Resume Writing Tips

With the economy looking so bad, you might be updating your resume. We often review resumes for friends and offer advice. Here are the suggestions that I generally give out.

Tips for Technical Resumes

With the economy looking so bad, you might be updating your resume. We often review resumes for friends and offer advice. Here are the suggestions that I generally give out.

Tip 1: Know the audience

When writing it is important to play to your audience. Steven King always includes the elements that his fans expect. An action film is expected to have an explosion or something major in the first scene. A romance is expected to introduce at least one of the main people in the first 5 minutes. A resume has to be written for its audience too.

What are the audiences of a resume? What makes writing a resume difficult is that there are two audiences. First is the low-paid, non-technical HR clerk that receives the resume. If it gets past the clerk, it will arrive at the desk of the person that will be your future boss. Your resume has to have the elements that will please both of these people.

• The HR clerk -- The first person to see your resume, sadly, is a non-technical, (usually low-paid), clerk. He is given 10,000 resumes a day and a list of what positions are open. This person then has to make a pile for each of those positions, and toss the rest. Your job is to make sure you get into one of those piles. The problem here is that this person doesn't know the difference between UNIX and Solaris, or that if someone knows Solaris 2.5 then they are hirable for a Solaris 2.6 job. Luckily, this person only reads the top part of every resume, so you can play to that: make make sure that you have an Objective and a "Skills" section that are customized for him. Don't say "Solaris 2.6", say "Solaris 2.x" or just "Solaris" (people have forgotten about Solaris 1.x by now).
• The Hiring Manager -- Each pile that the clerk created is handed to an appropriate "Hiring Manager." This person does understand the technology (or at least thinks they do) that you'll be working with. So the rest of the resume must be in their language.

The most common mistake that I see is that people don't write anything for the clerk. Therefore, their resume never gets to the hiring manager. The "Objective Statement" at the top of your resume is what the clerk reads. Make sure you resume has one, and make it a good one.

Tip 2: A good Objective statement:

A good objective statement tells a plainly-state title you would like ("UNIX programmer", "CGI Developer", "Project Manager", "Prostitute") and a couple skills that you have ("excellent shell coding skills", "AJAX development experience", "experience with digital audio technology", "excellent oral skills", etc.).

You can also specify what industry or department you want to be in ("financial services", "telecommunication", ".COM", etc.).

Here are some good ones that I've seen:

1. Objective: A position as a Senior UNIX/Linux Developer that lets me utilize my years of experience in the TDM cellular technology.
2. Objective: A position as a Project Manager in the EDA industry that lets me utilize my excellent communication and presentation skills.
3. Objective: A position as a Junior UNIX/Solaris Sysadmin (SAGE Level II) in the financial services industry that lets me utilize my superior Solaris knowledge.
4. Objective: Experienced web-developer looking for projects that let me expand my HTML, VB.NET, MS-CMS2k skills.

In that last example "expand" sets an expectation of being a little green at VB.NET, etc. Replace it with "utilize" if you want to set an expectation of already being an expert. Companies do hire both, so don't set unreasonable expectations.

A sample bad objective statement (this is a real example):

• Objective: I am an expert in building large, scalable services based on open protocols.

That person didn't get any calls back, even though he had built .COM infrastructures that served literally millions of users email, web services, etc. The person was quite brilliant with technical things, but didn't write a resume that would get past the clerk: It didn't include any buzzwords or technology that the clerk could recognize nor a tangible position/title that was open. How could the clerk classify such a resume? It has to get past the clerk to get to the hiring-manager.

A better statement would have been: "A senior architect of UNIX-based (Solaris, Linux) email and web services that lets me utilize my experience in building extremely scalable systems with high up-times." He did change his resume to something similar, and soon started getting phone calls.

Tip 3: Buzzwords:

Use 'em. There is a reason for them, it makes communication faster. I hate "buzzword compliant" presentations, but only when they aren't adding any value to the statement. When they appear on a resume they do add value because the clerk uses them (whether or not they know what they mean). Better-trained clerks are given a list of synonyms.

For example: they might be told "We need a Solaris sysadmin... but that means anyone that mentions Sun, SunOS, or UNIX should be considered. Oh, other synonyms for UNIX are: AIX, Linux, IRIX... a person that knows any of those but wants to learn Solaris is fine for this position." However, that doesn't always happen, so I am a little redundent: I include the word UNIX in addition to the name the vendor uses.

List your strongest skills first. People evaluating resumes only read the first 3-4 items. I see many "skills" sections that list 20 operating systems or 20 languages or 20 vendors and that's a fine way to show that you have a lot of experience over many years. However, the person reading your resume is only going to read the first 3-4, so make sure those are the ones you want to work in. Don't list them in chronological order: that just emphasizes out-of-date technology.

