Resume Critique
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58, while not exactly in the twilight years is certainly at the dinner table.
I thought that age was just a number.
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@coliver said in Resume Critique:
@wirestyle22 said in Resume Critique:
@coliver said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
first job in 1989
I always forget how old most of you are.
I'm 33. The late end of a young person. What age can I start calling myself middle aged?
38 I believe is the average middle age.
Whew. That's longer than I thought I had
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@coliver said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
first job in 1989
I always forget how old most of you are.
Ya I was 2 at that time.
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@stacksofplates said in Resume Critique:
@coliver said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
first job in 1989
I always forget how old most of you are.
Ya I was 2 at that time.
Haha that would have been the year I was born.
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Y'all can just shut up now.. I was in 10th Grade.
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@aaronstuder said in Resume Critique:
@kelly Thanks for your feedback! When you say bland what do you mean? Should I try a different format? Font? Layout?
I have removed all but the last 3 jobs, they make up the majority of my experience anyways
I'll work on wording, and providing more specific details.
The blandness of it was from the text, not the visuals. As a hiring manager layouts never made much difference except if they were terrible.
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@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@aaronstuder said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
Under "Network Engineer"...
Nothing in the description is even close to being either in networking, or engineering. It's wrong on both axis. This heading alone would cause me to bin a resume that I saw like this. Make sure the role name matches the workload, at least within reason. The tasks listed are admin / support side, not eng / design side. And they are desktop and infrastructure, not network.
I understand what your saying, but what can I do about it? That is the title that was given me by the employer. Even if I could change it, what would I make it?
I'm not sure that I follow. You never put your title on a resume, you put your role. Your role is not network engineer, not even slightly. What they called you is not applicable to a resume, ever. They could call you "Bob the Tech Janitor" and you still just put your role on a resume.
You always put what you actually were, nothing else. Anything else is lying. Even if they called you a Network Engineer, since you weren't one, putting what they called you is a total fabrication. It looks like you were a normal generalist, so any normal generalist title will do.
I'm not sure that is true. If a potential employer calls your current/previous employer they will provide the listed title when asking for verification of employment. If it doesn't match the one you have on record you will seem like more of a liar in that case.
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@kelly said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@aaronstuder said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
Under "Network Engineer"...
Nothing in the description is even close to being either in networking, or engineering. It's wrong on both axis. This heading alone would cause me to bin a resume that I saw like this. Make sure the role name matches the workload, at least within reason. The tasks listed are admin / support side, not eng / design side. And they are desktop and infrastructure, not network.
I understand what your saying, but what can I do about it? That is the title that was given me by the employer. Even if I could change it, what would I make it?
I'm not sure that I follow. You never put your title on a resume, you put your role. Your role is not network engineer, not even slightly. What they called you is not applicable to a resume, ever. They could call you "Bob the Tech Janitor" and you still just put your role on a resume.
You always put what you actually were, nothing else. Anything else is lying. Even if they called you a Network Engineer, since you weren't one, putting what they called you is a total fabrication. It looks like you were a normal generalist, so any normal generalist title will do.
I'm not sure that is true. If a potential employer calls your current/previous employer they will provide the listed title when asking for verification of employment. If it doesn't match the one you have on record you will seem like more of a liar in that case.
No, it does not. Because your former employer is legally bound not to lie about you. If they claim you did a job that you did not do, you can sue them. If they give a false title to do so, you can still sue them.
There is only one truth, you can only be a liar if you don't tell the truth but tell something else instead.
Companies are free to make up any title they want, but they cannot lie about the job you did. If the company trying to hire you calls and asks what your title was, rather than what you did, then they are idiots beyond belief and only hurting themselves for no reason. But in the real world, has anyone ever had an employer call and ask for a title and not care about the job that was done? I do these interviews on the employer side all of the time, and never once has someone asked me a title.
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@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@kelly said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@aaronstuder said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
Under "Network Engineer"...
Nothing in the description is even close to being either in networking, or engineering. It's wrong on both axis. This heading alone would cause me to bin a resume that I saw like this. Make sure the role name matches the workload, at least within reason. The tasks listed are admin / support side, not eng / design side. And they are desktop and infrastructure, not network.
I understand what your saying, but what can I do about it? That is the title that was given me by the employer. Even if I could change it, what would I make it?
I'm not sure that I follow. You never put your title on a resume, you put your role. Your role is not network engineer, not even slightly. What they called you is not applicable to a resume, ever. They could call you "Bob the Tech Janitor" and you still just put your role on a resume.
