Despite being some of the brightest problem solvers walking around at many companies, IT employees often have a hard time translating their skills onto a resume.  Information technology employees sometimes assume that they can load up their resumes with technological terms and industry jargon—not realizing that the first one or two people who read that resume probably won’t understand anything it says.

Include the appropriate industry keywords

If you’re applying for a technology position in a larger company, chances are that someone in the HR department (in an entry-level role) will be screening your resume before it ever hits the desk of anyone in a technology role.  Although the hiring manager will certainly understand the specific programming languages and software you’ve used, the HR screener may very well just be matching up keywords.  So how do you write a resume that will sail through this screening process?

Talk about the end result

The initial readers of your resume aren’t as interested in how you’ve done things in the past as they are in what you’ve actually done.  Did you create a Web site that saved your company $50,000 a year in outsourced expenses?  Did you administer a company network that successfully protected confidential information for 5,000 customers?  Did you supervise an IT department responsible for every single piece of computer equipment in a 500-employee company?  Regardless of how you went about it, results make sense to just about everyone.

Include a technology skills section

If you are applying for a “worker bee” sort of technology job, such as Web developer, you will want to be very specific about the different types of development programs in which you’ve been trained or certified. If your career has progressed to an executive level, such as chief technology officer, you will want to focus more on your success stories.

Strike a balance

The key to a readable IT resume is to strike a balance between identifying overall results and achievements, while providing enough specifics for your document to appeal to both an HR screener and a technology hiring manager.  Once you get into an interview, you and the hiring manager can go crazy with the details of which platforms and programming languages and software you used to achieve your results.  The key to getting that interview is describing your accomplishments in a language that your audience can understand!

Need some help developing an interview-worthy information technology resume? Our expert writers are former IT professionals and managers. We know the IT industry inside and out. For more information or to be matched with an information technology resume writer call 1.800.991.5187 or e-mail us at info@greatresumesfast.com

Guest Post By: Heather Eager

It’s easier said than done to create a great resume when you’re under pressure to get it done. If you’ve had a long career and you’ve worked your way up over many years, this is definitely the case, as it’s difficult to provide a sense of focus to your resume.

But, of course, ultimately there’s no excuse for having a subpar executive resume. Whether you’re stuck somewhere or just tuning up your executive resume, here are some tips to help you get the most out of the time you spend writing and perfecting it.

Define a Clear Target

One of the first things you want to do when organizing your executive resume is to define a clear target. You should always know a company’s mission statement and as much information about their goals and history as possible. Otherwise, you can’t expect to speak effectively about why you’re the ideal candidate.

Make Sure to Brand Yourself

At this point, you should be known for contributing something to your field. Whether you’re an expert in the world of communications, or can’t be stopped in the medical field, people should know you for your work. In branding yourself in your resume, you’re differentiating yourself from others and defining what makes you special. You especially want to highlight attributes that show your ability to lead and attributes that make you unique and critical to an organization.

Include a Success Story or Two

Again, at your level, you should be known for having accomplished a lot. You’ve got to show immense success in your field through your resume. It’s also helpful to show challenges you’d faced in order to achieve those successes.

Leave Room for White Space

When writing an executive resume, it’s often difficult to find a balance between including the right amount of information and leaving enough white space so that BlackBerry email cruisers won’t be overwhelmed with information. Use the most valuable information in your resume to create short, on-brand statements in order to develop a balanced, easily scannable executive resume. Employers will find each sentence easily “digestable”, and your resume will rise to the top of the pack.

Edit and Re-edit

There is absolutely no excuse for having misspelled words or grammatical errors in your resume at the executive level. If you’re not the best speller or grammar buff, you most definitely should have everyone you can think of edit your resume to avoid the embarrassment of being overlooked for something so elementary.

Avoid Too Many Pages

You may have a lot of information you’d like to include in your resume due to your extensive experience; however, as you know, managers are busy people with little time to read pages of accomplishments. So instead of writing five pages of details about yourself, try cutting it down to two pages and only including essential personal branding and marketing information.

Hopefully these tips (and your short breather) have helped to give you some focus as you write your executive resume. Now it’s time to write the best resume you’ve ever laid eyes on.

Read more on executive resume writing, search our blog or sign up for our e-mails to receive additional executive resume tips.

