Brajeshwar

A resume or curriculum vitae is a document containing a summary or listing of relevant job experience and education, usually for the purpose of securing a new job. Often the resume is the first item a potential employer encounters regarding the job seeker, and therefore a large amount of importance is often ascribed to it.

It has become a customary thrill on my part to go through resume to select good (if not the best) developers and designers alike. Something I realized it that it is not just the technical expertize that suffice to do a job; it is also about attitude, personal zeal and eagerness to do something. I have selected many developers based on their yearning to do something and not really on their technical skillset, people who are well informed and have that gut feeling of performing. They are extremely easy to train in the right direction too. Another important lesson I learnt is never to stop hiring and not to hire all at one go, sometimes someone just comes in whom you would just want to hire.

An effective resume is

• the simplest information about yourself, technical skillsets in our case which pin-points what you are best capable of executing
• precise, to the point and no-nonsense
• less pages; I would not really like a resume to be more than 3 pages, a maximum of 5 is enough - more than that, either you’re Albert Einstein or a super-genius (if you are that a genius, you’ll definitely not be looking for work, atleast with us).

A resume need not

• text/words infested with spelling mistakes and grammatical errors.
• Say what you want to do with the organization that you’ll be working. I see it like a common trait that says; I’ll like to do this, do that for the best of the company, growth of the company, yada yada. See, no-one will say bad things about a company you are joining, so you are just making things up. Get to the point.
• Print all the technical terms that you have heard of! Just try to concentrate on your core competency and the one that you want to pursue. Well, XML is not a technology that you can say you are highly skilled with.
• Try to portray that you are a good developer and a designer at the same time. We get confused - what do you wan to do? This is unless you are like one of those cool Designer/Developer combos - Erik Natzke.

I will try to update this article for future reference as and when I come across tit-bits, tips and tricks. Resume writing is perhaps a crossover between Arts and Science - you have to make good points of both worlds in a sublime, simple, accurate and precise information. While you are at it, read the Interview tips from an experienced recruiter.

References

• How to Write a Killer Resume
• Preparing For a Software Engineering Interview
• Interviewing Programmers
• How to Write a Masterpiece of a Resume