Mois : février 2019

Keep the technical skills section relevant. Keep it relevant to the job you are applying to, the your brand and to the current market.

Review the job announcement for Knowledge, Skills and Abilities (KSA). Make sure some of those terms are on your CV as well.

Show impact.Make people understand the scope of your work. Tell the story of your software .

Talk about challenges faced during the development lifecycle. Show that you can handle the unexpected.

Emphasize connection with business and non-tech teams. Highlight communication and collaboration skills and show you get business and customer needs and that you work well with others.

Create a « Technology Skills » Section. Include it right below your branding paragraph on Page 1 and organize it according to category (methodologies, development tools). Omit skills that are obsolete or that you haven’t used from some time.

Once you become a senior and manage more people your leadership skills are more important than your technology skills.

For every job description add the most impactful thing you worked on. Make sure that it will be most likely to be read.

Write the most of the resume in plain English and skip the IT jargon. Don’t confuse people with words and acronyms that they won’t understand.

Follow PAR (Problem, Action, Resolution). People only are what you accomplished, so make sure that each describe the problem, followed by an action and concluded with a measurable resolution.

Be ruthless with yourself. If the bullet doesn’t meet each step of PAR, then it’s not important or impactful enough to make it onto the resume. « Face the brutal facts ».

Show domain knowledge about the industry in which you work. Round out the value you are bringing to the new role/organization with an emphasis on soft skills and business understanding.

Show ability to evolve with technology. Understanding both process and data needs are necessary to become more than a coder.

Show versatility by demonstrating the range of applications and technologies. It illustrates your adaptability.

Employers want to know the whole person they are hoping to hire and not just their technical skills.

Why is it important to have a resume?

Having a resume is a standard. It gives managers something to analyze, people will always ask for it and it is ingrained in HR’s process.

CV is a marketing document and not your obituary. Resume is a forward facing marketing document. Obituary is a backward facing list of events. You should think in terms of « here is what i bring to the table », « Here is what that means for you » and not « this is a list of what i have done ». The resume should make company saying without a lot of thinking: this person will bring value to this role. Talk more about values and the benefits you can bring.

Build your resume

There is value in creating your resume. Creating it makes you think critically. It makes you choose your best value, it is a great interview preparation at the end of which you will own the conclusions.

Buy your resume

The cost of hiring a professional to write your resume is relatively minimal comparing to the value that can be bring. Certified resume writers are trained in their space, they are experts at creating your marketing document).

• careerdirectors.com
• careerthoughtleaders.com
• thenrwa.com

Audience

• Hiring managers – intimate understanding of what your skill set is.
• Your contacts – most of them won’t understand your skills
• HR – has a basic understanding of what the job is about but sometimes what is on the resume won’t make sense for them.
• ATS (Applicant Tracking System) a computer audience, it makes analyses on your resume and compares it to a job description.

Use a tagline or a cover letter for the persons who might not understand your resume.

Resume templates

Virus scan before sending it.

Avoid too much frill.

Chronological – the most popular.

Functional – thought as a format to hide age or experience level. Removes dates and don’t order by company. The focus is on the skillset.

Combination/hybrid resume –

• top is functional (the top 2,3 skills, details and experience with those skills)
• a list of companies and dates

Create a solid resume

• solid – not amazing, but also not embarassing
• good starting point and useable
• online resume builder (livecareer.com, resumegenious.com, cvmkr.com, visualcv.com)