A frequent theme of our blogs is limiting your resume to information that’s truly relevant to the position for which you’re applying.  You should feel free to leave off your high school job serving fast food or your college job working retail if you have years of subsequent work experience.  Also, listing only the achievements from your previous jobs can actually omit an important component of your career: your personal story.

Many of the clients I work with put themselves through graduate programs years into their career, while they were working full-time.  This is no small feat!  If you know anyone who has gone to grad school while they were working, you probably remember that period of their life as one of high stress and limited play.  However, making this career move almost always pays off with greater career opportunities and a higher salary.  It requires (and displays) real ambition to return to school when you already have a job.  So, if you’re one of the many people who has done this, one way to highlight it on your resume is to stick it right into the job summary:

Manager, ABC Company

Managed a department of 20 employees.  Directed all sales and billing.  Earned MBA while working full-time.

Many job seekers have also performed years of consulting services on the side.  Some do not include this on their resume, as they think of it as irrelevant additional information.  Not so!  If you have the business wherewithal to handle some amount of self-employment in addition to your regular job, that’s a valuable skill.  And even if you don’t end up getting the job for which you applied, you may just gain yourself a new client!

Another way to spark great interview conversation is by including any education or work relevant to your personal passions or hobbies.  I’m not suggesting that you put “likes to play golf” on your resume, but if you’re good enough to have won numerous tournaments, that shows dedication and skill that most people don’t possess.  I recently worked with a woman who had taken more than 30 classes at her local culinary school over the years.  I jokingly asked her if her retirement plan was to open a restaurant, and guess what … it was!

Ninety-nine percent of your resume’s content should relate directly to the position you’re targeting.  However, don’t be afraid to sprinkle in a few sentences that differentiate you from the other candidates in the pile.  After all, hiring managers want to work with interesting people!

For more information about professional resume writing or to read more career and job search related articles visit http://www.greatresumesfast.com

Imagine for a moment that you’ve just heard the dreaded words, “We’re going to have to let you go.”  A lot of people have heard this phrase over the last several years, and most have probably reacted with some degree of panic: How am I going to pay my bills?  Where am I going to go?  What am I going to do?

Obviously, this frame of mind is not a great launching point for your next job.  Writing an effective resume and cover letter requires analytical thinking and confidence in your abilities.  So let me tell you a little secret: the best time to write your resume is when you’re perfectly happy at your job!

I’m not saying that you should have a perfectly marketable document ready to go every moment of your life, although that’s not a bad idea.  I am suggesting that it’s smart to keep a running list for yourself of all your different jobs and what you’ve accomplished at each.  There are several reasons for this.  First, it’s easy to forget three years later that you wrote the proposal that won your company a $500,000 project.  Second, quite often your company doesn’t publish or share numbers that reflect your contribution to their success.  For instance, while you may be well aware that your efforts expanded a new store from just yourself to a staff of 25 employees, that information will probably never make it onto the company’s Web site.

Perhaps the best reason to keep a running career document for yourself is that if you do unexpectedly find yourself out of work, you won’t have to rack your brain to remember details from your professional past.  It can be particularly hard to ascertain measurable results when you no longer have access to a company’s documents.  By keeping track of your work accomplishments on an ongoing basis, you have the ability to go through your list and pull out the key highlights anytime you need them—like when you’re frantically searching for a new job.

Jessica Holbrook Hernandez is an expert resume writer, career and personal branding strategist, author, speaker and President/CEO of Great Resumes Fast. She creates high-impact, best-in-class, resumes and cover letters that transform job searches into interviews and ultimately job offers. For more information about professional resume writing or to read more career and job search related articles visit http://www.greatresumesfast.com or call 1.800.991.5187.

Historically, having a significant gap in your professional employment has been seen as a huge negative on a resume.  However, given that a May Gallup poll showed that 19% of the American population is underemployed (either not working or working part-time instead of full-time), there are many, many job seekers out there wondering how to handle this resume issue.  The good news is that there are ways to present gaps in employment that minimize their impact on your resume.

Fill your time any way you can

Hiring managers receive dozens of applications for every job they post these days.  They know as well as anyone how tough the current job market is.  Because of this, employers are far less likely to stigmatize a job seeker who shows a recent gap in their employment history—the key is to fill that gap with something that shows that you care about your career.

Take a class

One simple way to keep yourself sharp as a professional is to take a class while you’re looking for work.  Depending on your financial situation and available time, there are many options for professional development.  Many universities offer continuing education classes in subjects like writing grants or preparing taxes.  There are also online training programs for licensed professions such as real estate sales.  If finances are a concern, you can take affordable classes through your local parks and recreation department or library system.

