NYCPHP Meetup

[Brent Baisley]

I have worked for a technical recruiting (aka headhunter) company for 
the past three years and I can backup the statement below. Also, you 
can't always count on a technical person seeing the resume and 
"understanding" what you have done. At larger firms resumes go through 
Human Resources first as a filter. To them, someone with JDBC, EJB, JSP, 
and J2EE doesn't know Java. But someone with Javascript does. Someone 
with awk, csh, zsh, and grep doesn't know how to write a shell script. 
If they know Solaris, AIX, HP-UX and IRIX they don't know Unix. Etc, 
etc, etc,.

It's not easy to write a resume that spells out everything for a 
non-technical person, yet keeps a technical person from becoming bored 
and still has the required content presented concisely. Really the only 
common ground between human resources and a technical manager is that 
neither wants to read a resume longer than two pages. So where do you 
put all the buzzwords for the search engine? Put a "Key Words" section 
at the bottom of your resume and forget about the "References available 
upon request", of course they are.

It's a good idea to keep multiple "versions" of your resume that cater 
to different reviewers and skill sets.


On Friday, December 6, 2002, at 06:54 PM, The Rain Maker wrote:

> Now, as the person sitting behind the desk. I can say most definitely,
> you're resume is nothing more than a bullet list of accomplishments. If
> it's more than two page, 99% chance I won't read it (if it's four or
> more, it won't even get to my desk for review). What *I* want to see on
> a resume is a list of skills, who you worked for and when.
--
Brent Baisley
Systems Architect
Landover Associates, Inc.
Search & Advisory Services for Advanced Technology Environments
p: 212.759.6400/800.759.0577