Overview
In my last job, a software consulting company after a series of unexpected events I end up as the hiring manager of my discipline(Site Reliability Engineer).
This complete changed my view on how I see the hiring processes on the tech companies understanding what could be a nice way to have better chances when you are writing your resume.
On this post I will suggest a structure for a resume that will help you to improve your resume highlighting your strengths in oder to be more attractive for the head hunters and people that validates technical aspects of your resume.
Proposed structure
Your resume should be simple, clear but very informative about your capabilities and it should have the next sections:
- Contact Information
- Technical profile
- Profesional experience
- Education and Training
- Languages
Contact Information
This could be the most important part of your resume since it will provide the recruiter a way to contact you so it should be super clear.
Add only the necessary you just need add your phone, email and a linkedIn link.
People from talent acquisition will contact you mostly by email but add your phone with the country code, specially if you are looking for opportunities in another country.
There is no need to add more than one email or contact phone just be aware that you will receive calls or emails on those contacts.
LinkedIn is also important because it will allow you to keep the relationship with the recruiter or the company even if you don’t get the job, add a clickable link and if you can try to get a friendly and memorizable link.
Technical Profile
This will provide a quick overview about you. On this part you should synthetize your technical skills and a little bit of your background.
The technical profile should match with the position you are looking for you can list your familiarity with the technologies you use and even you can high light the key words like programing languages, tools, cloud providers or certifications.
Profesional experience
This is your history, here is where the people can see how you have evolve through the time in order to became the one they need for their company.
List all your related and only related jobs and with the start and end time, a brief summary of your responsibilities without being too specific and keep the uniformity between your past jobs.
But keep the focus on your current or most recent job, try to list your responsibilities in a way that could match with the job description.
Education and training
Almost at the end intentionally because even when education is super important usually for the IT industry is more important your experience in the field.
But if you have certifications or you have participated in bootcamps, workshops or any other practical training you can add it here.
Languages
This is super important but it should not steal attention from the other sections, to achieve that this section should be simple and clear.
You should list the languages you talk and complement them with the level
For the level you have two options:
Something simple like native, fluent, conversational, use adjetives to describe your capabilities with that language or use the international notation of A1, A2, B1, B1, C1.
Both ways will be enough to know your language skills.
Things to avoid
Avoid adding unnecessary information like address, extra phones, references and try to keep your resume clear and informative.
Do not add a photography, this is not necessary but also you could create an involuntary bias with the people who will review the resume.
There is no need to add personal references if they don’t ask for them there is no reason to include them, I would say that if you need to give them references it could be considered as a red flag and maybe you don’t want the job.
Sometimes companies runs background checks on the employees but this should be once you have the job offer not before or during the process, if this happens it better not to continue.
Extras
Special thanks to Carolina for reviewed my work and help me with on this hiring trip.
Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash