swestrup | Resume Formats?

As I sit here contemplating updating my Resume, I'm reminded that I chose this particular format (or a close cousin) something like 15 years ago. Recently

_sps_ was telling me of various experiments he had performed in the line of resume structure. So, maybe its time to revisit the layout and structure of my Resume. If so, I would ask all and assembled for any pointers to what they think is a good example of a modern resume, and what it is that HR departments are looking for today.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

http://users.livejournal.com/hub_/

As long as it is not proprietary like, say, MS-Word....

From:

swestrup

Actually, many HR departments insist on MS Word submissions. Usually though, I go with .pdf unless I know otherwise.

From:

sfllaw.livejournal.com

I generate my résumé in XHTML format. A quick rename of the extension to .doc and Word opens it up fine.

From:

cpirate.livejournal.com

There's a couple of relevant things I can share that the lady from the University of Waterloo drilled into me when I went to get some resume advice.

The most important thing is that for each entry in your work history, the stuff you did should be a series of one-line bullet points each saying what you did, the tools you used to do it (if relevant), and the resulting benefit the company realized. "Task, tool, result" was the mantra, though you'll probably end up with many tool-independant things.

So for instance, a few lines from my resume:

* Improved class hierarchy design to eliminate circular dependancies
* Designed and implemented a Perl script to add symbol information to stack dumps

The first one didn't really have a related tool, since it was more design work than anything, but the important thing is that I didn't just say "Improved class hierarchy design"; I say what it actually accomplished. For the second one, I made sure to note that I used Perl; I didn't stress the result too much, but the fact that it improved debuggability is pretty obvious to anyone with any technical knowledge. If I had the space on the line I might say that, but it's good enough as-is to get commented on in an interview, which is important.

Note also that they're both very terse, to make it easier to skim over the resume as a whole. For me, as you might be able to tell from this reply, being terse took a lot of work, but it really made a big difference to the end result. The best way to achieve this is to go over every sentence of your first draft and remove three words. It's brutally hard to do, but it really does work.

Try not to have more than 3-5 bullet points for any given entry in your work history; in fact, I was told to not have more than 5 bullet points for any given section in the whole resume but that might not always be possible. You shouldn't have more than one or maybe two sections with more points than that, and they need to be very important ones. For most of your old jobs, you should be able to squeeze the relevant stuff into 3 bullet points; only add more if you really have to. Combined with the terseness of the individual lines it makes your resume look really choppy if you sit down to read it, but from an employer's point of view it really helps cut down the clutter and lets them quickly focus on the good stuff. Remember, the goal of the resume is only to get you an interview, so you can get away with leaving a lot of details off the resume since you can bring them up in the interview.

Some people like having an "Objective" section at the top of their resume, some people don't. I didn't like it at first, but I've come around to the other side now and I think it's a good idea, assuming you can put something there that sounds sensible. For instance, "Objective: To obtain a full-time position as an Intercal programmer" would be fine (if that's what you wanted). Or feel free to expound slightly on your objective for the next couple of years - heading into management, technical lead, whatever. When I'm reading incoming resumes, it's handy to have a sentence or two that lets me know what to be thinking about, it helps to differentiate co-op students from full-time applicants, and it makes it easier to focus on the job experience that's relevant to the position you're looking for. If you don't like the idea, it's not a strict requirement, but I'd suggest it.

People always say that your resume shouldn't be more than two pages, and it's better if it's just one page, but I think that's not true in general. For most new high school/university grads, it's certainly the case, but I once tried to condense my resume down to one page and it really sucked. If your third page is full of useful, easy-to-skim information, it's definitely worth having. The easy-to-skim part is critical though. More than 3 pages is harder to justify, but not out of the question either.

From:

cpirate.livejournal.com

(Stupid LJ character limit on comments...)

That's about all the suggestions I can make that I think would be relevant to you. I thought a lot of them sounded silly when I first heard them, but the more I read the resumes that people submit to us, the more I wish they would implement these ideas. They really do make it easier to quickly get to the heart of a resume. If you want to see my complete resume to see what kind of road I'm leading you down, let me know and I'll try to dig up a halfway sensible version. Or if you ever want me to look over yours, it'd be a pleasure - it's the kind of thing I really enjoy doing.

From:

thebabynancy.livejournal.com

*laughs at LJ character limit*

Character limit is supposed to exist for the long-winded... not the all-informative. Kinda sad.

From:

swestrup

Yeah, I'd like to see an example of your resume. What you're suggesting isn't too far removed from the Old Format I've been using, although I've avoided bullet points until the last section, where I couldn't figure out any way around using them.

From:

cpirate.livejournal.com

I just remembered to have a good look at your resume. In terms of formatting, it's quite good; I mean, I'm no graphic designer, but I can't see any obvious way to improve it. It's much better than most resumes I've seen, including mine (if I could even find a properly-formatted copy).

My main advice, for what it's worth, is to replace some of the paragraphs with bullet points. It might be a bit depressing, but the unfortunate fact is that the people reading incoming resumes are so flooded with irrelevant or cruddy ones that the first reaction on getting a new one is to glance it over very quickly to see if it's even in the right ballpark. You need to make it easy to hook these people at the first read, and unfortunately, long paragraphs of text aren't the way to do it.

As it stands, it's hard to quickly get to the meat of your resume. It just takes too long to get the relevant information out of your introduction, or out of your job descriptions. For a counter-instance, your Hobbies section is just about perfect - it's very easy to skim and quickly get the gist of.

Similarly, the Skills section is too long. The stuff that I, as some hypothetical employer, might be interested in gets swamped by all the other entries. My strategy for dealing with this was two-fold; first, I separated my skills section into a few different subsections. Then, I tailored the contents of each section on a per-resume basis to the particular job I was gunning for. This worked well when I was just sending out single resumes at a time, but has obvious drawbacks if you're looking to do a more generic approach; even then, you can make a few different generic ones that each focus on different things.

One easy way to cut down the clutter is that if you don't want to work with something, or it's (commercially) extinct, take it out of your skills section. I'm thinking of stuff like Icon, APL, Pascal, VAX 780 assembler, etc. It might be fun to have, but it just gets in the way of the more relevant things. You can always bring it up in the interview if it looks like it'd be useful to do so. Another clutter-reduction tool is the whole "Task, Tool, Result" thing I was talking about: if your work history says that you dealt with some tool or language at an old job, you don't necessarily need to repeat that in the Skills section.

Oh, and my only other advice is that you don't need to give so much prominence to your address and contact information. Your name is important, so that should stay how it is now, but you can move the rest of the contact information to a smaller font in, say, one of the upper corners of the page. Or, for balance, you could have your physical address in one corner and your phone/email in the other. Your contact information doesn't have to catch anyone's eye; once they've read the rest of the resume, if they like you they'll go looking for it. They won't say "whoa, hold the phone, this guy lives in DDO? That's great, I always hire the first west islander I see! Get him in for an interview!" :)

So in my opinion, the best resume you can get would be to take the one you have and ruthlessly edit it down. It's incredibly painful to do, and feels like it's a thorougly unproductive waste of time, but the goal is to make it easier to read quickly and this is the best way to get there. The "remove three words from every sentence" rule comes in handy mainly as a way to force yourself to actually do the editing :) But you have to be serious about it - you really do need to take it down to 3-5 bullet points per section, and one line per bullet point, to make it as effective as possible. Even if you don't end up liking the end result, it'll give you a better idea of how to express what you want in as terse a manner as possible.