Technical Resume Writing Guide

From my brain

Article was sourced from Technical Resumes.com

Contents 1 Introduction 1.1 The Introductory Statement 1.1.1 Objective Statement 1.1.2 Headline Statement 1.2 The Summary 1.2.1 Format 1.2.2 Tips on Developing the Summary 1.3 The IT Skills Section 1.3.1 Tips for building the IT Skills Section 1.4 Experience Section 1.4.1 The Heading 1.4.2 Statements of Responsibility 1.4.3 Achievements 1.4.4 Tips for developing your experience section 1.5 Education 1.6 Other sections 1.6.1 Professional Affiliations 1.6.2 Publications 1.6.3 Volunteer Work 1.6.4 Other options to be wary of 2 Conclusion

Introduction

This guide was designed by our team of technical resume writers. The guide will take you through each portion of the resume and provide tips, guidelines and strategies for developing a technical resume for today's IT job market..

Key portions of the IT Resume Include

• Introductory Statement
• Summary
• IT Skills Section
• Experience Section
• Education
• Other sections

The Introductory Statement

The most effective resume will quickly grab the readers attention. It is essential that you introduce yourself to the reader with a compelling statement that encapsulates your experience. There are 2 types of initial introductions: The objective for entry level professionals and the headline statement for experienced professionals.

Objective Statement

This introductory statement is primarily used by entry level professionals to target positions in which the job seeker has no experience or limited experience. In this case, you are building a statement that tells the reader what type of position you are targeting.

Objective statements tend to be less effective than headline statements because you are stating to the reader information about "what you want" rather then telling them "what you can do for their company." Therefore, we strongly suggest using a headline statement unless you are a student, entry level professional or career-changer.

Example of Objective Statement:

"A self-motivated recent graduate looking for a challenging position in software development."

Headline Statement

This statement should be an overall breakdown of your career experience. It should be a simple, yet compelling statement that clearly explains what you bring to the table.

Example of Headline Statement:

"A results-driven Software Developer with demonstrated success in the design, development and deployment of large-scale enterprise applications for the financial industry."

The Summary

The summary will follow the introductory statement. The summary will consist of anywhere from 3 to 10 supporting statements that provide more details about your experience and/or training. These statements should reflect key areas that you feel are strong requirements for the job position. The statements should be compelling, detailed, yet easy to follow.

Format

Generally, there a number of ways to format the summary, but in this guide we will talk about 2 formats, general format and executive format.

1. The general format, which tends to be less formal and easier to read.
2. The executive format, which is commonly used by professionals targeting leadership positions. In this format, the summary statements will follow the headline in a paragraph.

Tips on Developing the Summary

1. Focus on functional strengths first, such as years of experience, areas of expertise, knowledge of key technologies, knowledge of processes or methodologies, or any other items that are DIRECTLY related to your experience or training. Then if you have the room, you can add statements that reflect personal strengths such as skills regarding communication, leadership, troubleshooting, etc. If possible, you can use these personal strengths in a combination with strong statements of functional expertise.
2. Don't be afraid to mention any major certifications, training, IT skills or education in the summary, even if you are building a formal education section and a formal technical skills section. If you are an MCSE and expert in Windows 2000, then let them know in the summary, the tech skills section and the experience section.
3. Don't go overboard with the adjectives and self descriptions. Usually 2 at the most per statement, otherwise the statements become overwhelming and you almost loose some credibility.
4. Usually, its good to write the experience section before you write the summary, then its easier for you to look at your experience and summarize it. Also, its a good idea to browse the job boards and pick out some jobs you would like to apply for. Then pay attention to the key requirements and make sure those requirements are addressed in the summary.
5. Often times you hear about individuals that have multiple resumes. Most of the time as busy professionals, we do not have the time necessary to completely rewrite our resume for each specific job we apply for. However, its usually not that time intensive to make modifications to the summary that can help you target the job much more effectively. After all, targeting, is one of the key elements of marketing and that is what your resume is doing ---- Marketing or Advertising yourself to your employer.

The IT Skills Section

The IT Skills section is something that you may not see in non-IT resumes, but is almost absolutely necessary in the technical resume, with exception of executives or high level managers who may choose to leave this section out.

The goal is to develop a detailed outline of your technical skills and break it down into subcategories. This will make it easier for the reader to pick up the specific skills they are looking for.

