resume writing

by Christopher M. Russo
<chris@thlogic.com>

Chris Russo manages engineering at GTE Internetworking. His focus continues to be satisfying the customer — whether that be a Web developer, a system administrator, or an end user.

A Hiring Manager's Perspective

What is the mystery that lurks on the receiving end of resumes? Why is it that so many resumes we send seem to fall into some sort of black hole? Many of us are very qualified and do actually work very well with others — so why is it that no one seems to be banging down our door?

The answer? Your resume is terrible. I suppose you're thinking, "Oh, he means that most people have terrible resumes." Nope. You. You, reading this article right now — your resume is probably trash. I know mine is, and right after I'm done writing this article, I'm going to go fix that. Statistically speaking, very few people are likely to have "good resumes."

That's a pretty harsh, not to mention bold, statement. I don't make statements like that lightly, so I suppose I should explain.

As the title of this piece implies, I am a hiring manager. The group that I manage has literally the toughest job requirements that I have ever come across, and I have ten or more open requisitions that I need to fill. In the past six months I have reviewed hundreds and hundreds of resumes, and have spent a lot of time and effort refining my understanding of what a good candidate is and how to identify one from his or her resume.

I have done this by taking very careful notes on the resumes that I have reviewed, phone-screening candidates I felt might be appropriate, taking careful notes during the call, and then comparing my results to my original interpretation of the resume. In the beginning, I phone-screened almost every candidate whose resume came across my desk — a painful elimination process that took untold hours. Now, I phone-screen a precious few, and they are usually very close to my expectations.

In the interest of reducing the resume flow from 50 or 60 a day down to a slightly more manageable 10 or 15, I took this information and wrote it up so that I could provide it to my recruiters. Most of the ones who have taken the time to actually read and understand it have been hitting extremely close to the mark every time. The others I am systematically weeding out.

So now I am down to a point where I spend only about 30% of my time working on the hiring issues for my team, but I'm still looking to get more of that time back. I was trying to determine how I could improve this process even more, when I realized the only thing I could do would be to improve the quality of the resumes I was receiving, for even the resumes of the candidates who were qualified were still typically very poor and took a lot of extra time to parse.

I began detailing better resume-writing skills information to give to my recruiters, when I realized that the best way to communicate this information was to give it to the candidates. Thus, I decided to write this article.

It is my hope that this information will be helpful to you — and ultimately to me and other hiring managers. Understand that it is written with the assumption that if you are qualified, this will help you get more interviews, and much faster. If you are a charlatan and looking to get a job that you neither deserve nor are qualified for, then you probably need to go find an article on "creative resume writing," because this article deliberately defies such efforts.

The following is a list of basic guidelines that I will use when rewriting my resume. I suggest you try them as well.

The Signal-to-Noise Issue

It is a good thing to keep in mind that, statistically speaking, most people who work in this industry are not really very good, and even fewer are capable of writing a good resume. Yours is likely to be swimming in a sea of resumes of this caliber. It is a difficult job showing your skills in situations like this, so be ready for the challenge.

Impressions

It is important to understand that resumes are all about impressions. If someone is looking to fill a position, then the likelihood is that your resume is one of dozens that they will review that day. Even the most well-meaning and conscientious managers are not going to read every word of every resume, because they simply do not have the time. It is therefore important that your resume quickly establish a positive impression of you and your abilities so that the person feels the need to investigate you further.

Sell Yourself

This probably sounds odd, given the nature of this article, but your resume is a showcase of the qualities that are you. Talk about the things you are proud of. If you are a technology analyst and a superstar, you shouldn't have things like "setup file shares" or "configured print queues" on your resume. It detracts from your other achievements and makes it appear as if you either didn't really do those more significant things, or just did them at a cursory level.

If you worked on some high-end projects, list those instead. Talk about the time you migrated the entire network to a new operating system, or the time you put in a business proposal to upgrade some major component on the 300 corporate infrastructure machines. Talk about the things that are very significant — major challenges you had to overcome in your career.

If you were an auto mechanic and writing your resume, do you think you would waste precious space on your resume explaining how you topped off the oil on a car and checked the tire pressure? One would certainly hope not. One would expect you would talk about the time you fitted that 350 big-block V8 into that 1958 MGB, or the time you fixed the transmission on a Ford Model T with only the aid of a screwdriver and a canned ham.

If it so happens that checking the oil and tire pressure were your greatest achievements, fine — put them down and be proud. Since, however, most of us have done a little more than that, most of us should be putting things of more import on our resume.

