The technology industry is continuing to grow and get more
and more competitive every day which is why your technology resume is so
important. As a job seeker in the tech industry you really need to sell
yourself as the best candidate through your resume in order to beat out the
other candidates, who will undoubtedly have the same skill set that you do on
their resume. Many jobs within the technology industry require candidates to
have a specific set of skills to be able to do the job correctly but your
resume should not only place focus on those skills. The skills explain what you
can do, but what is your value and what is convincing the hiring manager that
you are the best candidate? The candidate with top quality skill but also the
experience and personality that will benefit the company.
What does that mean?
Instead of just listing your daily duties and the coding
languages or environments you worked in at your previous jobs (these DO need to
be on your resume though) explain how you contributed to projects and how you
were beneficial to the company, preferably using tangible results. For example,
the software you created assisted the sales team with lead generation and
increased sales percentages by X amount. The idea here is to use quantifiable
metrics that gauge the effectiveness of your performance as an employee. Not
every project you worked on may have had as great an impact but make the effort
to highlight those that did can really make your tech resume stand out.
Tailor your resume, the technologies that you are pursuing
to work in should be highlighted in your experiences you give on your resume.
If you are trying to get a job as a developer working in .NET make sure you
tailor your experiences you use to highlight your skill in .NET development.
This sounds kind of obvious but when many tech job seekers are detailing their
skills and experiences on a resume they easily get caught up in trying to list
all the specifics of a job rather than focus their resume writing for the position
they want.
Additionally, use your resume to show your personality. Don’t
fall into the stereotyped tech stigma of the person who only works alone. Have
you worked with teams or managed others, how did you aide in the collaboration of
internal and external teams, departments, vendors, etc. For example you could
have helped to coordinate the efforts of designers and engineers in a new way
for a given project or collaborated with the necessary teams to troubleshoot,
debug, and improve upon existing software systems at such and such company. This
will help to show how you will fit in with the work environment and that you
are bringing more than just technical skills to the table (remember to use
those quantifiable metrics to back up your claims when possible).
When discussing projects, skills, etc. that require the use
of technical terms use industry standard terminology. What may have been a
common term for something at your company (ie. acronyms or slang) may not be
commonly used somewhere else. Make sure you are getting your point across to
anyone who may view your resume, if it doesn’t make sense to someone it will
get tossed aside.
When writing a resume for a position in the tech industry
you should be detailed (most tech positions will be, so follow suit) but leave
out the irrelevant or obsolete tech you used. Resume length should not be your
top concern but keep it manageable and always relevant. Layout your core
skills, programming languages, etc. in a clear manner and format your
descriptions so they are legible and tailored to your sought after role in
order to put your best foot forward.