Discussion on:

Eight resume tips for the experienced IT pro

I love techrepublic, but one thing that always gets me down is how far down the ladder I feel when I read articles like this one. How do I get from being the windows/office/nt server support guy in an office of about 25 people and doing the same basic things day in day out to the IT guru described in the article above. I love I.T. and especially learning new things. I have only been working in IT for a year and a half now, and been in this job for 8 months now. At my last place I was fresh out of college and thought I knew a bit ... I didn't, but the boss I had did and taught me so much and gave me so much experience. I still to this day call him the "Yoda of IT". Now I am in a job where I feel like I have come to a grinding halt, I have no one to teach me, no situations where I am forced to learn by experience - I feel stuck!! I feel like this job is doing my overall career more harm than good by trouble-shooting mostly Win95 PC's running office 97 on an NT4 network (very old skool). So what do I do? What should be my next move? any advice would be really appreciated!

The key to moving up in any field is networking. Develop contacts and friendships with other professionals in your area. You can do this at trade shows, user groups, and even vendor events. Keep this in mind: the majority of jobs people find are through the "informal job market" and are found through references, professional contacts, and personal relationships.

Also, when you are in the situation like your current situation, keep your eyes open for new opportunities both in and out of thecompany. I mention within the company because you should also look to build upon the situation you currently have. Do good work and make a name for yourself.

I completely agree with the other contributor about networking. The more people in the industry you make contacts with (and keep in touch with on a regular basis), the more opportunities you'll be exposed to.

In addition, create your own experience. Find what interests you the most (Win2K, SQL, firewalls, etc.), and make your own project. Set up a network at home and work through different scenarios. Implement a firewall on your home network. Set up a Linux server/workstation. Create an online database-driven website.

Moonlight (if you can). When you network, utilize all your friends and family members... tell them you're looking for small projects and see if they can pass your name along to anybody that might have a need. Ifyou can drum up a few small projects here and there, you'll be exposed to all kinds of new technologies.

Personally, I found contracting to be an excellent opportunity to be exposed to all kinds of technologies. There are risks with contracting though... be sure to check out all of TechRepublic's articles on consulting/contracting before making the leap. Even if you work as a W-2 employee for a contracting company, most of them don't pay bench time (the time between contracts).

Good luck!

The main risk with contracting is what you call "bench time". The longest such period I had was 8 months in 2002 ( I have hard of as long a 5 years benh time) and, while I survived my finances have not yet recovered. The other risk is you may have a choice between no contract and a contract that means slow financial death. A third risk is that your contract path is, whatever you say, a random walk, and may walk you into a vanishing niche. There are other risks but I won't discuss them here.

If you need a predictable income, cannot take the stress of uncertainty and your financial management skills are weak, do not go contracting.

FOr myself I am working slowly on ways of generating passive secondary income streams so "bench time" is less of a threat. This is harder than software development.

Everybody has a different style of learning, but many in IT, by nature, are self-learners. My first IT job was (and is) IT manager of a $20m company with ~80 employees. I built the hardware network by hand; deployed Win2K, Exchange, and other programs; work on databases; and manage every single other aspect of IT. I built all of this from scratch with about 20 employees, and I am designing an infrastructure to support many hundreds of employees. I got the position not because I had zero industry experience, but because I had been working with computers at home for many years. I had become more valueable than consultants with 10 years of experience.

The best way to learn computers, if you do not find yourself in a desirable position to do so in the workplace, is to get a couple of PCs together at home and build a network. Even with two PCs, you can learn Active Directory, DNS, DHCP, IIS, group policy, NTFS permissions, security, and a ton more. If you need direction with Windows, maybe start with the MCSE book set. Over time, as you break and fix things for yourself, you will discover for yourself the many intricacies that are not detailed in books and not taught in IT courses. This type of learning forces you to architect entire systems in your head and think faster than you can talk--and to think for yourself. With that, you will develop a skill set that is valuable to any company smart enough to recognize it.

I recently went through Windows/2000 training. W2K? Isn't that passe? Well, no, not exactly.

Contrary to what the vendors might have you believe, there is something to be said for being a rev or two behind the bleeding edge. There is something to be said for having real expertise at something, not just the latest and greatest.

You are not alone. While I was going through W2K training, there were two classrooms in the facility training on Windows/98! The instructor tells me that Win/98 are the most popular classes they run - it does everything most people need to know.

I predict that the I.T. people who are going to continue to do well will be the people who have some business savy as well technical smarts. A glut of technicians is developing, what with globalization and all, and race to the bottom is going to begin soon.

I'm a IT Manager as well and have run into the same problem as the author. Though I think there are some improvements that can be made to the format, I believe the bullets and thought process that went into this article are excellent.

My question for both the author and others reading this article: How successful has this resume approach been for you?

A resume is only a small part of your job search, but it seems to be the piece that most hiring managers focus on first.

Let's hear it folks!

Thanks for the feedback. I would love to hear your comments on the format, and I'm sure the rest of the readers would too. The more comments I receive from hiring managers, the better.

As for my personal success with this format... my personal goal was to present myself better, and to not have any more managers say that I was "light" in my areas of specialty. I think I've accomplished that goal. When I submitted the new format to hiring managers that I knew, it was well received.

As you mention, the resume is only a small part of the process, but first impressions are critical, especially when the manager is looking at tons of resumes.