Objectivity

Don't put anything on your resume that isn't a fact. Statements like "excellent customer support skills" and "works well with others" are your opinions, and your opinions alone. These are the kinds of things that can only be proven by actually working in an environment, and it is foolish to think that just by writing them down that they will be taken as truth.

What you can do is detail experiences or job functions that might imply that you have these qualities. For example, instead of saying "excellent customer support skills," you could say "worked on the help desk for 12 months, during which customer satisfaction ratings went up 36%." Instead of saying, "works well with others," you might say something like "was delegated as liaison for all operations/helpdesk interdepartmental issues." Both of these things will raise an eyebrow or two and may have the effect you were looking for. Be careful on the statistics, though — just because the helpdesk customer-satisfaction rate went up, that doesn't mean that you were the cause of it, and there is a very good chance you will be asked during your interview how you arrived at those numbers.

Honesty

Don't lie on your resume. In fact, don't even stretch the truth too much. The reality is that most good resume readers are going to be able to identify your tall tales fairly quickly. Your resume tells a story, and lies stand out as inconsistencies or deviations from the theme.

Yes, there are some people out there who will simply scan your resume for keywords, and if the keyword isn't there, they will throw your resume away — let them. If your resume is lacking something they are looking for, then there is no reason why you should want that job. There are far more jobs out there than there are people to fill them — you may not get that job, but you will most certainly get another one like it.

Length

Most resumes should be one or two pages long — in some cases you may need to make it three pages in order to be able to list all the technologies you understand and experiences you have had. If it's longer than that, I guarantee you that no one will read it unless they are very bored. They will read the first page or two, make their conclusions, and then throw it away.

If you can write a one-page resume, then you are a true master. I have actually seen extremely senior people write amazing one-page resumes. It's a tough thing to do, especially in a industry fraught with buzzwords and rapidly changing technologies, but it is possible.

On the other hand, if you really have only one page's worth of experience to write about, don't try to turn it into two. Some people want a more junior candidate and will be very annoyed with a resume from someone who is junior but trying to look senior by adding lots of "fluff."

Contractors are one of the few exceptions to the short resume. Most contractors have three, four, five, or more jobs each year, and keeping that history confined to a few pages is very difficult. For those people, I really don't know what to suggest, but I know that I still read the first couple of pages and ignore the rest. Further, eight-page resumes are very tempting to throw away just out of irritation.

The other exception is when you happen to need a curriculum vitae — in addition to their standard resume, many authors and other professionals have a much more extensive one that includes all of their experience and any publications they have been responsible for. This, however, is rarely required by the hiring party.

Keep It Concise

You do not need to tell your entire life's story in your resume. There was a time when I programmed in AppleSoft Basic, and I think I even have some experience with FORTRAN if I dig back far enough, but does anyone really care? And if they do, do you really want that job? Well, maybe you do, but I most certainly do not.

Your resume should detail the points in your experience set that are important to you and your career development. Make sure that what you list are things that you feel are either important to the jobs that you take or at least show something of significance in today's industry.

Listing too much simply confuses the people who are reviewing the resume and makes them question whether or not you really focus on the technology that they (and you) are looking for.

Keep It Generic

Your resume will be looked at by many different people — often with completely different jobs. Some jobs that may be perfect for you, but you may not have thought of them or even realized that they exist. It is therefore important to keep your resume relatively generic, so the you won't be passed over for jobs that might be ideal for you.

If you are feeling particularly zealous, you could theoretically slant your resume toward the needs of each specific job that you are applying for, but this is impractical for most people. Therefore, the focus should remain on the relatively generic.

Needless to say, don't go overboard here either. The opposite extreme is a single page with the words "did computer stuff" printed in the exact center of the page. This is clearly not useful either. Give them honest detail; the concern is just to watch that you don't paint yourself into a corner by giving too much.

Poor Documentation Skills

Wait a minute — you thought this was a piece on writing resumes, right? Well, yes, it is. Without question, if your resume is written poorly from the standpoint of grammar, spelling errors, or broken English, people are going to be left with a bad impression of you and your abilities. At the very least, they may think that you have poor documentation or presentation skills — both of which are important in many jobs.

Run your resume through a spell-checker, have someone review your resume for flow and good grammar, and if you have a difficult time with the English language, have a friend who speaks the language natively to review it and make suggestions for improvements.

Choose Your Words

Understand that resume writers often use words and phrases such as "participated in," "contributed to," or "assisted with" to attach themselves to a big project they really had little or no involvement in. Since this is a reasonably transparent scheme, these phrases have come to imply that the candidate not only was not a key contributor to the given task, but also is clearly trying to fool the reviewer into thinking that she or he was.

