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Aleksandr Noudelman – Creating the Perfect Resume
By Aleksandr Noudelman – Aleksandr Noudelman offers tips on how to improve productivity levels and enhance your career skills. Let Aleksandr know if you have any questions or concerns.
The notion of the perfect resume is similar to the search for the Holy Grail. It can seem that way for a lot of people, and even though there are a lot of different options that you can consider when you’re looking into this world, you may find that you think you’ve mastered the art. There are several components that you have to look at in regards to setting this up correctly, and if you are truly compelled to find yourself searching for that perfect IT professional resume, then you are missing the point.
The Notion of Perfection
Let’s start with the first thing that you should think about when compiling that perfect introduction. The break down of compiling the right information is not so much about having an elusive sacred document, but rather how you are able to illustrate yourself amidst other competitors. Make no mistake about this, when you are ready to submit anything to someone in the hopes that they hire you, you are competing with others. Some people assume that they are the best in their field, only by the rank of their peers etc, but that’s not something that you should boast too much about.
There are a lot of tech workers that have a lot of hubris, and it is written all over their work histories. Whether it’s embellishments or outright lies, it can end up derailing your movement forward. It’s easy to look at your track record and see greatness, but if you can’t illustrate that moving forward you’ll find you can get passed up. Stabilizing your approach and focusing on avoiding the pitfalls that others make will help you connect the right dots when it’s time to submit an application to a large company.
Starting With Just The Truth
Before you start crafting the perfect resume, take a moment to break down your experience into just the core elements. Create bullet points and figure out what makes your skill set triumph, and narrow it down to a locale that is far more compelling and contrasting than just one arena. If you’re tempted to write more than 1 sentence with more than a few words, you’re going too far.
Seriously look at what skills you have and break them down into the core fundamentals. If you can break down what you have and then compare them to the necessary elements of what IT work requires, you will find common ground. Those common elements have to be present in your resume, and they have to be up front and worded in a manner that gets caught by human resources programs.
The Machine
As mentioned, you will have to compete against other applicants. However, what most don’t tell you is that you have to also placate a machine. That’s right, you have to put yourself in a position where a machine is going to decide whether or not you have the right elements to move forward. That makes this notion of a perfect resume a game of chess. You’ll have to figure out how you can compel a program, software, a solution that is going to help you increase your chances at making moves without ever getting a human to view your paperwork.
It’s there that you have to find a way to find vocabulary that allows you to gain leverage in applying for the right parameters overall. Human resources software scans for buzzwords and focus on the language of your work history in order to come up with two candidates. Those that don’t meet the minimal standards and those that do. If you do not focus on the language and vocabulary that you choose to list your credentials, you are not going to get picked up into the right category overall. This may sound like it’s something out of sorts, but it’s absolute.
Think about this in terms of the other side of the coin. Instead of the applicant, consider that you’re the hiring manager at Google. They get hit with thousands of resumes daily, and everyone that tries to cajole them to hire them most likely have specific skills that you have. They are going to come across as experts in their field and rightfully so. As the hiring manager, you are not going to read through 1,000 applications daily, so what do you do? You filter them through a software that looks for buzz words, and the handful that are left over, you can look at and see if they are a good fit for the position of .net/C+ developer, or something else.
The Template Route
Once you start working on the vocabulary of your work history, make sure to look into templates. Templates online will give you an idea of what other people are no doubt jumping into. They are copying, pasting, and formatting things in the same manner. When you look at templates, especially those that are coming up first in your search online, take special note of how popular they are. The same template formats that you see, are guaranteed to be the things that other people are turning in. Hiring managers may not really care about that, but remember, the goal here is not to fall in line with others, it’s to stand out completely. You have to stand out, and it begins with the vocabulary you use, and the design of your media at this stage. If you are not imaginative here, you will not pass the litmus test. Even if you’re an incredible computer programmer, don’t just copy and paste, try to consider how you can illustrate more than the sum of your educational prowess.
The Website
The perfect resume may have a two prong approach. One is for the online world, making a portfolio website that houses the information of the paper copy. That URL should be a dot com, not a sub-domain. It should also have specialized design traits, examples of work, and clearly designed elements to show that you know what you’re doing. This will be your “bullet” point work history, omitting the things that don’t matter. For instance, do not post that you were a grocery store stocker, that’s not relevant. Some people will want to show that as a way of illustrating growth, but that’s not necessary. In your interview, you can illustrate yourself as a down on your luck individual if you want. You can paint your narrative to be a hero in an interview, on your resume, however, make it straight to the point as most hiring managers are just going to gloss over it.
Professional Edge
There is one way to get an edge that you are not going to see many people thinking about. There are professional resume writers. If you invest money into hiring someone to write yours, you very well could rise up to the level of any job that you want. The professional side of these things is an interesting one, because you will find that some writers will guarantee you get past the initial interview. There are no “real” guarantees, however, when you hire someone to do this for you, you will be able to see what human resources managers and professionals in the resume world create to help their clients. These roles would not exist if they weren’t effective at all, or they didn’t seem to help with anyone’s chances. That’s something that you have to take note of as you look at chasing perfection.
The Wild Card
There’s one wild card that could help. It can seem idiotic, but it works. A tech programmer sent in a resume in PDF format to a company. The PDF was so large, it crashed the hiring manager’s computer. As the hiring process continued, they couldn’t stop thinking about the crash and hired the individual that sent that in. Suffice to say, you may want to stand out by focusing on a unique presentation. This is not to say you should crash the computers of the company you are applying for, but rather think about standing out in a unique fashion. Combine your skill set and creativity to ensure that you are not just a cookie cutter individual. High tech companies are hit with mundane, programming work histories all the time. Standing out may take the help of a graphic designer, it may take incorporating outsider elements, it very well may take thinking outside of the box. As a Java developer or software engineer, you should be able to think of something unique.
The perfect resume is not the one that you create and forget. It’s something that takes thought, serious contemplation and focus. As you get wrapped up in all of this, the best advice you can take away is simple. Spellcheck not once, but twice, and have friends and family give you critique on it. Sometimes the individual that first gets your application is not the hiring manager, it’s someone that doesn’t know what you do or what your skills are, and they may be the one caveat to get you past the initial screening.
