Re: a question regarding resumes

[Aaron Sherman <ajs@ajs.com>]

On Wed, 16 Jul 1997, Todd Williams wrote:

> On Jul 16, 14:29, R.  Wyatt wrote:
> >   I am currently in the process of looking for a job and I have one of
> > those infernal skills matrices on my resume,  but my question  is how far
> > do you go with the flavors of unix?
> 
> Some companies have their semi-literate H.R. departments scanning resumes,
> so they may ignore a resume that says "many flavors of UNIX" because they
> were specifically looking for the keyword "AIX".
> 
> My favorite resume style integrates the buzzwords into sentences that
> indicate the scope of the responsibilities:

You can have a look at what I consider "workable" at
http://kr.com/~ajs/resume.html

I think that the above is basically correct, and has serviced me well, but
the tactic that I use to achive that is to have a "Buzzwords" section
(that I waffle about actually calling that) broken down into degrees of
understanding. Then, I have an outline style work history that uses these
terms in more coherent sentences. I find that this gets me past the
buzzword monkeys, and still gives the technical managers enough dirt to
decide if I'm worthy of an interview.

OTOH, I usually don't think much of a place that would find me via their
HR department. The companies that I have enough respect to work for seek
out their technical staff in more creative ways.

			-AJS