Resume Critique
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@kelly said in Resume Critique:
It looks very bland. The way you have things listed and how they're worded tells me very little about your actual skills and successes.
Some examples...
"Completed IT deployment projects for nationwide store chains such as Target
and Borders" - what kinds of projects? This could mean anything.
"Installed, configured, and tested new POS systems.
Maintained, installed, tested, and troubleshot POS hardware and printers."-- this seems redundant, condense this to one very short statement.
"Completed IT deployment projects for local and national business clients, as well as residential customers." -- what is an IT deployment project? Don't mention consumers, it lessens what you already have.
"Installed, configured, and tested POS and hardware systems." -- what makes this not included in the above? It is unclear why this is broken out.
"Answered, evaluated, and prioritized incoming email, telephone, and in-person requests." -- everyone does this, receptionists, secretaries, home users... don't mention this, it's not relevant. Unless you seek employment as an "email answerer" you don't want to list this on a resume.
"Managed and supported two locations with 50 users, 75 workstations and two servers" -- not bad, but not impactful. Try: "Oversaw all aspects of a 75 endpoint, multi-location network including server infrastructure." Avoid drawing attention to the fact that it only had 50 users and only had two servers.
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Under "Network Engineer"...
Nothing in the description is even close to being either in networking, or engineering. It's wrong on both axis. This heading alone would cause me to bin a resume that I saw like this. Make sure the role name matches the workload, at least within reason. The tasks listed are admin / support side, not eng / design side. And they are desktop and infrastructure, not network.
These two parts you need to consider mentioning at all:
"Provided Helpdesk support via phone and email, created and completed tickets.
Manage projects to improve client support and customer service."If you want to mention the helpdesk aspect, then merge that into the short, original description line. But I see no need to bring it up. The second part is project management and not part of IT at all. Unless you want to focus on moving over to PM instead of IT, I'd not point out that you were spending time involved in other things that makes it appear that while IT was your focus, it wasn't full time. This suggests, since it was big enough to be on your resume description, that a minimum of 10% of your time wasn't in IT at this job; but rather just processing paperwork and files TPS reports.
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Fix this... "Systems Administrator
With over 10 years’ experience, strong technical ability, problem solving and customer service skills"First, nothing in your history supports System Administrator, it's not a role you've ever held, nor do you have any accreditation behind it, like certs. It's fine as a goal, but why label yourself as something (that's not normal to do to begin with) so specific, that you specifically have not done?
Second, the description is too long and big, you can trim it to better effect: "10+ Years of Strong Technical Ability, Problem Solving, and Customer Service"
Just dropping extra words keeps it to one line, and faster to read.
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Skills: Cloud Technologies...
None of those are cloud. Office 365 and G Suite are just applications that you use, yes they are hosted and they may or may not use cloud under the hood, but their use of cloud tech (if they do so) isn't applicable to you, you aren't using or managing it. You are just using a website.
Saying you used cloud there would be similar to say that I ate an apple today, and that apple was picked by a farmer using a tractor, so I have skills in tractor management. I don't actually know that a tractor was used, it is only a guess. But whether it was or not, my benefiting from the farmer using a tractor doesn't mean I've gained skills in doing so.
And Nextcloud is just a normal application, it is not related to cloud in any way. It's not related to cloud computing, nor is it "over the Internet", it's just an application like anything else.
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I know you have cloud computing experience in using public clouds, I'm surprised that none of that has been mentioned.
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Designed, deployed, and maintained networks in the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
Administered hosts, servers, laptops, printers, switches, phones, smartphones.
Deployed software updates, security patches and firmware upgrades.
Designed, deployed, and maintained backups and replication using Veeam Backup & Replication
I think that we can tighten this up a lot...
Designed and administered complete networks in the US, Canada, and Mexico including core infrastructure and end user compute devices including security, patching, configuration, backup, and disaster recovery planning.
Half the length, 500% of the impact.
