Mastering the IT Resume
18 August 2006As the economy turned south, one of the first sectors to feel the pain was the Information Technology and High Tech sector. The part of the economy that for so long was the most dynamic and fastest growing of all fields, was quickly humbled, right along with dot-com stock valuations.
This of course led to layoffs, and hundreds of thousands of highly- qualified, once highly-sought-after high tech professionals now found themselves back in the job market. And that has been the problem. If ever there is a glut of overqualified candidates in any job market, it is in the IT/Technical/Telecom market.
Clearly, in such a tough job market, it’s essential that candidates find a way to stand out from the crowd and make their accomplishments and skills more dynamic to employers. We have various specialized techniques to achieve success for our IT clients, but there are several key issues that IT candidates can solve on their own.
* Don’t overdo the details! *
The number one problem we see from clients who send in their IT resumes is that they’ve put way too much information in. And the information they have put in is often redundant, or not that important.
IT professionals obviously tend to operate in project, contract and problem solving/solutions environments. Thus, their resumes tend to be nothing more than lists: they list every project they’ve ever done; they list ever software/hardware system/tool they’ve ever used; they tend not to list the tangible accomplishments that their work achieved.
If your resume is 4-5 pages, I don’t care what industry you’re in, you’re making a mistake. We often get 4-5 page IT resumes because people try to list everything they’ve done since the day they were born. Don’t get me wrong; showing comprehensive knowledge and experience is good. But remember, it’s not the quantity of information; it’s the quality that counts. Even if you have loads of experience, you need to organize it in an effective way.
Think about it from the reader’s point of view. What if you had two candidates who were equally qualified? One has a two-page resume that effectively and dynamically presents her qualifications in an organized and eye-catching way. The other resume is 5 pages long and is just a list of projects, often with the same information repeated on each project. Which resume do you think you’d read? Which do you think would make the better impact?
The key for IT resumes is to show you can get results. Think about it: everyone has training; everyone has certifications; most people have several years of various project experience. Listing skills is one thing. You should always put a comprehensive skill list at the top of your resume so they know what you’re qualified to do. But showing that you can get results is more important. A company wants to see that hiring you will make an impact on their bottom line or their efficiency of operations.
Here are some key tips for IT resumes:
- Show results. Things like “Reduced network downtime by 35%.” “Increased sales database efficiency by 21%, resulting in a 63% increase in sales.” If you don’t have tangible numbers to quote, summarizing major projects is good. “Migrated user call center to new location, setting up infrastructure and initiating service with 0% loss of service. Completed project on-time and under budget.”
- Don’t list every little thing. Don’t list the minutia like “Utilized spectrometers to realign X switches with Y routing tools.” Is it really important to list how you did it? Showing that you did it is more important. Don’t make the reader hunt for you achievements in a sea of technical name-dropping.
- If you have a solid skills list at the beginning of your resume, there is no need to list each and every hardware/software/language/tool/ system/protocol that you used, or are familiar with, every time, on every project. Believe me, it gets extremely redundant to read the same things on every job you list. The only exception to this is if the task you did matters to the job you’re applying for. Obviously, if you are applying for a job working with Cisco servers, you’ll want to show that you programmed in Cisco environments.
All and all, remember that you need to make your resume efficient, and eye-catching. If your resume can show you’re qualified, without coming to as many pages as long as War and Peace, then you’re doing a great deal to improve the likelihood that the resume will be read.
Owen Michaels is a Network Coordinators at ResumeWriters.com, the largest network of independently contracted resume writers on the internet. Owen manages a sub-network of Certified Professional Resume Writers for the company, who specialize in IT and tech-related resumes.
by Owen Michaels
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