When I look at resumes these days, I am really surprised by what I don’t find.
Really, I don’t make up this stuff, it actually makes me angry that anyone dispensing resume advice still paints all job seekers with the same brush.
Yup there is somebody out there telling people to keep the resume short and down to two pages or less. How can you put all the stuff you have done in only two pages?
I can picture a scene where you are taking scissors to your IT resume and shaping it like a geek cutout doll. When working on your IT resume please don’t run with scissors! Remember the resume does more than act as a history, it must tell a compelling story about you.
It should represent your skills in a way that the new fad, of using a computer applications like, I dunno, Microsoft Word, can do a keyword search.
HELLO!
Whoever is still telling people to shorten their IT resume listen to me.
SHUT UP!
The Anatomy of an IT Resume – Part 1 – Common Wisdom and Sense
I think the old conventional wisdom, does not hold true for all job seekers. You see the idea of a short IT resume was born of the Pony Express Postal delivery and Fax eras, when resumes were hardcopy tree killing exercises.
Most resumes were read back then in frustration by HR professionals that did not speak geek, and were better suited for benefits questions and background checks. I might have pissed off a few HR folks, (sorry I mean no disrespect but if you remember those days your old like me and should have retired by now anyway).
Work with me here for a minute, and get out the old highlighters. I would like to step you through a few points and yellow and pink highlighters will come in handy as we proceed.
Let me start at the beginning so I can share some of my experience in this area (I just love talking about me). My background is technical so I can often fill in some of the blanks missing in a technical resume. My work has become much easier since I had the distinct pleasure of morphing into the CCIE Agent.
Recruiting senior level network engineers, mostly CCIEs, is my stock and trade. If a CCIE’s resume is missing some detail, I will get them on the phone and make sure we fill in the blanks. In fact I tell my candidates to expect an IT resume review as our first step. Since there are so few CCIEs on the planet, I handle every one of them very personally. So this is why when I don’t see some skill or keyword mentioned clearly I can take a leap of faith and make an assumption. In the resume process we can bring these items out. It is important to remember that an IT resume can open doors or close them.
Hey, didn’t your mom tell you that you only get one chance to make a first impression?
Well, mine did, so don’t dis’ the mom here people, she was sweet and kind, and insisted on a comb through the hair for a reason. She wanted you to get a job and get out of the house. Remember geeks hang around the house longer than most professionals. There is this social challenge that many simply cannot handle at a young age, as opposed to attorneys or race car drivers.
So here’s the question.
HOW MANY PAGES?
2 PAGES? REALLY?! My argument is simple, like me, very simple. How can you tell your story in an IT resume limited to two pages?
Did you just fall out of the womb?
If you are submitting your resume thru a third-party recruiter, or to an HR professional, or one of those blind submission sites asking for you to trust them, how do you know you are going to stand out? Your resume will end up in a data base where a virtual pile is created to be sorted through by keywords. If you left something out during the geek cutout exercise earlier, hey remember I said not to run with scissors, right?
Let’s flash back for a moment.
Way back to the innocent days of technology, when the PC was simply called a computer. Arpanet was still hard to say, so people simply called it, “some new computer stuff, thingy”. An invention called the Fax machine was beginning to spread around the world. Now you could save time and get a document from point A to point B as fast as your telephone connection would allow. Recruiting was being revolutionized by this invention as well. Wow, a candidate could be asked for their IT resume on the phone and have it in the hands of an HR professional in minutes. They were asking for the Facts, only the Facts, on your fax, so the candidate’s resume was coached, and requested to remain two pages or less. Made sense, fax paper and ink and the rise of ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) were working against us and telling a compelling story, so we followed the rules. It seems like this rule has continued to echo through the ether.
I guess I should answer this question, no?
YOUR IT RESUME SHOULD BE AS LONG AS IT TAKES TO TELL YOUR STORY!
Sorry I get carried away when I am trying to drive a point home. So let’s review;
Short is bad. Bad short IT resume! Naughty thing pooping on my career carpet, stay away from my future employer.
What do you put in it? I thought you would never ask.
- Your name
- Your address
- A Summary or Objective Statement
- Skills
- Experience
- Education and Certifications
Next Installment we dig into the parts of a good IT resume
###
About the Author: CCIE Agent, Eman Conde is the only Cisco authorized international CCIE recruiter promoted by the Worldwide Channels of Cisco Systems. As the de facto source for CCIE talent around the world Eman has helped thousands of CCIE with their career goals. He is the owner of the CCIE Flyer where many of the most recognized resources in the CCIE Community have been published and networked to the world.
Eman’s team is currently filling roles and scheduling CCIE for career focused interviews. Not all roles require CCIE certification. Send him an email to connect with the best CCIE advocate in the world. [email protected]
Hey Eman,
I have read this article two times in a row now. The information you have given to new born CCIE’s like me is quite phenomenal!!
