Straight to the point. I don't know what I'm doing, I've never finished making a complete resume as the jobs I ended up with never required them. I feel like the best way to get out of dead-end jobs is to have a shiny impressive resume. I found some awesome examples, but they are far to artsy for the job I'm applying for. I'm making multiple versions to emphasize certain skills, but am having a difficult time coming up with something that would be appealing for a technical job.

Massassi, what advice can you give? I figure this is the best place to ask as so many of you are accomplished in some field, or at least pretty damn smart.

what job are you applying for?
what skills are you emphasizing?

It's an inspection job for L3 communications. The job requires experience with data compilation and product quality inspection. Most of what happens there is confidential. Last year I worked for a security company doing similar things under the direction of homeland security. I've written a few paragraphs about each job with a focus more on the technical side, working with computers, etc.

if you remember just one thing, it ought to be that you should proofread your resume.

Prefer bullet lists over paragraphs, they are easier to skim and look cleaner.

Focus on what you did, not just what your responsibilities were.

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Have you noticed that there is no native term for resume/CV in the English language? I'm going to start calling it my "list of **** I did before I quit."

Just say Lebenslauf to avoid confusion.

Do not make them fancy. Straight to the point.

http://ist.psu.edu/current-students/pdf/resume-template.pdf

Despite the pedophiles, Penn State has a nice template that isn't anything flashy, but looks professional. Other than that, tailor the resume to the job. If you have multiple experiences that you'd like to list but don't have space, then put in the most relevant ones. Keep it 1 page as well. Make sure your experiences are about what you did (like Jon'C said), and not just lists of "responsible for...", "responsible for...."

As a hiring manager, I agree. Every hiring manager is different, however.

Personally, I don't want to work for a manager who has the time to read pages of resume narrative. I also intentionally misspell at least one word to see if they are a Grammar Nazi.

As a hiring manager, I want to see a one page summary of what your skills and experiences are. I also want to know about your success in those areas. I don't care if you were captain of the football team or president of the chess club. I also don't care about your formal education as real world experience is far more valuable. There's plenty of over qualified but under certified people out there that I can hire for $10/hr less than a collage grad. They're also more likely to stick around instead of job hopping in two years. I know that probably pisses off some of those collage grads on this forum, but it's the truth about the current job market. Company's have been taking 2yrs experience in exchange for 1yr of education for years now. Now they're concentrating on finding people with experience over education. Don't worry, it'll change again in about 8yrs.

On a final note, a resume is meant to get you to the interview. During the interview, remember that the interview shouldn't be just about the company asking you questions. You should ask questions as well. The company is looking to see if you will be a good addition to their team. You should also be looking to see if you will enjoy your time with the company. I've walked out of interviews when I didn't think I'd enjoy working for the company. It's a two way street. Remember that when you get to the negotiation phase of the hiring process.

jesus

Thank you. This is a very great advice.

when it comes to saying what I did rather than my responsibilities, would that be like saying "I cooked burgers for 50 people a day" Rather than "I was tasked with cooking enough burgers for 50 people, daily."?

èéèéèéèé

Gahhh

Yeah, hah, uh, just ignore everything Alco posted unless maybe you're looking for a job at Walgreens.

Always, always, always include your post-secondary education (assuming you have one). You spent years working on it, and it shows what 40 very smart people think about your work ethic. There's always a chance that an employer will turn you down, but you don't want to work for them anyway.

If an employer turns you down because you're overqualified,... you're overqualified.

If an employer turns you down because they don't like college grads, because they "ask for too much money" or "quit too soon", it still means you're overqualified. But it also means the job is ****ty. It also means lousy, incompetent coworkers, because the only people left are the ones who couldn't get hired anywhere better. It also means lousy, incompetent management, because they aren't able to competently hire or retain employees.

Also, leave no typos. Zero. None. It shows you are intelligent and fastidious. Don't deliberately include typos to "weed out grammar nazis". You're just going to end up working for a company that self-selects for stupid and careless people.

More:

• Keep it at one page.
• Don't include an objective statement. Your objective is to get a job so you don't starve. They've probably figured that part out.
• Don't include irrelevant personal information like hobbies or club/frat memberships, unless it's a top-tier, well-known honors society relevant to the job.
• Avoid listing irrelevant work experience. Include it if you don't have anything else, but concentrate on what makes the experience meaningful for the position. You didn't cook burgers for 50 people a day, you developed strong multitasking skills.
• If you don't have a lot of relevant work experience, list your education first. If you have a lot of experience, list your education after.
• If you had a good cumulative GPA, include it too. If your major GPA is higher than your cumulative GPA, put it before your cumulative GPA. Don't just include your major GPA.
• If you are a relatively recent graduate, list any relevant awards and merit scholarships.

