Résumé Consultation

Depending on the needs and wishes of clients, I have created résumés from scratch, edited existing résumés, or provided suggestions to make them more effective marketing tools.

My recommendations for a young man who was a former Good Guys co-worker follow. His stated objective was “Computer Systems career in a challenging and rewarding environment that support my educational goals.” His expertise is in computer networking.

Cuthbert,

Here are my preliminary thoughts for your résumé:

• put your verbs into present tense (e.g. engineer instead of engineered); use past tense only for accomplishments

• put as much as possible into verb phrases (e.g. “installing and troubleshooting networks” has more impact than “network installation and troubleshooting”

• ditch the “Aided in” it unnecessarily belittles your role; saying “Y2K testing” or better yet, “participate in Y2K problem solving,” is accurate and stronger

• same thing with Good Guys reference: say you trained co-workers (as we all do Sunday morning training, that statement is absolutely accurate)

• list any accomplishments, honors, etc. (could even be led dept. in sales 4 X or received 4 letters of commendation; academic honors OK, too)

• say “professional certification”

• indicate your progress toward a BA, if any

• address your ability to translate the technical into lay language, and explain how you used that skill to sell computers, provide tech support, solve problems, etc. (employers want “team players” and “problem solvers” as opposed to technogeeks)

• “support my educational goals” should be “supports my educational goals”

• redefine your Good Guys job description for accuracy (core responsibilities are: sell computers and home-office products and service, merchandising, customer service); you can leave out the irrelevant and add marketing, upgrading, on-site installing, etc., as long as Good Guys’ HR dept. would verify those activities

• add e-mail address(es)

Those are some suggestions for starters. Send your next stab embedded into the e-mail message; you’ll have to apply for many jobs in your field in that way anyway.

John