Subj : Re: Accomplishments important or not? (was: Overcoming age discrimination...) To : comp.programming,comp.software-eng From : JXStern Date : Mon Aug 22 2005 01:40 am On Sun, 21 Aug 2005 16:01:20 -0700, rem642b@Yahoo.Com (Robert Maas, see http://tinyurl.com/uh3t) wrote: >> From: JXStern >> >To avoid the sprung-full-grown appearance, I have an idea: Water down >> >anything more than fifteen years ago by writing like it was an >> >entry-level job, like my first job out of college, and merge anything >> >over 20 years ago with the stuff 15-20 years ago into a single "more >> >than 15 years ago" section, and make it really sound like 5 years work >> >and no more. "Talk up" the very most recent 5 years to make it sound a >> >lot more professional than the middle ten years (5-15 years ago). >> Exactamundo. > >Ah, it's rare that anyone in these newsgroups like any of my ideas >about how to improve my resume. Thanks for posting. So now I'll have to >put on my to-do list a new resume per my idea above. If you don't see >it in a few days, send me e-mail, with "ReSpam2002Jan08" in Subject >field to bypass my spam filter, asking what's taking me so long, OK? Well I may be busy. >> Nobody cares about your accomplishments, just your current buzzwords. > >In this case I see a vehement difference of opinion. Oh, of course there are many versions given. Recruiters all go on about featuring your accomplishments, showing companies what you can do for them, but as far as I can tell, that carries exactly zero (0) weight in the IT field. > Compare what >others have written recently. (I tried a Google Groups search just now >but couldn't remember the exactly correct keywords to find the example, >but it basically said, paraphrased:) Your resume/CV shows no evidence >that you've accomplished anything in 30 years of programming. You sound >like somebody just graduated from high school looking for a first job. If you mean that resume at the bottom of this message, I agree, it stinks. The standard IT resume is buzzwords first, experience next most recent job first going back no more than about 10 years, then education, then miscellaneous. I HATE the buzzword thing and don't usually have such a section, but instead have a bullet section with brief buzzwords, accomplishments, and bushwah mildly customized to the situation. It seems to be working reasonably well. >So the other person thinks I need to emphasize more solid achievements >or accomplishments, especially on large projects, while you consider >such information worthless on a resume. So maybe I'll need to write two >different new resumes, one per your flavor for you to help me perfect, >and another totally different per the other person's flavor to have him >and many others help me perfect? (You're the only person so-far who has >ever said that buzzwords are the *only* important thing on a resume, >that there's no place whatsoever for any actual achievements or >accomplishments.) The sad, sad truth is that the buzzword are all that is actually going to be considered in about 99% of situations. The next thing they care about is your salary or rate. The next thing is the kind of company and kind of jobs you've worked for before. If you leave off that information, they are going to think you very weird, and weird resumes get tossed more often than not. Heck, most big companies just parse your resume into a database and query it back out by buzzword, and generally don't even LOOK at the body. Me, when I read resumes and do hiring, I skip the buzzword section as unlikely to be true, since anyone can list anything. I look for some kind of description of what the person did. Resumes that tell me all about the project and nothing about the person's duties, I figure at best belong to drones, and generally, those are not the people I'd recommend hiring. Then the interview is about the jobs and duties, which tell me what the technical level of the person must be. Just a few generally easy technical questions to validate the story, and we're done. J. .