When you put it all together. There's only two approaches to getting hired.

1. Networking/Inside Track. You already know someone on the inside. Maybe the person doing the hiring. Easily counts for more than half of the jobs.

Your resume is a formality to the hiring process.

2. Off the street/Unknown.

Your resume is their picture of you. Poor resume, leads to NO interview, leads to NO job.

But, the key ingredient to any cold resume is targeting your audience. Find out what technology they're using and what they are trending toward and target your resume to say "I am proficient in what you use and what you're going to use". If you do that, then you'll be interviewed (if no #1's are already slated for the job). That's where yousell your resume and yourself.

0bytes

Randy,

I guess my main points would be those of personal preference: Education and Certifications after experience, as well as the addition of job titles.

I noticed that you specifically left out the information that many people (myself included) like to include on resumes, namely "All those things that are in my job description" and focused instead on "what I accomplished".

That, in and of itself, should make this a more effective format when put in front of the hiring manager -yourintended audience.

All that aside, I've just found a nice job opportunity that I am going to apply for. I'm going to reformat my recruiter/headhunter loved resume into something based on yours. Let's see how this works! Realizing that I'll likely be one of a few hundred resumes, if I even get a call from the recruiter, I think it will be a success.

Having expected some gimmicky resume template, I was relieved to discover my resume was mainly in accordance with the example.

However, I put education and certs at the end. Certainly a senior IT consultant should emphasize real-world experience.I've known people with tons of certs but still incompetent.

Instead of accomplishment bullets, I use complete sentences. Often it is helpful to include information such as group name, which is every bit as meaningful as a job title. Accomplishments are the meat, but you need some gravy to bring out the real flavor.

I also include some skillset info where applicable. Non-techies in HR only understand apps and platforms buzzwords. They know nothing about IT migrations, security assessments, and the like. The example resume tells me zero about John Q. Smith's skill set at EZ Frozen Foods. For all I know he may have done nothing more than install a ZoneAlarm.

Also, I would recommend losing the Available Upon Request section. It goeswithout saying that testimonials and drilldowns of career are available.

Otherwise, good article.

I agree highly with the article, except when it comes to one area.

If you are applying through a head hunting firm, or staffing agency - some of the tricks implied in this article can actually get you LESS results, especially removing keywords and technologies that you understand.

Many of these agencies put your resume into a large database, and do a keyword search to find applicable applicants. If the client of the agency requires ADO or COM for example, and you removed it to show you specialize in OOPL or some other talent - the resume does not appear.

Perhaps an article can be generated in the future to address these techniques.

I sure wish that some of these HR firms had keyword "metatagging" like web pages - then a resumeto the client could be designed properly for the client, while the searching capability still produced a hit on each resume.

You make an excellent point, and one which I *almost* included in the article. One of the reasons that I wasn't aware of any problems with my resume is that I was previously using a lot of brokers/agents/headhunters/whatever. They all LOVED my resume (many specifically commented on how great it was, and loved the format). But as soon as it was in the hands of the manager, it apparently lost its appeal.

This is obviously one of the reasons most resume experts recommend having multiple versions of a resume, depending on who you're submitting it to.

I have been thinking lately that this is a good idea... Would it be useful to submit a hard copy of Perl and VB scripts that I've written, or perhaps procedure documentation that I've written, etc??

Or perhaps set up a web-site to host virtual copies of my work?? (Would a manager take the time to download them though?)

Going the hard copy route takes a two-page resume to 10+ pages of information...

But it would certainly stand out, and prove that I know what I'm talking about...

What do you all think?

The first thing in your list should be "KNOW YOUR MARKET" .....

Item number 7 (Seek advise from managers ...) is the key item.

I'll use Toronto as an example.

As you've hinted ... managers and headhunters (internal or otherwise) ... are looking for different things. You've explained what managers are looking for quite clearly. However, the headhunters are looking for tag words and the RIGHT format (read my way or the highway) and most of all - a little (predetermined) box they can slot you into.

Unless, you can bypass the headhunters and deal directly with the managers, writing a resume for the managers will bring nothing but heartache as the gatekeepers rip your hard work to shreds and demand that you rewrite to their format.

Now, 10 years ago, I would have said that your advice would work in Toronto. 20 years ago I would have said that was the only way. If you could get the resume on a manager's desk it would be scanned and if interesting, forwarded to HR for contact. If you couldn't get it on a manager's desk, there were always external headhunters who could. These people handled both sides of the market and were often former managers and/or technicians. A good one understood the market, the technology relationships and the duties of different jobs.

Today, in Toronto, it won't work. Why? Today, the manager will just send it over to HR. Effectively, the process has reversed. HR scans the resume, decides who is interesting and then forwards their best guess to the manager.

And the external headhunters have been gobbled by the big companies. Now, you'll contact a person who deals only with hiring and they'll come out of an HR background. They won't understand the market, won't know the technology beyond the buzzword let alone the relationships and believe that a job title accurately describes the position.

All of which means that if your resume doesn't fit into the buzz-word list and isn't in the format they think is best then it'll never get to the manager's desk.

Not a good thing for any one ... but that's the reality in the Toronto market (I'm not going to go into the why but there are reasons for the change).

In short, you need to be aware of your audience before taking advice like this. And your audience is determined by the market you are in. You may need multiple resumes ... one that you send to the HR types and one you hand to the manager. Only by knowing your market will you know what you need.