I believe 2-pages resumes are more suitable for Kitchen-In-Hand jobs but not for CCIE’s geeks. I You agree on this!
Some of the statements made me to laugh outrageously
” Remember geeks hang around the house longer than most professionals…”
” Did you just fall out of the womb? ”
Keep posting…and Thank you very much.
I just chuckled at these statements myself. Thanks for reading and putting a smile on my face as I begin my day.
I read this article twice over as well. I do have a question. Do you think this applies to someone who does NOT have such a unique certification like CCIE?
What about someone who has a CISSP for example?
Hi David. Sure as heck I don’t have the answers but assume “IT geeks” need two resumes … an electronic one for submission online (to meet the needs of the automated filters and keyword searches), and an abridged version that meets the requirements/expectations of the “personnel” barrier. How you achieve this effectively I’m still trying to figure out
David,
The geek resume still needs to do a few things. It is a principal I use regardless of IT discipline because we are a community of people dealing with HR professionals that in many cases are not IT people. As this series progresses you will see I am building up to a theme. Blow your horn loud and clearly three times in your resume. Will you need more than 1 version? Sometimes but having one where you edit the summary or objective is simpler I think. Remember we kill fewer trees today and use more electronic ways to contain and sort through soft copies of resumes.
I guess,its probably because somebody:
1-has got alot of paper technology(no experience) on IT Resume display and the jargons just blink in the eyes of the recruiter.
2-If one has not gotten multi-vendor exposure,the recruiter probably think you’ve got a small shot.
(so technical experience + multi-vendor exposure = a big shot at employers eyes)
I seldom reply to articles. However I will make an exception for this one, as I agree with the short resume concept and healthy debate is good thing.
I have been working in the communications/IT world for 25 plus years. I will concede to the argument that you must capture your experience. The question that remains; what experience is relevant and current. Because once in the past you could “hand jam html”, regardless of how proficient you where, has little relevance if your future employer is looking for a Cisco engineer. With today’s world of soft copy resumes and Boolean search engines selecting prospective candidates for employment, the art of “story telling” on a resume is antiquated. This being the case we geeks should have the advantage, an understanding of how search engines work. Following the articles advices list your information.
• A Summary or Objective Statement
• Skills
• Experience
• Education and Certifications
List your information clearly and concisely. Items like your certification titles will show up more than once, giving you an advantage if a search engine is used, as it most likely will.
The experience section is your time to fill in your “story”. Keep it relevant, about your accomplishments not the day to day trivial events. Most HR professionals don’t have a true understanding of a geek’s day to day accomplishment. If you feel must list the details ensure to quantify and qualify your accomplishments in a way normal people will understand. Summarizing your more distant accomplishments with legacy technology will help reduce size of your resume and allow anyone reviewing it the ability to understand your current skill set and not your life story.
Hi Eric. Thank you for your comment. You comment is so important, specially
“Most HR professionals don’t have a true understanding of a geek’s day to day accomplishment”.
Solution with two CVs isn’t bad. A short one for HR folks and a long one for the second line.
What do you think? How to guess who will read our IT Resume?
My resume is six pages. It’s the only way to tell my story. If an employer wants a shorter resume, they can delete it using their copy of Microsoft Word. If they don’t know how to use that, that’s not the employer for me. You can download my resume at the url above.
Hi Michael.
Do you send recruiters a .doc file? Don’t you afraid of formatting problem?
I support the 2-page resume. I see now that finally MW ended up with such in pdf format.
Today most resumes in the IT sector are going to be dumped into a data base of some kind. In that process you will find the use of indexing tools that will allow your details to be sought out by key word searches. If you have abbreviated your resume so it mentions your skills and experiences simply once then your hit count on these will be lower than another that has mentioned the skills across their employment history. So as my article progresses here in the pages of IT Certification Master you will see that I also recommend redundancy. Do not make the mistake of assuming your resume will be read from top to bottom or printed for review individually.
Thanks Eman for opening my eyes.
Cannot wait for the part 2.
Interesting article! And my resume is already 3 pages long… Never received any complaint about that.
Absolutely, the IT resume is distinct from your general resume…and it should be treated so. The great part about the job search process today is that there are so many good media and forums to communicate your compelling brand message. In fact, many are just as powerful as the resume, including the LinkedIn Profile, blogs, Twitter posts, etc. An IT job seeker has to develop a consistent message across these platforms–although the communication style must be unique for each, as your audience has different expectations when viewing a LI profile versus checking out how much of an expert you are through your blog and the interests you have on Pinterest. I would always advocate contacting a professional that certified and that specializes in working with IT and technical professionals to develop the resume, job search strategy, and overall branding approach ( http://www.ittechexec.com ).