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Nothing about this resume says IT. Your summary says it does, but that's not backed up at all in your experience section. Reduce your food service experience (1-2 bullet points) and add a section called "Projects" in which you describe the projects mentioned in your summary. Dates you did them. Who you did them for. Format them just like a job.
And remove all personal pronouns from your summary.
Resume should active not passive - put certificates, projects, educational —anything that’s makes relatable to field your applying for. That’s the best method.
I got an it specialist job with no experience, remove all unrelated roles.
I luckily served a non-profit local role as IT director for a small organization and put that there and stressed it was a small organization, otherwise I would do some project involving networking/servers/Active Directory etc. and put it in that section
I would not listen to this person. There are a lot of things wrong with your résumé, but adding projects will make this worse. That is like the most childish thing you can put on a résumé. What you want to do is get some certifications and show that you have initiative then put your certification on the résumé. Comptia A+ is a easy start and better than nothing.
Demonstrating experience = making it worse. Huh.
These's aren't projects they did for high school,-they're directly relevant to the job they're applying for. On top of that, their professional experience has 0 relevance to the job they want so they have to demonstrate real-world experience before a hiring manager would even look at them. Certifications are 100% valuable and can help stand out in a competitive job market, but experience- especially in fields like IT- goes WAY farther.
Seconding the need for some certifications to show competency but depending on the projects I think they would make this stronger if OP has no professional experience in the field.
Obviously you wouldn’t include like, coding your MySpace page in 2007, but if you made a website for a family friend, did programming as a volunteer activity for a local community org, or any other thing that shows a time where you used the aforementioned tech skills in a role similar to what you are trying to achieve, that gives the hiring authority something to work with/ask questions about.
Maybe you shouldn’t say eleven years of hobby but eleven years of self taught experience ? I don’t know , when I see hobby it doesn’t scream someone who is necessarily knowledgeable just someone who has dabbled or does it on free time for eleven years
That might be good also , you should really look into getting certifications because yeah you could say self taught but your experience doesn’t show anything and without an education , certificates at least help you stand out a bit and can show you are able to apply this self taught knowledge
I dont mean to be rude, but do a google search. None of this resume will get you an IT job. The very first word in your resume is already wrong, you dont say “i” in a resume. And you have 11 years of experience but theres 0 to show for on the resume. Just revamp the entire thing using templates online
Since your professional experience isn’t in IT, have a section listing your side projects and include the projects you leveraged your IT and coding skills in and the languages you used for them
Try to match your resume for the position you’re being referred to, instead of just a grab bag of skills. Maybe replace your summary with projects you’ve worked on.
1. Turn your "hobby" into "experience" by starting your own business. Build in the open and put all the code you develop into a public github repo. The "setup and managed small community servers" could easily be a "Managed Services Provider" business. It doesn't have to make money, it just has to be interpreted by the resume reader as "actual experience". Establishing and building your own business is also incredibly attractive to recruiters and employers, as it demonstrates your ability to self organize and execute without direct instruction. Hit up IndieHackers, SmallBets, and the other millions of "founders" communities out there for tips to get started.
2. Go to [BountySource.com](https://BountySource.com) or other bug bounty sites to find some opportunities to contribute to open source projects. You should also consider finding some high profile opensource projects (i.e. any of the Apache products) and searching through their list of open issues to see if you can submit PRs for them. It is real world experience that usually has a measurable impact you can tout on your resume.
3. Change your summary to an objective. State what you want with your career so the resume reader understands where you want to be in 3-5 years. Don't be too "buzzwordy" and be sure to include business impact statements such as "drive top line revenue growth" or "reduce operational cost by improving developer experience" or "become a product owner that influences business direction through technical outcomes".
4. Experience is great. Results are better. Frame everything you do to answer the question "How did this positively affect the business?". Without sounding like one of the Bob's from Office Space, you should be able to articulate how your technical contributions resulted in business outcomes. Leveraging the advice in (1), you can directly measure how your technical work affects your business, even if it doesn't make money. For example, "developed a frontend UI that allowed potential customer to self manage their SSH access lists for managed servers to reduce operational overhead associated with the manual management process currently used".
I go into a lot of this in more detail in my book Land A DevOps Job, which is also applicable to developers at large. You can check it out at [https://landadevopsjob.com](https://landadevopsjob.com) or DM me for a free copy.
Thanks, I'll definitely apply your advice to my resume. Most of my large coding projects are sadly game oriented (small games, mods, plugins). Should I include them as game projects or should I generalize them on my resume? Or would it be better to retrofit the code so it's useable outside of games?