Man. level3 has fucked us over so many times.

Good god yes. I always cringe when I see these people biased against college-educated applicants. They usually defend it by saying stuff like "the smartest person I know didn't go to college" or "Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard." All this tells me is that these people value anecdotal evidence over statistics.

*pauses*

And are but hurt because they didn't go to college.

However I can see not hiring college grads for positions that don't really require a college education.

Which is totally reasonable. When you're hiring someone it's your job to make sure they're a good fit for the position. When you hire someone who is overqualified it is as much your fault as if you had hired someone underqualified.

This is what offended me about Alco's post. Not that "experience is important" remark (no ****, sherlock), but the fact that he's blaming his hires for wanting to leave. Alco's company must be a real spectacle if the rest of their management is as incompetent and ego-driven as their hiring.

I can totally understand some jobs not wanting to hire college students, especially those who care about their education. My last job hated me because I would work very very minimal hours, like 4-8 hours only on weekends during the school year.

Some jobs want a bunch of mindless slaves they can overwork who are 59 and just want to continue mopping floors. Its the truth.

umm... I think they are talking about those who went to college and have since graduated.

I would also probably be wary of people who spent years of time and tens of thousands of dollars to start a career path next to high school students. Taking six years to finally get settle on a B.S. in philosophy would suggest to me that someone has pretty poor judgment compared to motivated high school graduate. I wouldn't consider those people overqualified as much as I would consider them to be potentially ineffective employees, who will probably show up hung over every Monday to boot.

But, yes, Jon'C, I agree that relevant qualifications can only help.

What about those who worked full time during their school years and as a result it took 8-10 years to complete their education(plus the dumb move of starting out in arts then switching to business, the dumb move being trying to get an art degree, not the switching.)? Thats the situation of both my wife and I.

It's impossible to pigeonhole every person. If you have good reasons for what you did it's not an issue. I took 7 years to finish my 5 year undergrad degree because I took a year off for medical leave and changed majors (which despite being similar programs had unforeseen liberal arts consequences). It's never warranted more than 30 seconds of discussion any time it's come up in an interview and has never been a problem.

I made the hilarious part bold.

I guess Roger "the grammar nazi" Spruce won't ever be hired by Alco now....

There are a lot of people who have worked their way up the ladder coming out of high school and in 4-6 years have the experience that's worth far more than a collage grad for the same position. Companies see value in this, which is why it's been a growing trend over the last 10 years. The 90's were full of job hoppers who were changing jobs simply to get a significant pay raise(40-50%+). These individuals, although "Collage Educated" are among the most incompetent people in the work force today because they don't stay anywhere long enough to gain any meaningful experience. This is not to say that all "Collage Educated" are prone to this issue. In all business jobs (non-technical/non-medical), just about everything you learn in Collage is useless. If you're a millennial, then it's already known that you have computer skills and are probably familiar with MS Office. Yes, it helps to have had a basic statics and economics course if you're going to be spending any significant portion of your day in a spreadsheet. However, even then, almost any issue that you run into can be solved in minutes with a simple Google search. The solution is also going to be far more current and real-world then the dated text books used in collage. Everything else in business is learned by spending time in the business. Nobody shows up for their first job post collage and knows exactly what to do. Every company is unique in how they do business. Yes, there are some standards, but most companies do not follow those standards. This is either because the industry changes too quickly or their customers require stricter standards.

Once more, this isn't a principle I alone adopted, it's something that the vast majority of small and mid-sized companies have adopted. The collage grads of the Generation X were the worst at being incompetent job hoppers. In general, they're absolutely the worst people to work for and with. More recent collage grads from the millennial generation are the exact opposite. Especially since many of them worked during collage.

Just a side note, I don't know what bug crawled up Jon'C, but in 5 years of business none of our employees have been fired and none of our employee's have quit to seek employment elsewhere. Our hiring strategy has been incredibly successful and so has our business model because of it.

If the job is "non-technical", as u put it, what's ur business in taking engineering statics anyhow?

It's really fucking hard to take your opinion about "Collage Educated" people seriously.

You have job experience. Plus it shows that your college experience wasn't just an excuse to binge drink for four to six years on credit.



It sounds like he's hiring people for jobs that don't require a high enough skill level to justify degree. There really is no point in hiring someone with a degree if you just want data entry or help desk stuff. I would guess he is probably talking about people with useless degrees who expect more pay for a position that has no relevance to their education.

