Resume Help

Wretched

Okay, so here's the facts, I am both terrible at writing resumes and i've been out of the workforce for over a decade, and dropped out of college after a couple semesters before the turn of the century. I desperately need to get back into the work force, and this is becoming a hurdle.

Is there anyone out there good at writing them that is willing to help me make one? i cannot pay, but could trade for photoshop work or summink.

Rinel

@Wretched

What sort of job are you trying to get? A résumé isn't necessarily going to matter all that much, depending.

ETA: I have no idea how good my résumé writing skills are, but at the very least I can probably dig up my most recent one and toss it to you.

Aria

@Wretched I'm not going to pretend that I'm great at writing them, but I can send you a blanked out version of mine for a nice looking template if you want it.

Beyond that, I'd actually advise checking out articles for stay-at-home parents returning to the workforce and how they should write resumes that cover a role that's more demanding than most people realize, but which our culture often undervalues and certainly doesn't monetize. Focus primarily on the organizational skills required for household management -- scheduling, budgeting, etc. Those are very real, and very translatable, skills.

2mspris

I help teenagers and college students write them as part of my job. I would be willing to take a look at yours to give pointers? And I can give you some of the same advice that I give them, if it helps:

Experiment with the templates in Word. (Or whatever you use for word processing.)
Write a functional or skills-based format resume. You've not been working in a while, so you don't want to highlight that specifically. Summarize the amount of time you spent doing specific jobs without giving specific dates. (Ex: 8 years of customer service experience. You don't need to specify that it was 10 years ago.)
Keep in mind to include any skills that you have used in the time since you've worked - any groups you've been part of (professional or hobby) could have marketable skills. (Not joking, I know a lot of people who have used gaming related skills on their resume - I'm one of them.)
Google it. If you check online there are TONS of examples of other resumes people have shared, there are also literally hundreds of sites that give free advice and other free templates you can try out so that you can build something that suits what you are wanting to do.

But honestly, I'm willing to help.

gryphter

I found that invoking the spell of 'Self Employed' patched any holes in my resume nicely. Yes you can verify that -- here's my number.

JinShei

@2mspris said in Resume Help:

Keep in mind to include any skills that you have used in the time since you've worked - any groups you've been part of (professional or hobby) could have marketable skills. (Not joking, I know a lot of people who have used gaming related skills on their resume - I'm one of them.)

Three friends of mine got jobs at Sony, citing the work they did on Discworld MUD. Include your gaming skills!

Ghost

MU is entry level UNIX experience. I'm a medium-level UNIX ops guy and I'd absolutely accept that in an interview as introductory experience.

Why? Because all MU are/have been built on heavily modified UNIX shells. MU users are effectively playing games on UNIX/LINUX systems issuing aliased commands.

Ganymede

What everyone else said.

You have code skills and excellent Photoshop skills. Market those. Data entry should be in your wheelhouse.

But it also depends on the job you want. Tailor your resume for that. Hell, even tailor the language of your resume and cover letter to meet the prospective employee’s mission statement.

MsPris is an excellent resource.

Ghost

@Ganymede You make a hell of a point.

@Wretched if you're going for data entry, all of the QA, code-checking, app review, wiki editing, UNIX command throwing, etc could all be written as positives in a resume or interview.

"I work with some of my friends on online UNIX systems, which was a lot of data entry and code checking, so I have a lot of attention to detail and am very comfortable in an environment where information has to be accurate and correctly reviewed."

While it's not much more than introductory, technically maintaining a DB is a form of data custodianship.

Aria

@JinShei said in Resume Help:

@2mspris said in Resume Help:

Keep in mind to include any skills that you have used in the time since you've worked - any groups you've been part of (professional or hobby) could have marketable skills. (Not joking, I know a lot of people who have used gaming related skills on their resume - I'm one of them.)

Three friends of mine got jobs at Sony, citing the work they did on Discworld MUD. Include your gaming skills!

^ What JinShei said. Skills built from hobbies and volunteer experiences are valid. The amount of time I spent as a volunteer/foster coordinator for a dog rescue got me my first non-internship job working at the headquarters of a chain of pet stores. While it wasn't amazing, it kept me employed as a receptionist, then an administrative assistant/database manager, then an executive assistant for a solid 10-12 years before I jumped into project management this past June.

The real trick is not listing what your title/responsibilities were, but the specific skills you built and how they transfer. Employers are not always great at connecting those dots, even when it seems particularly obvious.

