Resume Tips

How "big"?

Interviewers scan resumes for key words that match the job description. The entire purpose is to decide if the candidate should be called for a phone screen or first interview or dropped in the trashcan.

I try to keep my resume to 2 or 3 pages. It was 4 pages for a while but I started trimming. I saw a 12-pager once but that guy was a design engineer with lots of patents and publications. Two or three pages is good enough for the rest of us. Five is a book, which is not good.

What did I trim from my resume, and why? Well, I've been in the software industy for over 25 years now and I've had many jobs. At some point my education became a footnote that simply indicates my degrees. Early jobs were mainframe oriented and have little to do with the current industry. So I have a brief list with date range (years only), employer name, location, and job title. The only purpose of this list is to show continued employment.

So, how is my resume organized? Page 1 is about "now". Page 1 includes a brief introduction (synopsis or summary), list of skills and/or software experience, and detailed information about my current and most recent job(s). Each job in the list includes the name of the firm, city/state where I worked, start month/year, end month/year (or "Present"), job title, Responsbilities (what was I asked to do), and Accomplishments (what impact did I have). The responsibilities and accomplishments are prioritized and trimmed to only show the most important of each topic. Each item in these lists should begin with an active work (e.g. "Developed a ...", "Led a team to ...", "Designed ..."). Be brief and to the point.

Page 2 is about "history". That's where I list long ago jobs and education. Toward the end of page 2, I add a line that says "Information about positione before the position above available upon request". That tells the interviewer the list has been truncated for his or her benefit but I am willing to dicuss or may have a larger resume (sometimes called a "curriculum vitae").