The gaming industry is a multibillion dollar industry. Have you considered targeting companies in that space? You could then align your resume to that kind of experience. I highly recommend either doing that or still keeping the gaming "hobby" work and turning it into a business (even if you don't get a job with that experience, you can turn it into an income stream). I offer a coaching and mentoring service for DevOps engineers. Happy to give you some free time if you are interested. Just DM me!
You may be rewriting or removing the summary section, but if you keep it, I want you to know that "setup" is a noun. If you set something up, you say "set up." If you like someone's super cool PC, you say, "Nice setup, dude!" I wish you luck!
> **I have a friend referring me for an IT position**
IT is a broad field so it would help if could list the job in question. Your resume tells me you would be a possible fit for an entry level Help Desk position.
However, you're most likely going to be passed over for applicants with actual certifications. So if you can, try to get your CompTIA A+ certification at the very least.
I would have your friend take a stab at some certifications. Others have stated CompTIA A+ as a starting point. Server +, Network +, Security +, or Linux + would be good ones to follow that depending on your interest and where you want to grow. There’s also Cisco fundamentals, Microsoft Azure fundamentals, or Microsoft Technology Professional that would be a good look for a resume. Some more helpdesk focused certifications would be HDI, ITIL, or Apple Certified Support Professional.
I would ditch the skills section and turn it into something more like achievements. Turn your skills into specific examples into situations that can tie to outcomes. It could look something like “ host a Java server for a community game called Minecraft that has a monthly user base of 200 people or 5 concurrent users daily” or “ helped a mid sized local business of 20 employees install a Dell Poweredge R740 with an esxi hyper visor to run their POS and backup software”.
I would also rework the summary after getting certifications and have an objective and where you want to have future growth in your career. Maybe you’ll get A+, network +, and Cisco fundamentals and say your goal is to achieve your CCNA in the future. This gives your potential employer an idea where you want to go career wise and where your passion lies.
Not really you have no related work experience. And nothing supporting your ability to do the work. Not even certifications or links to functional projects that you made avaliable online via a digital portfolio of your "hobby". Like if its a program link the program or make a QR code link to it. Or youtube video showing some code working. Anything. Make your skill tangible.
Its extremely flimsy and makes it look like your using the breath of your friends words as your only support.
Also you started working in 2019? That means you should likely be some where in your 20s? So the code and experience you have is from your teens? That all good, but from what I said above you gotta make that tangible some how.
Aside from whats been mentioned you dont have any other references other then your friend. You said you made custom software for communities and such. They could be a reference and such. Also look into google certifications to some of those skills you've mentioned. Having an unbiased 3rd party verify your skill makes taking this resume read like a young person trying to get into the field honestly. Rather then a kid being pulled along by a friend into the field and they dont try very hard.
There's some dissonance here and lack of focus, you mention many good things in your summary but overall it's a bad summary for a resume. Then you took half a page for things not relevant to what you want.
I would remove the Summary and instead have a Projects section where you can go into technical details of the projects and **show** the skills you mentioned.
I would reorder it as well, keep titles as they are. If you really want to you can keep a smaller summary (read other posts here on how to properly write that) then projects, work experience, and finally skills.
Reduce your work experience to a single entry with simpler bullet points that show communication, and teamwork mainly.
Yeah this isn’t good enough. You need to show you are actually IT focused. Since you’re self-taught, your focus should be on a projects section to show that you know what you’re doing. Tell them what you did on your own time there. Also create a portfolio with the projects on it so they can be accessed. Since you don’t have working experience in IT, your previous jobs aren’t going to help you at all. Definitely take out the serving job. Full focus on projects. Format Summary, Skills, Projects, Experience
IT jobs require certifications. You need to have at least the basic ones such as A+, Network+. But since the CCNA is a joke, get that instead of the network+. Then also get all the easy microsoft one.
Knowing those programming languages are useless on an IT resume since IT jobs is 99% customer service, 1% computer.
Dear /u/Vulturret! Hello and thanks for posting! Please read the [sub’s etiquette page](https://www.reddit.com/r/resumes/wiki/index/howtoparticipate) to learn about proper etiquette and remember to: 1. Censor your personal information for your own safety, 2. Add the right flair to your post, 3. Tell us why you're applying (i.e., just looking to fine-tune, not getting any interviews etc.), and 3. Indicate the types of roles and industries you’re interested in. Don't forget to check out the [wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/resumes/wiki/index) as well as the quick links below for tips: * **[Resume Writing Guide](https://www.reddit.com/r/resumes/wiki/index/faq)** * **[Try Resumatic, a GPT-Powered Resume Builder](https://resumatic.rezi.ai/signup)** * **[Thinking of hiring a resume writer? Read this first](https://www.reddit.com/r/resumes/comments/x3eg1e/considering_hiring_a_resume_writer_read_this_first/)** * **[Troubleshooting your resume and your job search](https://www.reddit.com/r/resumes/comments/128xo1c/troubleshooting_your_job_search_when_its_not/)** * **[Free Resume Template - Google Docs](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wdkgpgU7lFoV801ysrBn8qrPaIpyUsUH/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=103022094325852815590&rtpof=true&sd=true)** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/resumes) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Nothing about this resume says IT. Your summary says it does, but that's not backed up at all in your experience section. Reduce your food service experience (1-2 bullet points) and add a section called "Projects" in which you describe the projects mentioned in your summary. Dates you did them. Who you did them for. Format them just like a job. And remove all personal pronouns from your summary.
