Money or Happiness?
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@IRJ said:
That's sad. Florida which has relatively low pay compared to the rest of the country pays much better than that. A helpdesk job is going to get you at least $15 an hour here. If you have certs, you will get more than that. Any type of network job is going to get you at least $18 and more with certs.
Helpdesk in Rochester, one city over from AJ, starts at $11. Probably half of the helpdesk market in that town is between $11 and $13.
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@IRJ said:
@thanksajdotcom instead of playing around VPS Servers, you should train for certifications in your free time. Sure playing around with VPS servers gives you knowledge, but it doesn't help your resume.
It does if you play with the right stuff and write your resume correctly.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@IRJ said:
@thanksajdotcom instead of playing around VPS Servers, you should train for certifications in your free time. Sure playing around with VPS servers gives you knowledge, but it doesn't help your resume.
It does if you play with the right stuff and write your resume correctly.
My resume sucks. I think I need to pay for one of those resume services or something. Last interview I went in they were really impressed but kept saying "how come that isn't on your resume, It should be" every time I would say I knew how to do something. I was told in college it should be no longer than a page so only put the bare minimum amount on it.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
I was told in college it should be no longer than a page so only put the bare minimum amount on it.
That's for people looking for non-technical jobs. This is one of the problems with college - people who can't get jobs giving advice to people on how to look for jobs. The one page thing is 100% wrong for any skilled profession. It's for art history graduates and other fields where you are only realistically going to go look at McDonald's or Jack in the Box.
The guideline for IT is one page per year of professional work, but it is only a guideline, it should be however much is necessary to cover the material.
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The "one page resume" garbage is one of the things that I always point to as how obvious it is that colleges hurt, instead of help, students because you actually learn things that are so bad but it is hard to tell which advice is okay an which advice is ridiculous. But as a general rule, no one know less about how to find professional work than teachers and professors. Avoid that information from schools across the board. They, practically by definition, have no experience in professional job hunting. Who could possibly be a worse resource?
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@scottalanmiller said:
The "one page resume" garbage is one of the things that I always point to as how obvious it is that colleges hurt, instead of help, students because you actually learn things that are so bad but it is hard to tell which advice is okay an which advice is ridiculous. But as a general rule, no one know less about how to find professional work than teachers and professors. Avoid that information from schools across the board. They, practically by definition, have no experience in professional job hunting. Who could possibly be a worse resource?
Yeah.. I know I didn't learn much correct info from them. I remember one professor always freaked about how easy it was for a computer that was missing a PCI cover or side panel to overheat... A prank may have been done to take his side cover away. haha.
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Also I found out at most colleges, once you have passed the class you can teach the class as an adjunct instructor.
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@scottalanmiller So How exactly would I list my Linux experience.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@scottalanmiller So How exactly would I list my Linux experience.
You list it as skills and projects. You describe what you have done and justify why it isn't just as good, but better than "at work" experience.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
I was told in college it should be no longer than a page so only put the bare minimum amount on it.
That's for people looking for non-technical jobs. This is one of the problems with college - people who can't get jobs giving advice to people on how to look for jobs. The one page thing is 100% wrong for any skilled profession. It's for art history graduates and other fields where you are only realistically going to go look at McDonald's or Jack in the Box.
The guideline for IT is one page per year of professional work, but it is only a guideline, it should be however much is necessary to cover the material.
I have a full 3 years in professional IT. However, I've had lots of jobs with tons of varied experience, so my resume is 3.5 pages at the moment.
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@scottalanmiller said:
The guideline for IT is one page per year of professional work, but it is only a guideline, it should be however much is necessary to cover the material.
Say what? I have 20 years experience - you're saying I should have a 20 page resume?
The guideline is 2 pages, regardless of industry. Any longer and recruiters won't read it. A resume is only a means to get an interview, it is not for getting a job. So keep it short. Your skills and experience will be discussed during your interview.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
Say what? I have 20 years experience - you're saying I should have a 20 page resume?
In theory, yes. You should have so much experience, skills, etc. that it would take 20 pages to hold it at the same rate than an eight year professional would include stuff. Once you reach a certain point, like us, you start culling. When my resume hit 12 pages I started trimming it. I no longer put meaningless stuff like college / university work or my certifications on my resume. That trimmed three pages right there (over 150 certifications, six colleges.) I took out nearly all of my jobs and left only highlights (more than 40 short term positions removed and trimmed many pages summarizing it in just a couple lines.)
I shorted job descriptions to tighten them up. I'm below eight pages now and it is very tight. I've worked on it a lot. But you should, once you reach a senior status, be stuck dropping stuff that people at a lower level would hungrily list on their resume. I only list a tiny fraction of the major tech that I know, operating systems that I'm qualified on, etc.
