The Best Resume Ever Written

When I was growing up I was taught that there’s always room for improvement. For example, when I was in high school there was a teacher who believed that giving students 100% on an assignment was not a good policy. It was his position that the moment he acknowledged that something was 100% he was admitting that it can no longer be improved upon and by default he was limiting his students. I had an employer who shared a similar opinion. She would never give a perfect quarterly review. It was her belief that there’s always opportunity for doing things better. However, she also believed that by giving an employee a perfect score it would either suggest that she overlooked something which could be scrutinized by others or that all past wrong doings by the employee was excused, which ultimately gave the employee a point of argument if they were ever reprimanded (i.e. a get out of jail free card).

As much as I can appreciate the perspectives that each of these individuals offered, I feel that it’s important to acknowledge when something is completed to expectations. It’s important that we have a measure by which we can assess whether or not something is achieved or needs improvement. While it’s true that there’s always opportunity to improve upon something it’s equally important that when someone achieves a level of exceptional work (i.e. meets expectations) it should be celebrated! The same holds true for resumes and the candidates that meet minimum qualifications.

It’s important to have measures in place that will be used to assess a resume against a job description. As you can imagine my team and I receive hundreds of resumes every day. We add them to our applicant tracking system (ATS) and we evaluate the content of each resume against multiple job descriptions. Even as the months and years pass we continue to evaluate resumes in our database against new job requisitions. It’s an ongoing process. In fact, just last month we identified and submitted a candidate for consideration to a developer opportunity. Their resume was in our system for nearly two years! After a resume is parsed into our ATS we assess the information for accuracy against the original document. Then, we source each resume by checking to see if it meets a minimum number of the requirements deemed acceptable for the next step; an interview. The minimum number of requirements deemed acceptable can vary depending on the difficulty of a project and the needs of a project. Often a candidate might be missing one or two of the requirements, but if they have experience in another skill set that is similar to what we are looking to acquire then we would still consider the candidate.

The best resume ever written is one that includes;

· first and last name

· contact phone number

· valid email address

· detailed summary of years of experience

· education

· honest details about where work was performed

· technology skills applied on each project

The best resume ever written is the one created with honesty. If you’re an excellent technology guru who needs help writing a resume I suggest reaching out to almost any recruiter in the tech industry and ask if they would be willing to assess your resume. Most of us are happy to assist in any way that we can.

Author: Dr. Eduardo Diaz, helping you exceed expectations.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/eduardo-diaz-phd-12219034