By J.M. Auron, Expert Resume Writer—The Best IT Resume Writing Services for More than 15 Years.
I'm going to take a bit of a break from my more extended articles on the details of crafting a great IT resume, and give you some quick, relevant, actionable tech resume tips based on my more than 15 years of experience as an IT resume writer. I'll start with some broad issues around staying sane during a tough job search, then get into the IT resume formatting best practices, content, and grammar details that can make a real difference.
Staying Sane During the IT Job Search
A job search is very tough today. Between the volume of applicants, ATS paranoia, and a badly broken hiring process, looking for a job is even less fun than it used to be. Given this reality, it's critical to avoid platforms and advice that aren't going to help you get a job—but are going to increase your stress and anxiety.
Tip 1: Cancel Your Reddit Account
Or, at the very least, stay off the Reddit career and resume subreddits. The amount of genuinely good IT resume advice there is very, very limited—while the amount of really bad advice, from completely unqualified trolls, is enormous.
Beyond the fact that most of what you'll read on Reddit isn't accurate, the toxic tone of many commentators just makes a tough job search harder. You don't need a troll who has never hired for any position trashing your resume, your approach, and your experience.
Now, don't get me wrong. Most of the posters on these subreddits are good, sincere people who feel pretty desperate after a lot of rejection. It's natural to reach out for advice when things aren't going well. The problem isn't the posters. It's the vicious trolls responding who can really make things harder.
Time spent on Reddit is time that could be much better spent on more productive aspects of the job search.
Tip 2: Get IT Resume Advice from a Qualified Source
More broadly, be selective about who you ask for advice about your tech resume and your job search. It's both wise and reasonable to ask for advice when we're dealing with a difficult situation—but make sure that advice comes from someone with real expertise.
In the resume world, that means asking people who have hired talent at your level, have seen a lot of good and bad IT resumes, and can give real, constructive feedback. People like to help—that's a great quality. But without real expertise, advice can do more harm than good.
Tip 3: Don't Obsess About the ATS
I've talked about the ATS boogeyman previously, but the level of noise around the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) drowns out any thoughtful counterarguments.
The ATS is almost certainly not the issue with your job search.
Yes. I know. Heresy.
ATS systems aren't great. They never have been, and they never will be. But they're not an impossible, Kafkaesque barrier created solely to make it impossible to get a job, drive candidates to despair, and otherwise make an unkind world even more so. They may be poorly designed, but the goal is still to let qualified candidates through—not keep them out.
That's why any decently written tech resume is likely to get through the filter. Don't listen to the hype, and don't sweat the ATS.
Tip 4: Keywords Aren't the Issue, Either
By the same token, driving yourself nuts about keywords will just, well, drive you nuts—with very little benefit.
Whatever you've heard, there's no way to know what is or isn't a keyword in a job description. Nothing in a job description has a handy `<keyword>` tag, after all.
But if you describe what you've done clearly and completely in your IT resume, the keywords will almost certainly be there naturally. Don't get sucked into the keyword matching tools and other "solutions" out there. They're inaccurate and will only increase your anxiety—which is not productive in a job search.
IT Resume Formatting Best Practices
Having dealt with ways to stay (relatively) calm during an IT job search, let's get into some nuts-and-bolts IT resume tips. I'll start with tech resume formatting—both because it's on everyone's mind and because there's a heck of a lot of misinformation out there.
Tip 5: Never, Ever Use an All-Bulleted IT Resume Format
I wrote about this at length not tool long ago, but I’m going to include the point here—because it’s really important.
Despite the ease of putting together an all-bulleted resume, and despite the relentless social media drumbeat that an all-bulleted IT resume is a good idea—all-bulleted resumes are the very devil to read. A lot of recruiters and hiring authorities will just give up rather than try to extract what's critical from a wall of bullets.
If everything is bulleted, nothing is. Use bullets only for things you want to stand out—real accomplishments that will get the hiring authority's attention.
Tip 6: Make a Clear Distinction Between Duties and Accomplishments
"So, how do I write an IT resume that's not all bulleted? It's all I see online." That's a good question. The simple answer: use paragraphs for duties and actions, and only use bullets for specific accomplishments. This can require a bit of rethinking of your career—but that's a valuable exercise in itself. My article on the CAR method may help you gain clarity on what belongs in a paragraph versus what belongs in a bullet.
But fundamentally, actions—the things things you done, the actions you've taken to get a job done shouldn't be bulleted. They're important, and should be in the resume, absolutely. But they should be in shorter, informational paragraphs. That makes it easy for the reader to know what is being read, and easier to skim for what's most important.
Tip 7: Use the Inverted Pyramid
This is another topic I'll explore in more depth in the future. But for now, I'll give the concept—which is pretty simple. If your experience supports it, give significantly more space to your current job, less to your previous job, and drop to a line or two for earlier experience.
There are a couple of reasons for this.
First, recruiters are most interested in what you've done lately. Early experience is less critical. Second, this structure gives a sense that you've been moving up, doing more, accomplishing more—and that's an important part of the story you want your tech resume to tell.