A good general breakdown would include 5 categories of skills sets: Operating Systems, Hardware, Software, Networking and Programming Languages.

Of course the subheadings that you choose should reflect the key areas of your field. Often times, network engineers will not have a languages section and software engineers won't have a networking section.

Also, its a good idea to break down the IT skills section into more than just 5 subsections. I have seen this done effectively with up to 10 subsections, although I think going above 10 is overdoing it. For example, a specialized software engineer could build an IT skills section using these subcategories: Programming Languages, Operating Environments, Hardware, API's/Frameworks, Databases, Development Utilities and Applications.

Tips for building the IT Skills Section

1. Be reasonable about the subcategories and don't build so many that you have only 1 or 2 skill sets listed in the subcategory. For one, it tends to make you look weak in that category. For two, it tends to take up too much space and may be forcing you to cut quality information from other portions of the resume.
2. Be reasonable about what you are listing. I have seen resumes with an entire page full of technical skills. This is counterproductive as it makes it extremely difficult for the reader to find what they are looking for. Stick the key technologies and eliminate skills sets that are either insignificant or so old that no one uses the technology anymore. Thats not to say that you should eliminate ALL legacy technologies as sometimes they may be beneficial if the company is planning to migrate to a newer technology. Use logic and your better judgment to decide. 25-30% of the page is an ideal length for the IT skills section.
3. There are multiple options for formatting the IT skills section. The style above is popular and takes up less room. You can also list the headings on top and the skills below. Use the style that you prefer.

Experience Section

The experience section is also commonly knows as the "body" of the resume. There are numerous styles and formatting options for the experience section, but in this guide, we will discuss common options and you can choose the style that best suits you.

The experience section is made up of headings, statements of responsibility and statements of achievement.

The Heading

This should include at minimum:

1. Name of the Company you worked for
2. Location of the Company (City, ST) - Sometimes Country or Province
3. Your Job Title
4. Dates of Employment

Optionally, you could include multiple titles if applicable and also include a description of your company, which is highly recommended. It is acceptable to use only the year as the date and eliminate months. This is an effective way of hiding gaps in employment. If your work history is consistent then it is recommended to use months. If you have a number of jobs that lasted less than 1 year, it will be difficult to eliminate months without confusing the reader.

Statements of Responsibility

Much like the headline statement in the introduction and summary, you will want to build an opening statement that identifies the overall scope of your responsibilities. The following statements then support the opening statement and provide further details regarding your key duties.

For hands on IT professionals, you can also list key technologies that you worked with in the position, especially if those technologies are critical for obtaining your next job.

Achievements

After developing statements of responsibility, you should now document a few achievements. Your achievements are what set you apart from your competition. They help differentiate your resume from other applicants and they demonstrate that you have been successful in previous positions.

Ideally, statements of achievements should be written in the form of ACTION - RESULT. State the action, then state the positive result. If possible, try to quantify your results. Example:

Achievements don't always have to be in the form of action result. Other achievements can document awards, completion of training, promotions, or prominent roles (such as being selected as chair member of emerging technologies). Also, you can build statements to simply highlight key technologies or areas of technology.

Tips for developing your experience section

1. Experience should be written in reverse-chronological format (most current job positions first). For the most part, order of items in the experience section reflect order of importance to the reader. The heading is necessary to identify critical job information. Then it is important to state your scope of work. Then highlight achievements. The order of statements within the paragraph of responsibilities should also be determined by importance. Therefore, build the opening statement and follow that statement with the next most important responsibility. Follow the same logic when listing statements of achievement.
2. Try to start statements with action verbs (design, develop, implement, deploy, create, lead, manage, coordinate). Avoid using the same action verbs within each job, but if that is not possible, at least avoid using the same action verb in consecutive statements. Develop this, develop that, develop this, develop that.... its poor writing, reflects laziness and shows a lack of creativity. Also try to avoid the two dreaded vanilla statements (Duties included..... and Responsible for.....).
3. Make statements detailed, but don't go overboard. Brief and detailed is ideal. Even if you have 1 bullet point, don't be afraid to break it down into multiple sentences.
4. Avoid using first person pronouns (I, me, my). Also avoid using too many articles (a, an, the). The resume is not a novel or publication. Statements are meant to be quick and descriptive. This strategy really helps maintain attention of readers who quickly scan the resume. Imagine the statement above filled with articles and first person pronouns.
5. Length is a matter of judgment. It really depends on how much experience you have, the level of detail involved in your job, and volume of achievements. But.... it would be highly recommended that you limit yourself to 5-10 statements of responsibility and 2-8 statements of achievement. As you start building descriptions of previous work history, you should start cutting back the level of detail. Each job should be progressively shorter as the you work your way from current to previous positions.
6. Consider dropping experience past 20 years and you should even consider just listing the headings (without descriptions) for "old" experience, especially if it has limited value.