A friend listed the languages she knew in the order she learned them. Which of the these two would a clerk find most useful if he/she was told to find a "Windows C++ programmer".

1. BASIC, Pascal, C-64 BASIC, AppleBasic, Cobal, Fortran, C, awk, C++, Visual C++, Perl
2. Perl, Visual C++, C++, awk, C, Fortran, Cobal, AppleBasic, C-64 Basic, Pascal, BASIC.

Number 2 is the more appealing, right? List the technologies you want to work with first.

Delete the super-old technologies like Commodore 64 and Apple II.

A concise way to list skills is to group them:

• Operating systems: Unix (FreeBSD, Solaris, Linux), Windows 95/98/2000/NT, and others.

Tip 4: Use industry classification like certifications and SAGE Job Classifications:

Who cares about certifications? I don't, but the clerk does. If you have any certifications, list them. Consider getting certified on topics that you feel you could pass without studying very hard. It will help you get past the clerk.

If you are a sysadmin, use the SAGE Job Classifications to describe yourself and/or the position you are looking for. More and more HR departments are using them, and certainly the cool companies that you want to work for are using them. However, explain enough so that someone that hasn't read http://www.sage.org/pubs/8_jobs/ will understand what you mean. That's why the above example was redundant: "a Junior UNIX/Solaris Sysadmin (SAGE Level II)". Also good would be "A SAGE Level II (Junior) UNIX System Administrator".

Tip 5: Never lie

I shouldn't have to say this, but don't lie on your resume. Don't exaggerate your skills. Don't claim you have certifications that you don't have. Companies would rather know that you don't know something but are willing to learn than be surprised to discover that you misrepresented yourself.

I had rather poor grades in college so I didn''t include my GPA on my resume. I was honest when asked for my GPA during interviews: the first interview was with someone that didn't complete college, and was unconcerned with GPA: he thought experience was more important.

I once interviewed someone that claimed they had designed LANs and WANs only to discover that they had talked about it with friends, usually while drinking at parties. If he had said he is looking to get started in LAN/WAN design, I might have hired him and enjoyed teaching him the rules of the road. Instead, I ripped up his resume after he left.

If they don't discover you are misrepresenting yourself (google is a great thing), then they'll be surprised when your job performance isn't what they expected and end up terminating you after a few months. Don't waste their time. There are jobs out there for every skill level no matter where you are.

Tip 6: Proofread, proofread, proofread.

(This should be the #1 tip but I thought Most resumes have at least one embarrassing typo. Most people suck at proofreading their own resume. Have someone else proofread it. Have a non-technical person proofread it AND have a technical person proofread it.

Tip 7: Cover letters

I have mixed feelings about cover letters. In theory they are a good way to introduce yourself. However nearly every cover letter I've ever seen has hurt the candidate's chance of getting an interview. Usually they include an embarrassing typo but more often than not they've made a claim that can't possibly been true ("So, you invented C? Tell me more about that, since you weren't born then.").

It is safer to have a cover letter that is just three sentences long: "I'm writing to you about job opening X-Y-Z as advertised on A-B-C. I've attached my resume. I look forward to interviewing with you." In other words, "Hi! Here's how to route this resume. Thanks."

(Note: I do admit that a cover letter I wrote did help me get the job. I knew the people evaluating the resume were very technical so my cover letter included a "Top 10 List" of reasons to hire me. The list was numbered in hexdecimal.)

Tip 8: Your filename:

Never use a filename like "resume.doc" when sending your resume as an attachment. Name the file something like "resume_tom_limoncelli.doc" so that if the HR person saves it, s/he will be able to easily tell yours from someone else's...and your resume won't be overwritten the next time someone else sends them a file called "resume.doc". (Thanks to Tina for that tip!)

Here's the beginning of my resume, altered slightly to demonstrate the above tips:

Objective: An architect-level senior system administrator (SAGE Level IV ) UNIX or Network administration position that uses my technical and inter-personal skills; or a role evaluating new technologies especially in the security and networking marketplace.

Skills:

• Operating systems: Unix (FreeBSD, Solaris, Linux), Windows 95/98/2000/NT, Cisco IOS 7.x-12.x, plus some experience with AIX, HP-UX, OpenVMS, NetBSD, OpenBSD and others.
• Programming Languages: Perl/CGI/mod_perl, C/C++, HTML, Unix shells and tools, awk/sed, SQL, Python, Pascal, BASIC.
• Network Products: Cisco Routers, Cisco Switches, Cisco PIX Firewalls and Cisco IP Telephony equipment (ICS7750); Checkpoint FW-1; Linux/Unix firewalls (IPFilter, IPFW); Avaya Cajun products; Network General Sniffer, tcpdump, Ethereal, Snort.
• Network Technologies: FastEthernet, Gigabit Ethernet, FDDI, OSPF, BGP, ATM.

Education: