Here’s an honest question on the “no McJobs” discussion: I’m a recent college graduate. My last few jobs are a mix of internships relevant to fields I’m interested in, garnering little to no pay, and grunt jobs in the service industry. I hesitate to completely omit my service jobs from a resume, because without them it looks like I have the privilege to spend all my time solely flitting between froofy summer internships, which is not true; in actuality I worked overtime concurrently at second jobs, and also held jobs through the school year. Should I just not care about this? Advice much appreciated.
Does that two pages that most people on here seem to be suggesting include references? The reason I ask is because my resume is three pages, but one of those is just references. The first page is work experience and the second one is college, awards and various workshops and conferences I’ve attended for my work.
I’m another one who doesn’t limit myself to two pages. I haven’t had to update it for a while, but it would be about 4 pages long. That is the standard in my industry, foreign aid work. A lot of people call them CVs, but there more like a resume-CV hybrid. You want your resume to demonstrate that you understand the industry you want to work in, there won’t be any applicable rules that cover all jobs.
Yes, 2 pages.
All the exceptions listed here seem to be about cover letters, addendums of example work, or official forms. No matter how long you’ve worked for, you should be able to distill your CV (and I’m not sure why Claire Beauchamp thinks that a CV is different to a resume - they’re just different terms for the same thing 
) down to two pages.
When you start out, you include internships, voluntary work, any jobs you had that showed you could show up on time and do OK, and made more of your qualifications; as time goes on, they’re less important, so take up less space, so your work experience just fills up the space that would have taken.
With really damn good jobs, the CV is just an introduction and the interviews might take weeks. Still no reason for a CV to be longer.
In the UK, you don’t include references. Employers are not permitted to ask for references until they’ve offered you the job, so there’s no point including them on a CV. If this is different in the US then yup, references would take up more space.
In the United States, a resume and a CV are understood to be two different things. A resume (which is what’s being discussed in this thread) is used for most jobs, and is a summary of experience, qualifications, and education.
A CV is far more comprehensive, and is used primarily for academic or research jobs. The CV includes all positions, credentials, and publications, as well as awards or significant achievements and occasionally work samples. The CV is pretty much expected to run long–six, eight, ten pages or more, in contrast to one or two for a resume.
Again, this is in the US (and Canada?); the UK has a different definition of CV.
Maybe it just depends in which circles you run in: I have always heard the two terms used interchangeably and I am from the US. Could it be that there is a distinction in the academic fields and not in others?
I think you should be able to summarize on the “Dates Employed” line that you were hired back in subsequent summers. In fact, if you can’t concisely communicate that, you’re not going to be able to concisely communicate much of anything - which is an important job skill in any field.
Not necessarily. If someone has been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, it’s unnecessary and superfluous to list the 17 other minor distinctions they’ve been given, unless relevant (i.e. the Marksmanship Medal if they’re applying for Assassin).
Possibly. But instead of extrapolating everything out on your resume, or listing way too many points of interest for your more recent accomplishments, I’d think it better to express them in your cover letter. Accomplishments in narrative form is going to be much more interesting to your audience than a list, and will allow you the room to not gloss over the headlines at the bottom.
I was told by a career counselor that you don’t include references until you’re asked for them, and that there are several reasons why you don’t do that. The biggest is that you need to make sure the information is current, and that they’re still willing to be a reference. Occasionally, someone who has agreed to be a reference in the past decides not to; maybe his company has a policy against it, or there hasn’t been contact in a while or a falling-out.
The second is for privacy reasons. A friend of mine was a reference for a friend of his who was looking for sales jobs. One company his friend applied to asked for references at the interview. The applicant thought nothing of this and handed them over. After the interview, but before the offer, my friend wound up on the company’s mailing list and had been contacted a few times by an existing sales rep. It turns out that the company in question used references as sales leads. The applicant turned the job down because he didn’t want to work for a company with such poor ethics.
I’ve always been able to fit my resume onto one page, even when I had a long and checkered work history. Had a pretty good record of getting interviews, too.