Alco this thread is about technical or engineering jobs. It sounds like you're hiring people to work at Walmart. People for those positions don't need a college degree. Good luck getting anywhere technical without either a BS in science/math/engineering or an equivalent amount of self-learning and something to prove it.

That's because a university degree is not a substitute for job training. Why would you ever assume that it is?

"Workers with more professional experience are in demand! Hot new trend!"

Simply to get a 40-50% pay raise, you say? How dare they entertain competitive job offers instead of sucking it up and quietly chewing on the **** sandwich you've been serving them? chainsawing employees and their enlightened self-interest, we never had this problem back before they passed the 13th amendment.

Quick question: if a 40-50% pay raise is competitive for your employees, why aren't you matching it?

Oh, be honest. It's because you don't give a ****. You're basically banking on high school dropouts getting their girlfriends pregnant, aren't you?


Well here's your fucking problem, it's all puppies and ****.



Seriously Alco, there's a slight flaw in your reasoning:

Even assuming that college-educated people are "the most incompetent people in the workforce", what does that say about the people who are hiring them?

Here's a hint: they're out, getting better jobs and getting bigger paycheques. You, on the other hand, are a lifer at the same awful company where they are too good to work.

They are not the problem.

I'm not sure why that should be a surprise. Just about everything you do in business jobs is useless too, so why should a business school act differently?

Statistics. It's spelled statistics. Statics is a different thing which Collage Educated people also tend to know, so it's a little confusing for most of us. Fortunately I still speak imbecile from back when I used to work in a warehouse.

Statistics I understand, but economics? Please explain why an economics course would help you work with a spreadsheet. (Are you sure you don't actually mean finance?)

Congrats, your job could be easily automated.

I JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND WHY THESE YOUNG PEOPLE DON'T WANT TO WORK FOR ME.

And here we have the biggest nugget of bull**** in this brown, fetid pile.

The textbooks at college aren't "dated". They publish a new edition every damn year and always make students buy the latest copy. It's a money-making scam to crush the used textbook market.

It's been a huge controversy for the past 20 years, like the biggest controversy in post-secondary pricing, and the fact that you obviously don't know anything about it proves pretty conclusively that you don't have a single solitary clue what you're talking about.

Hiring employees appropriate for the job? Companies have really just adopted this strategy? And yet we blame the banks for the economy collapsing?

What was your strategy before now? Drawing jobs from a hat?

Also pretty sure the "vast majority" of small businesses aren't turning away people with post-secondary educations, dude. Construction, non-institutional healthcare, engineering and high technology make up a pretty huge chunk of small businesses and in a lot of cases it's literally illegal to not hire people with post-secondary.

Would rather work with an entitled Collage Educated person than have a manager who blames his employees for being unhappy with their ****ty jobs and low pay.

The new generation is "better" because it's hard for them to get experience. Beggars can't be choosers.

The last generation had the freedom to pick the job they wanted to take. Sorry to break it to you dude, but the reason they didn't pick you is because you suck.

Loyalty is earned, fuckwad. Give employees a reason to stick around and they will. Are you really dumb enough to think these new kids would act any differently if a better job came along? You aren't offering them anything.

NOBODY HAS QUIT SINCE 2008. THAT MEANS OUR HIRING PRACTICES ARE EFFECTIVE.

CORRELATION IMPLIES CAUSATION, I LEARNED THIS IN STATICS CLASS.

Oh geez, you brought out the "anyone can use Google" defense... Seriously, any job where that's truly the case is not a very good job. It might fly in a very basic environment where your job is being a computer janitor, but not much else.

Don't be so stupid, Darth. Educated technologists are simply the couriers who convey the products from the idea store to your front step. Telling them what to do is the hard part, and you don't need no collage degree to tell you how to do that.

Seriously, post of the year for Jon'C.

I need to solve a totally new business problem in a novel way.

QUICKLY, TO GOOGLE.

I AM GOOD AT JOB, YES?

This is a huge pet peeve of mine. There are people out there who never developed any real creative skills or useful knowledge, but decide to adopt a lazy, arrogant attitude that allows them to dismiss the hard work of people who are actually creative and pretend that their ignorant, nonsensical "ideas" are somehow God's gift to all the poor "left-brained" nerds. Worse, their "ideas" tend to either be, "I want to become rich by doing something that some famous guy already become successful by doing", or else it's something they came up with after pondering some ****ty discovery science special, but violates basic physics and logic.

And I will tell you about it after you sign this NDA!