If, in reality, you were only "involved" in the task, then definitely list it as such. If, however, you did hold a more active role in the duty, be sure to use words that explain that. "Directed," "integrated," "migrated" are all active words that show you were the driving force in whatever task they are attached to.

In general, try to focus on things that you did personally, or rewrite statements to more clearly state what it was that you did. For example, instead of saying "was involved in the selection committee for conference abc," say "handled seating arrangements for selected officials at conference abc."

Paragraphs

Do not write your resume in paragraphs of text. This is not a novel you are writing, it is a resume. It should read like an outline, not like a biography. Paragraphs of text are hard to read, do not allow for easy skipping around, and leave you open to the reader disliking your style of writing.

Chronology

Dates are often very important to a resume reviewer. It is important to give your experiences in chronological order, listing most recent items first. This may seem obvious to most people, but I cannot tell you how many resumes I have seen that start with experiences from ten years ago. This can be very confusing and can leave a bad impression or, worse, can cause your resume to wind up in the wastebasket.

Many people today also perform several jobs at the same time — if you are one of those people, it is important to put "Contract" or "Part-Time" at the end of dates for jobs that overlap each other chronologically. This avoids raising questions in the mind of the reviewer.

Do not be afraid if you have lots of short-term jobs! Years ago, people looked for resumes that showed the person had devoted years to a company and was likely to stay on for the long haul. Interestingly, that trend seems to have reversed — now hiring managers are looking for people who are agile and can move quickly from job to job, because it is this kind of person who is often dynamic and able to change rapidly to meet the needs of a rapidly changing world.

It seems that now people who stay longer than 18 months are "lifers," and people who stay longer than two or three years are suspect. People expect a good system administrator to move on every so often, because a good admin learns fast and becomes bored very quickly. Unless you are holding down permanent jobs for three months at a time, detail your starting and ending dates with pride.

If you are holding down permanent jobs for only three months at a time, you may want to consider a different model entirely. Perhaps contracting or consulting would be more suitable for you — both are generally higher-paying careers and will be more apt to match up with your tendency toward mobility, and the short-term assignments will not look strange to hiring managers who review your resume.

Objectives and Goals

I have started cutting these "Objectives" out and hanging them on my wall so I can look up occasionally and get a chuckle on an otherwise tense day. All job objectives tend to boil down to the following statement: "Seeking a position where I can work insanely long hours and use my godlike skills to solve impossibly complicated problems while working hand in hand with people who love me dearly because I'm such an amazing person."

Oh please. These types of statements are neither honest nor objective. More often than not, they are just plain silly.

For the most part, I personally feel that objectives and goals are a waste of space unless you really know what you want, and it is fairly specific. If you genuinely know, for example, that you are "seeking a management position in the technology field, preferably in IT, secondarily in development" or something like it, then great! Those people who have the job that you are looking for may call you. Those people who are looking for a peanut vendor will not. Perfection.

Those of you who decide to specify objectives need to understand that there is a very good chance that you might get passed over for a position you never would have thought of, but which might really interest you. Your objective may state "a," you may know that you don't want "b," but since "a" wasn't "c," your resume wound up in the trash. Perhaps this is a good thing, perhaps not. It depends on your goals.

If, however, you are like a lot of people who really are just looking for a cool job where you can poke around at a new technology, then leave the objective or goal off your resume entirely. You'll need the space for other things anyway, and "looking for a cool job where I can play with cool technology" is a little goofy and unprofessional-looking on your resume.

Summaries

Experience summaries are typically an attempt to give resume-scanners like myself a "quick overview" of the person's experience or skills. This is an interesting idea, but it is likely to be incorrect at best, at worst a major misrepresentation and disservice to the candidate.

Oftentimes recruiters encourage this behavior. Sometimes they demand it. As we stated previously, you are the person best suited to sell yourself, so the recruiter really shouldn't make a summary for you and is likely to represent you fairly poorly in any summary.

If you write the summary yourself, you will inevitably try to encapsulate what you are and what you can do in a one-paragraph statement. This is likely to lead to subjectivity and certainly will glaze over areas that may be key to one manager or another, thus causing your resume to be dismissed before even being fully reviewed.

For example, let's say that a manager is looking for scripting experience — even a small amount. Many system administrators will list on their resume a scripting experience they had, but are not looking for scripting jobs, so will not necessarily put it in their summary. What happens when your resume comes across the desk of a manager who will lazily read only the summary? Where do you think your resume will end up?

