Monday, August 31, 2015

Stay Ahead of the Competition with an Updated Technical Resume

September is international Update Your Resume Month according to Career Directors International, a well-known and respected resume and career association. I am sure that there are those who will jump at this opportunity while most of you, will just pull the covers over your head. So, let’s make this as painless as possible.

First, let’s look at all of the good reasons to update your technical resume. Even when you're not looking for a new job, updating your resume at least twice a year is a good practice. Here are my reasons why.

  • If you wait too long between updates you will forget about some of your important achievements. Once a project is done, it’s easy to forget the details. 
  • Keeping your resume fresh makes it easy to also freshen your LinkedIn profile, keeping you visible and active in your professional network.
  • Stopping to reflect about your technical job and IT career is a healthy thing that everyone should take time to do.
  • Within the company where you work now, it is likely that promotion opportunities will need a resume.
  • You may encounter opportunities to do some freelance work as a consultant and an IT resume will help to get these kinds of jobs.

Here is the painless part of putting your technical resume together. You don’t have to do it all at once. Start with capturing your IT career stores. This will be the most time consuming part so just recording the information about your projects already gives you a head-up over your competition. You can write out the stories or record them – it doesn’t matter.  The purpose is to get the story details before the clear memories are lost.

For more strategic positions such as IT Director or CIO, think about these questions while you write your stories.

  • Did you overcome the challenges of managing technology in the face of uncertainty? What challenges and how did you meet them?
  • Did you define or refine strategy? Was it business strategy, technology strategy, or both? If both, what degree of strategy integration was achieved?
  • Did you determine how IT could best support business strategy? What changes were made and what impact did they have?
  • Did you enable business agility and adaptability with technology? What business pressures were relieved?


For more tactical positions, such as IT Project Manager or IT Manager, consider these questions.

  • Did you push the leading edge of technology, integrating new and emerging technologies into technical infrastructures? Which technologies, and with what business benefits?
  • Did you improve technology ROI by reducing IT overhead costs? How much improvement? What methods to reduce overhead – outsourcing, agile projects, cloud services, legacy system renewal, etc.?
  • Did you narrow the gap between leading edge and trailing edge technologies in the technical infrastructure? How and with what benefits?


For more technical roles, such as Software Developer, Systems Administrator, or Network Administrator, try to answer these questions.

  • Did you meet an impossible deadline through extra effort? If so what difference did this make to your company?
  • Did you assume new responsibilities that weren’t part of your job? If so, did you ask for the new projects or were they assigned to you? Why were you selected?
  • Have you developed and/or led the team that developed any new products, systems, software or technologies that you either used internally or marketed to your clients? 


The first major hurdle to updating your resume is to capture your project stories. It would be great to refine your achievements and get them into resume-speak, but this isn’t always practical. Consider it a major win to write down or talk about the work that you’ve done. Then go out and enjoy the rest of September!

For more information about technical resumes and IT careers, see http://www.itresumeservice.com/your-it-professional-resume-in-a-data-driven-economy/.

About the Author
Jennifer Hay is that rare technical resume writer who actually has IT experience and understands the complexities of working in a technical environment. She goes beyond a standard information gathering process and applies her knowledge of data and information management, business analytics, data analytics, data science, infrastructures and architectures, software development, project and program management, among other areas to create truly compelling messages.

Jennifer is the author of Supercharge Your IT Job Search available through Amazon. She is currently working on her second book about data and information management careers, a collaborative effort with Dave Wells, a mentor, educator, and thought leader in fields of business intelligence and business analytics. 
www.itresumeservice.com

Saturday, August 29, 2015

Seven Easy Steps for Updating Your Government Resume for the Private Industry


As federal budgets continue to be slashed, more and more IT professionals are looking to move out of their government jobs and instead transition to the private industry. One of their primary challenges is to rework their resume to appeal to IT recruiters and hiring managers. I've put together a list of the top 7 best practices for updating your technical resume.

Remove the Emphasis on Reporting Relationships

In federal jobs, reporting relationships are significant and are often complex so it’s not uncommon to see them well-documented using prime real estate on a resume. Although these relationships are important in private industry, the chain of command is much simpler than in federal government so they require a much lighter touch.

When considering how to reference these, think about the individual’s responsibilities within the organization and then try to translate that to a job role that is meaningful in private industry. Here are some examples of how this can be done.
  • Served in a dual role as direct report to CTO, with budgetary and SOX responsibility for $10M+.
  • CIO-level executive with P&L and executive decision making responsibilities—direct report to President/COO of an investment group.
  • Evaluated IT staff capabilities and performance of systems and applications, reporting findings to the Executive VP of Application Development.
  • Direct report to CEO and Director of Operations
  • Manage 4 direct reports (System Technicians and System Support Specialists) 


Eliminate Overuse of Acronyms

There is nothing more frustrating than reading an IT resume filled with mystery acronyms and not knowing what they mean or worse yet, knowing what they stand for and still not having a clue. For federal resumes this is a particular challenge since the government loves verbose and complicated terms.

