I Need To Take My Own Advice And Update My Resumé
I recently got in back in contact with a friend from my days as an IT manager at DeepDiscount. He had fallen on some hard times (death in the family), but wanted to get back into IT work. I offered to look over his resumé, since I had a lot of practice honing mine during my consultant days. You never know where you next gig will come from as a consultant, so I kept my resumé sharp. I gave my friend some advice, and he was so happy that he said that I should teach this stuff. I figure that’s not a bad idea, so I’m reprinting a paraphrased version here.
I told my friend that his resumé needed a total overhaul. He had an older, four page document, and I recommended starting with that and working his way down to two pages. Length aside, the resumé had no clear goal. Is he shooting for a technical position or a project management position? Each goal should have its own resumé: one to detail technologies that he had worked on, the other to detail projects that he had completed. The other problem is that the experience he outlined was not results-based, in that it outlined what he did but not what the outcome was.
Try this: read each bullet point in your resumé and ask yourself “So what?“ Take this sentence, for example: “As a corporate employee, my responsibilities have ranged from heavy user technical support to training and project management.” Well, what did that do? What did that accomplish? You need to display results to potential employers. You could instead say, “Corporate responsibilities have included fielding 3000 client messages per day as a ‘heavy user’, holding training courses for up to 50 students at a time, and managing projects with budgets up to $500,000.”
Notice the difference? I use lots of numbers! The numbers tell a story. The bigger the number, the more important you are (at least to people who don’t know you). In my own resumé, I pack in details with small fonts and I use big numbers. I include what was done, why that was important, and which technologies were used at each phase. Don’t be afraid to estimate some of the big numbers, as long as you’re consistent in interviews. If your estimates sound about right, then there should be no problem if a potential employer tries to verify them.
One more thing: there’s no reason to outline your absences due to a death in the family [or extended illness, etc.]. If someone spots the missing time on your resumé (and they often will), you can just explain what happened. I was unemployed for six months before finally taking the job at DeepDiscount. The gap is not highlighted on my resumé and I don’t bring attention to it. If anyone asks, I say that I took time to finish my MBA between jobs. Besides, you’ll need that space to display how fantastic you are at your job and show that hiring managers can’t live without you!
So I hope that the advice that I gave my friend can be helpful to others as well. Resumé writing is my least favorite job, but it’s a necessary evil. I haven’t updated mine properly in a while, but I’m feeling pretty secure in my current position at the University of Chicago (I gave up consulting when Chrissy and I decided to start a family). Even so, it never hurts to keep your resumé current! One more bit of advice: you won’t have to estimate your numbers in the future if you gather them now. I used to ask the finance guys, “How much money could we have lost if these technical changes weren’t implemented?”
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