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

[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.