Author: way0utwest

The resume that you send out, whether in print or electronically, is the first impression that you will make on a potential employer. For that reason, you want to make a good impression, and that’s one reason that I am trying to get people to manage their brand and present a great “modern resume.”

You definitely need a resume or CV to summarize your efforts and display your brand, but at the same time you need to be sure that you are projecting the image that you want to project.

With that in mind, I would recommend that you have two reviews done of your resume using the following criteria:

• Use someone in your career field
• Use someone outside of your career field that is a good writer

Why use two? There’s a couple examples I can give you, mainly from the technology business. I think they’re applicable to all areas, and I would like to hear back from you if you use them.

Someone in your field will understand the language, jargon, and terms being used to describe what you do. They can give you an idea of what image you are presenting of you accomplishments and skills. I saw a resume that listed Windows 2004 awhile back, which is a non-existent product. A non-technical person would not have known that, and I might have missed it on proof myself. However that is a glaring error to someone that is in the field.

Note that someone must be in your specific field, so a database person if you work with databases, a orthopedist if that’s you’re field, or a contract lawyer if you do that work. Using someone that’s a criminal attorney or urologist might not get you the same level of review.

However people that are specialists and talented in their fields often don’t present themselves well to laymen. Who are the laymen I worry about?

HR

I despise human resources as a term, but not as a department, and they often sift through the stacks of resumes (or emails in this age) and reject or accept them. This is with an eye on the job criteria, so they are matching up skills (hence the technical review), but they often make their own decisions, especially as the number of candidates matching the criteria grows.

Having someone that’s a good writer review your resume and help you punch it up to read better, make more sense, flow, can make a difference when you have someone reviewing your work that sees 200 of them a day.

Do yourself a favor, when you open your resume and make a chance, send it to two people that will give you confidential, critical reviews from two points of view.

cross posted to The Modern Resume

I was tagged by SQL Rockstar, aka Tom LaRock, after this thread was started by Paul Randal-not-Paul-Tripp (I wonder if Kim disagrees?). It’s an interesting, introspective question. What three things got you going.

I could go with getting a computer early, or something in education, but the truth is I don’t think those things shaped me. They were the result of a high curiosity in math and computers, of wondering how the world works, having ambition, etc.

I could go with the fact that I spent part of my childhood fairly poor and hated that. It definitely drove me on to work hard, but it wasn’t a fundamental change. It did, however, keep me from trying to pursue a career in music since I hated the poor struggling band lifestyle and I could have given that up at any time to have a regular paycheck.

Instead I’m going to go with three events that I think fundamentally moved my life in the direction it’s taken, and prevented me from going in another direction.

Rugby

I’ve always enjoyed sports, and to the dismay of my Mom, often violent sports: football, martial arts, and in college, rugby. I picked up the game in Hyde Park in London, and when I returned to the US, I joined the University of Virginia team.

It was great fun, and I moved from a 2nd row grunt on the “A” team to the scrum half on the “B” team. A move I was happy to make as I got to run free, touch the ball, and often got to make the first tackle on ball movement out of the scrum.

My senior year, early October, we had an off week. So as usual we were practicing in Madison Bowl on campus, scrimmaging each other. I picked the ball up out of the scrum and took off to the right, coming around the scrum and moving into open space. A quick fake toss and I turned back inside, only to be caught by the other scrum half. Not our “A” team scrum half, who was about 5’ 8” and 160 lbs, but our “A” team eightman, who was 6’ 2” and 220lbs, a little larger than me.

Unlike the tackle above, I got dropped down on my left shoulder and it separated. A grade-III separation that put me in a sling for 24x7x8 weeks and that was the last rugby play I was ever a part of. It also changed my life.

At this point I had been an economics major, and had just started signing up for interviews with many investment banks. I wanted to go to Wall Street to work for Shearson Lehman or Bear Sterns, in true 80’s fashion. The realization that I wasn’t invincible, that life was hard, and that I might be seriously hurt changed my priorities that October. I cancelled interviews, put rehab first, and by May of the next year, when I graduated, I was able to finally do push-ups again.

I decided to move my life into a direction that was more enjoyable to me, even if it meant less money.

Bad ears

In 1991, a couple years out of school, I was wandering around life. I’d enrolled back in a local college to do some graduate work, but wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. I’d spent a year managing a night club and having fun, but it became boring. My girlfriend at the time was from California, and we moved there, thinking that it would be a change, and a way to move forward. Living in San Diego was nice, but trying to get my life going was not. So I decided to enlist in the Navy and enter their nuclear submarine program.

I’d always wanted to serve, and had seriously considered applying to the Naval Academy in high school. So I met a recruiter, we talked, and with great grades, especially in math and science, it looked good that I would be accepted into the Officer Candidate School and the Navy Nuclear Program. I signed papers and early one morning I went downtown into San Diego for my physical.

