During any big hiring push, I tend to review a lot of resumes from candidates breaking into the IT field or those who have already established themselves as IT pros looking to make the jump to a new company. While the majority of these candidates are likely very nice people who would do a good job, the sad reality is that the first impression I get of them is from a one or two page summary of their professional accomplishments.

Sadder still is the way these summaries are presented. A great number of the resumes that come across my [virtual] desk are poorly formatted, bloated, generic, and largely indistinguishable from those of any of their competitors. Don’t let yours be filed away in the recycle bin with the others- follow this guide to stand out from the rest and get that interview!

There are plenty of great articles describing how exactly to write a resume in 2019, so this will not be just another one of those. We will discuss what information to include and how that information should be presented from the standpoint of an Information Technology hiring manager.

You won’t often have the opportunity to know who in particular will be reviewing your resume first- it may even be an automated review system looking for keywords in your resume. That said, eventually, a human being will review the resume. Perhaps that human being is someone in the HR department. Perhaps it is your future boss. Regardless, take the time to create a professional resume that they cannot help but read all the way through because it is clearly formatted, flows nicely, and is not wrought with typos.

Formatting Your Resume

How to best format your resume is going to be largely a matter of opinion, both your own and that of the person reviewing it. There is no single right answer, but there are definitely some wrong answers. We will need to put our design hat on here to make something appealing yet informative. Let’s break that down a bit.

Length

It seemed that for years we weren’t supposed to exceed one page in length for our resumes. I think that more recently the trend has moved away from a single page and that it is more acceptable to have a longer resume, even up to three pages.

For me, it depends entirely on the seniority of the candidate. If an applicant is straight out of school looking for a first job, then their resume had better not be more than one page. On the flip side, if an applicant is looking for a more senior role, then an extra page with more job history and details is perfectly fine. While a third page may make sense on a more detailed CV, for most purposes in IT keeping things under two pages will serve everyone the best.

You may be tempted to include as much information about yourself as possible, and want to show off every little detail of your past experiences as possible. It will be to your benefit to prune this information down to the stuff that really matters. This includes the things that you were responsible for in your previous positions, and even more importantly what you accomplished while in those positions. As you grow throughout your career, the focus should shift further away from responsibilities and more towards accomplishments (assuming you have a few!).

Format

Formatting your resume to be pleasing to the eye is very important. You may think that because you are looking for a technical role that no one in the review process will care much about how things look as long as the content is up to snuff. This has never been my experience and even when I bring in more senior technical staff to review candidates with me the first thing they notice is how well or how poorly a resume is formatted.

We mentioned before that we were putting on our designer hat for this task, but that doesn’t mean we need to re-invent the wheel. There are plenty of great resume templates out there in the world waiting for your name to grace them. You’ll want to find templates that use bold job titles followed by bulleted lists of accomplishments, all in a simple and easy to read font. I would recommend avoiding any of canned the templates in Microsoft Word, however, as I have personally seen each of them exactly 10 Billion times. Remember, we are trying to do everything we can to differentiate ourselves from the competition.

The format chosen for a resume is going to dictate how the reader consumes information, and in many cases whether they consume it at all. During The Ladders most recent study of recruiters’ resume review habits, they found that on average the initial screening of a resume lasts only 7.4 seconds. That is not a lot of time to get your message across! Take a look at the study results to see for yourself how they tracked the eye movement of recruiters across the page of resumes.

If you are going the template route, look for a template that has a clean modern look that reads easily. Don’t be afraid of color! A bit of color will definitely help your resume stand out in a sea of grayscale. Just keep the overall design simple and the color choices to a minimum. Black, white, gray, and a single accent color is my go-to, and it should be yours as well.

What Information to Include

The Basics

Let’s start with the absolute basics: you need to include your full name and contact information in a prominent location. It may be old-fashioned, but I also prefer a mailing address to be included as well, as it can potentially save some hassle at steps further along in the process. Perhaps that is just my preference!

As you move on to the content of your resume, work to craft a narrative that tells the tale of your career thus far. Ideally, that is a tale of progression and advancement as that would be most appealing but that is not going to be an option for everyone.

A Summary

Begin with a brief summary that explains why you are a fit for this role and this company in particular. The summary should be a snapshot of your experience before you move onto more detailed career history. I much prefer a summary over the more antiquated “objective” that still pops up from time to time. We all know what your objective is- to get the job!