No one has time to read through a long resume. If you can’t show you’re a good candidate in the first page, you’re not likely to show it on page 2.
More important than the resume is the cover letter. It’s got to show that you’re sharp, enthusiastic, and want to bring skills that will help the employer. Write a good cover letter and you’ll get an interview even before anyone reads the resume.
The big secret is that no one – and I include HR people – know how to hire a good employee. People go for hires that seem smart, seem to like the job,* is looking to help the company instead of themselves, and – the number one factor, though no one will admit it – how much the interviewer likes the interviewee. And not wasting the interviewer’s time with a long resume improves you in the interviewer’s estimation.
*The best predictor of how well a person will do in a job is how much he or she wants to do.
I would add a third: although most employers won’t bother to call references unless they’re very serious about a candidate, sometimes people jump the gun and call early if they have the information. The onus is on the candidate to make sure that their references are aware that they’re on the reference list. If you’re pretty sure that someone like your supervisor or someone else who makes hiring/firing decisions in your department will stand as your reference but you haven’t told them that you’re looking, having someone call them out of the blue may put them on notice to start looking for your replacement.
I agree with not counting references as part of the page count and with not providing references unless and until they are requested. Have them neatly typed up on a separate page in case they are requested. The possible exception to this is if your references from well-known, highly influential people are among your strongest qualifications for the job (e.g. Vernon Jordan’s reference for Monica Lewinsky). If the job advertisement specifically asks for references (typical in academia) then do send them with the resume, but having them on a separate page is still best.
There is no way I would ever get a job If I limited it to 1 page, or even 3 or 4.
Most IT work is a combination of several technologies. Putting “Java application developer/access control” means nothing. “Java application developer. Used DB2, Tivoli data extractor, LDAP, Siteminder, Websphere 6, for real time access control of enterprise level 10,000 user SOA, context-based SOX compliant Application” Means slightly less than nothing. It takes a good 10-12 line paragraph to explain the project to the level any IT interviewer worth a damn cares about. Start adding in multiple projects for dozens of separate contracts, and it is just not doable.
I don’t know what kind of incompetent managers you people run into, but they have to figure out what you have done, and what skills you have before they hire you. Do you really think these busy managers are going to throw out all the detailed resumes, then start with the vague, pointless undetailed ones and them invite them in for interviews to figure out what they know, if they have any qualifications? :rolleyes: Give me a break. Anyone with half a brain is going to gather as much information they can about applicants in the most time effective manner, and that is starting with resumes that actually give info.
Could you (without divulging any personal information you’re not comfortable with) give a few examples? Like the last 2 or 3 jobs you would put down? Because I’m sensing a common theme among IT people, so I think that’s really skewing this discussion (not for bad or worse - just possibly a much different field and resume type).
And at some point, doesn’t IT work become irrelevant? By that I mean, setting up some COBOL* database system 15 years ago isn’t really a useful skill or job experience, since there’s simply no way that’s going to be used again. Right?
well I found a website with a pretty good example.
I’m not sure where fair-use comes in on things so I don’t want to reproduce it here.
But if you take a look at it is is pretty close to the standard IT form. (I’ve worked with at least 8 IT recruiters, and they all use a personal format similar to that)
Basically the level of detail on the first job detail is what you have. First a list of technologies used for the project, then a details bullet point list of actual responsibilities and how those techs were used(although that last bullet point on the first job detail is pretty fluffy, I would never have that on my resume.)
And it is a very rare developer/DBA etc that only has a couple distinct projects in their career. Most have 6-7 minimum, and as I said I have at least 20-25 as a short term contractor, and that is much fewer that many people. So multiply that first job detail by 6 times, and you are three pages, by 20-25 for someone like me and you are on 7 or so.
And There are still a lot of Cobol systems out there on Big iron as/400 type systems. And insurance and banking companies are pretty stodgy when it comes to change, and maintain legacy systems forever. There are some jobs that come up looking for someone who did manage application X in Cobol 15 years ago.