Education

You have a number of options regarding the information that you may want present. Usually, the further away from the college courses or degree the less information you present.

Experience is almost always a better seller than education, unless you are in an Academic field. Therefore as you gain more experience, focus less on your experience. With the exception of entry level professionals, the education section should fall below the experience section.

Information that is required

1. The name of the degree or certification
2. The institution where you received the degree or training

Information that is ideal to include:

1. The date you received the degree, certification or training (unless you received the degree over 20 years ago)
2. The city, state and sometimes country of the institution.
3. Graduating with honors or Cum Laude

Information that you may include:

1. GPA. Make sure to also include the scale (3.5/4.0). Do not include if your GPA is B average or below.
2. Other honors affiliated with your performance
3. Social, athletic and academic organizations
4. Scholarships and academic awards

Listing of key courses (only recommended for entry-level)

Other sections

You will often see a number of other sections within the resume. Of course some of those sections are reserved for specific fields and professions. For example, you will always see a list of publications in the resume of an Author or Writer. But for the IT resume here are a few sections that you may want to include IF they quality is of information presented is of a high degree.

Professional Affiliations

The Project Management Institute (PMI) is a good example of a high profile organization in the field of Project Management and membership is highly regarded. I would not recommend adding this section if the extent of your professional affiliations is something like.... Member of the South Orange Country Computer Users Club.

Publications

Again this is straightforward. Only provide this information if your work was published within well know publication in your field. If you are highly published, it is often a good idea to create a separate document as an addendum to your resume.

Volunteer Work

Sometimes IT professionals set up significant systems within local organizations. In this case, it may be a good idea to add this content, but it really depends on the extent of your career and the level of effort involved in your volunteer work.

Other options to be wary of

1. Be careful when adding information about your race, religion or sexual orientation. For the most part they should play no bearing on your ability to perform the job. There are a few exceptions, such as if your experience was primarily setting up information systems for Christian Churches and you are a member of a Christian organization. By all means, you should include that information. In these situations, let common sense prevail.
2. In most cases, avoid adding the interests, sports and hobbies. If you are too the point of adding this information, you should seriously consider the detail in your work experience or the overall length of your resume. I know it sounds good to talk about how you were the golfing champion at your country club, but unless you are prepared to only accept jobs where you can be the star on the company golf team, you should probably leave that information out.

Conclusion

Overall length of the resume is a highly debated topic. It is very difficult to generally recommend a specific length for a resume without knowing anything about an individual's career. For people with limited experience, a 1-page resume is ideal. For those with substantial careers a 2-page resume is necessary to document experience. For IT Contractors its often ideal to break down details of each specific project and 3-4 pages are necessary. These days, it is more common to see longer resumes, especially in the complex IT industry and especially since it is much more common to electronically distribute resumes. You really need to weigh the positives of quality information vs. the negatives of excessive information.

In summary, the technical resume should accomplish these goals:

1. Introduce yourself with compelling, detailed information using brief statements that summarize your career.
2. Identify your key areas of technical expertise and IT skills sets.
3. Document the scope of your work experience.
4. Demonstrate your past success through statements of achievement.
5. Define your training and education.
6. Utilize action verbs and action oriented statements.
7. Above all else --- GENERATE INTERVIEWS.

It cannot be stressed enough. If your resume generates interviews, don't change it. The resume is a tool and these guidelines can help you build a more effective tool for generating interviews. However, there is no secret system or no 100% guarantees. These guidelines are based on research and personal experience of our technical resume writers, based on what has been successful for the majority of IT job seekers. And remember, the resume is not the only tool you have to generate interviews. You also need a good, aggressive job search plan along with a strong initiative to succeed.