Size and Everything (Update, See End)

I’m holding a printed copy of a first pass at a master resume.  Which isn’t really a mater resume, as it doesn’t include the jobs and experiences it could.  It does go back to everything meaningful I did since 1990, and appears to go back to 1986 by including my little business that overlapped the end of college and the subsequent years wandering in the economic wilderness, lowering my lifetime earnings by hundreds of thousands of dollars while the economy writhed in agony and I regretted my degree.  Which did help me land work in 1994 making almost what I should have made in 1988, but hey, who’s counting.

Anyway, it is three pages.  Nice and neat.  Three pages, and not quite as much white space or large type as I prefer.  If I put on my “someone handed this to me and I shake your hand twenty seconds later” hat, I get nothing.  The summary doesn’t get more than a skim and a few words reach out.  The titles of the two jobs on the first page are what leap out, and they say nothing to me.

Which isn’t where I was going with the post; rather I was bringing up the perennial question of resume length, not to mention formatting - if you get it short but it’s in 8 point type, nobody will read it - and how it all works when your resume might be online as HTML, or as plain text somewhere.  Then what about the length, and what of the formatting one might have used on paper to draw attention, or does that even matter, since that renders it searchable and is the equivalent of warm rather than cold calling.

I’ll probably through it up as HTML later, off of elhide.com/resume again, in this or similar form.

At least I seem to be down to finer points.  I found myself going through the formatting and making substantial modifications to the text, tightening some things up.  There will be more of that, and from there the idea of emphasizing more for one thing (management) or another (technical).  What I always forget is the sheer amount of training I’ve done, and that I am good at it.  Not only does it date back to Christy’s Markets, training new employees, but it even goes back to Halliday, where I worked starting in 1980.  I will never forget the time I trained a guy at Christy’s and was his hero.  When he was managing or assistant managing a store later (weirdly, I can remember the store number, 81), he got all excited when I stopped in one day, introducing me around enthusiastically as the guy who trained him, and thanking me profusely.  I could almost emphasize that in its own right, not just as part of a managerial focus.

Anyway, thoughts on resume length and the internet age?  On varying resume focus?

Update:

Here’s a Word version of the draft resume as it stands.  It comes from Word 2000 and should be openable by Word 97 or newer, and anything that can open that format.

There were a couple minor typo corrections, but otherwise it is what I handed Deb, which she had some good ideas about, for when I dive back into it.  Right now I am thinking about making baked macaroni and cheese for supper, and some apple cobbler, neither of which I have ever made before.

1. 1 page at least 11 pt type
   go to monster, hot jobs or careerbuilder and read their advice on resumes.
   ask your resident English major for the quote about brevity.
   you are suffering from paralysis by analysis.
   you have valuable skills that you need to expose to the market.

   Posted by  on  10/24  at  03:27 PM  from 

2. I’ve had to write them and I’ve also had to review them as a hiring manager.  You definitely need to make it shorter.  One page is ideal but often times that is simply impractical but I would aim for no more than two pages.

   A few comments:

   * You need to collect and summarize your skill set and bring that to page #1.  In my resume I include a table that summarizes my skills and groups them into categories such as “Programming Languages”, “Operating Systems”, etc.  I think this is esp. vital for your resume given your vast set of IT/computer skills

   * Assuming you are targeting an IT-related position, I’d dump everything after Tranti, and I would also dump the Carnival of the Capitalists and re-purpose that within a section entitled “Interests and Activities” or the like.  Here’s where you promote your blogging endeavors.  Include a link to the CotC site and one to your other blogs if you feel brave.  Current thoughts on hiring suggest this as an excellent way to advertise your skills.  You can also mention your volunteer efforts in Arisia in this section.

   * I concur with the analysis paralysis comment above.  For the remaining positions you need to find a way to summarize your skills and reduce the number of bullet points.

   Posted by  on  10/24  at  10:11 PM  from  Red Sox Nation

3. What Adam said! ; )

   Posted by Sharon  on  10/25  at  07:23 AM  from  Middleboro, MA
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