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Would anyone mind reviewing my resume, I haven’t updated it in almost 2 years and the last time I wrote it I had a lot of help when I was transitioning out of the Army. The highlighted part is the experience I have tried to add but just reading it I feel like it doesn’t sound right.

I’m not currently looking for a job right now but I’d rather have it updated and ready if needed.

  • I’ve removed the header with all the contact info, so I know that’s missing.

Resume_Review.pdf (164 KB)

13 Spice ups
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Cut the conjunctions way back… also abbreviate your points and AWS. Anyone with half a brain knows what AWS is these days. Try to get it to one page. Be short and to the gist… I see far too much rambling here.

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I think a new layout or theme would be beneficial. This comes across to me as rather bland. If anything, use headings too make each section stand out more, it all runs together are a brief glance for me. For the jobs, have the dates with the jobs, not separate, as well as the employer. I wrote up a section before editing the response mentioning some tips about that until I realized you had those separate. No reason to separate them, include all that info together.

To help add more to the job positions, think of achievements or awards you’ve been given and explain how you got them. You can expand on your duties by explaining what you did.

Assisted in migration and transition to Microsoft Office 365

How many mailboxes did you migrate and how long of a period was this over?

Consolidated two offices and call center into one building with zero down time

How did you ensure zero down time?

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It isn’t necessary to keep it to one page, unless there just isn’t enough info to validate having more than one. On mine, I have my “top skills” and current employer, and then on the second page, past employers and education.

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I’m not saying its necessary, just trying to get certs/skills on one page. Yours is the same way mines currently split its worked well for me thus far.

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So as for a new lay out instead of a mixture of skills/ jobs should it be a section titled “Work History” with proper formatting and then list all the positions with duties, skills, achievements?I honestly can’t remember why I separated the jobs and dates, I think the person helping me at the transition center said because it was all with the Army there was no need to put them with every job.
Thanks for the advice! I thought about going to the workforce center here in town, but I went with my wife once and it was a joke, obviously Spiceworks is going to have better advice.

@jimmy-t

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Having key skills separated out is what I do, above the work history. It gives me the chance to focus on what I can do for the job I’m applying for as well as make it easy for HR to match up their request. With work history, I provide the dates I was there (current if I’m there with the starting date), and then provide a mixed list of responsibilities and achievements.

There are a lot of templates on Microsoft’s template site and Google has them for Google Docs. Find one that fits you and go for it. Just don’t get too fancy with a theme as that can be off-putting.

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My .02 cents:

  • Summary not needed, if you can put that in a cover letter
  • Skills and Qualifications should not go together?
  • Help Desk and Customer Service & Network and Systems Administrator ??
    You list the job, and what you did there… reverse chronological (most current job on the top)

e.g.

Undisclosed Company - IT Administrator 04/2015 - Present
 Assisted in migration and transition to Microsoft Office 365
 Consolidated two offices and call center into one building with zero down time
 Designed network topology and scheduled contractors in construction of new location
 Maintained network security by using single-sign on solutions to corporate applications.
 Upgraded +120 computer from Windows 7 to Windows 10
 Reviewed service contracts for seven locations and was able to reduce cost $40,000
annually.
 Managed corporate Salesforce CRM

  • I’d put education and certifications together
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What rank were you in the Army? Did you have actual supervisory status in the Army? Otherwise your desire for a supervisory position just looks like “I have no experience doing this, but I want to give it a go”, and it doesn’t look like that is what you are trying to do here.

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Like someone else mentioned, get a template. Sure, you can submit as is, but having something that is eye appealing keeps the reader’s attention.

The professional summary needs to go. This is an archaic section that often used in lieu of a cover letter. You’re an adult now, use a cover letter.

With Heading/contact information: all you need is your name, phone number, and e-mail.

Your Skills and Qualifications section needs a little changing around. I wouldn’t use “Proficient in.” I’d probably group things together like operating systems, applications, and other. Then have your certifications. I’d rephrase those without the “Certifications in:” clause.

Under “Network and Systems Administrator” I would use “performed” rather than “did.”

Other things I’d rewrite:

“Maintained and setup new user accounts in Windows Server 2008 and 2012.” to something like “Created and maintained Active Directory accounts in a Windows 2008 domain.” Yes, Active Directory is usually a keyword that HR folks are looking for when they go over resumes.

“Managed four employees and directly responsible for oversight of day to day helpdesk operations.” could be changed to “Directed day-to-day help desk operations while managing four technicians (administrators, or whatever a generic title might be.)”

“Communicated vendors service, support, and information regarding products and technologies.” What did you communicate and to whom?

“Imaged laptops and desktop computers with Windows 7,8, 10 operating systems.” How did you image them? One at a time? Using an image you created? FOG?

“Maintained record of daily data communication transactions, problems and remedial action taken and installation activities.” Where did you maintain this? How was it maintained? Was it used to establish/determine issues with hardware or possibly users?

“Created and maintained presentations and training to keep end-users consciously aware of active cybersecurity threats.” I’d change to something like “Researched and created material used to train end-users regarding cybersecurity threats and how to mitigate them.”

That’s just some of the ones I came across quickly.

When it comes to length of resume, two pages is perfectly acceptable.

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CPL, our BDE was deactivating so we literally had 6 people in our S6, that how I ended up being COMSEC custodian, help desk, retrans team chief. I’m confused by the last statement, in bold, not that I’m applying for any management position but are you saying this does or doesn’t look like I have experience?

