Resume Critique
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In an interview, having a long conversation about how bad decisions were suggested and how you decided to do something else and talked them out of it, great. Talk about how they were going to spend $200K and you only spend $50K, great. But don't claim success or cost savings in a vacuum. Cost savings "versus decision X" is totally different than "cost savings", for example.
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For example... I was tempted to spend $200K, but I only spend $50K and got a system that was even better. Maybe I could have saved more, but I didn't feel like looking into it any more. That's a decent discussion to have. At some point you've got to make the judgement call to move forward, even if the answer isn't ideal. Talk about decision making capabilities, talk about your understanding of the decision making process. Those are the things that matter. If you try to state absolute value of decisions, someone is going to tear it apart. It implies unlimited knowledge that cannot exist.
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Going back to the software development example that I gave... I had a long meeting with the team talking about what they were planning to do. I kept asking them for their reasoning behind decisions and then asked why those same reasons were not applied universally to all decisions. We went round and round on this. Eventually they asked me what answer I was looking for. I was shocked. I had to explain that I wasn't looking for an answer, I was asking them to take a rational approach to decision making and be aware of when they were deciding based on stated criteria, or applying criteria after the fact to justify emotional answers.
Likewise, in the interview, you want to show that you can get to good answers, not claim that you once had a good answer. That you "did something good" once at a previous job is of no value to an employer in the future. But that you knew how to get to a good solution is something that you can repeat for a new employer. Does that make sense?
It's like "I picked Office 365 and it was the right choice" is worthless because for all we know you threw a dart at a dartboard. But if you show logic as to why you chose O365 and with different conditions would choose different things, you can show how you can bring value to other employers by making good decisions for them in the future.
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@black3dynamite said in Resume Critique:
What happened to staying on topic?
Actually, I welcome this for my thread. Reading others' opinions helps me achieve some clarity about what I think.
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@eddiejennings said in Resume Critique:
@black3dynamite said in Resume Critique:
What happened to staying on topic?
Actually, I welcome this for my thread. Reading others' opinions helps me achieve some clarity about what I think.
Lots of insight on this one.
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Any more lively discussion on this thread and it will make the all time most popular threads list!
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holy shit this thread blew up.
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@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
What a hiring manager or new company cares about:
- That you know technical things or have skills and experience (e.g. I can do this thing.)
- That you make good decisions and have good understanding (e.g. I think well about things.)
So a resume should only contain the above, and nothing more, nothing less?
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@Dashrender
It's all a part of my grand plan to be mentioned on a ML review video
On another note, home DNS server is now functional, so back to editing and job searching.
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If this is in relation to your new company startup, I would venture to think your personality and communication is critical. Use applicable discourse conventions to explain how you can add value to a particular business. While this also is true for an employee/employer relationship, as an outside IT business consultant, communication of issues and opportunities to improve profitability of a business are paramount.
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@tim_g said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
What a hiring manager or new company cares about:
- That you know technical things or have skills and experience (e.g. I can do this thing.)
- That you make good decisions and have good understanding (e.g. I think well about things.)
So a resume should only contain the above, and nothing more, nothing less?
Other than basic contact info, yes. You don't want to leave off applicable skills and experience, and anything else is filler. Things like certs and education may or may not fit into this category, depending on if they are applicable to showing skills or experience.
The goal of a CV is to show value to a future or potential employer. Skills and experience are what show that.
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I have created another iteration.
First, I removed the borders from the table. I'll work the formatting some more, as without the lines it seems awkward.
For my current position, I decided to reword a few points to make the focus be on the skills. I've pondered whether or not it would be beneficial to mention some cost savings, but the more I consider it, much of the cost savings comes from remedying poor past decisions or re-examining something that's been left on autopilot.
I removed the line about IT inventory. Further consideration makes it seem like it's as much of a selling point as saying "I manage DHCP on our network." Doing so, along with the other rewording, allowed for room to mention my home lab.
