resume templates?
I'm looking to update my resume just as a precaution given the current environment of layoffs. I haven't really updated my resume since college about 5 years ago now. Are people making their own resumes, using a template, or using a service? If you're using a template, I'd appreciate some comments on which ones are good. I did a quick browse over on microsoft's online templates and didn't really see anything that jumped out at me.
A little background about me, I'm a semiconductor design engineer with 9 years at one company. I've done lots of different roles from layout, transistor level circuits, gate level implementation, all the way up to my current role writing RTL. I have an MS, several patents, and one publication. I feel like my current resume and format is poor to present this much info (at least I feel like it's a lot of info).
Thanks in advance.
Comments
I did my own by hand many
I did my own by hand many eons ago, sort of copying the look I saw in a book. I don't use MS products though OpenOffice does a decent job of reading and writing most of their formats. If you come up with a good source of templates I imagine there are quite a few of us that would be interested in checking them out.
In today's job market probably everyone should make sure their resume is up to date just in case.
Take this suggestion for
Take this suggestion for what it's worth, but I'd recommend getting your LinkedIn profile up to date first. If you setup your LI profile permissions correctly, you can effectively use your profile as an online version of your resume by sending out your public profile link. You can event setup a "nice name" so the public profile URL is pretty. E.g. http://www.linkedin.com/in/mgenovese. This works great for printing on business cards.
The best part is you'll have your recommendations embedded on that profile (which are akin to references, and not normally sent with paper resumes). And since the LI profile page is already templated, you need not worry about formatting it. Then from this profile, you can create a "paper" resume...but at least you'll have your up-to-date info online for others to see first.
I use XML Resume library,
I use XML Resume library, along with some customizations, to automatically keep my resume up to date. With that, I keep one resume.xml up-to-date and then I just 'build' plain text, word, pdf, and html versions of that. I also use Matt's suggestion of keeping my LinkedIn profile up-to-date. Unfortunately, I haven't figured out how to automate that.
To see my resume, head over to http://donie.endofinternet.org/
There are links there to the XML Resume project. I'd be happy to share my customizations of XML Resume. The project hasn't been updated in quite a while.
Like you, I had not really
Like you, I had not really touched my resume since college. Over six years I updated it with job info and such, but maybe spent 1 hour per year. When I started looking for a job, I decided to spend time and money to update it.
Here are the steps I did to get to my resume up-to-date:
1. I updated my resume on my own, as best I could.
2. After reading the book "Resume Magic" (which is much more than just a collection of resumes), I took another crack at it. This included copying formatting ideas from other people's resumes.
3. I went to elance.com and hired Michelle (resumepower) to do my resume. You can contact her at 618.877.1538 if you can't find her account on elance.
This order was very introspective. By doing #1 and #2, I was ready when I got Michelle's questionnaire. She commented that most people just say "see resume." Instead, I took a couple of days and filled it out with all the detail I could. Needless to say, I was impressed with the result.
I just finished assisting
I just finished assisting the digital creation of my Father's book Market Yourself Back to the Top. My father owns Excufirm, Inc an 8 year recruiting firm out of Houston specializing in Senior placement. This book is a work of how to present your resume in a portfolio presentation similar to a graphic designer that he actually patented this year. In the end, you have a 8-10 page presentation that highlights your works over your career instead of two pages that get thumbed over every time.
The book can be ordered at www.market2top.com , we are self publishing and the first 2500 will hit our front door in 6 days. I would also highly recommend the book Knock em Dead, by Martin Yate. I used this book over many years and down sizings with much success before my Dad's concept was developed.
Best of luck and let me know if you want a free resume review once you get it together.
Thanks
Abel
Abel Garcia
GTGweb Technologies
I have a few comments on
I have a few comments on this topic.
As a technical recruiter for the last couple of years I have seen 1000's of resumes. (Trying build credibility here).
Some suggestions:
"This included copying formatting ideas from other people's resumes."-This is what I would do.
-Where can you find examples? A couple of places, you could look on Craigslist there are plenty of resumes there. Or you could do a quick google search. For example in the google search bar type:
filetype:doc semiconductor design resume
This will get you plenty of ideas, you can cut and paste what you like and dislike. Change the name and address and not have to "re-create the wheel"
Some things to consider when putting together a resume.
Keep it simple. Most companies have applicant tracking systems. What this means is when you send your resume over to a company they need to parse it into some sort of CRM system. The more tables and headers and footers you have the harder it is for the system to parse this data. It may look great but the fact of the matter is if it is a pain in the ... to put in the system they might just skip your resume and move to the next.
I would suggest making it a word document instead of pdf. Also, if you have Word 2007 make sure and save it as an old .doc file and not a .docx file. Most people are still on the older version and won't be able to open it.
