[colug-jobs] A first resume

[William Yang]

So, the caveats:

I've only applied for two jobs in my life: a job as a cashier in a
resaurant when I was a 16-year-old kid, and a non-appointed, reasonably
high level management position in government.  Every other job, I've either
been a principal of the company or I've been recruited.  Also, I tend to be
in entrepreneurial (high risk) startup environments, which favor certain
kinds of people, personalities, and skills.  Please, take everything I say
with a generous helping of salt and take it as an attempt (ham-handed,
certainly) at providing constructive criticism.

First off, let me disagree a little with Rick about how to read the resume.
 I believe, based on my read, that Zach has been at TWC/Charter since 1998,
about two years since graduation in 1996.  That doesn't nullify his other
observations about what you were doing from '98 to 2007, but it could be
communicated in part of your description of TWC/charter.  Consider how
something sounds if you said something like "TWC 1998-present: Worked up
from the ground level, starting as an entry-level customer service
representative to a project manager for billing operations in an American
telecommunications and cable company ..."

Secondly, Rick's right about his other observations.  Well, except the
RHCSA cert thing: that would not stick with me.  It belong in the resume,
but having a certification isn't as important as other things.  He's
completely right about not selling yourself short: your management
experience and leadership positions could put you into a different kind of
track -- while this probably won't go well in this audience, a major
component for success in system administration (a place I come from,
myself) with linking business value to technical capabilities.

Finally, if I were to receive this resume, it'd go on the "don't call them
in for an interview" stack.  As a decision maker, I have my own biases: I
look for ACCOMPLISHMENTS, because results mean more than loose job
descriptions.

It might be valuable to think about your resume as being part of how to
communicate the value proposition for having you on a team. Why would you
be valuable to a new employer? That's what you need to communicate in a
combination of a resume and a cover letter, assuming it gets read by a
human being. (You also need some buzzword compliance, because a lot of
resumes get read/scanned/analyzed by software nowadays).

* As a project manager in IT billing operations (seven YEARS) what have you
done that actually is valuable for TWC/Charter? What projects?  What kinds
of budgets?  Were they on time? On budget? What problems did you deal with?

* You're using "in the field" language to describe your positions, when
you're applying "out of the field" -- customer service and dispatch jobs
need to talk about "resolving customer problems" and "scheduling and
routing technicians to assist customers" in the field.  Some discussion
about efficiency would be needed here, as well as detail-oriented
behaviors.  Anyone hiring a person should have a small amount of
understanding about these kinds of roles, but you aren't linking your
activities to value for a company.

You also don't really communicate any real goals here.  There's no
direction in your resume that links these experiences -- it reads like you
just floated along in a company for almost 20 years, moving from position
to position.  That would kill your application to a position I was hiring
for, unless I was looking for someone put in a dead-end or short-term position.

	-Bill
-- 
William Yang
wyang at gcfn.net