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Technical Resume Writing Tips
Emphasize Technical Knowledge: Reflect your work and school experience with as many key words as possible. All operating systems, networking, databases, programming languages, platforms and software experience should be prominently presented. This will enable employers to make quick visual assessments of your skill as well as satisfy scanners searching for relevant work experience.
List Relevant Qualifications Only: If your work experience spans many years list only the employment history that would be relevant to the position you are seeking. Crowding your resume with inapplicable work experience will only make it difficult for employers to assess compatibility with a particular position.
Quantify Experience: Where applicable list numerical figures to demonstrate progress or accomplishments within your past work situations. This will illustrate your level of efficiency and initiative. Examples would be sales quotas met/surpassed, budgets/funds saved, lines of code written/debugged or number of machines administered/fixed.
Always Use Action Words: It is important to use action words when describing your past and current responsibilities. Depicting your work behavior in an active light will demonstrate to employers your degree of initiative and responsibility in particular roles. Words such as designed, organized, built, developed, coordinated and established will reinforce your qualifications.
Accentuate the Positive: Avoid negative turns of phrase. The words "no" or "not" should be omitted from your resume-writing vocabulary. Where they have occurred in your draft document re-think the sentence and structure it to use positive and action words.
Be Concise: You should limit your resume to two pages and only list relevant experience from the past five years. Avoid lengthy descriptions by consolidating tasks of a similar nature. Consider using bulleted lists as an alternative to paragraphs that are largely list-driven.
Omit Needless Items: The following items should be omitted from your resume: social security number, marital status, citizenship, age, scholarships, irrelevant awards, associations, memberships, and recreational activities, second mailing address, previous pay rates, previous supervisor names, and reasons for leaving previous jobs.
Proofread: In order to catch any hidden mistakes you should proofread your resume numerous times over several days. It is even a good idea to have someone who is attentive to details read over your resume. Choose someone who can effectively critique your writing and provide you with an honest objective opinion.
Use Plain White Paper: Your resume will most likely be scanned, faxed, and photocopied numerous times, defeating special paper effects, therefore plain white paper is the best choice. However, if you are sure your resume is going directly to the hiring manager you may consider using special paper.
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