You always put what you actually were, nothing else. Anything else is lying. Even if they called you a Network Engineer, since you weren't one, putting what they called you is a total fabrication. It looks like you were a normal generalist, so any normal generalist title will do.
I'm not sure that is true. If a potential employer calls your current/previous employer they will provide the listed title when asking for verification of employment. If it doesn't match the one you have on record you will seem like more of a liar in that case.
No, it does not. Because your former employer is legally bound not to lie about you. If they claim you did a job that you did not do, you can sue them. If they give a false title to do so, you can still sue them.
There is only one truth, you can only be a liar if you don't tell the truth but tell something else instead.
Companies are free to make up any title they want, but they cannot lie about the job you did. If the company trying to hire you calls and asks what your title was, rather than what you did, then they are idiots beyond belief and only hurting themselves for no reason. But in the real world, has anyone ever had an employer call and ask for a title and not care about the job that was done? I do these interviews on the employer side all of the time, and never once has someone asked me a title.
Employment verification has nothing to do with the work you did. It is a communication between HR people verifying that the information on your resume reflects the records of the other company. For example, "Was Kelly employed by your company as an IT Manager (title) from <date> to <date>?" At this stage they do not care about the work that you actually did. This is simply a verification of employment and the title applied. If, however, there is a discrepancy between the title provided on the resume and the records of the prior company then there will be a loss of trust.
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@kelly said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@kelly said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@aaronstuder said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
Under "Network Engineer"...
Nothing in the description is even close to being either in networking, or engineering. It's wrong on both axis. This heading alone would cause me to bin a resume that I saw like this. Make sure the role name matches the workload, at least within reason. The tasks listed are admin / support side, not eng / design side. And they are desktop and infrastructure, not network.
I understand what your saying, but what can I do about it? That is the title that was given me by the employer. Even if I could change it, what would I make it?
I'm not sure that I follow. You never put your title on a resume, you put your role. Your role is not network engineer, not even slightly. What they called you is not applicable to a resume, ever. They could call you "Bob the Tech Janitor" and you still just put your role on a resume.
You always put what you actually were, nothing else. Anything else is lying. Even if they called you a Network Engineer, since you weren't one, putting what they called you is a total fabrication. It looks like you were a normal generalist, so any normal generalist title will do.
I'm not sure that is true. If a potential employer calls your current/previous employer they will provide the listed title when asking for verification of employment. If it doesn't match the one you have on record you will seem like more of a liar in that case.
No, it does not. Because your former employer is legally bound not to lie about you. If they claim you did a job that you did not do, you can sue them. If they give a false title to do so, you can still sue them.
There is only one truth, you can only be a liar if you don't tell the truth but tell something else instead.
Companies are free to make up any title they want, but they cannot lie about the job you did. If the company trying to hire you calls and asks what your title was, rather than what you did, then they are idiots beyond belief and only hurting themselves for no reason. But in the real world, has anyone ever had an employer call and ask for a title and not care about the job that was done? I do these interviews on the employer side all of the time, and never once has someone asked me a title.
Employment verification has nothing to do with the work you did. It is a communication between HR people verifying that the information on your resume reflects the records of the other company. For example, "Was Kelly employed by your company as an IT Manager (title) from <date> to <date>?" At this stage they do not care about the work that you actually did. This is simply a verification of employment and the title applied. If, however, there is a discrepancy between the title provided on the resume and the records of the prior company then there will be a loss of trust.
I've done this a lot, and it is never done this way. And as your resume never says that that is your title, they can't verify that way without violating your employment rights.
If there is a loss of trust for being honest, the company was never going to be honest or trusting anyway. That's them being dishonest and blaming you. If you put a false title that gets verified, but then proven that you didn't do that job, that's legal grounds not just for dismal, but for legal action.
This is ethically, legally, and practically clear cut. Putting false titles makes you culpable for misinformation; putting true information that gets ignored makes others culpable for slander.
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@kelly said in Resume Critique:
At this stage they do not care about the work that you actually did. This is simply a verification of employment and the title applied. If, however, there is a discrepancy between the title provided on the resume and the records of the prior company then there will be a loss of trust.
This is very much what McDonald's does for blue collar workers. This doesn't really apply to IT. Maybe entry level people, but by definition those people would not have IT titles to check against at former employers.
