“A Few Things about a Technical Resume…”

posted by Daniel Parrillo on ERE Exchange on May 27, 2009

In
almost ten years of experience in technical recruiting, you would not
believe the technical resumes I have seen from even some very senior
members in our technology community.  Thought I'd remind folks of a few
things that a technical resume should be.

What A Technical Resume Needs To Be:

• An example of the person's technical & business functionality
  documentation abilities, reflecting the business aspect/purpose of the
  position - as well as the technical environment.


• The only objective the resume needs to address is the objective
  of the hiring management. View the resume through the eyes of the
  prospective hiring manager.


• Be Precise and Concise!


• It should speak for that technical person in their absence -
  speaks of the quality of that person's abilities and business/technical
  abilities - being the technical person's sales and marketing material.
  It "sells" the candidate.


• Environment: listing technical tools - provides hiring manager a
  chronological history of your experience using a particular development
  tool. Include version numbers. The latest version shows your skills are
  current but older versions document your length of experience (ex:
  Oracle 2.x - 9i)

The average person briefly glides over resumes - the way you peruse
your credit card statement or perhaps the contract for a rental car. 
Each technical position or project had to have some type of business
justification.  Companies just don't hire "techies" without some type
of business reason and purpose.

A technical resume must exemplify the prospective new employee's
technical documentation abilities.  Each technical position requires
some type of documentation (both technical as well as business
functionality).  A technical resume must find a happy medium between
business analyst and technical expert.  All business and technical
aspects needs to be documented and detailed for each position listed in
the employment history section of the chronological resume - without
getting verbose.  Be precise and concise!

If you're a hiring manager implementing a new architecture for your
software development team - don't you think it would make sense to hire
someone who can do the JAVA programming or the infrastructure
implementation - but also find someone who can document that work in a
precise and concise way?  Isn't that truly what your resume should be
stating?

Beware of "made-up words" or terms that may have been created on the
job and used in that specific organization and environment.  Acronyms
at one company don't always mean anything to another - or could mean
something complete different.  The author of a technical resume needs
to consider the person who will be reading the resume, quickly
scrutinizing it and hopefully deducing that you're the ideal match for
their needs.

Director level and higher candidate resumes should definitely have
the first few bullets of each position documenting both technical and
business aspects:

• Size of the staff - and what type of positions it included, multiple locations, offshore, etc.


• Size of budget (regional, district, etc.), sales quotas
  (budgeted, accomplished, etc.) - and make sure that you clearly state
  that budgets were met, sales quotas exceeded and that projects were
  brought in on-time, etc.


• Be Precise and Concise - without being verbose. If not, there's
  probably a 99% change that the reader will presume something
  incorrectly.

A technical resume IS the marketing and sales material for that
technical person.  It's what is going to be representing that candidate
- when that candidate is not there to speak for him or herself.  If the
candidate is a well-educated, successful, productive professional - why
shouldn't that person's resume reflect that?  If the candidate is a
QUALITY person, present a QUALITY resume! (...and I'm not talking about
putting it on pretty letterhead or an extremely expensive bond of
paper).

This may seems all to obvious when you read it - but how many people
actually have a "workable" resume that can be quickly tailored to
represent their candidacy and qualifications for their "ideal
opportunity

View the technical resume as if you're using the eyes of the hiring
manager.  You just might see the technical resume in a completely
different way... - the way that's going to lead to the hiring manager
quickly deducing this person's qualifications are "ideal" and lead to
an interview.

Whether you're a recruiter, internal HR person or a technical
professional reading this article - a technical resume should be more
than just a resume or an e-mail note received.  By including both the
business as well as the technical aspects of past employment history -
demonstrating the technical documentation abilities - and the ability
to document the technical business perspective of past projects - you
will be demonstrating to prospective employers that this technical
professional has the vital skills necessary to achieve the business
objective or deliverable.

------------------------------------------

Daniel Parrillo

President - Sr. Technical Recruiter

Strategi LLC
www.strategi.biz