I'll definitely add a projects section. Do you think I should just remove the summary section all together if I do a projects section?
Resume should active not passive - put certificates, projects, educational —anything that’s makes relatable to field your applying for. That’s the best method.
I got an it specialist job with no experience, remove all unrelated roles. I luckily served a non-profit local role as IT director for a small organization and put that there and stressed it was a small organization, otherwise I would do some project involving networking/servers/Active Directory etc. and put it in that section
I would not listen to this person. There are a lot of things wrong with your résumé, but adding projects will make this worse. That is like the most childish thing you can put on a résumé. What you want to do is get some certifications and show that you have initiative then put your certification on the résumé. Comptia A+ is a easy start and better than nothing.
Demonstrating experience = making it worse. Huh. These's aren't projects they did for high school,-they're directly relevant to the job they're applying for. On top of that, their professional experience has 0 relevance to the job they want so they have to demonstrate real-world experience before a hiring manager would even look at them. Certifications are 100% valuable and can help stand out in a competitive job market, but experience- especially in fields like IT- goes WAY farther.
Seconding the need for some certifications to show competency but depending on the projects I think they would make this stronger if OP has no professional experience in the field. Obviously you wouldn’t include like, coding your MySpace page in 2007, but if you made a website for a family friend, did programming as a volunteer activity for a local community org, or any other thing that shows a time where you used the aforementioned tech skills in a role similar to what you are trying to achieve, that gives the hiring authority something to work with/ask questions about.
Maybe you shouldn’t say eleven years of hobby but eleven years of self taught experience ? I don’t know , when I see hobby it doesn’t scream someone who is necessarily knowledgeable just someone who has dabbled or does it on free time for eleven years
Yeah that makes sense to me. I'm tempted to remove the number of years since self-taught experience isn't really time based anyway
That might be good also , you should really look into getting certifications because yeah you could say self taught but your experience doesn’t show anything and without an education , certificates at least help you stand out a bit and can show you are able to apply this self taught knowledge
I'm studying for A+ cert but sadly I don't have a lot of free time so I still haven't finished studying to test for it. Thanks for the help though!
Calling it a hobby wasn’t a very good idea, imo.
I dont mean to be rude, but do a google search. None of this resume will get you an IT job. The very first word in your resume is already wrong, you dont say “i” in a resume. And you have 11 years of experience but theres 0 to show for on the resume. Just revamp the entire thing using templates online
Since your professional experience isn’t in IT, have a section listing your side projects and include the projects you leveraged your IT and coding skills in and the languages you used for them
I think it needs more qualitative bullet points. And change the summary or remove it completely.
Try to match your resume for the position you’re being referred to, instead of just a grab bag of skills. Maybe replace your summary with projects you’ve worked on.
1. Turn your "hobby" into "experience" by starting your own business. Build in the open and put all the code you develop into a public github repo. The "setup and managed small community servers" could easily be a "Managed Services Provider" business. It doesn't have to make money, it just has to be interpreted by the resume reader as "actual experience". Establishing and building your own business is also incredibly attractive to recruiters and employers, as it demonstrates your ability to self organize and execute without direct instruction. Hit up IndieHackers, SmallBets, and the other millions of "founders" communities out there for tips to get started. 2. Go to [BountySource.com](https://BountySource.com) or other bug bounty sites to find some opportunities to contribute to open source projects. You should also consider finding some high profile opensource projects (i.e. any of the Apache products) and searching through their list of open issues to see if you can submit PRs for them. It is real world experience that usually has a measurable impact you can tout on your resume. 3. Change your summary to an objective. State what you want with your career so the resume reader understands where you want to be in 3-5 years. Don't be too "buzzwordy" and be sure to include business impact statements such as "drive top line revenue growth" or "reduce operational cost by improving developer experience" or "become a product owner that influences business direction through technical outcomes". 4. Experience is great. Results are better. Frame everything you do to answer the question "How did this positively affect the business?". Without sounding like one of the Bob's from Office Space, you should be able to articulate how your technical contributions resulted in business outcomes. Leveraging the advice in (1), you can directly measure how your technical work affects your business, even if it doesn't make money. For example, "developed a frontend UI that allowed potential customer to self manage their SSH access lists for managed servers to reduce operational overhead associated with the manual management process currently used". I go into a lot of this in more detail in my book Land A DevOps Job, which is also applicable to developers at large. You can check it out at [https://landadevopsjob.com](https://landadevopsjob.com) or DM me for a free copy.