Tip 8: Unless You're Very Early Career, a One-Page IT Resume Is Never Enough
This is another point where I disagree, strongly, with the "experts" on Reddit and social media screaming that you should condense your tech resume to one page.
This is absolute, complete, utter, unmitigated nonsense. Balderdash. Foolishness.
So, how long should an IT resume be?
Generally, two pages. That's concise enough to be readable—while giving enough detail, enough context, to tell your story.
I know. I know. RECRUITERS ONLY SPEND .0000000003 SECONDS READING YOUR RESUME! I've disposed of that harmful myth in a previous post. Even if there's an initial quick read-through, hiring authorities want to see real meat, real detail. If they're going to invest time in even a quick initial call, they want to know it'll be worth it.
One page simply does not give enough information to support that decision.
IT Resume Content Best Practices
We've covered some strategies for avoiding misinformation, and a few IT resume formatting pointers. Now, it's time to discuss the content you want and need in your IT resume.
Tip 9: Focus on Accomplishments
Almost every IT resume I see is little more than a laundry list of actions—things the candidate has done, tools the candidate has used. These details matter, absolutely. But this largely recapitulates the job description and shows nothing that makes your IT resume stand out. Every security engineer does, largely, the same things. The same for every senior software engineer. The same for any CTO or CISO.
Your resume has to show why you're different, why you're better than the competition.
Hard, clear, quantified accomplishments are the easiest and most compelling way to make your IT resume—and your IT career—stand out. And in my view, accomplishments are the only things that should be bulleted in a well-crafted IT resume.
Tip 10: But Accomplishments Aren't Enough
I know. I know. I never said writing an IT resume was easy. After 15 years as an IT resume writer, I can tell you absolutely that it's not.
Yes, you need accomplishments. But you also need to give the context of those accomplishments so the reader understands what you've actually done.
A bulleted accomplishment without context is a bit like a punchline without the joke. Consider this example:
• Mitigated potentially billions of dollars in legal liability, technical cost, reputational damage, and national security risk.
That's a mighty strong bullet, and it's likely to get the hiring authority's attention. But it leaves the reader asking a lot of questions. Take the time to think through not only the endpoint, but the process you took to get there—and craft that story into your IT resume.
Broader IT Resume Strategies
Every IT resume needs to be a strategic document. Here are a few strategies for addressing your specific career objectives.
Tip 11: Include Leadership Where Relevant
Not every IT professional is interested in leadership—but for those who are, it's important to include it. I'm planning on writing an extended article on this in the near future. But for now, include your team sizes—both for a given role and for specific projects. Your main team may be 10, but if you're leading project teams of 50, that's an important data point.
Also, leadership means everyone you've led—not only direct reports. If you've led teams of direct, indirect, matrixed, and vendor resources, add up that total number—it'll give the reader a clear view of the scope of your leadership experience.
Tip 12: Call Out Promotions
Recruiters, generally, like to see candidates who have been moving up, taking on more, delivering more. So, if this is relevant to your IT career, mention at the head of each new opportunity that you were promoted into that opportunity. It's a small thing, but builds the sense that your career has momentum.
Simply starting each job with "Promoted to position with expanded scope..." helps show this, and helps the recruiter think you're ready for your next step up, too.
IT Resume Grammar & Style
Ok, I really enjoy grammar. I'm a writer and an amateur linguist so for me, grammar is fascinating.
I realize I'm pretty unusual in that. So, without getting too deeply into the weeds, here are a few tips on IT resume grammar and style that are easy to implement.
Tip 13: Get Your Verb Tense Right
This is actually pretty straightforward, but there's genuine confusion about tense in IT resumes. Duties in your current job are written in the present tense—"Lead a team of 34. Manage a $3M budget,"—because they're ongoing actions.
Everything else should be in the simple past tense. That includes initiatives and accomplishments in your current role, and everything in previous roles: "Led team of 25 in migration from on-prem to cloud..."
Tip 14: Resumes Are Written in Implied First Person
This is getting a bit more technical, but it's important. What I mean by "implied first person" is this.
You shouldn't include "I" in a resume—it's not considered best practice. But the document is written as though the "I" were there. "I led a team of 25..." becomes "Led team of 25." This is what readers are used to; including "I" can seem a bit jarring or unprofessional.
A couple of additional style notes:
- Omit small words. Generally, drop articles like "a" or "the." It makes for a punchier style and saves space—and in a complete IT resume, space is always at a premium.
- Put periods at the end of sentences. "Reduced costs by $500K" looks like a fragment, but in resume style it's treated as a complete sentence and gets a full stop. Honestly, not a huge deal—but worth knowing.
As an IT resume writer with more than 15 years of experience helping tech professionals land their next role, there's a lot more I could say on each of these topics—so I'll keep interspersing these tips articles with my longer deep-dives as new topics come up.
If you'd like to learn more about how I work, and what me different from most other IT resumes writers?
We should talk. Because I speak IT.