Make sure and put in buzz words. For example think of it like a job search. What words are you putting in your search to find the right job? Those words should be in your resume more then once.
Exaples for semiconductor resume: ADS, MWO, SONNET, IE3D, HFSS or Momentum, DC-DC converters, smt design etc.
If I am looking for a candidate to fill an opening I do a search on Monster or Careerbuilder or Google.
The resumes I see first are the candidates that have my search terms in their resume the most. Most relevant.
(Just don't overdo it!)
Hope this helps.
Happy Holidays!
Why the insistence on Word
Why the insistence on Word format over pdf? (I suspect it is mostly because of the ability to insert agency advertising.)
A couple of reasons to
A couple of reasons to insist on Word instead of PDF's.
Again this has to do with parsing your resume into an applicant tracking system, word is the most compatible.
Some other reasons: A manager might want to share your resume with their team, so they might want to take your personal information off, email, phone, address etc.
HR may want to take that information off too.
If using a recruiter or an "agency" we will always take your personal information off too. (We will also fix any grammatical errors, spelling, margins, etc.)
Lastly, if you are concerned with someone modifying your resume you probably don't want to work with that person or agency.
(Note: Most modifications I make to resumes are cleaning them up, making all the font the same, same spacing and so on. I will of course add our logo to the top, get rid of your personal information, and add any selling points I might have. If I feel the need to change anything I ALWAYS talk with my candidate first and make sure they are in agreement.)
Now that we've talked about
Now that we've talked about resume formatting, I'll say that I think resumes are "legacy"...not quite outliving their usefulness, but indeed in need of an upgrade.
The problem is that most resumes are chronologically ordered, which IMHO is the least useful way to communicate one's experience. On door64 I created skill sets, where your experience is communicated and indexed via skills learned / gained / otherwise acquired. Then for each skill set, you can give background info (i.e., companies or other experiences where it was used), and also how you would like to leverage that skill in the future. For example, some skills you'd like to use for a day job, where others you might be open to using in the evenings or weekends. It's like having a stated objective for each skill, which is difficult to accomplish on a traditional resume. At the same time, each skill description is wholly devoted to that skill, so there's no other unrelated fluff....which makes it easier for a recruiter or hiring manager to parse.
I wonder if someone has written a paper resume as such already. Either it would stand out positively amongst all the other chronological resumes, or cause the reader to go into convulsions.
With decades of experience
With decades of experience playing resume roulette in the contract/consulting world, I strongly suggest paying close attention to the words of our recruiter (Wiesjahn) in this thread.
In the corporate and recruiting world, software "reads" resumes. Candidate searches and matches leading to successful interviews are in the form of DB queries. We are all technical folks so it should be a simple matter to put our work experience into DB friendly terms ;~)
Based on my own experience, following the suggestions from Wiesjahn is a good start and the correct direction.
William W. (Woody) Williams
Senior Project Manager
Software & IT Governance
It is unfortunate that
It is unfortunate that MS-Word is such a popular format for things like this because its technically such an awful format to deal with. .doc is a big, nasty, proprietary, undocumented, binary hairball that was never designed to be searched or indexed... Unfortunately PDF isn't much of an answer to many of those problems either.
What would be ideal is if there was an XML based standard for representing resume and curriculum vitae type data which could then have style sheets applied to it for pretty formatting. I've actually seen proposals for that sort of thing, but given how splintered opinions are in the industry, I'm highly doubtful anything like that will ever take off enough to achieve ubiquity. Alas.
At least pdf is
At least pdf is platform-independent and wouldn't shut out UNIX/Linux folks, OpenOffice notwithstanding. "Technical" != Windows/Word :-)
Yes and no... PDF viewing
Yes and no... PDF viewing is cross platform, but Adobe is a Mac-Centric company, and with Windows secondary. Linux/UNIX support is still tertiary for them, they don't ship full versions of Acrobat or any of their other big ticket products for *nix anymore/yet.
Of course there are 3rd party solutions to that, but once you get to that point, there are also 3rd party solutions to MS-Word .doc files, such as OpenOffice which you mention.
Anyway, my point really was that generic binary document formats like .doc or .pdf don't really lend themselves well to searching, indexing or other things that recruiters, hiring managers, job boards, etc., would like. People have put a lot of effort into trying to work around that by decoding the binary formats... but that's just ugly. And unfortunately since most of that effort has been towards .doc, it just strengthens MS's proprietary lock-in.
Hi all, I had Liz Handlin of
Hi all, I had Liz Handlin of Ultimate Resumes help with my resume. She did a great job of helping me convey my value to future employers through a complete re-write of my "homegrown" resume.
See her site here: http://www.ultimate-resumes.com/
YMMV, Steve
Steve Kupec
cell: 512-289-7905
steve.kupec@gmail.com