Show me your resumé!

Try to keep it to one page if possible. Certainly no more than two pages.

Include a little bit of info on each prior job, but keep it light. No one reads resumes anyway.

Don't bother referencing jobs that amount to little, such as that summer you spent inventorizing broken sludge pumps at a sewage treatment plant to help pay for school. (Although, if it's that fringe, do include)

Perhaps you consider yourself an expert in something. Make sure you get this point across loud and clear.



Ultimately, you're trying to bond with the employer, since, in all likelihood they're going to get several applications from people who can do the job as well as you, and they're going to hire based on who they think they can work with best. So the interview is the bigger deal.

A man's place is in the home.

You know the difference between the resume and the CV (curriculum vitae), yes? A resume is the highlights, a CV is the whole story. Keep your resume really brief, one page for someone at your age with your experience. No stupid formatting tricks to fit everything, like itsy-bitsy fonts and 1/4 inch margins. Edit. More precise and fewer words are better than more poetic and more words. Make sure your credentials get across the kind of environment you want to be in, how you want to interact with people, and where you want to go with yourself eventually -- don't just apply for the job at hand, show some ambition to move.

Make your name a little big in the header.

Write in complete sentences, spell check for the love of God, be succinct. Proper amounts of space and clear formatting go a lot further to get your resume out of a stack than all your high school awards and volunteer work.

Don't list high school stuff at this point unless you're right out of college with little experience, it's really extraordinary stuff, or will win you good-ol-boy points (e.g., Exeter grad).

Good rule of thumb: keep bullet points and listed items (jobs, skills, activities, education, etc.) in groups or sub-groups of 3 to 7. Less than three makes it seem trivial and no worth having in there. More than seven (seven is a LOT for a resume) and it's getting too detailed.

Another rule of thumb: name-dropping is good. Most times, whomever is vetting the resumes is scanning the thing for something or someone they recognize. It's important that they be able to scan the thing easily with having to read all the bullet points, and that the places and names stand out.

I can post a .pdf of my resume (with some fake info to protect the guilty) tonight if I remember.

moving from austin to houston?

damn, that better be a hella job she is getting to do that


good luck

g


me i go nothing...i write one resume every 10 years or so

My resumé is pretty out of date, but I've had to look at a lot of resumés lately. I think most of them are awful -- but then again, I'm not sure reactions are typical.

What makes me gag is the marketing-hype lingo that's creeping into so many resumés lately. "I'm a results-oriented professional, working to provide timely solutions to business critical applications... yadda, yadda". Blehhcchhh!!! But that which pins the needle on my personal bullshit detector might be the same sort of crap that some human resource types love, so who knows? Maybe playing these bullshit games works in many cases.

Yeah, precise verbage that expresses what you want, and not what you think they want to hear goes farther than that generic "I'm a people person" crap.

Make sure you visit Madras Pavillian on Kirby. It's a lovely little vegetarian Indian restaurant where a lot liberal people hang out.


Keep The Dad At Home
http://capitolbuzz.blogspot.com/2005...-excerpts.html

If you can squeeze the word "synergy" into half your bullet points, you'll be a shoe-in!

First off not that I know Texas or anything, but you seem way more Austin than Houston. Secondly, can you please move to Delay's district and vote against him

I haven't done a resume in well ever, but I do see a bunch of them and most of them are pretty terrible. I'm amazed how many times I see things like, proficient in outlook. When times were more laid back my coworkers and I would sometimes spend a Friday afternoon drinking beer and laughing at resumes.

As far as advice though, my wife does a good deal of hiring at my job and one thing she always digs is when people send a follow up note after an interview thanking her for her time and the opportunity to meet with her.

Ack! DON"T use the word "synergy".

Personally, yup, your name ought to stand out. However a little creativity (a little!) in page layout doesn't hurt either. I think that it'll help the document stand out.

G, I don't want to derail your thread but, how well do you know Houston? Just curious.

i don't know if it's anything special, but here's mine.

everything i have read says the old one-page rule is over-done and just take as much room as it takes, providing you aren't going overboard and talking about your roles in high school drama productions

http://ucplanning.uc.edu/people/stud...Sickmiller.pdf

personal info, shmersonal pinfo

Sorry guys, I have this need to hijack this thread momentarily...

One word, HUMIDITY!

When it statrs to rain HARD, don't get stuck under bridges or at big intersections. Houston floods at the drop of a hat...

Get use to no natural topagraphy. Pretty flat area.

Oh, another word, SKEETERS! They have been known to gang up on small children and carry them away...

I did a quick Google and the only cool clubs I recognize from my time in Houston (1980-1989) are The Ale House (Kings X, Missing Persons, Joe King Carrasco...), Fitzgerald's (Fabulous Thunderbirds, Stevie Ray, Roomfull Of Blues...) and Rudyard's Pub (Dead Kennedy's, Agent Orange, Black Flag). Check 'em out. I'm glad they're still around.

Ahhh, those were the days...

Back to your disscussion.

Changed stuff to protect the guilty so the formatting is a bit off. Funny, after not looking at it for months, now I might do a few things a bit differently.

In my field, the resumé is usually accompanied by a mini portfolio. The header is a bit short because all the sheets had the same header, and one that was too tall in my case would get in the way of graphics on the other sheets. Don't feel the need to compress your address like I did.

