the technical resume

i get a lot of resumes, and im always amazed how horribly people represent themselves. here are some of my suggestions for making sure your resume gets noticed.

order the information on your resume by relevance, beginning with the most recent. at this stage, you have only 15 seconds of the person's time. make it worthwhile. if you are fresh out of school, your education and the projects you developed should come first. if you have some experience under your belt, that experience comes first. dont be overly verbose in your descriptions of your prior job responsibilities, but dont be overly brief either. the person reviewing your resume is trying to figure out whether you have a good background, and whether you have made the most of your experiences. convince them that they should call you for an interview (or at the very least, look at your website- see below).

dont include technical fluff. that means dont waste space on your resume listing applications (e.g. Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Word). dont waste time writing things that should be common knowledge (e.g. XML).

create a website. include the url on your resume. make the website professional. do not use myspace or any other social networking site. on your website, include sample code, screenshots, descriptions. if your resume convinced them to look at your website, then your website should convince the recruiter to call you. once on your website, they have already decided to give you 5 more minutes of their time. make it worthwhile.

at the bottom of the resume, including some interesting facts about yourself. provide a "spark" that shows you are a real person, and perhaps even a well rounded person. couple of trivia about yourself (no more than 3) also serves well as the ice breaker in the interview process.

submit your resume in pdf format. if you are using word, i would suggest find a mac or downloading openoffice. either will allow you to save as pdf. if you are using word and applying for a technical position, i suggest you rethink your career path. pdf ensures that they can read it regardless of which computer they are using. it also ensures that your resume will not come out completely garbled.