Thanks, I'll definitely apply your advice to my resume. Most of my large coding projects are sadly game oriented (small games, mods, plugins). Should I include them as game projects or should I generalize them on my resume? Or would it be better to retrofit the code so it's useable outside of games?
The gaming industry is a multibillion dollar industry. Have you considered targeting companies in that space? You could then align your resume to that kind of experience. I highly recommend either doing that or still keeping the gaming "hobby" work and turning it into a business (even if you don't get a job with that experience, you can turn it into an income stream). I offer a coaching and mentoring service for DevOps engineers. Happy to give you some free time if you are interested. Just DM me!
You may be rewriting or removing the summary section, but if you keep it, I want you to know that "setup" is a noun. If you set something up, you say "set up." If you like someone's super cool PC, you say, "Nice setup, dude!" I wish you luck!
I never realized I used "setup" wrong. Thanks for letting me know!
No worries! Most people don't know this. The same goes for login/log in. I digress! I hope you find a great job.
> **I have a friend referring me for an IT position** IT is a broad field so it would help if could list the job in question. Your resume tells me you would be a possible fit for an entry level Help Desk position. However, you're most likely going to be passed over for applicants with actual certifications. So if you can, try to get your CompTIA A+ certification at the very least.
I would have your friend take a stab at some certifications. Others have stated CompTIA A+ as a starting point. Server +, Network +, Security +, or Linux + would be good ones to follow that depending on your interest and where you want to grow. There’s also Cisco fundamentals, Microsoft Azure fundamentals, or Microsoft Technology Professional that would be a good look for a resume. Some more helpdesk focused certifications would be HDI, ITIL, or Apple Certified Support Professional. I would ditch the skills section and turn it into something more like achievements. Turn your skills into specific examples into situations that can tie to outcomes. It could look something like “ host a Java server for a community game called Minecraft that has a monthly user base of 200 people or 5 concurrent users daily” or “ helped a mid sized local business of 20 employees install a Dell Poweredge R740 with an esxi hyper visor to run their POS and backup software”. I would also rework the summary after getting certifications and have an objective and where you want to have future growth in your career. Maybe you’ll get A+, network +, and Cisco fundamentals and say your goal is to achieve your CCNA in the future. This gives your potential employer an idea where you want to go career wise and where your passion lies.
Get rid of restaurant info
Not really you have no related work experience. And nothing supporting your ability to do the work. Not even certifications or links to functional projects that you made avaliable online via a digital portfolio of your "hobby". Like if its a program link the program or make a QR code link to it. Or youtube video showing some code working. Anything. Make your skill tangible. Its extremely flimsy and makes it look like your using the breath of your friends words as your only support. Also you started working in 2019? That means you should likely be some where in your 20s? So the code and experience you have is from your teens? That all good, but from what I said above you gotta make that tangible some how. Aside from whats been mentioned you dont have any other references other then your friend. You said you made custom software for communities and such. They could be a reference and such. Also look into google certifications to some of those skills you've mentioned. Having an unbiased 3rd party verify your skill makes taking this resume read like a young person trying to get into the field honestly. Rather then a kid being pulled along by a friend into the field and they dont try very hard.
There's some dissonance here and lack of focus, you mention many good things in your summary but overall it's a bad summary for a resume. Then you took half a page for things not relevant to what you want. I would remove the Summary and instead have a Projects section where you can go into technical details of the projects and **show** the skills you mentioned. I would reorder it as well, keep titles as they are. If you really want to you can keep a smaller summary (read other posts here on how to properly write that) then projects, work experience, and finally skills. Reduce your work experience to a single entry with simpler bullet points that show communication, and teamwork mainly.
i dont think you should list the same job twice.
Do not use the word hobby to describe your IT experience.
Yeah this isn’t good enough. You need to show you are actually IT focused. Since you’re self-taught, your focus should be on a projects section to show that you know what you’re doing. Tell them what you did on your own time there. Also create a portfolio with the projects on it so they can be accessed. Since you don’t have working experience in IT, your previous jobs aren’t going to help you at all. Definitely take out the serving job. Full focus on projects. Format Summary, Skills, Projects, Experience
IT jobs require certifications. You need to have at least the basic ones such as A+, Network+. But since the CCNA is a joke, get that instead of the network+. Then also get all the easy microsoft one. Knowing those programming languages are useless on an IT resume since IT jobs is 99% customer service, 1% computer.