On a lark, I searched on ‘government acronyms’ and came up with a rather extensive listing of U.S. government agency, office, program and publication acronyms. Out of the hundreds listed here are a few treasures.

Office of Legacy Management (LM)
Advanced Passenger Information System (APIS)
Labor Agreement Information Retrieval System (LAIRS)
Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS)

One common sense rule when writing your resume is to NOT include acronyms that might be unknown to the reader. If you aren’t sure then be cautious by spelling out the acronym in its first occurrence of your resume. After that it is fine to just use the acronym.

Finally, remember that one of the primary goals of an IT resume is to use straightforward language that is easy to understand and that highlights your achievements. Try not to bog down your resume with unnecessary details that aren’t important to your message. For example, if you are working on a system with a horrendous name than leave it off your resume and instead describe its purpose/functionality.


Understand the Relevance of Policies and Practices

We all know that the role of the Project Management Office (PMO) is to define the standards and practices for managing projects, to provide support for planning and controlling projects, and to facilitate IT project portfolio management. Although equally important in private industry, the government’s rigid structure brings the control aspect to a new art form.


For this reason, it’s understandable to see an IT manager with a federal background toting this as a strength. But a question arises as to whether they can meet the demands of agile development and rapidly shifting demands within private industry. 


To learn more about how to transform your technical resume, 
http://www.itresumeservice.com/seven-easy-steps-for-updating-your-government-resume-for-the-private-industry-cont/




About the Author
Jennifer Hay is that rare technical resume writer who actually has IT experience and understands the complexities of working in a technical environment. She goes beyond a standard information gathering process and applies her knowledge of data and information management, business analytics, data analytics, data science, infrastructures and architectures, software development, project and program management, among other areas to create truly compelling messages.

Jennifer is the author of Supercharge Your IT Job Search available through Amazon. She is currently working on her second book about data and information management careers, a collaborative effort with Dave Wells, a mentor, educator, and thought leader in fields of business intelligence and business analytics.

Monday, August 10, 2015

IT Careers: Bring Synergy and Diversity to the Workplace

When I coach IT job seekers in preparation for their technical interviews, I explain the importance of being keenly aware that there are 3 generations in today’s workplace: baby boomers, generation X, and generation Y, also known as the millenniums.  This awareness is important because there are substantial differences in workplace behaviors and expectations between the generations.


A first area of differences is in communications and interactions. Boomers are biased toward teamwork and formal communications, Gen X are more entrepreneurial and causal in communications, and Gen Y are more social and participative.

A second set of differences in in motivations and rewards. Boomers are driven by value, respect, and recognition. Gen X is motivated by independence and freedom, and Gen Y by feedback and innovation.

The third area of differences is in work styles and embracing technology.

Boomers tend to be methodological and structured; they’ll stay current with technology such as cloud computing (SaaS, IaaS, PaaS), but they are less likely to fully embrace the dramatic changes required by emerging technologies.  

Gen X works collaboratively and embraces both current and emerging technologies. For this generation, the realities of balancing their professional and personal lives can shift the focus to more immediate needs. Instead, they are focused on delivering business capabilities that the business currently needs.

Gen Y embraces an agile work style and has the energy and enthusiasm to play with bleeding-edge technologies. They prefer a shared experience discovering what makes the technology so cool. 

Awareness of these differences between generations makes a real difference in how you present yourself and how you are perceived in interviews. First, be self-aware. Know which generation you represent, how you are typical of that generation and how you are atypical.  Then get a sense of the generations represented by hiring managers and interviewers. With some understanding of your similarities with and your differences from those with whom you’ll be working, you’re better prepared to describe how you bring both synergy and diversity to the workplace.


If you would like to read more about technologies in IT Careers, see http://www.itresumeservice.com/your-it-career-keep-pace-with-wearable-technologies/

About the Author
Jennifer Hay is that rare technical resume writer who actually has IT experience and understands the complexities of working in a technical environment. She goes beyond a standard information gathering process and applies her knowledge of data and information management, business analytics, data analytics, data science, infrastructures and architectures, software development, project and program management, among other areas to create truly compelling messages.

Jennifer is the author of Supercharge Your IT Job Search available through Amazon. She is currently working on her second book about data and information management careers, a collaborative effort with Dave Wells, a mentor, educator, and thought leader in fields of business intelligence and business analytics.