Skills

Many people list the technologies they are familiar with at the top of their resume. These lists are valuable for some people to do a quick check and make sure you at least have the basic skills they are looking for.

Do not, however, list every single technology you have ever been in the same room with. Listing skills or technologies implies that you can use them if called upon. If you are competent with the skill, then list it. If you just tinkered with it a bit one afternoon when you were bored, I don't recommend naming it. Think of it this way; you're going to wind up with either a very uncomfortable technical interview, or worse, a very uncomfortable day at some later time of explaining why your entire company went down because you couldn't fix something critical.

Another thing to consider when listing the skills is: Do you want to use this skill in your next job? For example, I have experience with, and can probably fix, a couple of nasty DOS-based accounting packages if I really want to . . . but I most certainly do not — not ever. Therefore, I usually think twice before putting it on my resume.

Real Experience

Don't try to pass off schoolwork, home projects, and fixing your neighbor's computer as "work experience." It's not. You could arguably list these things as technologies you are familiar with, but unless you've done it in a professional environment where you were being paid for a measured deliverable, I don't recommend it. It makes you look silly and unprofessional, especially when you are asked about it during an interview. Picture yourself saying, "Oh yeah! My friend and I networked his house with some Ethernet cables we found over at the dump! It was cool!"

The only exception to this rule is if you happen to be a junior candidate, an intern, or someone who has recently graduated school and this is your first job. Use your best judgment.

Highlighting

Highlighting via bolding or italics is one of the curses of the overly specific method. The common practice is to bold or highlight key words or phrases to help resume-scanners like myself to see that you are perfect for the job.

There are many problems with this theory. The first is that it is very possible that you do not fully understand the job and what it would take to be perfect for it. Thus, you may highlight things that actually make you look inappropriate, or at least confused.

Another is that, as stated previously, your resume needs to be reasonably generic. How are you going to manage highlighting items that are appropriate for every job? Practically speaking, it isn't possible.

The last, and probably least obvious, is that it makes your resume very difficult, and very annoying, to read. It breaks up the flow significantly and causes whoever is reading it to stop and process why each bolded word has been so accented.

For example, try reading that last paragraph again, this time with key words bolded:

The last, and probably least obvious, is that it makes your resume very difficult, and very annoying, to read. It breaks up the flow significantly and causes whoever is reading it to stop and process why each bolded word has been so accented.

Recruiters

While a little outside the scope of this document, it is important to understand a few points when working with recruiters.

First and foremost is to understand that unless you have retained a recruiter to work for you — that is to say, you have offered payment to a recruiter to find you a position — the recruiter works for the company who eventually hires you. Remember, the recruiter gets paid a fee of 25—40% of your total salary if the company hires you. This means that the recruiter will always work in the company's best interest, and not yours.

Next it is important to keep in mind that the recruiters, in actuality, work for themselves. Just like you or me, they need to keep their own interests in mind at all times. There is a cost associated with helping you to find a position — if that cost ultimately outweighs what they believe that they will get in return when and if someone hires you, they may decide to give up on you.

This leads us to our next point — it is important that you work with the recruiter to help them find you a position. Be as forthcoming as you can with what your needs and expectations are, return calls promptly, and be professional in your dealings with them and the companies they send you to for interviews. The recruiter is your partner, albeit a limited one. The more assistance you give them, the more likely they will be to want to help you find a position.

RECRUITER "REVISIONS"

Recruiters have a nasty habit of modifying your resume to meet what they believe to be the requirements of the jobs that they are submitting you for. The problem here is that most recruiters do not understand your industry. Even those who basically understand cannot possibly keep up with the changes that happen almost daily in one of the strangest industries that ever existed.

Even if you are one of the worst tech professionals on earth, it is you who are most suited to sell yourself — not the recruiter. Make it clear to your recruiters that you have worked very hard on your resume to properly document your skills and capabilities and do not want your resume modified in any way. Be polite, of course, but be firm.

The only exception should be to allow your recruiter to put their company and personal information on your resume in the form of a header or footer. This is actually a good thing for the person reviewing the resume, as it allows them easily to pick up the phone and call the recruiter to request a phone screen or an interview.

Some recruiters may make suggestions on how you could improve your resume. If you respect their opinions, go with it. If not, tell them thank you, but you would rather keep it the way it is. If they insist, politely decline and find another recruiter. Don't worry about not being able to find other recruiters — you cannot sneeze without knocking over 50 or 60 of them.

