Updating my resume has taken on a new urgency since I lost my job today. (Or as they so euphemisically put it: "decided not to renew my contract".)

So if folks could look over my resume and make suggestions, I'd appreciate it. RIght now, the content is reasonably accurate, but it needs some layout work and suchlike.

So, if you would, take a gander at the resume and tell me how to fix it. I've got some ideas myself, but I thought I'd let you guys give it a go.

Oh, and if you know of a Unix sysadmin job in central NC, let me know.

Needs contact info, name, address, telno, etc.. or I suppose you omitted posting the first page on purpose. Cheers

Nope. It's right there up top. Just underneath the rule line.

Compaq EVA, not EVM.

Also, it's rather lengthy. One of the things I am doing in my new resume is skipping the full descriptions for every job, and just posting the relevant skills in the skills section. I'll probably toss it up here soon to get an idea of what people think, as I am looking at a few new job prospects.

Are you looking in your same area, or thinking of relocating?

Yeah, that's one of the things I'm intending to do.

I figure I want to stay here.

You might want to specify which flavours of Linux you know -- there are subtle (and not so subtle) differences between, say, RedHat and Debian. You've listed all the flavours of Windows, so why not of Linux?

One thing I don't see in the special skills section that might be important is security -- ssh, https server, etc (that probably falls under firewall configuration, but that may not hit the right buzzwords, sad to say).

I haven't seen VPN anywhere, either. (That buzzword thing -- I hate 'em, but when so many places are using OCR to fill up a database, they're important.)

Under the software part of the special skills section, you might consider grouping things -- rather than Sendmail SMTP server, QMail SMTP server, etc, just say "Sendmail, QMail, blah blah blah SMTP servers".

What about adding things like "network design" or "network planning" to the special skills? You have "physical wiring", but what about the actual planning portions -- server load estimations, throughput requirement gathering, logical network design, etc?

For the DoT, it says you were in charge of most Unix installations. Does that mean that you were leading a group of people? If so, you might want to reword that to include the specific number of people that you were overseeing. You might also want to say how many machines/people were in the DoT (which I liked about the WindWire part).

In the first bullet under DoT, you've said "influencing hardware decisions." Did that lead to some sort of cost savings, or anything like that? If so, you might want to re-write that section to show what sort of specific benefit you provided there: analyzed hardware requirements, resulting in $200,000 cost reduction.

Same bullet point, the "installing operating system and application software..." seems like it's duplicated by the last bullet point in that section.

Random thought: I've always used past-tense of verbs in resumes -- installed vs. installing. The former, IMHO, says what you *did*, while the latter feels more like "this was my job description, but I may or may not have actually done that."

First bullet point for WindWire, you say "high availabity" -- you may want to be more specific, and quantify that. Same with fourth bullet point -- if you were able to keep the connectivity at or above, say, 95%, you should say that.

Second page, fifth bullet, "Redesigning network designs" sounds awkward (and redundant).

Two words I feel I miss: efficiency and proactive. To me, the latter is one of the most important parts of being a network admin. If you're not proactive, that means all you're doing is maintaining the status quo, if that, even. For example, I see lots of "installing" -- did you ever write any scripts to automate the installs, so that you could go do something else? What about things you've done to improve things so that you don't *have* to troubleshoot so often?

Total Sports intro -- how many people were in the group, and did any of the junior admins report to you?

Last bullet point, page 2, feels really, really run-on, and more of an ad hoc collection of miscellaneous stuff.

I'm getting tired of reading "installing and maintaining." I know that's a lot of what you did, but by the end of page 2, I'm kind of bored. Are there other words you can use? Maybe grouping things together:

Code:

---

    Installed and maintained a wide variety of software and hardware:
        * Mail servers running SMTP, POP, and IMAP service, using sendmail, Qmail, etc.
        * FTP servers for web-site file transfers
        * Dial-up authentication and accounting via RADIUS servers
        * DHCP server for mobile/out-of-office users
        ...etc...

---

Note I dropped the explanation of what DHCP is. I figure anyone that's gotten this far into your resume is going to know what it is, so there's no need to tell them. I may be wrong, of course.

I have to agree with drakino about the length. My attention started to wander by the end of the second page, was almost completely gone half way through the third page, and I barely glanced at the last page. I can see how it would be tough to cut any of it out, because it's all relevent. I think cutting down on repeated wordings would help.

Hope some of that is useful to you. Best of luck finding something new.

I now know what he can do, but WHO is this bloke, errr, what's his name - oh yeah, here in the tiny letters at the top - William Faulk?

Yeah, I'll have to post it to you - it won't go clearly through a fax to you, sorry (font size should be minimum 11point).

As an example, have a look at my CV (considerably less polished than yours) at:

CV

You could also look at a recent book called brilliant CV by Jim Bright and Joanne Earl, publisher Prentice Hall, ISBN 0-273-65485-3, available on Amazon. Contains a lot of obvious, but nonetheless useful information about how to doll up your CV.

Hope you find something suitable in a short timescale Bitt - there's nothing worse than being out of work for any length of time. I just celebrated two years out on Wednesday

Excellent comments. Here are a few other things:

- Have a separate education section rather than hiding your education inside your work experience.

- Start out with an objectives section. Say specifically what kind of job you're looking for. Do you want a supervisory job? A long-term planning and architecture job? It's okay to say you want to do something beyond what you've done in the past.

- Restructure your "special skills" section. You want to focus on skills that pertain to your objectives. For example, deep in your resume, I saw you mention some security work. That would be an aspect worth pulling out. Maybe you could have a line like: "Security skills: incident response, firewall configuration and planning, ..." When you're talking about your skills, you need to make it more clear what your skills are. When you list "TCP/IP" as a skill, I have no idea if that means you want to work on better policies to eliminate TCP slow-start latency, or if you know how to tell a computer what it's IP address is. Instead, I'd probably have a heading for "Systems administration experience: Unix client and server configuration, Windows NT, 2000, and XP cluster administration, ...", another heading for "Network design and administration" and maybe another heading for "Enterprise system architecture" where you describe big things you've planned and the tools you're comfortable using to do it. You want to show that you're comfortable with low-level details but that you're capable of grasping the big picture of an organization's needs and constraints.

- Simplify your descriptions of each job. I don't really need to know that you installed a DHCP server for a specific job, but rather that you completely designed, budgeted, built out, and maintained all of the network needs to support front and back-office applications for an X-person firm over so many different sites. There's a good chance that somebody reading your resume won't know what DHCP is, but they will be impressed to hear that you took an organization and completely redid their network from the ground up. You already have this, to some extend, in your opening few sentences for each job. I'd extend those opening blurbs and consider cutting the bullets entirely, in favor of an extended "skills" section at the top.

- Do you have any certifications (from Cisco or whomever)? Are you a member of Usenix LISA or any other trade organizations? That sort of thing is important to list.

- Do you speak any languages beyond English? Do you have any other "interesting" skills beyond your job skills? Many people choose to list these things on their resume. It's not entirely superfluous to say, for example, that you're a master woodworker (if you actually were one). That sort of detail might grab somebody's eye and provide fodder for small talk, while they're trying to just gauge whether you'd make for a good cultural fit in the company. (A friend of mine who worked for three months at the South Pole station as a sysadm says that, despite all his experience after that, everybody wants to ask him about the South Pole.)