.NET @ Kape ni LaTtEX

I was looking at the calendar this morning and I realized that I’ve already surpassed the longest period I’ve employed with a particular company. My second software developer post was at Philippine National Bank, and I stayed for 1 year and 9 months. I have been with Cormant for longer than that starting last Friday, with no plans or itching to jump ship and leave just yet.

I’m very happy about it — finding an organization that would nurture me, let me grow, and tolerate my occasional delinquencies (I tend to be naughty sometimes) was difficult, and it almost drove me crazy into depression at one point. Sometime last year however, I was fortunate to have needed to update my resume not because I was going to apply for a new job (although I did bite this one interview), but because I got promoted. This year, I really hope I would only be updating my resume for the exact same reason.

Speaking of resumes, a few months back Max Pool of {codesqueeze} came out with a nice resume writing series he called 3 Days To Building a Perfect Resume. As I’ve also dabbled in some resume writing advice, I found his articles very informative, expounding a lot on several of my own key points, as well as adding several other ideas I haven’t thought of. If you’re writing your tech resume for the first time, or are looking to improve upon a resume that doesn’t seem to work, his series is a must read.

There’s one glaring disagreement between our opinions however; Max recommends putting that big Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer logo up front to make it stand out, while I stated that putting certifications up front is a bad idea. I totally understand Max’s take on this, but I still believe that it’s a bad idea, more specially now that a 9-year-old, genius as she is, just got herself an MCP. Of course, it’s totally up to you whether to take Max’s word for it or mine — what I do want to underscore though is that the decision to put that cert in there in big bold letters would be a case-per-case basis depending on how the company (or, more importantly, the hiring officer) looks upon certifications.

More recently Joel Spolsky posted an article also somewhat contradicting parts of Max’s series. In “Another Resume Tip“, Joel gives the following advice:

When a startup CTO sees a resume that says things like:

* Responsible for $30m line of business
* Architected new ERP platform
* Managed team of 25 developers
* Optimized business processes

they think, “Spare me, that’s all we need, somebody running around trying to manage and optimize and architect when we just need someone who isn’t afraid to write code.” Here’s the stuff CTOs at startups want to see on a resume:

* Single-handedly developed robust 100,000 LOC threadsafe C++ service
* Contributes to OpenBSD file system in spare time
* Wrote almost 75% of the Python code running IsIt2009Yet.Com

If you’ve been in a large company for too long, you may feel that you put in your time, with all those years working your way up the hierarchy from the $50,000 coder jobs to the $250,000 Senior Vice President in Charge of Long Meetings With Other Senior Vice Presidents, and you’re kind of enjoying the nice parking space and the personal assistant and stuff, and coding? not so much, so now you’ve found a cool startup or small company, and you’re thinking, maybe now’s the time to jump ship? So you send your resume with your ERP stuff and SAP stuff and Vice President stuff to the startup, and it gets tossed.[Joel on Software]

The quote above contrasts with “Sell Yourself With Business Benefits (And Not Geek Speak)“, where Max wrote:

The real “trick” is to write down your experience in ways that allow people to imagine what it would be like if they received those benefits and results. For example:

Common Resume Mistake:

* Built a ASP.NET CMS system for a high profile company that used it to monitor blood pressure machines. The client was very happy as it did 1 million transactions a day via AJAX.
* Managed a 100 person team dealing with C++ integration points to 3rd party products.

Result/Benefit Resume:

* Developed systems that significantly lowered the clients operating costs by maximizing the number of daily sales transactions
* Managed a large (100+) team that created a number of product opportunities and business partnerships by integrating with 3rd party applications and platforms.

Now which resume do you think will impress a manager? By presenting yourself as already solving problems that businesses continually improve on (i.e. increase sales, decrease operating costs, product development, etc…), the potential employer does not have to bridge the gap between your skills and the bottom-line benefits they will bring. [{codesqueeze}]

So which one would you follow? Max himself followed this up and said to optimize for your audience: Joel was specifically talking about CTOs of tech startups; typically, small companies with 100 or less employees. Max’s advice would work for larger organizations.

As with anything, not only is it about audience, it’s also about context. You always have to make sure that the proper context is taken when deciding whether emphasize or exclude your certifications; the same precaution must be taken when deciding whether to sell yourself with geeky jargon-filled bullet points or middle-management banter.

‘Til the next resume.

Tags: career, IT Professions, resume writing, resumes

This entry was posted on Monday, January 5th, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Industry Talk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.