July 3rd, 2006 in Lifehack, Management

10 Ways to Tweak Your Tech Resume

Okay, now you need to find a new job. As a techie you may thought you have so many things to mention to the recruiters. What are the best ways to include into your resume? eWeek has researched and gives some advices on how to write practical and outstanding resume to get an interview. The article lists ten quick tips:

ATS: The most important letters you need to know
Skills section keywords
Don’t use a template
A good objectives section counts
Lose the one-page-only rule
Avoid the personal
Cover letters are not critical
Don’t spend 100 hours on it
Go old school
Use common sense

In my opinion, the most important would be using skills section keywords. In the recent recruitment which I conducted, I require to screen over 100 resumes for a position even after HR has screened out majority of the applications. I use keywords to search for essential skills that required for the job. If the candidates do not have that particular keywords - usually means it is too bad for them. Having the relevant keywords also means the candidates have done their homework of researching what are required.

10 Ways to Tweak Your Tech Résumé - [eWeek]

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Leon Ho

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Logan says on July 3rd, 2006 at 9:02 am

One nit to pick: I read a fair number of resumes, and the “objectives” section is the most useless waste of space on the page. Your objective is to get the job for which you submitted the resume. We all know that. I’ll ask you why you want the job at the interview, if you get that far.
David A says on July 3rd, 2006 at 10:08 am

I agree with Logan.

Here in the UK, I’ve not encountered ATS.

I also disagree with the point about personal information - I see a fair number of CVs, and many of them scream “BORING!”. So you have a decent degree and some relevant experience. So do most of the other applicants. What sets you apart?

I want to see that you are an interesting, intelligent person who does more than slump in front of the TV after work.
Tom says on July 3rd, 2006 at 3:27 pm

ATS/Skills are what HR, Monster.com and the others search. Sometimes we call it the buzzword section. If you have Solaris, make sure you have Unix also. The HR dept. doesn’t know the difference or similarity.

Don’t use an odd format. If it calls for Word 97, use it! You can add other formats. If they get 500 applications for a position, they’re trying to narrow the applications down.

If you don’t get past HR and the data mining recruiters, you’re not getting an interview. Network with people you know there to put your resume right to the hiring director. That’s the person deciding if you’re worth keeping out of the discard bin. If they have 100 resumes, they’re not going to spend more then an hour going through the stack. That’s less then 1 2/3 minutes per resume. They’ll spend less time then that.

Ok, you’ve survived the ding bin. Now what?
The hiring manager looks at it. Maybe some go to staff for recommendations. This is where people look at it in detail.

Format, font, layout? HR faxed it to me after printing it on a dot matrix printer with a faded ribbon (so to speak). As long as it’s not wierd, I don’t care that it’s in Garamond 11pt on cotton linen as long as the copier can copy it.

Show me what you’ve done and how it helped the company/dept/group/etc. I want numbers, objectivity and action. No officespeak (utililize instead of use. Argh!) Be simple, direct and consistant. Spelling and punctuation could.

If you got this far, you’re probably going to get a call for an interview. Good luck.
James says on July 10th, 2007 at 12:20 pm

what does ATS stand for, im in the UK and havnt com across this??
Jack says on July 10th, 2007 at 4:11 pm

ATS - Applicant Tracking Systems. Its a class of software for managing thousands of applications.
James says on July 11th, 2007 at 4:05 am

thanks Jack