Do consulting work

Working less than full time doesn’t mean you automatically forget all the expertise you’ve gained from working in your field.  Using your network to obtain consulting gigs not only allows you to earn some income, but it gives you recent experience to discuss on your resume and in interviews.

Work as a freelancer

I know a copy editor who has been unemployed for 15 months now.  He’s been working as a freelancer over the Internet while he’s been searching for a full-time position.  Given the current economic conditions, he knows that it’s a logical alternative to doing nothing at all.  And should this year-long gap even come up at an interview, he knows that his freelancing experience will not only provide a reasonable explanation but also show the potential employer his initiative and ability to persevere under adverse conditions.

Volunteer

Volunteering is particularly helpful to those who are hoping their next job will be in a field different from their last one.  If you don’t have professional experience in something like marketing, volunteer to promote a fund-raiser for a local nonprofit—they’d love the help, and you instantly possess some marketing experience.

If you’re currently paying your bills by working a job for which you’re overqualified, it’s OK to mention it when applying for a new position.  Employers appreciate the honesty.  “I’m waiting tables right now while I look for full-time work,” is a statement that shows you’re flexible, humble, and willing to get your hands dirty when it’s needed!

Jessica Holbrook Hernandez is an expert resume writer, career and personal branding strategist, author, speaker and President/CEO of Great Resumes Fast. She creates high-impact, best-in-class, resumes and cover letters that transform job searches into interviews and ultimately job offers. For more information about professional resume writing or to read more career and job search related articles visit http://www.greatresumesfast.com or call 1.800.991.5187.

People often ask me why anyone would seek professional help with writing his or her resume.  The great part about resume writing is that I often work with educated professionals who have years of great experience.  Unfortunately, they just don’t know how to get their resumes in front of people with the power to give them a job.  Generally, they’re too busy being a great nurse, project manager, executive, or whatever else to understand one important thing: how recruiters think.

1) They have very little time

While recruiters and hiring managers have many different philosophies and approaches, one thing is certain: they all review scores of resumes.  Rejection letters often inform candidates that more than 100 people had applied for the same position.  Faced with competition of that magnitude, it’s easy to see why your resume has to be outstanding in order for you to get any attention from an employer.  Most people reviewing your resume simply don’t have more than a minute or two to look it over.

2) Know your audience

Given the volume of resumes employers receive for each position, lower-level hiring staff are frequently used to “shortlist” candidates for each opening.  This means that a less experienced HR professional is reviewing dozens of resumes in order to weed out 6-10 strong candidates.  With this in mind, it’s important to write your resume in simple terms that someone who doesn’t have your background can grasp.  As you develop the highlights from each of your previous positions, ask yourself if a stranger at a cocktail party would understand what you’ve just written.

3) Experience doesn’t always matter

Let’s imagine for a moment that you’re looking for a pet sitter while your family is away for a week’s vacation.  In looking for a pet sitter, you would generally want to know about the person’s experience with pets, whether her availability met your needs, and whether your pet liked her during an in-person introduction.  The pet sitter candidate would be wasting your time if she told you all about her experience roofing houses or preparing people’s income taxes.  It’s fabulous that she has those abilities, but all you need to know is whether she can walk and feed your dog.

The same principle is true for resumes.  Because the average worker holds more than 10 jobs during his or her career, chances are good that some of your accomplishments may not be relevant to the job you’re currently trying to get.  Use your resume space for the experiences that matter, and don’t overwhelm reviewers with information that they don’t need.

Jessica Holbrook Hernandez is an expert resume writer, career and personal branding strategist, author, speaker and President/CEO of Great Resumes Fast. She creates high-impact, best-in-class, resumes and cover letters that transform job searches into interviews and ultimately job offers. For more information about professional resume writing or to read more career and job search related articles visit http://www.greatresumesfast.com or call 1.800.991.5187.

It’s not always easy to know what to do with your executive resume when you realize that it’s not getting you jobs, but you don’t exactly know why. Sometimes your resume requires a few minor tweaks and sometimes it needs a complete overhaul. Then there are times that it just needs a boost to make it interesting to more recruiters.

