially for specific programs or just job skills in general before your work experience. So they can see the bullets and if they want detail they can consult your work experience section. This is especially handy if you are having trouble filling 1 page.

Use a font that is not Times New Roman, but nothing funny or hard to read.

Left justify as gaps can make it hard on the eyes to read.

Avoid using paper with patterns or texture, but consider a color to set it apart from the rest. Off white, light gray, light peach, etc.

Cover Letters are also important. The cover letter is your chance to let them know how you found out about the job, why you are interested, and what you think you can do for their company.

After the interview, email everyone in attendance (so make sure to get that info before you leave) to thank them. If you are really interested in the job, this is your opportunity to let them know. Often interviewers cannot tell if you are interested or not. Do this the same day as the interview, the next day at the latest.

One thing about interviewing that I always try to keep in mind when I am the interviewer or the interviewee is whether or not I am talking over/being talked over. It is not good and it lets you know what the working environment will be like.