“A Few Things about a Technical Resume…”
In almost fifteen years of experience in technical recruiting, you would not believe the technical resumes I have seen from even some very senior members in our technology community. Thought I’d remind folks of a few things that a technical resume should be.
What A Technical Resume Needs To Be:
- An example of the person’s technical & business functionality documentation abilities, reflecting the business aspect/purpose of the position – as well as the technical environment.
- The only objective the resume needs to address is the objective of the hiring management. View the resume through the eyes of the prospective hiring manager.
- Be Precise and Concise!
- It should speak for that technical person in their absence – speaks of the quality of that person’s abilities and business/technical abilities – being the technical person’s sales and marketing material. It “sells” the candidate.
- Environment: listing technical tools – provides hiring manager a chronological history of your experience using a particular development tool. Include version numbers. The latest version shows your skills are current but older versions document your length of experience (ex: Oracle 2.x – 9i)
The average person briefly glides over resumes – the way you peruse your credit card statement or perhaps the contract for a rental car. Each technical position or project had to have some type of business justification. Companies just don’t hire “techies” without some type of business reason and purpose.
A technical resume must exemplify the prospective new employee’s technical documentation abilities. Each technical position requires some type of documentation (both technical as well as business functionality). A technical resume must find a happy medium between business analyst and technical expert. All business and technical aspects needs to be documented and detailed for each position listed in the employment history section of the chronological resume – without getting verbose. Be precise and concise!
If you’re a hiring manager implementing a new architecture for your software development team – don’t you think it would make sense to hire someone who can do the JAVA programming or the infrastructure implementation – but also find someone who can document that work in a precise and concise way? Isn’t that truly what your resume should be stating?
Beware of “made-up words” or terms that may have been created on the job and used in that specific organization and environment. Acronyms at one company don’t always mean anything to another – or could mean something complete different. The author of a technical resume needs to consider the person who will be reading the resume, quickly scrutinizing it and hopefully deducing that you’re the ideal match for their needs.
Director level and higher candidate resumes should definitely have the first few bullets of each position documenting both technical and business aspects:
- Size of the staff – and what type of positions it included, multiple locations, offshore, etc.
- Size of budget (regional, district, etc.), sales quotas (budgeted, accomplished, etc.) – and make sure that you clearly state that budgets were met, sales quotas exceeded and that projects were brought in on-time, etc.
- Be Precise and Concise – without being verbose. If not, there’s probably a 99% change that the reader will presume something incorrectly.
A technical resume IS the marketing and sales material for that technical person. It’s what is going to be representing that candidate – when that candidate is not there to speak for him or herself. If the candidate is a well-educated, successful, productive professional – why shouldn’t that person’s resume reflect that? If the candidate is a QUALITY person, present a QUALITY resume! (…and I’m not talking about putting it on pretty letterhead or an extremely expensive bond of paper).
This may seems all to obvious when you read it – but how many people actually have a “workable” resume that can be quickly tailored to represent their candidacy and qualifications for their “ideal opportunity.
View the technical resume as if you’re using the eyes of the hiring manager. You just might see the technical resume in a completely different way… - the way that’s going to lead to the hiring manager quickly deducing this person’s qualifications are “ideal” and lead to an interview.
Whether you’re a recruiter, internal HR person or a technical professional reading this article – a technical resume should be more than just a resume or an e-mail note received. By including both the business as well as the technical aspects of past employment history – demonstrating the technical documentation abilities – and the ability to document the technical business perspective of past projects – you will be demonstrating to prospective employers that this technical professional has the vital skills necessary to achieve the business objective or deliverable.