This can only be done by companies that hire you with "employment forms" where you are asked title in a field, not a resume that doesn't mention title ever. And IT jobs are not hired like cashier jobs.
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@scottalanmiller Perhaps at a level above where I am familiar with what you're describing is the case, but everywhere I've gone, all the employment people I've spoken with, and cursory Google searches all seem to agree with what I'm talking about. In your postings on here about titles it comes across that you're very hung up on the title exactly matching the work performed. This simply is not borne out in the market.
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@kelly said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller Perhaps at a level above where I am familiar with what you're describing is the case, but everywhere I've gone, all the employment people I've spoken with, and cursory Google searches all seem to agree with what I'm talking about. In your postings on here about titles it comes across that you're very hung up on the title exactly matching the work performed. This simply is not borne out in the market.
The market does exactly what I describe - they give out false titles almost always; and then our resumes have to reflect the truth - just because someone else lies doesn't mean that we can repeat that lie. I've worked in companies that blacklist people left and right because of obvious lies (like using terms like Director or System Admin) and no work to support the obviously fake title. They do it to 90% of candidates, because they know that most are faking it anyway.
I'm hung up here because it is important. Just lying doesn't get you anywhere, because any good job will simply bin your resume and move on, they will never speak to you if they can tell it's fake without even calling you.
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Google search on people lying on resumes and in interviews. Look at it from that perspective. It makes it all clear. You are assuming that because it is lying that people aren't doing it. But people lie with reckless abandon.
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@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
Google search on people lying on resumes and in interviews. Look at it from that perspective. It makes it all clear. You are assuming that because it is lying that people aren't doing it. But people lie with reckless abandon.
I'm not stating that you're wrong in what you're wanting, but that what you're giving as advice to people is not helpful where the market is currently. If @aaronstuder was given the title of Network Engineer by his employer his resume needs to reflect that because when employment verification is performed they will be matching reported dates of employment and job titles on the resume with what the employer has in their records. You are right that him stating he is a Network Engineer when not doing any network engineering is lying. He will need to address that in his cover letter and be clear in any interviews what his actual job performance included.
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Much of interviewing is determining if someone is lying or not. That's why technical questions are asked. If we assumed people were honest, we'd just look at the resume and be done with it. In theory, other than assessing personality, all interviewing is is testing honesty. If we trusted resumes we'd hire based on nothing else. Hiring would be quick, simple, cheap, and automated.
But it isn't, people go to great lengths to make their resumes look great; and employers go to great lengths to figure out what is real. If you put things on the resume that are blatantly untrue and can rule you out before you even waste their time in person, they jump on that. Because typically employers have to eliminate loads and loads of people due to automated submissions systems, recruiters, etc.
So testing for things like blatant dishonesty, or going to schools of questionable reputation (Phoenix, WGU, etc.) that allow them to eliminate people based on those things quickly is very important.
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@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
Much of interviewing is determining if someone is lying or not. That's why technical questions are asked. If we assumed people were honest, we'd just look at the resume and be done with it. In theory, other than assessing personality, all interviewing is is testing honesty. If we trusted resumes we'd hire based on nothing else. Hiring would be quick, simple, cheap, and automated.
But it isn't, people go to great lengths to make their resumes look great; and employers go to great lengths to figure out what is real. If you put things on the resume that are blatantly untrue and can rule you out before you even waste their time in person, they jump on that. Because typically employers have to eliminate loads and loads of people due to automated submissions systems, recruiters, etc.
So testing for things like blatant dishonesty, or going to schools of questionable reputation (Phoenix, WGU, etc.) that allow them to eliminate people based on those things quickly is very important.
Still not disagreeing with what you're saying. He must go to whatever lengths are necessary to not lie on his resume. My point is that if he puts an entry on his resume that doesn't match the title on record at his employer then he will be lying with regards to what the market expects that entry on the resume to reflect. That is why the cover letter is so critical to avoiding being auto-binned.
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@kelly said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
Google search on people lying on resumes and in interviews. Look at it from that perspective. It makes it all clear. You are assuming that because it is lying that people aren't doing it. But people lie with reckless abandon.
I'm not stating that you're wrong in what you're wanting, but that what you're giving as advice to people is not helpful where the market is currently. If @aaronstuder was given the title of Network Engineer by his employer his resume needs to reflect that because when employment verification is performed they will be matching reported dates of employment and job titles on the resume with what the employer has in their records. You are right that him stating he is a Network Engineer when not doing any network engineering is lying. He will need to address that in his cover letter and be clear in any interviews what his actual job performance included.
