IT Resume 101: How to Optimize Your Work History Section

For most candidates, work history gets the bulk of attention on an IT resume — especially if you’ve been out of school for a while. Whether or not it’s accurate, the perception exists that on-the-job experience is superior to academic, “textbook” exposure.

But work history is important for an even simpler reason: potential employers hope to examine the kind of employee you were in previous jobs, and draw inferences about what kind of employee you’ll be for them.

Usually, a job history section is developed by using bullet points. There are many formatting conventions for these bullet points, but we’ll save those for a different blog post. In the meantime, the following content-centered tips will help you optimize your work history section on your IT resume.

Tip #1: Consider the story your work history section is telling

An effective IT resume is more than a catalog of where you spent forty (or more) hours a week. For a hiring manager, a resume tells the story of you as an employee. So before you write (or rewrite) your resume, reflect on the overall impression you want to create.

Begin by considering your target job. Look at the advertisement and ask yourself:

• What features — stated or implied — make an ideal candidate?
• Are employers looking for someone with writing ability? Project management experience? A diverse background? A trainer?
• Are they looking for someone who can work on their own? With others? Who can lead others?
• Do they need someone who can optimize current processes? Who can innovate new ones?

It will be impossible to present every feature of your background. But that’s fine. All you really have to do is present your work history in a way that matches your objective.

You want to be honest, of course — but also be a bit of a salesperson.

Tip #2: Look for things that set you apart from the competition

Imagine yourself at a desk with a stack of, say, fifty resumes (whittled from roughly three-hundred). The remaining candidates have not been excluded for any obvious reason. They meet technical proficiency, they’ve been in the field long enough, their degree is reputable, and their certifications are current. Now that the stack is manageable, your job as a hiring manager changes: it becomes less about eliminating undesirable candidates and more about locating desirable ones.

Here’s where truly high caliber resumes reveal themselves. Since the remaining candidates, on the surface, are mostly interchangeable, hiring managers must identify candidates who seem exceptionally skilled or suitable. Your challenge as a resume writer, therefore, is this: how do you establish what you, specifically, can bring to the table?

Let’s start with what not to do.

Don’t focus too much on your duties. Overemphasizing routine tasks — trouble-shooting equipment failures, responding to customer or employee inquiries, securing networks, writing code, and so on — don’t tell much of your story. In most cases, there isn’t a reason to just describe the nature of your previous jobs; a hiring manager is going to know these facts. What they don’t know is what the experience at those jobs was like for you.

Here’s what you should highlight in your work history section:

• Proposals you had accepted or implemented — the ability to innovate is highly prized
• Moments you were singled out for exemplary performance — be sure to explain why
• Any awards or publications — whether within the company or outside it
• Times you demonstrated exceptional capability using skills required for the job
• Times you solved a company problem
• Quantifiable and verifiable measurements of your success, whatever the field
• Major projects that required sustained planning, leadership, or organization
• Times the abilities you make prominent in your technical skills section were put into actual practice

There are other things, of course. Your main objective, though, is to focus on things unique to your experience, and that demonstrate a strong connection to your desired position.

Tip #3: Use specific, revealing details

In her essay “History by the Ounce” historian and writer Barbara Tuchman discusses how a single concrete detail, calibrated to the moment, can reveal more about a person than pages of abstract observations. This is an important concept when it comes to resumes. Consider the difference between these two hypothetical bullet points, one of which is abstract and the other concrete.

• Abstract observation: Demonstrated strong writing ability.
• Concrete detail: Authored fifteen unique sets of end-user process instructions for technologies ranging from setting an email password to managing and querying information in company sales database.

Each statement — the abstract idea and the concrete detail — reveals the same information: the candidate communicates clearly. But they are not the same thing. The first makes its point blankly, and without much precision. The second is exact, revealing, and unique.

Which one do you think stands out more?

With bullet points, you must be ruthlessly precise. Name specific projects, figures, and initiatives. If you led a team, say how large it was. If you exceeded sales figures, say by how much. If you managed a network, what was its capacity? Never miss a chance to use a number.

While you’re at it, avoid vague, buzz-wordy language (hard worker, efficient and effective, met all goals, team-player, etc.) and focus instead on mining your experience for detailed moments that reveal these larger qualities.

When hiring managers reflect on resumes, they aren’t going to remember the overall impression. What they will remember are the details.

Incidentally, the following resume words are almost always too vague, and should usually be revised:

• various
• numerous
• multiple
• diverse
• countless
• several
• contributed to
• assisted

If you catch yourself using them, ask how they can be more precise.

Next week, we’ll present the final entry in our IT Resumes 101 series, which will cover the remaining common resume sections, including: language skills, volunteer experience, and memberships.

More Related Posts

1. INFOGRAPHIC: The History of Microsoft
2. Expert Advice on How to Get the IT Job You Want
3. IT Job Tips: How to get into the “YES” Folder
4. How Important is Experience on Your IT Resume?
5. New Jobs with Vista?