OWN YOUR RESUME

Your resume, as a representation of yourself, is a commodity — and a valuable one at that. Most companies will pay a recruiter between 20 and 40 percent of your total compensation in commission to a recruiter who finds you. When you consider the salaries of tech professionals, you see that this is an enormous amount of money.

If multiple recruiters are presenting your resume to every single job opening in your area, managers are going to start seeing your name multiple times from different people. This causes confusion, and can even result in disqualification of your resume because companies are now uncertain as to who represents you. The last thing you want is for a manager to have a bad impression, or, worse, for you to lose a good job opportunity because you do not own the process.

It is important that you ensure that the recruiters who are handling your resume are not blasting it everywhere. As of this writing it is a job-seekers' market — most jobs are not filled for a very long time, because of the low supply of qualified talent. Make your recruiters work for their money. Tell them that they must contact you before submitting your resume to anyone, and, further, they must keep careful records on where your resume has been sent and who has sent it, as well as any notes on the progress of that submission so far.

Certifications

This section is likely to make me very unpopular, but I don't care — it must be said. Whether you believe it or not, most certifications are not really worth all that much. It's dangerous to make the assumption that your particular name-brand certification is worth more than some others and therefore assume that it is a critical piece of the resume. Unfortunately, the likelihood is that it is not.

Will these certifications get you a job? Possibly, but any seasoned computer professional knows that you have certifications just so that people who are uninformed enough to demand them won't throw your resume in the trash.

Other than that, they are typically the equivalent of a driver's test — proof only that you are not so insanely incompetent as to cause severe and consistent damage to others around you when at the console of the item in question. Certainly there are those among you who studied very hard and learned a lot — maybe even some who worked very hard to apply the knowledge after the fact — but those people are very rare. The vast majority of the people who have certifications have no real knowledge to back up their gilded paper.

This is unfortunate — especially for those of us who have the certifications and truthfully deserve them — but it's true. Once again, the signal-to-noise ratio is very poor.

If you have certifications, list them. Don't waste a lot of space — you need it for other more important things — put them all on one or two lines, and put them at the end of your resume. Do not splash logos on your resume. The more attention you bring to your certifications, the more it makes it look like you don't know what you are doing.

Of course, if you don't know what you are doing, please continue splashing logos all over your resume. It makes it much easier for managers like me to weed you out.

Education

A great many people in this industry have little or no college education — in fact, in my experience, many of the really good system administrators are the ones who flunked out of college because they were far too busy playing with computers to go to class.

This actually includes many people for whom you will be working. College educations do not appear to be a standard requirement, and frequently the only time they are listed in the job description is when someone in human resources put it there, or because the hiring manager is more "old-school."

If you have a college education, certainly list it — you worked hard for it and it does mean something. In addition, you don't want people passing you over just because you don't have something written on a piece of paper. It is also important to understand, that the higher up in the career band you go — manager, director, VP, CIO, CEO — the more important your degree is likely to be.

Do not, however, devote too much space to it. It is certainly far more significant than any certification you might have, but it is not typically nearly as important as your actual experiences. Again, typically list this at the end of your resume, but before your certifications.

Publications

If you have them, be sure to list them. Not many people write articles or books, and they do mean something — at least they mean enough to make someone stop and really think about how serious you are in your profession.

Personally, I prefer to find these at the end of a resume. When I see them closer to the top, I tend to worry whether the person is pompous.

"References Available Upon Request"

OK, did you really need to waste three lines worth of text and white space to tell me that if I ask for references you will give them to me? Please tell me you have more important things to put on your resume. Just take it off.

You need to have references, and I most certainly hope that you have some good ones, or you will have some rather serious issues. Aside from that, however, I think it is assumed that you will provide references when requested, so you really don't need this on your resume.

So now that you have read all of this, I'm sure you will have found at least a few things that could use some adjustment on your resume. As I said, I know for a fact that mine needs a lot of fine-tuning.

If you'd like to try an interesting experiment, send out a couple of dozen copies of your resume — half of them before you make your changes, and half after. See how many interviews you get from each.

Remember that for a hiring manager looking for candidates, a resume is the sole window into the professional that is you. Make sure that it is something that you are proud to share with other people, and something that would never leave you feeling foolish or embarrassed. You are trying to get a job and establish a relationship with a corporation. If their first impression of you is that you are dishonest or trying to get a position you are clearly not cut out for, that impression is likely to bias their reactions in a negative way.

Do the right thing; if you're right for the job, you'll get it. If you're not, you'll get another one, and there's still always a chance that you will come back and get this job in another year or two. As I said, people move around a lot.

In the meantime, good luck, and happy job hunting!