The purpose of a resume is to make your advantage over other candidates stand out. A retail clerk job probably merits no more than a line. A job where special skills are demonstrated needs more. My daughter worked for residence life in college. Just saying that implies she answered phones or filed or something. In fact she organized campus-wide events, and in helping her with her resume I said she need a line or two about it. She did, and she was very successful in getting a job that summer. Clearly you don’t go to two pages with filler - but if you have information that could give you a competitive advantage, you don’t cut it out because of some one page rule.
All were biggies in that episode. I know a professor who wanted to be introduced before a paper as “having all the usual degrees.” Fun there, but you don’t do a resume that way. I’ve founded four conferences - I’m not going to drop any because they are redundant.
:eek: In our automated system, resumes get pasted into the database and cover letters easily get lost. We don’t pass around much paper anymore. Second, when reviewing resumes I can very quickly glance over lists of jobs, accomplishment, skills and papers - even multipage lists. I can rapidly see if the papers on a two page list are for good journals/conferences or junk ones. This is much faster than reading a short story in a cover letter, where I have to look at everything to get the salient skills.
I’ve seen an interview with a CIO where he says they want to hire people with the exact skills they need for a job - they don’t want to train anyone. I have problems with that attitude, but I understand it. Someone with specific experience with the EDA tools we use is going to have a big advantage over someone without that experience, and not listing these as part of a job description to keep a resume short is going to keep someone from getting an interview.
I don’t have to worry about nearly as many tools and applications as your standard IT guy does, but the principle is the same.
(I chuckled over the dig at COBOL also. That could be a job-winning skill.)
Part of the reason to list out of date skills on IT resumes to show that you’ve not just used one technology your entire career. A lot of what we do involves learning on the job, and adapting to changes. That, and there’s a huge installed base of legacy applications and equipment, I’ve gotten more than one interview because I dealt with some obscure tech five years ago. (I’m a unix/storage geek)
My biggest issue is that I can’t find companies that stay stable for more than a couple of years. I was a contractor for several years, and lumping all the contracts together has helped some. My current job is the least responsible, least technical, most boring position I’ve held in the this decade, but I’ve had too many jobs even if you count the contracts as one job.
I hear cover letters mostly just get tossed, and the resume is only document that makes it (or not) into circulation.
ETA: I see Voyager beat me to it.
I think the purpose of the cover letter was to customize your resume to the company you were applying to. That was fine when you had to run off copies at the copy store, or got your resume professionally typed. Today it is far better to customize your resume to the company, possibly emphasizing experience in that industry segment.
IT people seem to suffer from diarrhea of the resume. “Short” does not mean “vauge and pointless”. I should be able to look at your resume and know within a few seconds whether or not you know how to program in Java. If I see you were “Senior Exchange Server DBA at Goldman Sachs” for 6 years, I don’t really need to see the minutiae about every single project you worked on there. Summarize the highlights and we can discuss the details during the interview.
Here is how the process works as I’ve seen it as a hiring manager. Resumes come in from a number of sources:
- Employee referrals
- Job fairs
- Job sites (monster)
- Company website
For anything other than employee referrals, resumes are only considered if we are actually hiring. At best they go into a database and the paper ones get tossed or sit on someone’s desk forever.
The first hurdle you have to get past is actually getting your resume selected as a possible candidate. These will be reviewed by some kid we sent with the HR rep to a job fair, some imbecile from HR or some kind of search engine. Their job is to separate viable candidates from the much larger pool of junk resumes. They will look for certain key terms, relevant degrees, certifications or recognizable company names.
The next step is the hiring manager will go through a pool of the viable resumes and try to narrow it down to people who he actually wants to meet.
What I am generally looking for is what kind of “story” is your resume telling me about your career. Some questions that come to mind:
-Why is this person in a different job every 6-18 months?
-Are they advancing in their career?
-Can they do the work?
-Will the work be interesting for them?
I’m not looking to read your entire life story in 12 pages.