Resume Review Please
-
@obsolesce said in Resume Review Please:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Review Please:
@animal said in Resume Review Please:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Review Please:
@obsolesce said in Resume Review Please:
When you leave out unrelated jobs to a position you apply for, the potential employer will notice those gaps. What does that tell them?
This is what I wonder... there is definitely a time to include and definitely a time to exclude. Avoiding gaps is often good, at least back to a certain point. And I like having a "starting point" on there, that shows what that "first job" is. For me this is an extra big deal because my starting job was long ago (1989), a very serious one (solo software engineering intern), and for a great company (Eastman Kodak was #19 on Fortune 100 while I was there.) Lots of people say they've been in IT or whatever and their starting date is based off of "I fixed my family's computer" or working in retail or something.
When I say that I've been in IT or SE for 30 years (technically not for a few more months) lots of people immediately say "we don't count playing with computers at home" and so having a Fortune 19 engineering job on there is pretty important.
I leave off my factory engineering work from a little later, or my restaurant and hotel management experience, and other things from about the same era, those are too unrelated.
Yeah, it makes perfect sense to include jobs that you worked at for a prestigious place, but that can also be done in a cover letter. We never got into the whole cover letter question whether they're worth it or not, but my feeling is that a resume is a bumper sticker, the cover letter is your story.
I've never worked anywhere that even received cover letters. They are normally, in my experience, stripped. I don't know any manager who gets them, or would look at them if received. To me, as a hiring manager, getting a cover letter tells me..
- The candidate doesn't value their own time and is spending time fruitlessly writing up a cover letter than has nearly zero chance of being seen and nearly zero chance of being read if seen.
- The candidate is desperate and willing to commit a lot of resources to a job before knowing if it is real at all (most posting by far are not), still open, or something that they'd even consider. It's way, way too early in the process to "care" at all about the potential job.
I don't do cover letters. It would just include the stuff at the top of my resume anyways, but in more words. I think it's pointless. I did, however, include a cover letter to explain my reason for applying to international jobs, so they don't just toss out my resume when they see I'm from a different country. That seems to have worked a couple times.
Yes, sometimes you have to point out that you KNOW where the job is.
Stupid that the opposite isn't true. Jobs from other regions reach out to me all the time and just ignore the fact that I'm not local.