If you think your resume falls into the last category, supercharging it is probably all you need to give it that boost. Here are some ways to get this done…

Make Your Key Details Stand Out

One great way to supercharge your resume is by learning how to make your key details stand out. You could get this done by positioning your details as high as possible on your first page. If you have a career summary, you could place this underneath your title and contact information then list out in a paragraph or bullet-point format what details you want them to know about you.

Some stand-out details that you might consider include record-breaking or award-winning moments you had with previous employers. You could also mention exception moments of bringing in revenue, having huge results with a small staff or any other moments that showcase how you were able to help previous employers improve their business.

Also, you could mention skills that you’ve acquired that make you stand out from the rest. Basically, the idea is to mention whatever you think will convince the hiring manager into read on.

Get Testimonials

Something many executive job seekers don’t consider when writing their resume is adding testimonials. While it’s not necessarily something you’ll see on the typical resume, it’s something that you could absolutely add to spice things up and give insight into your work ethic before the hiring manager ever checks up on your references.

A good way to get this done is to ask for a number of testimonials from your networking circle. If you have LinkedIn contacts, you could easily ask for recommendations on there then ask for permission to add the ones you desire to your resume. Having these testimonials adds credibility to your cause and gives the hiring manager an additional reason to read on.

Stick with a Theme

While you want to cover a number of bases to show you’re well-rounded, it’s also important to choose some type of theme for your resume, especially if you’re sending your resume out into the job pool to be discovered by recruiters. The idea is to create one career goal for your resume so that recruiters will know how to categorize you as they look for prospects. If you have more than one career goal, create more than one resume. This way, your resume(s) will be focused enough to draw in the audience you’re looking for.

Having a good resume is not a bad thing, but having a supercharged one is better by far. So if you’ve decided that what you already have just isn’t good enough, consider the above tips to supercharge your resume and create the interest you’ve ultimately been looking for.

Guest post by Heather Eagar of Resumelines.com

Jessica Holbrook Hernandez is an expert resume writer, career and personal branding strategist, author, speaker and President/CEO of Great Resumes Fast. She creates high-impact, best-in-class, resumes and cover letters that transform job searches into interviews and ultimately job offers. For more information about professional resume writing or to read more career and job search related articles visit http://www.greatresumesfast.com or call 1.800.991.5187.

In recent blogs, I’ve written a lot about the importance of investing time into every job application you submit, even if this means applying for fewer total jobs.  While it’s most efficient to get your resume fine-tuned to a point where it needs little modification for each new job application, you generally will need to make a few changes each time in order to customize your document.

UTILIZE PROPER LANGUAGE

The first rule of customization is to ensure that your resume contains the same language found in the job advertisement.  Many companies use junior human resources staff as the first reviewers for the resumes they receive.  Since HR staff typically know a lot about HR and less about the business of their company, they often look to match your resume with the keywords used in the job ad.  This is why it’s important to customize your resume for an untrained eye; generally, the first person (or software program) looking it over is not discerning enough to know what you mean unless you use the exact same language.

RESUME KEYWORD OPTIMIZATION

For a job seeker who is looking at several different industries, matching keywords can be the most time consuming part of the process.  For instance, someone with a background in nonprofit development may be looking at various nonprofit positions as well as opportunities in sales.  Although both jobs essentially involve bringing in money for the employer, the nonprofit industry talks about “fund-raising” while the sales industry talks about “market share”.  In order to save herself the hassle of changing the language of her resume every time she applies for a job, this job seeker would want to design both a standard nonprofit resume and a sales resume as the basic documents to work from for either type of job.

IMPORTANT DETAILS FIRST

Another way to customize your resume for a specific job opening is to construct the various sections of your resume in the same order as the items listed in the ad.  For instance, if an advertisement says, “Seeking licensed master’s level social worker for clinical supervisor”, then your resume should display your academic degrees and social work license near the top.  Employers generally use their ads to tell you what they’re looking for—so don’t make it hard for them to find it!

As you start or continue your job search process, keep a standard resume on hand for each industry in which you’re looking, and adjust the keywords and section order as needed.  Employers will appreciate it!

Jessica Holbrook Hernandez is an expert resume writer, career and personal branding strategist, author, speaker and President/CEO of Great Resumes Fast. She creates high-impact, best-in-class, resumes and cover letters that transform job searches into interviews and ultimately job offers. For more information about professional resume writing or to read more career and job search related articles visit http://www.greatresumesfast.com or call 1.800.991.5187.

