In a former life I hopped around between programming jobs every couple of years, and it was no big deal. But I haven't had to seek employment for a very long time, and I'm concerned about how moving on from my current company is going to go for me. While I have had a few interviews over the years for special situations that popped up, I haven't tried to do an honest-to-goodness job search with the handicap of being an extra 2000 miles away from the tech industry. I would prefer to relocate near my family in Florida (anywhere within a day's drive would be best), but getting back to the west coast would be an acceptable improvement to my current location. I'm also a bit worried that my skills are rusty for the market/interviews, or that my skill set is no longer in demand as much.

Anyone, enough of my blog. What comments would you have on my resume?

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing

Google docs showing the correct fonts?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/0...n_7167390.html

Haha, "sweatpants of fonts". I don't know if I believe all that, but, sure I'll change it.

Helvetica is ftw, but doesn't come standard in word for some reason. Open Office has it for free tho

Helvetica just helped Gizmo get an interview.

I liked how you refer to constantly adapting with the new stuff coming out and that is definitely a plus to give off that impression to employers.

The resume looks good.

"For the last year, our team has been coding almost exclusively in Python,"

I'm not a fan of using those two words together and don't really see the point of that sentence but it probably doesn't matter.

That's an impressive work history! wow.

My only recommendation - at one point (Treyarch) you write PS/2 where you in all likelihood actually mean PlayStation 2.

Also maybe expand on VIC/VNIC ? I don't know what these new protocol stand for, but maybe it's just me being behind the times.

That is one of the best resumes I've ever read.

I like the poker career part. Very well handled.

Ok I have lots of comments

- First, I don't like the format. Consider changing. The Skills bullet points are ok but you should really start with an objective, i.e., what kind of an employee you are and what you are looking for.

- Are you really proficient in all the skills you list? Can I find them in your resume? If the answer is no to either then remove them. More skills listed != better. You might get questioned on them and then it will look like you are padding if you don't know the answer

- Change the work history to the format. Right now it's just a wall of text. Something like this is what is easier to read:

Role

*Major Accomplishments in bullet format.


So like this

Lead Developer on XYZ platform using C++ with blah blah blah

• Implemented new blah blah
• Setup blah blah
• Wrote blah blah
• etc

- Consider breaking up your last job into sections. Did you only have the one role at your last job? I doubt it if you were there since 2008. If you had three roles then list them and put the major accomplishments under each role. It will show progression. Right now it kinda looks you were just in the same boring job going nowhere for the last seven years.

- Consider changing your date format to (2008 - Present) or (2006-2008) It's easier to read and people just want to know how many years you worked at the place.

- Age. I can tell from your resume how old you old. Drop the date on your education. All they need to know is that you have a BS. Also consider dropping the last two jobs off the list. Trust me nobody is going to read that far anyway. Software is more of a young mans game and you are likely going to have people 10 to 20 years younger then you looking at this. Don't make yourself look too old as younger people will have a natural basis.

Here's a decent example of the format I am kinda talking about

http://www.blueskyresumes.com/blog/w...esumeafter.gif

Hope that helps.

Ok.

Many of those routing protocols no one would ever need nor want to know. And if you don't work at Cisco or VMware, VIC & VNIC are gobbledegook. I wasn't trying to go for an "Oh good, he's worked on VNIC!" response there, so the fact that no one is going to know what that is doesn't bother me. If people think it important, I could write it out as "Cisco's network virtualization protocols" or something like that.

http://resources.alljobopenings.com/objective-on-resume
I definitely don't want a generic objective, it's a waste of space, and I was jumping thru formatting hoops to keep it on two pages.

Actually, you can. There's no reference to SQL, but I really am proficient in it. I suppose I could cut Perl.

Yes, every job I've ever had my title would be "Software Engineer" or some synonym of that. I think including role every time would be redundant.



Ok, done. And that gives me some leeway on keeping it well within two pages too without resorting to 0.9 for margins, etc.

I'll think on the format change. Historical is pretty standard though.

I would also caution against editorializing as well. The bit about "which unfortunately didn't ship" or whatever it was seemed superfluous and unprofessional to me. But I am not a hiring manager.

Unless you're specifically applying for a job that mentions that you need to have worked on software that shipped, etc., your work and whether or not the product shipped seem unrelated to me.

Your resume reads very well, but I'm wondering if you may want to supplement the paragraphs with some bulleted highlights?

