Lateat guestBy J.M. Auron Quantum Tech Resumes
In my previous article, I recommended against using an all-bulleted resume format—because it’s unclear and difficult to read, among many other problems.
In this article, I’d like to go a bit more deeply into that topic—and more importantly, give some guidance on how to write a resume that’s more clear, more powerful, and more effective.
How to achieve IT Resume Clarity
When we think about our careers, it’s very natural, and very easy, to see everything as, well, a bit of a hodgepodge—and that’s what most resumes present. A number of (fairly) random bullets or paragraphs with nothing tying them together, nothing giving them structure.
That’s extremely hard to read. Trust me on this—in my 15 years as a professional IT resume writer, I’ve read thousands of resumes.
So here’s an initial way to begin to organize your career in your mind—I’ll follow up on this with more detail and more ideas in future posts.
1) Make a Clear Distinction between Duties and Responsibilities and Initiatives
This is a really critical method to improve your IT resume—and help you clarify your career in your own mind also—which is invaluable interview prep.
Generally, duties / responsibilities are things you do day-to-day, week-to-week. These are actions you take that don’t have a discrete start or end date, but are ongoing. They often seem less interesting, but they’re important on a resume because they give critical context for your accomplishments (the core of the resume). Examples of duties could be, “Create requirements, research / analyze best-fit technology options, provide guidance across decision points, and present options. Serve as vendor liaison and drive conversations with major vendors to determine options.” Other examples that are critical if you’re in a leadership role are your team size and budget size: “Lead teams of 120 direct, matrix, and vendor resources. Manage $15M in total annual budgets.”
Once you’ve got a good sense of your day-to-day duties, write those in one concise paragraph—no bullets—right under your job title.
2) Separate Actions and Results in your Initiatives
Initiatives / projects / products are where IT professionals spend the bulk of their time, so these need to be discussed thoroughly and effectively. Here are a couple of tips.
I suggest continuing with the idea discussed above. Separate—in your own mind and then on (virtual) paper, the actions you’ve taken in each initiative.
For example, “Selected open-source developer platform. Highlighted engineering best practices. Introduced Hentman metrics and brought in service templates to bootstrap building services.”
Then—and only then—pull out the bullets for the accomplishments in each initiative. Ask yourself the question, “What did this deliver?” Here’s an example of a solid bullet:
- Slashed time required to develop and release into production from weeks / months to 1 day.
Putting It All Together
I realize that this is a somewhat different way of thinking about—and writing about—your career.
But, I hope you see the value in this approach. A resume written with this structure is much clearer and easier both to scan quickly and read deeply. On a quick read, the bullets will give the bang that you’ve delivered in your career—and that gets attention. But the paragraphs (deprecated as they are in online chatter as ‘walls of text’) give depth and context to what you’ve accomplished in your career—and that can make the difference between getting a call and, well, not getting one.
As with so many things in life, some ideation time prior to starting to work on the resume can pay real dividends when you’re sitting down to the task. And when you’re asked in the interview what you’ve done, what you’ve delivered, this previous groundwork can help you answer quickly, confidently, and in a way that makes sense to the interviewer.
I’ll be back soon with more suggestion on things to avoid—and strategies to make use of—in your IT resume.
Bio: I’m J.M. Auron, and I’ve been a professional IT resume writer for more than a decade and a half. I’ve helped IT professionals from engineer to CIO move forward, move to opportunities with new and interesting challenges, and increase salary and compensation. I’m happy to share some of the insights I’ve gained in my work to help tech pros better understand what makes a great IT resume.
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