[Other] Resume Critique

Ok, it's time to get serious about this whole job search thing. I have more bad days at work than I do good days, and it's only a matter of time before I say something to one of the owners or the president of the company that gets me fired. So, who here would like to critique a resume? It's been a while since I've been out of the job search game. I'm just going to throw up a link to the resume on my Google Drive. Oh, and I'm not going to worry about editing out my personal details. Much like Dave, I really don't mind if y'all know who I really am, or how to find me.

Have at it, and thanks.
 
Your resume is set up a lot like mine...skills highlight, followed by work history with summaries of duties, followed by some specific accomplishments.

I think it's a strong resume style. Something I've focused on as I've moved more into management is highlighting how much money I've made or saved the company, with specific numbers quoted: manhours saved, dollars recouped, that kind of thing. That way a company can see at a glance that I'm worth more than I cost, making it easier to swallow the large salary I command. It's neat to say "I wrote a system to automate the inputting and tracking of Miss Utility dig tickets", but much better to add "which saved the company 120 man-hours a week and allowed for a 250% increase in workload without additional headcount."

For instance, you list vendor negotiations on your resume. If you could say "I negotiated a reduction of x%" (or x dollars), it makes for a stronger case.

I think any place you can show how your work benefited the company in concrete dollars in addition to the more nebulous soft skills, it makes for a more enticing resume.
 
I hate writing resumes and CVs. I'm terrible at tooting my own horn and they're all about trying to sell yourself.
 
There's no "one true way" to do a resume, and it should reflect you, further I'm not an interviewer or hiring manager of any sort, so what I relay below is what I learned from others and may or may not be useful/true, so don't treat me as a voice of authority. Hopefully some of this is helpful, though.


The resume seems a little unfocused. The first part suggests customer service, with two entries talking about that and most of your experience in that, then the experience section appears to focus on procurement and project management. Reading more carefully I see that the first bullet point isn't as customer service - it's as management.

So the verb is "call center and customer service management" rather than just "management". It may well be that there's a significant difference between the two, and you really aren't looking for or suited to "management" positions that aren't related to customer service and call centers, however I'd suggest that even if that's true you should consider pushing management to the front, and treating the descriptors as secondary to the role.

One of the things that resume writers do to avoid this to use active verbs rather than passive. You aren't simply "management" you are managing, or a manager. So you might instead write, "7 years managing a call center and customer service."

That's still a little weak though - if you can give specific numbers it might improve further, as Tin suggested:

"7 years managing an international call center team"

But again there's a little loss of focus. Your first bullet point relates to a job you stopped doing over 6 years ago, and you've since moved on to project management and purchasing. The project management has elements of management, so it follows a loose theme of managerial work, but I'm not sure how much management you've done in the last 3.5 years as a purchasing agent.

The resume is an attempt to sell yourself, but I'm not exactly sure what the product is. It's obvious you have significant experience and there's a great deal of value you can provide to the right organization, but you don't make it easy for me to see that you'd be a good fit for any specific position.

So I'd suggest you take a step back, and consider what you want to be doing. Do you want to work in management, and have direct reports? Do you want to manage projects, but work off to the side without direct reports, but people who still have to work with you to complete their tasks? Do you want to manage relationships between the company and vendors, customers, or third parties? These are all things you've done in the past, but right now you can pick and choose.

There is value in a shotgun type resume, so I'm not necessarily saying that you have to change it, or that my suggestions will necessarily improve your chances of getting a job, but my experience is that the resume is there to get you in the door and if it matches the employer's needs more explicitly then you're a lot more likely to get an interview.

In fact, the last time I did a job search I had three slightly different resumes, and would choose one to send to a given job opening based on what they were looking for. The difference between the resumes was small - I refocused the theme on each one to target a type of position I was interested in. In your case you might be ok with being a purchasing agent again, or a project manager, or a customer service manager. You may still have all the same points, but they would be in a different order, and you might replace a few bullet points in work history with something more relevant. So the "customer management" resume might move the third bullet point of your westmark experience to the top, and expand on how you managed the projects, teams, and people within the company to accomplish specific goals. I would then write a cover letter to send with the resume that relates specific things I've done, shown in my resume, to specific requirements of the job listing - making it easy for a hiring manager, HR, or recruiter to match me to the position.

So I'd suggest working on the theme and trying to make that a little more clear.

Little nitpicks -
* The "advanced proficiency in [office software]" makes me wonder if you're looking for an entry level position. Maybe a separate skills section would list this sort of thing, but I'd instead showcase it in the work history if it was critical to the job listing you're after. Unfortunately a lot of people claim "advanced proficiency" and there's no real standard. Consider re-tooling that if you believe you need it highlighted so as to emphasize what this expertise will do for the organization you join. Otherwise, let it go to another section and choose a more relevant-to-your-desired-position skill/experience to highlight.
* Since you don't have an educational degree beyond high school (and if you do, you'd better make that much more clear in your education section) then a section on specific skills might be appropriate.
* The work history section doesn't look right to me, and I think it's the way you chose to list your consulting history while at Society. Consider treating each consulting gig as a separate job, and highlight the company, time, and position just as you'd have done if it weren't consulting. If you did any significant work at Society while on the "bench" or for society directly, then list that as a separate job as well. Otherwise you can do something like:

Microsoft Corporation
timeframe
Project Manager (consulting from Society Consulting)

To call out that you were consulting. Depending on how you were hired and whether you worked on-site or not, maybe it makes more sense for you to do it the way you are doing it, but in many consulting situations you have to go through an interview with the customer and get "hired" by them and work onsite just as if it were a regular job. There's a middle man, but you aren't defined by them and shouldn't focus on them.
* The awards and accomplishments are significant, but don't seem emphasized enough. I don't know if picking out a few and bringing them to the top or into the work history would improve their visibility and relevance, but it seems like they are underutilized, particularly those that saved a company significant time or other resources. For instance, reducing a timeframe by 10:1 for next of kin processing, or reducing costs by 40% are not small things, but they're listed at the very bottom of the resume in a big text block.
* You've gone to a two page resume even though you have less than a decade of experience. Now there's no real transition point between one and two pages, and I understand a lot of people are perfectly fine with two page resumes now. However, I still subscribe to the idea that less is more. Maybe I'm wrong, but perhaps just doing the exercise of converting your resume to one page will give you some ideas on what to change about your two page resume to improve it. Besides, if everything on the resume really is that important, then you're going to need 10 pages long before you retire. I think you can successfully land interviews you want even if you cut it down to one page by focusing things a bit more, highlighting only the best of your experiences and skills, and changing the layout a little bit. For instance, in an old resume of mine I put the job name, dates, location on a single line, and condensed each piece of experience into a single line so the entire thing was not only shorter, but easier to scan and read. I have moved to a two page resume (I don't actually think I have it online right now) but I've still got less than two decades experience and I'm not in management, so I think it's probably excessive - again, there's no rule, but being able to convey useful information in a concise manner is important.
 
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