Dennis -- I sent Kimberly my tips offline (and my resume) but thought I would forward my tips based on nearly 24 years of experience to you folks in case you find it of value. If so, great, if not, oh well, but they were lessons learned over the years and apply to all jobs, contract and perm.
If you have a boodle of experience, great. Don't hide it. But if your resume is going to be over two pages, go ahead and add a page to the front. The first page should be all the buzzwords that people are looking for, broken up into categories: Education Hardware Databases Languages Software Security Clearances Certifications Publications Major Industries That You Know Well (ie., not just database administration but a good knowledge of a good segment of the industry itself) That way, nobody has to fish on your resume for words like Oracle, Unix, C++, PeopleSoft or "Oil and Gas". If HR people are looking through a pile of resumes for those buzzwords, the faster you can get into the smaller pile of people who have those skills, the better off you are. If someone has to wade through 4 pages just to see a skill they're looking for, you can pretty much assume they're not going to take the time. A-Number-One rule in job-hunting is Make Your Resume Friendly to The People Making Small Piles of Big Piles. The person you're actually going to be working for won't get to be impressed by all the cool stuff you've done if he/she never gets the resume. Work experience (if you've been an employee most of your professional career) or project experience (if you've been a consultant most of your professional career) should follow. Write about the major things you've done at your jobs/clients in paragraphs. Use whole sentences. Pretend that you are as comfortable with the written word as you are with grep and awk. Some people say bullet points with action verbs are the way to go; I don't agree. You have a small amount of space to demonstrate "verbal and written communication skills" (which is a requirement for EVERY JOB), make the most of it. As for which jobs to list and which not to, my rule of thumb is that if you've been at a particular job/client for more than 6 months, it should be listed by name, you might want to modify that to suit your experience. Regardless, if you've been doing a bunch of short-term projects, you can clump them in together in a single paragraph that shows a particular chunk of time with only your major clients listed by name in there. If you have minor clients (companies nobody's ever heard of) in that chunk of time, don't bother listing them, even if you have no major clients in there. There's no shame in saying "small business" or "mid-size corporation" rather than "Joe's Barbershop" or "Peppers Waterbeds". When you have client with a household name, their name should appear in the paragraph. If you did vastly different things for different clients on a short-term basis, it is still better to cluster them together than not to. You'd rather look like a stable person with a variety of skills than a huge job-hopper who never stays anywhere very long (even if the latter is substantially more true than the former). One mistake to avoid: if you've been at a client for 12 years, the paragraph doesn't have to be long to prove it. You may have a shorter paragraph for a long job where your job function was clearly defined than a much shorter job where you were a maverick/firefighter/janitor. And if your resume has to be 5 pages, then it has to be 5 pages. There's a limit to how small you can make the type and how short you can make the paragraphs. You still need your resume to be your representative, and if you've been in the field for a long time, you sometimes just can't be represented by one page. Hope this helps... Bambi. -----Original Message----- Sent: Friday, November 30, 2001 1:56 PM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L Kimberly - From my admittedly meager experience of job-hunting for both permanent and contract work, here is my impression: 1. If the resume is for permanent work, keep the resume brief and to the point. The objective is to keep HR from tossing your resume. Keep it to a single page and hit the major points that you are selling yourself on. 2. If the resume is for contract work, throw in the kitchen sink. Consulting companies are always receiving that oddball request for that Forth programming position and maybe you worked on Forth for one week ten years ago, but it may turn out that you are the most qualified contractor that can be located quickly. I really found the book "What Color is Your Parachute?" to be really good training. Most of us don't think of job-hunting as a skill to be learned. Dennis Williams DBA Lifetouch, Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED] -----Original Message----- Sent: Friday, November 30, 2001 1:26 PM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L My resume that gets passed around EDS accounts is 5 pages. That is a little long for applying for jobs outside of EDS. I was wondering how other folks who work for the same type of companies shorting this (companies like CGI, XWave, etc) where you get billed out to various contracts. If my responsibilities on those contracts were always the same I guess it would be easier but sometimes I get billed out to provide one on one training, sometimes I am there for development, sometimes DBA stuff. You get the idea. Do you just list all the key things you have done for the company as a whole and leave out the individual contract stuff? I guess contractors would have the same issue. ___________________________ Kimberly Smith Portland, OR [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com -- Author: Kimberly Smith INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services -- (858) 538-5051 FAX: (858) 538-5051 San Diego, California -- Public Internet access / Mailing Lists -------------------------------------------------------------------- To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing). -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com -- Author: DENNIS WILLIAMS INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services -- (858) 538-5051 FAX: (858) 538-5051 San Diego, California -- Public Internet access / Mailing Lists -------------------------------------------------------------------- To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing). -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com -- Author: Bellows, Bambi INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services -- (858) 538-5051 FAX: (858) 538-5051 San Diego, California -- Public Internet access / Mailing Lists -------------------------------------------------------------------- To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing).
