Today's Redlined Resume comes from JB, who appears to have the same problem that I have every day--so much to say and not enough time and room. Believe me, I hate the idea of trying to cram everything about myself into one page--it seems like something's going to get left out. Well, that's true. A lot gets left out of a resume, and your job in crafting your resume is to distill what is most important and then laying it out in a way that conveys all the intangibles for which you don't have room to articulate. JB has two pages here--and when I received this resume, JB knew s/he had to thin it down to one page without me saying anything. Indeed, JB's main issue here is editing and thinning: deleting the objective and limiting the non-architectural jobs to only two or three tasks each.
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The other issue of concern is how JB is describing his/her titles at his/her various architectural jobs. One of many problems I have with the architectural profession is that we don't do a good job of standardizing what our non-licensed and almost-close-to-licensed folks do. For example, JB uses "Project Coordinator" to describe his/her position at one firm but "Job Captain" at the job before that one. At some firms, "Coordinator" is the name for any unlicensed person, regardless of their experience or job tasks. Firms also may have a wide range of what they consider a "Job Captain"--for example, at my firm I wasn't a "Job Captain" until I was licensed and running the CDs and CA on a project. By listing the titles on his/her resume, JB looks like s/he's taken a step down from one firm to the next. Titles can be troublesome, so sometimes it's more helpful to eliminate them completely. If you describe what you did at each job, that tells a firm if you're capable of doing what they need you to do for their firm, regardless of what you were called at your old firm.
Eliminating the fluff from the resume will give JB a clear, solid document with which any hiring manager would be impressed. S/he has lots of great skills and experience doing a wide range of work at architecture firms, and s/he clearly has a good work ethic by finding other jobs during a bad economy, such as working at the driving range and as a notary public (both of which might really come in handy for a firm!).
Given the candidate has some experience, I would suggest a Summary instead of an objective at the top of the resume. It allows the reader to gain a quick "summary" of their qualifications ...i.e., Over five years of increased responsibility within two different firms with emphasis on xxx.
ReplyDeleteJust a thought. The old rule was one page for every ten years.