Resume length and history

[Jefferson Kirkland]

Kenny:

Having been forced back into the job market back in October of last year, I
was afforded training by my last company in the most recent resume trends.

Longer is not necessarily better, and the standard these days is anywhere
from 1-3 pages, depending on the job and amount of experience that your
needing to convey.  They typically want to see the last 10 years of job
experience, if possible.

When adding a job, you should be creating each point in the job's
experience as what is referred to as a CAR statement (
http://www.careerealism.com/executive-resume-good-car/).  Doing this takes
a bit longer, but it is definitely worth it.

If you are having to redo your resume, I quite possibly still have the
resume writing guide that was provided to me.  If you wanted to borrow it,
I could bring it in to work and hand it to Paul for you, just hit me up off
list and I would be happy to let you borrow it.

Regards,

Jeff


On Tue, Apr 9, 2013 at 5:29 PM, Alan Johnson <alan at datdec.com> wrote:

> 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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