That’s an interesting experience, including the drug testing where you urinate while someone watches you. I felt like I was doing great in all the programs until we reached the auditory lab. They put me into a soundproof box, headphones on, and I had to click a device when I heard a sound. I knew this was an issue, and when I got out, I moved on to more tests. Eventually the lady running the lab found me and brought me back. She showed me the results, which have my left ear down to about 20% of normal. She offered to let me take the test, and hinted that “looser headphones” might help. I took it, slipping both sides of the headphones up to listen, and this time got to about 60% on the left ear. Enough to pass.

However I knew this would be an issue in the service, and might be dangerous in a critical situation. I told her to submit the first results, and then went to meet the recruiter, informing him I couldn’t join.

That changed my life in that I was disappointed, but I realized that I should just get on with my life. I moved back to Virginia, enrolled in grad school, and started driving forward with a higher level of intensity.

Bad Software Engineering

While I was in graduate school, with every intention of becoming an electrical engineer, I got an internship with the Surry Nuclear Power Plant in Virginia. The plan was that I would work a semester there and a semester in school. I did this a few times and eventually moved into the network administration group, which was more interesting than the Electrical Engineering group. And safer! No getting close to 1000V wires that were an inch in diameter.

Eventually they hired me to work with them and I dropped back to part time in grad school. One of my first assignments was to help deploy a new radiation monitoring system that would integrate with dosimeters (shown to the right) and record radiation received by workers in the plant. It was mandated by the NRC and I arrived at work Jan 31, at 6pm to help get this installed for the new year.

I finally left the plant on Jan 2 at about 3 or 4pm, exhausted and ready to get home, but due back in about 15 hours for a week of almost 8 hours on, 8 off as we tried to stabilize this system that was constantly failing. That poor software engineering effort, not written well, nor tested under load, changed my life. It was written on SQL Server 4.2 on OS/2 1.3. I migrated through versions, spending hours reading about SQL Server and the OS, until we stabilized on Windows 3.1 Advanced Server. From there I developed a great interest in RDBMS’s and moved on to one SQL Server job after another.

I think without this project, I might have become a network administrator instead of a DBA.

Tags

That’s it, the three things I think most influenced where I am today. I’ll tag these people.

• Gail Shaw
• Jack Corbett
• Glenn Barry
• Marc Beacom

Please link back to me, and to Paul’s post.

I woke up this morning to find Tia reading an actual paper books. That’s become a rarity for both of us, each of us tending to read on our phones and not with real books.

I reached over and held her hand, just laying there. We do that a lot, and it’s very relaxing. I like holding my wife’s hand. I felt her move, and opened me eyes, and saw that she had tilted the book so she could read the right hand page and I could now see the title. I closed my eyes until a minute later when she said

“This is so inconvenient”

She was referring to the fact that she had to hold the book up, it’s heavy, no light for night reading, and she can’t turn pages with one hand. At least not easily.

I’d agree with most of those, and reading in bed was one of the main reasons I like e-reading. I can do it with one hand, I don’t disturb my wife, and it was easy. I had all my books with me, and enjoyed it. With the Kindle I needed a reading light, but with the iPhone I don’t, and in that sense it’s superior. It’s also smaller, lighter, and one less thing to carry.

On the other side, I can’t easily read in bright sunlight, and I wonder how my trip to the islands will go. I am planning on taking 4 or 5 paper books along that have been sitting on the shelf and I want to get through. This is a great time to do it, plus being gone for 6 days, and not sure about my Internet connection, I don’t want to spend $100 or so on books.

The book my wife had was one our son recommended, and she said she’s just going to buy it from B&N to make things easier.

Still no work on my laptop. It’s been over 24 hours since I left a message for the customer escalation team and no return call. I haven’t tried to call them back because, well, I’ve been busy. Trying to get things done to get off on vacation next week has me jammed up. I should have some time tomorrow to call and I’ll see what happens then. I’d like to record the call, but we’ll see how that goes.

A few people have asked why don’t I threaten Toshiba with a mention in my newsletter going out to hundreds of thousands of people? Why don’t I play that card to get some service? I haven’t done it, but the story, or at least a take on it, is going out in tomorrow’s editorial as Dodge, Dip, Dive, Duck, and Dodge.

I have a few reasons why I haven’t done that.

1. I’d feel like an ass if I did
2. I don’t want or like special treatment
3. I want to know what Toshiba will do for everyone else.

I don’t really like special treatment, or being recognized. I guess I’m still a little shy, but I also don’t really think I’m any better than anyone else. Someone who pulls the “do you know who I am?” when they get in trouble always bothers me and I don’t want to be the one doing that. So I don’t threaten, or mention my job, in cases like this.

There’s also a curiosity factor. If I wasn’t able to communicate to lots of people, how would I get treated? Or how will everyone else get treated? I was irate, and still am, but I wanted to get the regular guy experience. Heck, I might be a regular guy that doesn’t write a daily column at some point.

So I’m now just wondering what will happen. Tomorrow I’ll actually order something else, hoping that it will arrive by the time I get back from vacation.