There are two aspects here. One is that I want employers to be honest. That's not something that we can fix, but we can help by talking about it. But that's neither here nor there here. Here we are talking about how to fix his resume.
And in the case of his resume, he needs to be honest so that he isn't instantly binned for having an obviously false title. One need only glance at it to know that either it is made up and/or he used a title he didn't understand. Neither is good.
Here, in the real world of IT work, future employers do not call and verify titles, they verify job history at best and even that is rare. What they actually do is call references at those jobs and never discuss titles at all.
Cover letters are universally discarded and ignored. The interview won't happen if he has to defend false information that ruled him out long before calling references was ever considered.
Remember: there is an order in which things happen. First a resume is viewed. Then an interview is had. Then references are called.
If you lie on the resume, you don't make it to the interview to explain why you lied. If you explain lies on the cover letter, they are never seen as you'll notice "reading the cover letter" isn't in the process. If you want to explain in your interview that your previous employers gave you false titles, that's fine, but silly, as no one will ever check on the titles.
But on that super rare case that they do, and they find out that your employer gave you a six figure title, but paid you five figures, and that you put your career aspirations at risk to be honest when an opportunity to cheat with an excuse presented itself, you really think anyone, ever would take that as a negative?
So there are three things in the end...
- The problem imagined doesn't really happen. It's not a realistic fear.
- If it were to happen, it would make you look good, not bad.
- The law protects you for being honest, and punishes you for lying. They can leverage that later if they want.
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@kelly said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
Much of interviewing is determining if someone is lying or not. That's why technical questions are asked. If we assumed people were honest, we'd just look at the resume and be done with it. In theory, other than assessing personality, all interviewing is is testing honesty. If we trusted resumes we'd hire based on nothing else. Hiring would be quick, simple, cheap, and automated.
But it isn't, people go to great lengths to make their resumes look great; and employers go to great lengths to figure out what is real. If you put things on the resume that are blatantly untrue and can rule you out before you even waste their time in person, they jump on that. Because typically employers have to eliminate loads and loads of people due to automated submissions systems, recruiters, etc.
So testing for things like blatant dishonesty, or going to schools of questionable reputation (Phoenix, WGU, etc.) that allow them to eliminate people based on those things quickly is very important.
Still not disagreeing with what you're saying. He must go to whatever lengths are necessary to not lie on his resume. My point is that if he puts an entry on his resume that doesn't match the title on record at his employer then he will be lying with regards to what the market expects that entry on the resume to reflect. That is why the cover letter is so critical to avoiding being auto-binned.
I've never met anyone on the hiring side who things that that field is for titles, always for your job role. It's unique to SMB IT that I've heard people claim it is for titles rather. This is definitely not how the world in general works.
Keep in mind, though, that outside of it, role and title are normally linked. So often can be used interchangeably.
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@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@kelly said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
Much of interviewing is determining if someone is lying or not. That's why technical questions are asked. If we assumed people were honest, we'd just look at the resume and be done with it. In theory, other than assessing personality, all interviewing is is testing honesty. If we trusted resumes we'd hire based on nothing else. Hiring would be quick, simple, cheap, and automated.
But it isn't, people go to great lengths to make their resumes look great; and employers go to great lengths to figure out what is real. If you put things on the resume that are blatantly untrue and can rule you out before you even waste their time in person, they jump on that. Because typically employers have to eliminate loads and loads of people due to automated submissions systems, recruiters, etc.
So testing for things like blatant dishonesty, or going to schools of questionable reputation (Phoenix, WGU, etc.) that allow them to eliminate people based on those things quickly is very important.
Still not disagreeing with what you're saying. He must go to whatever lengths are necessary to not lie on his resume. My point is that if he puts an entry on his resume that doesn't match the title on record at his employer then he will be lying with regards to what the market expects that entry on the resume to reflect. That is why the cover letter is so critical to avoiding being auto-binned.
I've never met anyone on the hiring side who things that that field is for titles, always for your job role. It's unique to SMB IT that I've heard people claim it is for titles rather. This is definitely not how the world in general works.
Keep in mind, though, that outside of it, role and title are normally linked. So often can be used interchangeably.
Well, I have an opportunity to get a concrete answer here in 30 minutes. I'm meeting with a recruiter from a national agency. I'll ask her, and see what she says.