One of the easiest traps to fall into when writing your resume is simply mimicking a job description by listing the responsibilities of your past positions.  However, as soon as you write “sales representative” on your resume, any reader will assume that you understand the basics of sales.  In a crowded field, the two things that set your resume apart are details and quantification.

Take, for example, my father’s friend who owns a restaurant equipment business.  We’ll call him Joe.  Joe could write his resume two different ways.  He could simply say “Proprietor, Restaurant Equipment Sales Company.  Sells restaurant equipment to local businesses.”  Or, he could say, “ Proprietor, Restaurant Equipment Sales Company. Provides comprehensive start-up materials, including industrial stoves, dishwashers, walk-in refrigerators, and cook tops to 83% of local area businesses.  Specializes in boutique eateries in historic urban neighborhoods.”  Clearly, the second description provides a much more detailed portrait of what Joe does—and also makes him instantly more interesting.

The fact of the matter is, you can’t include quantifiable information like “83% market share in the local area” unless you have that information.  Even today, many companies don’t use performance metrics, and the way a company assesses overall performance may do little to reflect your personal contributions.  For this reason, it’s a good idea to keep track of your own quantifiable accomplishments.  For instance, if you audited services for which your employer was reimbursed $300,000 per year, then you contributed to the company receiving that revenue.  Managing a nursing home with 500 residents is significantly more complex than managing a nursing home with 50.  Make sure your resume includes numbers that highlight the full scope of your previous responsibilities.

Sometimes, the growth or success of a company may not be a direct result of your responsibilities.  However, that growth or success may impact you in a way that’s important to note on your resume.  For instance, let’s say that you work for a public relations firm that starts out with three staff members and five clients.  Your company does so well with those five clients that within two years, they’ve hired five more people and now have 20 clients.  In this case, you could safely say, “Provided leadership and mentoring to new staff as firm tripled in size from 2007-2009.”

When it comes to resume writing, it’s up to you to toot your own horn.  The easiest way to do that is to be aware of what you’ve accomplished, and be able to describe your successes with specific details and solid numbers.

Jessica Holbrook Hernandez is an expert resume writer, career and personal branding strategist, author, speaker and President/CEO of Great Resumes Fast. She creates high-impact, best-in-class, resumes and cover letters that transform job searches into interviews and ultimately job offers. For more information about professional resume writing or to read more career and job search related articles visit http://www.greatresumesfast.com or call 1.800.991.5187.

If you asked your parents how to write a resume, they would probably tell you to list every job you’d ever had, and then detail everything you’d done at those jobs.  Twenty-five years ago, when people mailed their typed resumes to the person to whom they’d be reporting, that was sound advice.  In today’s market, wasting space on your resume with irrelevant information is a quick way to land it in the rejection pile.

If you’ve been in the workforce for a while, chances are good that you’ve had at least one job that wasn’t relevant to your overall career path.  For instance, someone looking to hire you for corporate communications really won’t be interested in the job you had serving milkshakes at the Dairy Queen. So don’t waste space on your resume talking about it.

Let’s say that you’ve been in the workforce for 20 years, but you’ve only spent 10 of those years in related professional roles.  It’s okay to include a line on your resume that says, “Ten years previous experience providing outstanding customer service in the retail and restaurant industries.” It won’t matter to a finance company when or where you held those positions, but it lets them know that you understand how service businesses work in the real world.

The next time you encounter a recruiter, ask him how much time he typically spends reviewing a resume.  Most will tell you a number between five and 30 seconds.  That’s right: the same document into which you invest hours of your time receives just half-a-minute of his. That’s why it’s critical that your resume contain only accomplishments relevant to the job you’re seeking.  If you’re applying for that corporate communications gig, you don’t want the hiring manager’s eyes to fall on “Dairy Queen” rather than “published company newsletter”.

Forget what your parents told you.  In today’s job market, a resume doesn’t have to—and generally shouldn’t—include every single thing you’ve done at your past jobs.  Tailor each resume to highlight your most relevant accomplishments, and employers may actually spend a little more time reading it over.

Jessica Holbrook Hernandez is an expert resume writer, career and personal branding strategist, author, speaker and President/CEO of Great Resumes Fast. She creates high-impact, best-in-class, resumes and cover letters that transform job searches into interviews and ultimately job offers. For more information about professional resume writing or to read more career and job search related articles visit http://www.greatresumesfast.com or call 1.800.991.5187.