So one of my new favorite authors also happens to be my technical writer. He’s been putting up a lot of posts on his blog and he’s been encouraging me to post more myself. We’ve recently been reviewing a lot of resumes (well over a hundred) as my division has a few open slots. If you’re interested, please feel free to apply. Joe has heard me complain about some of the submissions and decided to document a number of my comments with his own observations as he’s been going through them with me. I don’t want to rehash everything he said, you can catch his well written funny post directly, but I do have some additional comments to add.

Contact Information

I really don’t understand why you would not include basic contact information on your resume. You have no idea how that resume will get to someone and any other artifacts associated with that resume can easily be lost. I would say a phone number and email address is the perfect combination, and preferably a cell phone number. If you are applying outside of your company, or want to post a resume for people to scour, a personal email address is best.

If you are applying for an internal position though, I would highly recommend that you use your company email address. It doesn’t take that much effort to update that and apply. It helps to remind the reviewer that you are an internal candidate.

Dates

Please, please, please put month and year. When you only put the year down or nothing it makes it really hard to figure out how long you were really at a position. Were you there for a month or 12? The margin of error on a guess like that is just too high. My particular contract requires that I am able to confirm the years of experience down to the month, so without that information I can’t figure out how much I can bill you out for.

Degrees, Certifications, & License

I understand the desire to apply for positions for which you are slightly under qualified for as a stretch. There’s also a desire to push the boundaries a little and prove that you can do the job. I can definitely relate, as I wasn’t fully qualified on paper for my first job, but I knew I could do the work. If a position calls for a bachelor’s degree and you are going to graduate soon, sure put that on the resume and list the expected date.

In terms of certifications and licenses I don’t think you should list plans for these on your resume. If you don’t have them, you shouldn’t highlight that fact or try to confuse us by saying you took a boot camp or class for that certification. It might help you through the automated screening tools because the certification name shows up on the resume, but when I read that you took the class back in 2009 and still did not obtain the certification two years later, it just suggests to me that you did not learn enough from the course to pass the test. That’s probably not the impression you want to leave.

I might grant an exception if it’s the type of license or certification that requires multiple exams and you’ve passed most of them so far and have a schedule for completion. Just make sure it’s up to date. I’ve seen a lot of resumes where the planned certification was years ago.

Another note on education. I know that there are a lot of alternative school programs out there. Far be it from me to judge the quality of the education that these programs offer. There are a huge variety of learning styles, ability, desire to succeed, and life situations that make a bigger impact on your knowledge base than just the school you attend. That being said, if you are planning to attend a degree granting program, i.e. bachelors, masters, doctorate …, at least make sure the program is accredited. The US Department of Education maintains a database of these schools that is easily searchable, and your institution should also proudly display their accreditation on their website. The accreditation doesn’t guarantee you’ll learn something, but it does show that a group has reviewed the program and feels that the program and process of education is conducive to education. To me accreditation is a minimum bar for the institution.

You work for whom?

A final story that I want to share. We had an interview a little while back. We looked at his resume and thought, “This might be worthwhile to talk to Bob” (not his real name). He seems to have the right experience and it looks like he worked for us 10 years ago.

As we were going through the interview Bob kept mentioning tools and systems that we are using today at my company and we were shocked at how much he knew about our organization. It wasn’t until the last 10 minutes of the interview did we figure out he actually still works for our company. The way he had written his resume it looked like he left us 10 years ago and started working directly for government. Turns out he was just working on a contract for the government but still employed by us.

Obviously the format of his resume did not make that clear as we were all dumbfounded at the realization. It also did not help that he listed his government email address as his primary contact. This goes back to the issue of applying for an internal position. If he had at least listed his internal company address and not his client site address we may gotten the hint.