Friday, January 09, 2009
How come resumes from India suck?
Ever see a resume from India? How come a person who has been in IT for only a few years has a resume that is larger than most CIOs? Do folks in India understand that the word resume is french for summary...
So why do techies tend to write résumé tomes? The reason is that good technical people understand the value of documentation and detail. After all, Heller says, "The mentality is, 'If you don't document your work, does it really exist?'" No doubt this kind of thinking has made its way on to the résumé.
How come for each role instead of simply saying what you did, instead indicate what impact you made? If you don't know what impact you made if any then maybe this is a future development opportunity? I like to hear what improvements to existing systems were made and the effect that each of them had. I tend to be less interested in the buzzwords of whether you know what struts vs spring is or whether you think Ruby on Rails rocks and that there is no hope for the ECM community when it comes to integrating with enterprise security products using standards-based approaches.
Many resumes have a listing of all of the degrees one has achieved yet few have any mention of certifications. I believe that attending college is obligatory and therefore pretty much everyone in IT has and therefore it provides me with zero value in reading about it. However, certifications are things usually achieved while also working and therefore give a hint to how much you really love our profession and your willingness to study deeper when not on the clock. Along with certifications, a few mentions of honors and awards are in order.
If you are an architect, provide a sense of not just the size of project you participated in but also a sense of any thought leadership you may have provided. Good architects can deliver a system online, within budget and of high quality. Great architects are capable of innovative thinking, motivating others to be create and moving the industry as a whole...
| | View blog reactionsSo why do techies tend to write résumé tomes? The reason is that good technical people understand the value of documentation and detail. After all, Heller says, "The mentality is, 'If you don't document your work, does it really exist?'" No doubt this kind of thinking has made its way on to the résumé.
How come for each role instead of simply saying what you did, instead indicate what impact you made? If you don't know what impact you made if any then maybe this is a future development opportunity? I like to hear what improvements to existing systems were made and the effect that each of them had. I tend to be less interested in the buzzwords of whether you know what struts vs spring is or whether you think Ruby on Rails rocks and that there is no hope for the ECM community when it comes to integrating with enterprise security products using standards-based approaches.
Many resumes have a listing of all of the degrees one has achieved yet few have any mention of certifications. I believe that attending college is obligatory and therefore pretty much everyone in IT has and therefore it provides me with zero value in reading about it. However, certifications are things usually achieved while also working and therefore give a hint to how much you really love our profession and your willingness to study deeper when not on the clock. Along with certifications, a few mentions of honors and awards are in order.
If you are an architect, provide a sense of not just the size of project you participated in but also a sense of any thought leadership you may have provided. Good architects can deliver a system online, within budget and of high quality. Great architects are capable of innovative thinking, motivating others to be create and moving the industry as a whole...