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@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
What are "lean on time IT services"? Whom did you lean on while doing it?
I'm assuming that this means something, but it sounds super funny when you see it on a resume. I can't figure out what work you did as a Field Tech, only that it was leaning on something.If you were just a cog in a company practising Lean, then I don't think you need to mention it on your resume.
If you were required to have a solid understanding of Lean (and have the ability to help a company use Lean), then maybe move it to something like a Skills section
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Definitely drop the college part if you don't have a degree. There is no value by saying you took some college classes.
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The wording in general is very confusing. I feel like you are stretching for space. Concentrate on relevant skills. The points mentioned are repetitive, long, and boring. They also don't really describe what you did very well. I know you've worked on some cool projects. Why not describe the best of what you do.
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@irj said in Resume Critique:
Definitely drop the college part if you don't have a degree. There is no value by saying you took some college classes.
Especially as nearly every high school kid gets college classes as part of high school today. My sixteen year old nieces all have college classes already.
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@black3dynamite Thanks for your feedback! I have removed that job completely
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@aaronstuder said in Resume Critique:
@black3dynamite Thanks for your feedback! I have removed that job completely
Why remove it, it added depth?
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@kelly Thanks for your feedback! When you say bland what do you mean? Should I try a different format? Font? Layout?
I have removed all but the last 3 jobs, they make up the majority of my experience anyways
I'll work on wording, and providing more specific details.
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@aaronstuder said in Resume Critique:
@kelly Thanks for your feedback! When you say bland what do you mean? Should I try a different format? Font? Layout?
I have removed all but the last 3 jobs, they make up the majority of my experience anyways
I'll work on wording, and providing more specific details.
I would caution against that. Your early jobs establish your timeline, and middle ones avoid gaps. It's rare that you want to remove a job in your field. I've been in IT 30 years (as of next year) and still have my first job in 1989 on there, because it shows when I started.
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The only thing I would add is that if you are submitting your resume to someone that has a HR filter, you might want to word stuff like Point of Sale (POS) so that if they search for either search term, your resume gets a hit. A tech person knows all the server versions between Server 2016 and 2008R2, but a non tech that is told "we have Server 2012R2, so show me resumes that have experience with that" might miss your resume because it doesn't come up in the search...
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@scottalanmiller Added the the jobs back in.
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@kelly Good Points! I'll work on that
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@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
Under "Network Engineer"...
Nothing in the description is even close to being either in networking, or engineering. It's wrong on both axis. This heading alone would cause me to bin a resume that I saw like this. Make sure the role name matches the workload, at least within reason. The tasks listed are admin / support side, not eng / design side. And they are desktop and infrastructure, not network.
I understand what your saying, but what can I do about it? That is the title that was given me by the employer. Even if I could change it, what would I make it?
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@aaronstuder said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
Under "Network Engineer"...
Nothing in the description is even close to being either in networking, or engineering. It's wrong on both axis. This heading alone would cause me to bin a resume that I saw like this. Make sure the role name matches the workload, at least within reason. The tasks listed are admin / support side, not eng / design side. And they are desktop and infrastructure, not network.
I understand what your saying, but what can I do about it? That is the title that was given me by the employer. Even if I could change it, what would I make it?
I'm not sure that I follow. You never put your title on a resume, you put your role. Your role is not network engineer, not even slightly. What they called you is not applicable to a resume, ever. They could call you "Bob the Tech Janitor" and you still just put your role on a resume.
You always put what you actually were, nothing else. Anything else is lying. Even if they called you a Network Engineer, since you weren't one, putting what they called you is a total fabrication. It looks like you were a normal generalist, so any normal generalist title will do.
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@aaronstuder said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller Added the the jobs back in.
The one time you might take jobs out is if they are overlapping (two jobs at once) and one is not impressive enough to bother including.
Like you are a Senior IT Engineer my day, but moonlight doing L1 helpdesk for extra scratch. Don't tell anyone about the moonlighting.
