jsync | Java Staffing Specialist

Is My Resume Technical Enough??

06/24/2004

by Dave Fecak

When putting together a resume, keep your audience in mind. Often times your resume is being initially screened by HR professionals or administrative assistants to hiring managers and not by technical personnel – if your resume is submitted by a recruiter it should be going to a technical hiring manager so this is less of a problem in those situations.

But let’s say you are sending your resume to a position you see posted. If the screener does not quickly see the buzzwords he/she is looking for, the resume will not get passed on to the hiring manager. You may have all the relevant skills for the position, but the HR screener doesn’t take enough time to look through the resume. And your resume only has a few seconds to get this across.

How do we avoid this problem? First, I like resumes that have a short summary of skills at the top, which include relevant information – for example “Senior developer with ten years of full-lifecycle software development experience and four years with Java technologies”. I also appreciate a skills matrix at the top of the resume, with technologies divided into categories such as Languages, Operating Systems, Databases, etc. This makes it very easy for a non-technical resume screener to immediately view you as a qualified candidate and your resume will move forward to the decision maker.

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