@rebootssolveproblems

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Thank you for the feedback, it gives me a lot to look over and improve on. I think reworking the Skills and Qualifications section as you mentioned would look a lot better.It’s funny you mention the professional summary and cover letter, when I was job searching I still sent a cover letter but I can see how the professional summary is redundant to the cover letter.

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I like to see the job history with dates to see long a person has been in their position rather listed separately. I would not lead with “Army” people will see that and know that you are a vet when you electronically submit your resume as well as when they read your resume…

This whole summary piece is kind of a mess - I would edit to state:

Networking and Information Systems IT professional with six years experience. Conducted both hardware maintenance such as repairs to computers and networking systems, as well as software updates and installations.Experience with supervisory positions.

This is kind of the place where an IT pro gets to do the “soft sell” for instance:

Excellent at detection, root cause analysis, containment and issue resolution. Team player who assists others with training, documentation and a creative problem solver who considers alternative issue in problem resolution.

You are going to to have to explain why you have gravitated in and out of help desk from time. Best to you .

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I won’t repeat the great advice already given, but for my 2¢ it would be worth your time to check out the O*Net AutoCoder site to align your key words with the job you want: http://www.onetsocautocoder.com/plus/onetmatch

Second, this site used to be free, but now I think you get one or two free tries, then need a membership: https://www.jobscan.co/ will scan your resume against the job description you are applying for. Copy and paste both in and it matches key words, and gives suggestions for improvement.

HTH and good luck! We’re here for you.

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Outside of having been Army for 6 years, NOBODY knows what that means. What I meant was if you don’t state that you had ACTUAL management experience, it just seems like you are looking for a promotion.

I was a BN Plans/Ops NCO and a JNN/SSS Operator/Team Leader. I never actually worked in the S6 because my unit was a Signal Battalion, so S3 was somebody else’s S6.

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Oh and I thought you all were speaking German… but I understand German…
What I mean to say is, yeah no idea what that means. lol

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That makes since, that’s the hardest thing I have found was trying to translate what I did while in service to the civilian job.

I mean I could put " Loaded COMSEC into Excalibur artillery round to ensure accuracy to +/- 5 meters while being fired out of an M777" but I don’t think that would make it past HR.

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Your resume does not tell me what you did where. Does not show supervisory experience.

You need a skills section.

Followed by a reverse chronological listing of jobs and what you did there. That’s where you highlight achievements and responsibilities.

For education, you don’t have your BS, leave it off. Doubly so because you are doing it online. Right or wrong, there is still a stigma attached to online universities. You can mention it in an interview, but not on the resume.

Remember, When I first go through a pile of resumes, it’s not to select my candidates, it’s to reject as many as possible. You have less than 5 seconds of me looking at that page to convince me to NOT trash it. Don’t give me an excuse, any excuse.

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You were doing a functional resume since your breadth of different jobs was limited.

But now that you have greater experience, focus on that. Trim off all the individual job duties, and reorder them in order of importance. Leave out lines that don’t really say anything to an outsider, like “coordinated with vendors and with company personnel in order to facilitate purchases.” To my eye, if I was looking over your application as someone looking to fill a position, my first reaction is “this guy is trying to fill space to make himself look more impressive than he actually is” because you’re listing things that simply come with the territory of the job.

Your help desk job should really be boiled down to maybe 3 or 4 lines and focus on any projects or value-add you’ve provided while performing that duty. A list of job duties isn’t really saying much, apart from “I worked help desk doing typical help-desky things.” It doesn’t stand out. If you were the help desk lead, focus on the leadership aspects of the job, not the day-to-day create accounts, reset passwords kind of entry-level stuff.

Talk about how you did certain things, not what you did. For example:

“Planned, coordinated, and implemented network security measures in order to protect data, software, and hardware”

How? What tools did you use? What were these measures? Talk in specifics, leaving out the obvious like “data software hardware” (any IT person knows this already). What was your role in this? Was it as a project leader or as a mere pair of hands doing what someone else above you told you to do?

“Tracked, maintained, and inventoried over $3 million worth of digital systems, including a variety of routers, switches, radios, servers, and computers.”

How? What software did you use? What was the impact of this initiative? Did you create this system to fill a need, or were you handed this existing responsibility that someone else designed?

“In charge of network performance utilization, security monitoring and server maintenance.”

What does this mean? This is a weak line because it’s not using an action verb. It’s also probably not necessary, as it’s like the help desk role and just mentioning a daily task.

“Reviewed service contracts for seven locations and was able to reduce cost $40,000 annually.”

By doing what? How? Service contracts for what?

Bear in mind that these are all rhetorical questions. I’m not posting them to get your answers, but rather, to get your wheels spinning on how to rewrite some of those entries. Pick out the significant highlights of your work history, something that says “none of this would have happened without me.”

Include more white-space so that it doesn’t look tiring to read. I had to struggle to read each line, so if I was inundated with other applications and resumes, I wouldn’t have given yours the time that I did just now.

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Lots of really good advice on this thread.

I try to stick with a single page unless I am asked to be verbose.

All experience is in a formula like “experience + tools + value”, listed most recent to oldest.

Wrapped up in a clean, well formatted design.

There is a ton of guidance on the web regarding formats and visual styles that work, are keyword friendly and so on.

Most of all, you are doing the right thing to have a tuned up resume handy. You never know when someone will request it because their name is Opportunity.

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