I think at this stage of my career, especially wanting to dive into the [unfamiliar] territory of Linux administration, mentioning the home lab shows some initiative -- even if it's simple and small. I could mention some of the stuff I did with my Cisco switches during CCNA training; however, methinks that would be unwise for a couple of reasons: 1. I have old equipment and likely what I learned about IOS is likely dated by now. 2. It doesn't seem relevant for looking for position in systems administration.
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This resume still leaves me with a lot of questions. What size is this company? Multi-locations, are you sole IT staff? What are your responsibilities? I would also like to see more information on what you are using group policy for, 'implementing group policy' just only tells me you have seen what a GPO looks like.
Also, all your skills should come back into play in your projects. Your skills list tells me what you have used, but your projects shows me how much experience you have with them.
I'm also not a big fan of the home lab section. If you run your home network like a business using these technologies day to day, that I'm interested in. If you followed a walkthrough and installed something, I don't care. Show me that your home lab is actually doing something.
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@flaxking said in Resume Critique:
This resume still leaves me with a lot of questions. What size is this company? Multi-locations, are you sole IT staff? What are your responsibilities? I would also like to see more information on what you are using group policy for, 'implementing group policy' just only tells me you have seen what a GPO looks like.
Also, all your skills should come back into play in your projects. Your skills list tells me what you have used, but your projects shows me how much experience you have with them.
This sounds like questions for the interview, not to be put in a novel in an attempt to get an interview. I don't think the person hiring has the time to read through all that when sifting through resume after resume.
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@flaxking said in Resume Critique:
I'm also not a big fan of the home lab section. If you run your home network like a business using these technologies day to day, that I'm interested in. If you followed a walkthrough and installed something, I don't care. Show me that your home lab is actually doing something.
Home lab shows experience, interest, and willingness to learn... among other things. I'd rather hire someone who does this stuff in his free time to learn and gain experience than someone who doesn't have it at all.
The home lab isn't meant to run your home network. It's meant for learning, gaining experience, and fun. And if someone is running their home network like a business, more to them!
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We have a massive office In Atlanta (likely bigger than everything but our Palo Alto campus). Our remote professional services team (Precious just Airwatch now doing VSAN installs and other stuff) is growing, and that kind of work is good for finding some of everything.
HPE and Veeam also have large facilities on the north side.
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@tim_g said in Resume Critique:
@flaxking said in Resume Critique:
This resume still leaves me with a lot of questions. What size is this company? Multi-locations, are you sole IT staff? What are your responsibilities? I would also like to see more information on what you are using group policy for, 'implementing group policy' just only tells me you have seen what a GPO looks like.
Also, all your skills should come back into play in your projects. Your skills list tells me what you have used, but your projects shows me how much experience you have with them.
This sounds like questions for the interview, not to be put in a novel in an attempt to get an interview. I don't think the person hiring has the time to read through all that when sifting through resume after resume.
It's not meant for the first sift through. The thing is that the person hiring has even less time to arrange interviews and ask all these questions, so if you don't answer questions in the resume, they are going to make assumptions based on every little thing you write.
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@tim_g said in Resume Critique:
@flaxking said in Resume Critique:
I'm also not a big fan of the home lab section. If you run your home network like a business using these technologies day to day, that I'm interested in. If you followed a walkthrough and installed something, I don't care. Show me that your home lab is actually doing something.
Home lab shows experience, interest, and willingness to learn... among other things. I'd rather hire someone who does this stuff in his free time to learn and gain experience than someone who doesn't have it at all.
The home lab isn't meant to run your home network. It's meant for learning, gaining experience, and fun. And if someone is running their home network like a business, more to them!
I don't fundamentally have a problem with it being on there, it just doesn't tell me enough with the information provided. What was actually done with it?
Listing all the IT books you've read and training resources you've used would show me initiative as well, but what I'm most interested in is what you've actually used in production, so if you can show me you actually USED something long term in your home lab, that's much more interesting.
Maybe even if the home lab section was showing me the home lab stack rather than something that I could interpret as "I did this once in my home lab"
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I agree, the more you can show the home lab as a long term, solid environment, the better. To some degree, this is for the interview, but getting the idea across is good.
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How many resumes should you have? Do you have 3 or 4 different offshoots depending on what position you are applying for?
