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.