Work Experience

As you move onto listing out your previous positions remember once again to focus on responsibilities and accomplishments for each position. This goes for full-time professional experience as well as any internship experience you might have obtained. Whenever possible, work to present information as an accomplishment rather than a responsibility while also including specific metrics along the way. For example:

Rather than: Responsible for receiving positive customer satisfaction scores.

Choose: Achieved 99% positive customer satisfaction score across more than 2,000 tickets in the previous year.

The information provided is largely the same but focusing on your work as a series of accomplishments provides a sense of confidence in your abilities and makes you a more desirable candidate. Always remember that the best applicant is not always the one to get the job. Instead, the candidate that presents their information most effectively is the one to move on in the hiring process.

Skills

Of course, we need to tell our future manager that we are capable of doing the work they need done. Many people like to have a section of their resume dedicated to listing the skills they feel confident in. This is a fine choice if the list of skills is not overly bloated, and stuffed with buzzwords. Keep the list consice and make sure that the skills you are listing are skills that the company is looking for right now.

I prefer to include information regarding skills in the work experience section, within the context of each position. For instance:

Rather than listing “Active Directory” as a skill.

Choose: Successfully deployed multiple domain controllers in a Microsoft Active Directory environment.

This both tells the hiring manager that you know your way around Active Directory, while also shining a light on some quality work you performed.

Education

Deciding how much educational experience you should include can be tricky. My take on the matter is that as you get older and more experienced, you should prune the Education portion of your resume to include only academic degrees that you have fully completed. Earlier in your career, it is more acceptable to include coursework you are currently working on, and even high school information as well. You have to put something on there after all!

Certifications

Information Technology certifications should be included in their own section. You should prioritize these certifications based on what the specific role you are applying for might require. If, for instance, you are applying for a Junior Network Engineer role that requires obtaining the CCNA, then take the time to put the CCNA at the top of the list rather than a certification that an HR adminstrator might not be looking for.

Remember, you never know who might be reviewing your resume. So our first goal is to get past that person and onto an interview where we will have more time to talk all about ourselves in great detail.

The Most Important Thing…

If you take nothing else away from this post, please just remember to tailor every interaction with your potential future employer to their company. This includes creating a resume that is just for them, the work they do, and their company culture.

Spend time reviewing their company website and social media accounts. See how they communicate with the public and (as long as it is appropriate) try to mimic their style. Use this opportunity to highlight areas of interest or experience that overlap with those of the company.

Does the company have a global presence? Perhaps you are a world traveler and are excited at the opportunity to travel abroad for work.

Is the company active in the local community? Highlight your volunteer work with non-profit organizations.

All of this may seem like a lot of work, but the extra effort will demonstrate how you can not only do the job but how you are a good fit for the company and the company is a good fit for you. If there isn’t much in the way of overlap, then it might not be a good long term position.

Which file format should I use for my resume?

There is [nearly] only one answer: PDF.

The only exception to this rule is if the prospective employer utilizes an applicant tracking system that requires you to use a different file format. Aside from that, PDF is the only widely-adopted format that ensures that your resume will come across both digitally and in print form how you envisioned. It also just looks a lot more pro than a Word document.

If you are delivering a printer resume either via mail or in person, take the extra time to get some high quality resume paper. It looks and feels much more professional, and will make you look much more put together than the rest of the people in the stack of resumes being review.

Should You Include a Cover Letter?

Perhaps I am showing my age, but I think a Cover Letter is an absolute must. It is an opportunity to communicate with the hiring manager, show off your personality, and include information that might not fit so nicely in the resume.

I often read that Cover Letters are antiquated, and perhaps they are not so necessary in certain environments. The bottom line is that they certainly don’t hurt, and any time I have received one that was tailored to my company and made mention of work we have done, customers we support, or activities we take part in I have felt a much greater urge to move that candidate forward to an interview. And while I probably sound like a broken record by now, I’ll keep hammering on this point: The most important thing in the process of looking for work is to positively differentiate yourself from your competition.

Some Final Thoughts

You will be applying for jobs alongside dozens if not hundreds or thousands of other people looking to join or move throughout the workforce. Take any opportunity to demonstrate why you are a candidate who is more capable, more reliable, and more aligned with the mission of the organization than all the rest.

Your resume (and Cover Letter!) are opportunities for you to communicate with the hiring manager long before you ever meet in person. You get to make the first impression, but you only get one shot at it. And unbeknownst to you, that first impression you are making is being made alongside all those other resumes from your peers. That piece of paper does not exist in a vacuum, instead, it exists in a competition. It is up to you and you only to compete fiercely and use every tool at your disposal to successfully transition from job seeker to new hire.