I recently had a recruiter at Facebook critique my resume and this was a piece of unique advice from her:

"*Suggested edit: include a separate ‘Achievements’ heading under each role. List your responsibilities above and then mention (examples of achievements.) This makes them stand out more and there’s a better chance a recruiter will see them as opposed to skimming over. This goes for each role below too."

I didn't love all of her advice, but I though this was pretty interesting, and now being on the other side of hiring, I usually scan the resume for things I find interesting/ know a lot about/ can speak to myself/etc. If candidates I had interviewed had this skimmable "highlights" section above each paragraph of detail, I would definitely take a read through the whole resume and then use those sections to go back and find things I had found interesting.

For example on your resume, I thought the HTTP/1.1 protocol inclusion up top was really cool, and enjoyed reading more about it when I got to it, but if I put your resume back on my desk and went to pick it up before meeting with you, I'm not positive I would have found it right away, and I definitely would not remember where specific technologies are throughout the other paragraphs.

Her advice to me was basically

Quick responsibilities for the role
Achievements in bulleted list
Paragraphs or bullets about the role generally

Game companies are very big on the whether or or not something shipped, so the emphasis on the word when discussing jobs in that industry was intentional.

yeah, i've read some blizzard job requirements, so that's why I brought it up

Not a bad start, but some pointers:

- Play with the format. You can present the information in a nicer way, a few years ago I bought some fancy modern (read: hipster) templates and my callback rate went through the roof. You don't need ******ed infographics or anything, but I think making things dense is a good thing.

- For your jobs, really focus on your individual and specific contributions. In my current job (senior dev) there's a small group of us that handle resume screening and first round interviews. We come across resumes that talk very broadly about projects (and what the project does), but then when we drill down we found out they wrote a shell script or something trivial. It looks like you've done lots of stuff, you can customize this individual contributions according to jobs you're applying for.

- Ditch the objective. During my last job search I read a lot of books on resumes, and most seem to suggest they say nothing and are as useful as 'references upon request'.

It's long, I'd recommend trimming it down where possible. In particular, there's probably too much detail on your first few jobs out of school.

I like consistent sentence structure / presentation. You have this in a few places, like the Konami section, where each paragraph starts with "shipped" or "developed". I find the skills section hard to read at a glance because each line item has the verb in a different place.

We have software engineering positions open at Twitch. If you have a non-professional interest in games (which I think you do; I vaguely remember you posting in the VG forum), I think you'd like the culture. The networking automation team in particular sounds like a good fit given your most recent job. PM me if you want to hear more

I would re-word the second bullet point to something than "Other languages"...

Maybe something like Proficient in Python, SQL... etc.

Trim down the irrelevant portions depending on the jobs you are applying? So if you are applying for a videogame job, trim all the technical parts about your first jobs.

This resume doesn't seem fit for someone that will glance over many resumes per day.

Any updates OP?

I'm still wondering whatever happened to Craggoooo's job search

Change the area code to 415.

Are you at 225 Bush? I miss that building

No, resume is still what it was around post 15.


Did you mean updates on the job search? I've sent the resume a dozen or two places, not as many as I should have by now. I've gotten maybe half a dozen callbacks and I'm flying out next week for an on-site. If that doesn't work out, I'm going to get much more aggressive.

In the past I just used a head hunting firm, and that always worked splendidly for me. Usually would get tons of interviews with basically no effort. The company I used to prefer, Scientific Placement, is no longer in business though. I tried sending my resume to a couple of places that appeared to be technical recruitment firms, and they haven't even called me back, which was really strange. IME, normally those guys are all over you like paparazzi or used car salesmen.

The place I'm flying out to is in SF, and I do miss living in silicon valley. But I'm pretty aghast at the cost of living in the area now. You basically can't buy a house anywhere out there for less than a million, and a small part of the impetus for moving from Hawaii was to get my boys a backyard.

Change your area code to 510. You might find something for $700k.

I work on the recruiting team for a publicly traded company in the bay...

I cannot open your resume from my phone but will check it out mañana! In my experience, engineers very rarely need to apply for jobs these days - we'll find you

As such, I'd recommend updating your location in LI to be wherever you're looking to land a job! We're always running targeted campaigns, searching left and right, etc. and you won't reap any of the benefit of this by being out of an area companies are searching in (speaking in general, as the company I work for actually searches and targets across the world as we're open to covering relo).

You'd be surprised at the number of people not considering candidates outside of a small radius... Shoot, in the bay they don't consider people 20 miles away. So while the people saying "change area code to 415" are saying it in jest, there is some truth to their comment