Like, yes, hello? Hello? I've spent 12 years as an admin of varying levels. Yes, I can in fact juggle varying priorities from a number of stakeholders, schedule work activities like a boss, track invoices/budgets across the fiscal year, parcel out limited resources depending on priority of the associated work, and write executive summaries that go to upper management about various initiatives my managers are working on. That... that is also a very large part of what a PM does. Duh. But I had to spell it out that clearly, bit by bit, because otherwise interviewers assumed that I only spent my day booking meetings and ordering catering.

Arkandel

@Wretched said in Resume Help:

Okay, so here's the facts, I am both terrible at writing resumes and i've been out of the workforce for over a decade, and dropped out of college after a couple semesters before the turn of the century. I desperately need to get back into the work force, and this is becoming a hurdle.

Is there anyone out there good at writing them that is willing to help me make one? i cannot pay, but could trade for photoshop work or summink.

I don't know if this will help you out at all but here it is.

I'm interview for my team (granted, that's in IT) very regularly. Provided the correct keywords for the job are present then the HR folks will eventually put the candidate in front of me pretty much no matter what, and I've never turned down an interview based on the resume without having at least a chat first.

The contents of the resume - let alone its more superficial aspects such as formating, length, etc - are of relatively little consequence.

I also expect most industries won't care about the same issue but for me degrees are nearly irrelevant; if an applicant has enough knowledge, can can handle the drilling part well (meaning either they can answer enough of my questions and can communicate the answers clearly or have the right attitude about the ones they can't) I don't care at all which school they attended. They'd be useless to me if they graduated from a superb university but can't do the job I need them to fill, and if they can't, they can be highschool dropouts for all I care.

As I said, I'm not sure if that helps you at all, especially for fields other than mine.

Auspice

Keywords are the thing.

There are websites out there (I honestly cannot remember them and I am sorry; perhaps someone else here can!) wherein you can load in the job listing and your resume and the site will tell you if your resume is keyword dense enough for the listing.

Because almost every single company out there just feeds incoming resumes through software to decide who gets to go to stage 2 (aka interviews). What your resume looks like, etc. etc. pretty much doesn't matter anymore. It's stupid. It's why I hate resumes.

All that truly, actually matters, is making sure the formula behind the 'reader' software being used will pick up on the right keywords.

fuck resumes

Ghost

Every time I come back to this thread...

...i resume resume help.

The mooooore yoooou knoooow

Sunny

I'll help if you still need. Get it done to the best of your ability, email it to me. I'll go over it and send it back. I do it fairly regularly for folks. PM me if you need my email / to let me know it's on its way.

ETA: It depends completely on the industry and company in question as to whether they use keyword type programs or actually review them. If you are applying at anything but a corporate environment, keep that in mind. IT might use those programs, for example, but if you're looking for a baking job you would do it very differently. Also depends on if you're working through a headhunter or not.

2mspris

@Arkandel said in Resume Help:

As I said, I'm not sure if that helps you at all, especially for fields other than mine.

It, honestly, very much depends on the field. My experience has been that educational fields can be really particular about it. I tend to get a lot of high school and young college age individuals come into the library who want to "fill out an application" but these days libraries are pressed to make sure that they receive resumes. Not all decisions are based on a resume, but more attention is paid to those that are thorough on skills, that tends to lead to the interviews we get. But other fields I've worked in they barely paid any attention to my resume.

Wretched

you guys. I will try and put something together and pass it around to those that offered help. It might take time, yay for unmedicated executive dysfunctions.

Cupcake

@Wretched I've done resume review and edit for a handful of folks in the MSB community over the years. PM me if you'd like an assist.

Ganymede

@Wretched

For all of our dysfunction, the surviving merit that I generally see here is that the community generally likes seeing others get ahead.

Probably because we know what the converse is like.

Selerik

I'm a big fan of trolling LinkedIn for people /actively in the jobs I want/ and requesting copies of their resumes.

They'll surprisingly often just give it if you ask, and it could lead to an opportunity.

Auspice

@Selerik said in Resume Help:

I'm a big fan of trolling LinkedIn for people /actively in the jobs I want/ and requesting copies of their resumes.

They'll surprisingly often just give it if you ask, and it could lead to an opportunity.

Dang.
I've never thought of this!

I might have to give this a try next month since my contract is up in January (unless they renew). Thanks for sharing.