[Cialug] resume assistance

[Tim Champion]

I had absolutely no luck finding any quality resume & cover letter service
in the area. I tried one guy, who promised that I would only pay him when I
was happy with the cover letter, but I was never happy with the cover
letter, and I didn't use it, nor did I pay him. I'm still looking, so if
anybody knows of a good cover letter writer, pass it along!

For resumes, just pack them full of specific technical accomplishments
you've done in each job. I good IT resume should be 2-4 dense pages. At the
top should be either a well formed paragraph, or a bulleted list (5 or so
bullets) that summarizes your skills and talents.

I've been on the hiring end a couple times, and from my experience, the
cover letter is more important than a resume.  -- and because I hold that
opinion, I have a huge hang-up on constructing a quality cover letter to the
point where I work through recruiters instead so I don't have to deal with
cover letters.

As far as recruiters, I personally recommend Paragon IT in Des Moines:
http://www.paragonitpros.com/

Tim Champion
timchampion at gmail.com


On Tue, Aug 31, 2010 at 9:44 AM, Josh More
<MoreJ at alliancetechnologies.net>wrote:

> Read "Don't Send A Resume" by Jeffrey Fox to learn why the old style
> resumes don't work anymore.
>
> Then grab one of those 101 Resumes books and just start throwing stuff
> together.  Your resume is going to suck.  That's OK.
>
> Then contact one of the recruiting companies here in town.  Alliance does
> this sort of work, I think so does Palmer and Executive Resources.  The
> recruiters will review the resume you created and either fix it for you or
> tell you what needs fixing.  They're paid when you get what you want, not
> before.
>
> Then get an interview question book and practice linking the common
> interview questions to specific resume talking points.
>
> This way you learn what's necessary and build the stories that you need to
> tell in interviews.  The other method is to pay someone on Craig's List $50
> or someone at a firm $250 to get a fancy piece of paper that's not going to
> help you land a job anyway.  After all, they're not in business to get you a
> job, they're in business to make pieces of paper.
>
> -Josh More, CISSP, GIAC-GSLC, GIAC-GCIH, RHCE, NCLP
> morej at alliancetechnologies.net
> 515-245-7701
>
> ________________________________________
> From: cialug-bounces at cialug.org [cialug-bounces at cialug.org] on behalf of
> jason at benalto.com [jason at benalto.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, August 31, 2010 09:42
> To: Central Iowa Linux Users Group
> Subject: [Cialug] resume assistance
>
> Does anyone know of a good local service to assist in drafting a decent
> technical resume? My wife is (unexpectedly) back on the job market and
> hasn't done a resume in years.
> Thanks,
> Jason Warden
>
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