Rate my resume

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I got some helpful suggestions from my rate my profile thread which I will soon be implementing. There's this job I want to apply for but in my usual paranoia, I wasn't sure if I'd written my resume properly. I can't change any of the content right now because I don't actually want to lie but if anyone wants to rate it or suggest improvements that don't change the meaning of what's written you're critique would be more than welcome.
[img][800:1571]http://i61.tinypic.com/2l83s8.jpg[/img]

Last edited by RetroGamer87 on 19 Oct 2014, 5:43 am, edited 2 times in total.

Adobe Suit?

Otherwise, it's a single page, the style's open and consistent. It won't harm your chances.

Good luck

Nice save.

I need it to apply for that Specialisterne thing that you already know about.

I've amended the resume in my opening post.

Take out or change the objective The employer wants to know how you will help them not yourself.
Unless the job requires you to drive I don't see the need to mention it.
Give specific examples of how your computer skills have helped people or better help your former employers make money.

Last edited by ASPartOfMe on 19 Oct 2014, 6:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Amended.

I meant I wanted to improve myself but I can see how that could've been misread. I reworded it but if it still doesn't work I may just remove it entirely.

Good call, I put that in when I applied for a driving job last year but then I forget to take it out.

Hmmm. None of my former employers have ever made a profit... not because of me though.

Instead I thought I'd mention I build computers, not just use them. That might help because the job I'm about to apply for is a low level computer job.

You could change the order of your achievements, put first the things which are most important for the job you are applying. Sometimes employers have a big amount of curriculums and they will only read the first lines.

The objective section on resumes went the way of Windows 98. A summary of skills or a "elevator pitch" targeting the hiring manager is more the way to go.

I'll do that when I actually have some achievements.

I think it needs a lot of work to be honest. What's the most important part of any resume is work experience and education. That is all employers are ever going to care about. First of all you shouldn't have your education written near the bottom, have that written after objective. Also you need to write the date your graduated from your high school as well as the date you got your certificate. Resumes need consistency. If you dated your work history (which you did do) you need to date everything else. Trust me on this. With resumes you need to have it follow in a consistent pattern.

Also what you have written for your work history is very vague. You worked at that place for five years, you should have much more to say about it. You do not need you have your duties written down separately from your employment history. Write down your work duties in each job title.

You shouldn't have your hobbies written down. They will do nothing to help you get a job and might even be distracting to a potential job recruiter because they will see you couldn't think of enough relevant information to put down so you put down hobbies as a filler. Get rid of it. Because your work experience obviously is limited, I would say you can keep your volunteering experience for now but once you get more work experience, you won't need to write down your volunteer work either. Also for resumes, do not put down references. They do not belong on a resume. The only time you need references is if you fill out a job application that asks for it. Other than that, remove that form your resume as well.

I agree with Homer Bob - This resume needs a lot of work but its okay, we all need to start somewhere.

Here are probably the 2 biggest missing pieces, in order of importance:
1. You need a lot more description for "duties" and duties needs to come as dot points under your employment history
2. The information isn't properly positioned or formatted correctly, especially for the job descriptors for company, position, location. date of employment:

Here is an example of how a standard resume would look like, for the job details. Note that I have no idea what your job actually entails, so the descriptions of the duties are BS'd:

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Imprint Design, Bedford Park
Mac Operator, Graphic Design Studio Nov 2009- Aug 2014
- Developed marketing materials for 7 clients, in the retail and healthcare industries, for direct mail and
brand awareness campaigns
- Worked with clients to understand marketing objectives and key requirements - used feedback to
develop prototypes into finalized products
- Designed themes, print media, and icons using Adobe InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________


If you can get that part done, there are also plenty of other improvements that I would suggest:

- Have you sold any computers? If so, move build computers into professional experience, with your job-title as self employed. Then put the descriptions like above
- Put education up top and note time of graduation/completion, as well as relevant courses
- Hobbies - I think hobbies is okay to keep. Homer_bob's statement is right most of the time but there are cases where hobbies does help, and that is in industry/companies where junior level workers screen the resume, rather than HR. However, I would think you need atleast 3 hobbies to justify having this section. If you enjoy the piano you should note the level you are, if its decently high. If you don't have 3 hobbies you want to put, I would probably remove.
- Your references should mention the company that they are from (e.g. Adrian Weller - Inprint Design Training Co-ordinator : ############)

I think if you implement these as well as the other recommendation put through, you will potentially have a passable resume (will need to see it to judge). However, note that there's a still big difference between a passable resume and a strong resume.

Last edited by aspinnaker on 19 Oct 2014, 7:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

This just generalizes what was written above. What did you Graphically Design? Any specialty? How was it used? Did what you designed help somebody become more productive?

Answering these questions is hard because we tend to think negatively, and do not like to brag. Bragging is what is expected when writing a resume.

Hmmm. I guess I could but then they might figure out how old I am, they might see that I have several resume gaps.