 

buonresume.pdf.zip 42.337890625k . file

dude. my resume was TOO good, i kid you not, i managed to bullshit my way into freelance design gigs that were waaaaay over my ahead.

i even got an interview with Yahoo australia HQ and they asked me to go back for the 2nd interview, even though in the 1st interview i was just talking out my ass i didn't even know what the hell the job was!! it was some news/online-ad syndication partnership whatever

anyway, check it out:
http://homepage.mac.com/sunilraman

click on the resume PDF icon thingy


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Sexy-ass font = Optima. Used it all over my folio, resume and cover letter. Note that I didn't put an objective on my resume because I felt it was covered in my cover letter. Some places don't hang on to the cover letter though, so it's up to you. I find smaller places usually do, but some big and/or popular ones toss it because it takes up file space, same reason for keeping the resume to one page if possible -- one page is likely to be lost at those places.) Good to have some synopsis of what you're looking for.

I've never lost job opportunities for leaving out personal info on my resume but I have lost job offers because I didn't talk enough about them, particularly group activities (sports, poker night, cow tipping, whatever) in the interview. Just prepare your resume and cover letters with some of this stuff in mind. It's the first thing to go if you're cramming thing on the page.

Oh, and a few more things to consider. People really do keep resumes on file. I applied for new jobs about 18 months ago, and just two weeks ago I got a call back from the big cheese of one Boston area firm, who was, as they say, cleaning off her desk and found my resume. We are graduates of the same college, so contact your college career development and/or alumni offices and use these connections. I don't know how far this goes with UT but, coming from a small department in a snooty Ivy League school, it goes really, really far. Also, I worked for a friend of hers at my old firm, and she contacted that person to get the scoop on me before she called me up. I had an offer from another architect who was friends with that summer employer on my resume, and guess who that guy called before he arranged an interview with me? Name dropping is important! Just don't do it too much on the interview.

Now, I have a standing invitation with these firms. I can bypass the human resources department and call these people directly. That's how I've gotten in at places -- bypassing the human resources department (play "dumb" about it) and contacting the head cheese directly with my stuff. I've pissed some people off by doing that, and been chewed out for it, but I've gotten an inside track with some better architects that way. To me, it's worth pissing off a few people to do that. They won't remember you in two years anyway, and you can do it all over again!

How does one make an attachment? Is this a moderator thing?

I have a pdf of my cv / resume hybrid

Look near the bottom of the reply screen, between the smilies and the options checkboxes. Just click on the browse button, find the file you want to attach (it doesn't have to resid eon the internet, local browsing works too) and that's about it. Oh, except the forums don't recognize .pdf files for attachment so you'll have to zip the file first and attached the .zip file.

[edit]Whoops, sorry! It' been so long since I esca -- er, stepped down as moderator that I forgot I still had some privileges.

<Buon is off to the Mods forum to stir up trouble>

I don't have this 'browse' button. I do have a line that says 'You may not post attachments', though...

What gives?

Can I be a moderator now? I'd be really good.

JOKING

Can anyone host my pdf? It's really funny.

BuonRotto, I'm not sure if you even have it in your real resumé, but is "QE" meant to stand for Quebec? The proper postal abbreviation is "QC".

Some useless tips, for the sake of it:

- Make sure you've expressed how that experience is worth something to the employer. I don't mean writing bureaucratic PR bullshit like "Initiated increased accessibility for dynamic fast-paced business professionals by utilizing dual-wheel based semi-recumbent unmotorized personal transportation media by installing a high-tech inclined plane device using myriad products of the global forestry industry in association with contacts developed within local distribution channels servicing the industrial construction metal fabrication businesses across the North American continent in order to assure the security of a mission-critical, ability-sensitive assistive device designed for long-term availability" for when you volunteered to build a wheelchair ramp. Just look at the requirements for the job and appeal to them. You'd distinguish yourself by being clear.

- Make sure your resumé is easy to read. Prioritise the information you include and design your resumé around that. Make sure your name and contact information are prominent. Use white space, if you can, to separate sections cleanly. Give your resumé some form, so it looks like more than just words splattered on a page.

You misspelled WOman

Heh, made that part up, changed the cities and awards. Missed the typo.

One thing that drives me nuts when I read resumes is when people's formats are inconsistent with regard to things like punctuation and indentations or bullets. Nothing says sloppy like inconsistency in a resume. It's hard to pick up everything yourself so have plenty of people look over your resume for this stuff. They're more important for spotting that stuff than they are for suggesting creative action verbs.

The order of things is up to you too. Experience doesn't have to be first, nor necessarily objective, nor education. Traditional formats are usually a good starting point but, like in my case where I put in a bunch of awards after experience but before education, you can mix things up to show what you think is important closer to the top. Most people reading these things see what they want in the first few items and the bottom of the page is something they take a closer look at when they run out of questions in the interview.

May I suggest a close proofread of one of your headings:
ORGANZIATIONS AND AWARDS

heh

Nice.

Another thing IMO is to not to bother writing "references available upon request" or anything of the sort on your resume. For one, it should be obvious that they'll call your previous employerson it if they want, ask you who to call first, etc. You and they can safely assume you have references.

an organZiation is something special

it's pronounced organ-azizzy-ation, actually

i'll fix it some other day, that thing is posted on my school's server and i won't be looking for work for another 2 years

OMFG i miss Chicken Molé !! in San Francisco - tha Mission - one of the mexican restaurants... yes! i remembered the name

Puerto Allegre

ahh many a good drunk-on-margarita-after-fajitas-or-chicken-molé night with good work friends in the early part of this decade