Does Your Resume Reflect Your Reality Today?

The IT talent market has recovered from its pre-pandemic slump and is accelerating, reaching all-time highs. There are more jobs open than there are qualified people to fill them, and the opportunities for qualified people to switch jobs abound.

Employers are navigating the challenges of hiring, and re-evaluating how they attract and retain high-value IT professionals. Many employers are entertaining the idea of remote workers, offering if not fully remote, at least partial remote flexibility. Local candidates are finding themselves competing with a much larger group of peers.

This is a great time to dust off your resume. What did you do during the pandemic? What new skills did you learn? What adjustments did you make to work from home? Do you look at your career differently now? Is there room for improvement? So many questions! Here’s one more: Does your resume reflect who you are now, and where you want to be?

The Elements of the Technical Resume

Address Block:

At the head of your resume, put your full name, address (city and state only), phone number, and email address.

Be sure your email address is readily identifiable as yours. While your friends may recognize you as “hotdog007”, it won’t make a good point of reference with HR. Set up an email account that includes your name.

Summary:

Objective statements are a thing of the past. Use this space to provide a bird’s eye view of your experience. Include in your summary:

Number of years of experience or expertise
Field(s) of expertise or areas of skill
Industries worked in or preferred

This is your opportunity to whet the reader’s appetite for more. What makes you stand out from the pack? Keep it short—just a few sentences.

Technical Skills:

Present your technical skills so the hiring manager or reviewer can easily scan them. One way to do this is to present them in a list, broken out by headings.

Another way is to provide a running list of the skills and tools you used for each job or project under the position description. This can be highly effective. It will illustrate your flexibility and ability to enhance your skillset as you move from role to role.

Consider using both of these methods. The skills block tells the reader you have used the skill; listing the skills used under each role shows how you used the skill to accomplish your goals.

When you create the simple list of tools and skills, it helps to use sub-headings to organize the tools, especially if you have mastered several operating systems, languages, or databases. For example:

Hardware:
Software:
Languages/Environments:
Databases:
Operating Systems:
Web Tools:
Mainframe Apps/Utilities:

Professional Experience:

List your employment history, with the most current position first.

Provide the company name, with city and state.
On the same line, add the dates of employment (month/year – month/year).

Provide your title, and indicate if you were a full or part time employee or a consultant (or on contract). You may wish to include a brief description of the company or client.

Provide a brief description of your position. Don’t list your job duties. Rather, focus on key projects or outcomes. If you were a consultant, identify the project and the objectives or deliverables.

Summarize by breaking out the particular technical skills and tools you used while with the company. You can list them as “Skills used: skill 1, skill 2, etc.

If a job was not pertinent to the one you’re currently applying for, include the company name, dates of employment and your role on the resume to ensure there are no gaps in your history. Usually, you won’t need to provide additional information about your work there. If you have an extensive work history, only include the last 10 – 15 years.

Education:

This section includes your academic education, professional education, and training courses, seminars or workshops.

Colleges or Universities – Provide the degree and major field of study. Include the school’s name, city, and state. Unless you are a new graduate, don’t include your grade point average, especially if it was below 3.0.

For those who have done all the work on a doctorate, except the dissertation, don’t fall to the temptation to add ABD (all but dissertation). Do not claim to have the degree, as the degree is incomplete if you didn’t do all the work.

Technical Institutions – Provide the same information listed above. Include all of your education, even if you did not complete the degree or certificate. You should clearly state that you did not complete the degree.

Training Courses, Bootcamps, Seminars, etc. – Provide the name of the course, the sponsoring entity, dates, and certificates.

You may be asked to provide copies of academic records, certificates of completion, or certifications. Make sure the information you provide on the resume matches the information on your records. In the current hiring environment, the changes are you will be asked to provide the documentation. Be certain that you can.

What about…

Formatting: Nix the tables, columns, and fancy fonts. Applicant tracking systems (ATS) usually can’t parse resumes that are heavily formatted (or even mildly formatted). Instead, stick to using plain text without page breaks and standard fonts, such as Arial, Verdana, or Times New Roman. Font size should not be smaller than 10 or larger than 12. Submit your resume in Microsoft Word. Even if your resume was written as a Google doc, download and save it as a .doc or .docx to make it easier for the ATS to ingest. If you must, save it as a PDF document (not image).

Extracurriculars: Unless specifically stated in the job ad, you do not need to add any other information. Volunteer work and hobbies may be useful. Say, for example, you volunteer at a Code Camp for kids. Including that experience would demonstrate a willingness to share your passion for programming with others outside your peer group.

References: Do not provide references with your resume. However, you should be able to quickly provide a list of personal and professional references, including email addresses and best phone numbers, when the time comes. No need to add the “references available on request” statement on your resume.

Well, what do you think?

Congrats on staying with us this long, and thank you! We’ve found this format to be successful for our candidates. Before you leave, check our Job Portal for our openings. At the bottom of every job, we include the name and email address of the primary recruiter for that position. Drop them a line. Or just click “Apply”, and the recruiter will be in touch. We look forward to hearing from you.