Applying? Write a good resume!
If you work in IT, I can recommend The Tech Resume Inside Out for practical advice on how to write good resumes. It's a brand-new e-book that I wish I read a decade ago. I've only written a resume twice and both were quite bad. I was lucky to get any interviews at all! As a hiring manager I read a lot of resumes now, so I do have a good sense of what I and our recruiters need from them.
Here's some common problems for many IT professionals:
- Sparsely populated LinkedIn profiles that don't match our experience;
- Resumes full of fluff and long lists of technologies;
- Resumes that omit essential facts recruiters expect;
- Resumes that don't tell a clear story or sell our achievements;
- Outdated GitHub profiles or broken personal websites.
I was no different and so I had to do a lot of cleanup myself as I worked through the book, which was easy to do in a couple of hours thanks to the very practical tips. I'm convinced my profile looks much better now...I might even consider inviting myself for an interview now! For most of us, spending a day or so on our resume can really help a lot to get past the initial recruiter screen.
The Tech Resume Inside Out is a 215-page practical e-book packed with solid practical resume advice. The book is written by Gergerly Orosz, a former engineering manager at Uber. He tailored his writing to developers and tech leads, but all the advice also applies to DevOps roles as long as you replace Python with AWS or ReactJS with Kubernetes.
I do not know the author personally and I don't get any commission from recommending his book. Instead, my goal is to find new colleagues! I'm always worried we reject good candidates merely because of bad resumes.
So, if our company rejected you based on your resume, and you rewrite it after working through this book, please send it to me! Make sure to mention for which role. I'll either put in a good word with our recruitment team, or if I don't want to do that I'll give you some pointers to explain why not.
If you are also hiring and you'd like to make a similar offer, please feel free to leave a comment below!