Good idea.

So much for what my school said. I only put that in there because yesterday I was applying for an IT job and I wanted to hint that I was good with computers. I guess it could go.

Really? So much for what they taught me in school. Why is school wrong so often wrong?

OK I'll do that.

That's pretty good. I'll try to make it look like that.




Nope... that's why I like ambiguity. I don't want to lie but if I can be ambiguous it can help get me out of a tragedy-of-the-commons situation. I wouldn't want to be the only applicant who doesn't exaggerate.

Up top, but I thought they cared about work history more than education. I thought a resume was supposed to read backwards through time, starting with the most recent stuff. As for time of graduation... maybe but some other website said you should never hint at how old you are. I might be competing against people younger than me... or they might see my resume gaps of 2006-2007, half of 2008 and most of 2009. About half of that time was spent doing some really lame courses that aren't worth mentioning and the other half of that time was spent doing nothing at all.

(quick anactode; read a forum post about a woman who didn't get a job due her ?resume gap?. That gap being the four years she was in college. The interviewer said the fact she didn't work at the same time proved she was lazy. I hope not all interviewers think that way)

I didn't reach a very high level. They don't need to know which level I reached. Do I more than two hobbies? I have many hobbies but I think most of them are ones employers won't like. Does collecting retro games count as a hobby? Probably not. Does walking two hours a day count as a hobby? Probably not. Does collecting vintage Lego Technic count as a hobby? Definitely not.

Good call.

Also, how many references are needed? Is two enough? I wanted to get three but my supervisor said she wouldn't give me a reference because I already had two.

My most common duty was formatting magazine layouts and similar. Sometimes I just did corrections to other people's work (easy job) and sometimes I'd design logos

That's difficult to say. We'd compete for the best logo or other work to get published, the only catch was they were too lazy to tell us who won (even though they said they would).

I think the magazine layouts helped publishers of magazines. The corrections I did helped other staff members who made mistakes and the logos? Logos are marketing, which is not what I consider a productive endevor. The world would be better off without marketing.

I knew it! It's that tragedy of the commons thing again. That's what I learned when I applied for that job last year where I learned they either don't expect me to exaggerate like all the other applicants, or worse yet they were gullible enough to actually believe the other applicants.

edit: also should I mention they sometimes got me to type stuff because I was the only low ranked worker there who didn't suck at typing?

I went through the resume process at my Uni just a couple of years ago. They did give some advice, like I'd been told during my first round at college as a teenager to put 'references available on request', but, this time around, I was told to remove that, that if they wanted references, they would just ask for them. (my current company actually used an email system where I had to email a link 3 references for them to fill out)
And, regarding references, during that resume review, we were also told to create a LinkedIn profile (if we didn't have one already) and solicit references from our contacts. I just sent out a message to people I'd worked with and whom I had liked, and said 'I've got a school assignment, can you write a quick reference for my linkedin page?' and I got a few of them. From those, I copied excerpts of the ones I liked the best and saved them (both on my website and as a document to be sent along to companies if requested). And, yes, included the company they'd been at when we had worked together (for example, one of mine quit his job as a major software marketing manager to open up a bakery lol).

I was also advised, being someone with a *very* short job history who was moving to a slightly different field (from engineering to computer science), to do a "functional" resume rather than a traditional "chronological" resume.
So, I had three major skill groupings (Project Management, Computer and Presentation/Communication), then below that I put my employment history, education and the professional associations I belonged to.
So, the skills that I listed in my top section came from all: my job, my freelancing gigs, volunteering and school. I was not a project manager at my main job, but, I did a couple of tasks like that with a professional organization, so darn it I'll use it.

One of my bulletpoints under computers was when I created a filing system and tracked the contents in a database. I thought it would sound more impressive as a computer point than something 'organizational' or 'filing', but, that's a good skill to have, keeping things organized, lol.

And, if you do typing, take one of those online tests that measure how fast you can go, and include that (I can do 65wpm ).

As for the years bit... I'd say leaving off your years of graduation and work so everything is consistent.
Rather than saying you worked at X company from 1999-2000, I'd put I worked at X company for 1 year. So, duration of employment, rather than the actual time. It displays your experience, but, doesn't focus on your age or any employment gaps.

Of course, that works during the initial phases of an interview, if you have to go through online forms etc you'll probably need to enter the years exactly.

Excellent suggestions.

Unless you wanted to, though, I wouldn't have put my real name on top for everybody to see.

If you want to account for "gaps" in your employment, I would say that I had to take care of my mother when she was sick, or something of that nature.

Also: maybe dispense with some of the "volunteering."--like dogwalking.

Are you going for a job in IT?

It's not terrible, but it is light on information. I disagree with criticisms about including an objective section, I think that's still important, but it could be more detailed. You don't just want a good employer, you want something specific related to your career goals. Also, one would think that a graphic designer could be more creative about the layout, it's quite plain.