Resume length and history

[Alan Johnson]

There has been some good advise posted here already, but I will just add
that I have landed my last 2 jobs with nothing more than a LinkedIn
profile.  My current one was a cold submission electronic submission to a
company where I knew no one.  I had an offer about a week after sending the
email.  When the fit is right, it is right, and a good resume will get you
in the door.  That said, it was surely an outlier.  I fully support the
idea that it is usually more about finding some way to make a personal
connection, especially if the fit is not glaringly obvious, but you had
better have something decent to submit into their system to back up your
charm.

I stopped bothering to keep a separate resume up to date many years ago.
 You can export LinkedIn to PDF which is what I use when asked to submit
something electronically when requested.  For my current job (interviewed
almost 2 years ago) I don't think I even bothered to bring paper copies to
the interview.  When I was on the flip side of things, I always wished
people would stop doing that, but I'm sure there are still stall-warts out
there who will check to see if you are "prepared" by asking for a copy of
your resume.  Frankly, I don't want to work for those folks if I have other
options.  These days, I'd just bust out my android.

My last job was with one of the top recruiting firms in the world.  We had
the leading technical offering for recruiters to find candidates.  When I
started there, resume-handling was mostly electronic and shifted heavily
toward it over the years.  Now, it is nearly all electronic.  Even most
small businesses do candidate sourcing on the web.  For tech jobs, it is
almost exclusively electronic.

I only say all this because the 2 page limit is not terribly relevant in a
well formatted and easily searched (visually that is) electronic document,
especially for IT folks.  I just keep all the work history in there.  Well,
everything relevant to any job I might want in the future.  =)  I dropped
my high school jobs a while back, but I've been paid to do computer stuff
since college and, for example, I think it still impresses employers to see
that I worked a help desk on the largest trading floor in New England
between my Freshman and Sophomore years.  You have to decide for your self
if each bit of work experience is necessary, but be wary of putting time
holes in your work history as well.  If you have more than 2 "pages" worth
of work history, rely on the job title line to indicate to your potential
employer if the position is relevant to them.  Again, formatting is key and
good luck beating the experts at LinkedIn on that.

Similarly, don't bother with irrelevant padding to fill some
artificial minimum of this "paper" stuff that is still around, but don't be
afraid to say who you are either.  The text in your resume is an example of
your written communication skills, so if you are job hunting, you should
review it every day looking for mistakes and improvements in getting to the
point and clarity.  Take this email as an excellent counter example. ;-)

I think the cover letter (or submission email in modern terms) is where to
do your customizing.  Highlight a few keys things that are most relevant to
the job in question.  If they like those bits, they will likely read the
rest and probably want to talk to you.


_______________
Alan Johnson
alan at datdec.com
Date Format PSA <http://xkcd.com/1179/>


On Tue, Apr 9, 2013 at 11:49 AM, Kenny Lussier <klussier at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> Not specifically Linux-related, but I was wondering what other people are
> seeing/doing with resumes these days. I have seen everything from a 2-page
> resume for someone with 20 years of experience to a 15-page resume for
> someone with 2 jobs over 3 years (it looked like the output of cat
> ~/.bash_history). How far back should a resume go? How long should it be
> before you stop reading it? I'm seeing absolutely no consistency in
> resumes, and the ones that come from recruiters seem to be the worst
> formats.
>
> C-Ya,
> Kenny
>
>
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>
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