By J.M. Auron, Expert IT Resume Writer—The Best IT Resume Writing Services for More than 15 Years.
In the more than 15 years that I've been sole proprietor of one of the best IT resume writing services in the US (and globally), I've noticed a number of common patterns that can weaken your IT resume—and negatively impact your IT career.
This problem has grown exponentially in the last couple of years, for a numbers of reasons—including the exaggerated fear of the AI apocalypse (and the concomitant obsession with ATS systems) and the endless drumbeat of bad, wrong-headed advice on platforms like Reddit.
So, in my own small way, I like to provide a (hopefully) sane voice to help IT professionals navigate the choppy seas these days.
Today, I'd like to talk about something I see very often in the resumes that my clients send me—and that's a lack of context for their accomplishments. This isn't something that many (I suspect) who aren't professional IT resume writers are likely to think about, but lack of context for your accomplishments can really weaken your CV—and in these difficult times, you need the best IT resume possible to showcase your career.
Now, it's understandable to not put a lot of thought into context. It's very easy to think up individual sentences (I suppose that's another reason all-bulleted is so popular). It's harder to see how everything in your career—from duties and responsibilities to results—ties together to tell one coherent, compelling story.
But Context is Critical in Your IT Resume
Good recruiters—they're a minority, and always were, but they exist—are looking for more than a random collection of skills, or even for a few great, bulleted accomplishments.
They're looking for a real, solid, three-dimensional candidate that they can submit for a job.
To find that candidate, the good recruiters need to know the context of your career, the context of your accomplishments
Without Context, Your IT Resume is Punchlines—with no Jokes
Let me give you an example of the importance of context. If someone said to you "To get to the other side!" you would, probably, stare at him pretty blankly. You might even smile and walk away discreetly.
But if the person said that same line to you as the punchline of the joke, "Why did the chicken cross the road?" (and you were one of the small number of people in the world who hadn't heard that joke before), you might laugh. At the very least, you'd understand what the other person was saying, and while you might question that person's sense of humor, you probably wouldn't assume that person to be, well, nuts.
A CV with accomplishment bullets—even if they're strong accomplishments—is rather like this. Without context, the bullet either won't make sense, or, what's more likely, won't have the impact and the clarity that it could have.
Use The CAR Method To Dig Into Context
Over the 15+ years I've been working as a professional IT resume writer, I've written a fair amount on the CAR method resume. I keep returning to the topic, because I've found it provides a valuable structure to think through your IT resume before and during the writing process.
CAR, of course, stands for challenge, actions, and results. Most tech resumes massively over-stress actions—with few real results.
That's not a compelling approach to writing your IT resume. Fundamentally, resumes of this sort end up recapitulating your job description (usually—and unfortunately—in the dreaded, ineffective, all-bulleted format).
That's why, in general, when I'm interviewing clients in my IT resume writing service, I focus on digging into their results, on what they've delivered.
Because results are the meat of the CV; without results, there's really very little reason for a hiring authority to call you back.
But Results Aren't Enough for a Strong IT Resume
I know this may seem counter-intuitive—and may argue against a lot of what you may have read from the "experts" on Reddit and other platforms.
But results, without context, while having some real value, aren't as effective as they need to be.
Here's an an example of what I mean.
• Mitigated potentially billions of dollars in legal liability, technical cost, reputational damage, and national security risk.
Now, don't get me wrong. That's a mighty strong bullet. It's likely to get the attention of the hiring authority.
But it leaves the reader asking a lot of questions—because there are a lot of paths to get to the goal described in this bullet. This could have to do with data policies, audits, technology changes, and many other things.
There's also the interpersonal side of an accomplishment like this. Were you the decision maker? Were you reporting directly to the decision makers? If so, how did you communicate urgency, how did you get buy-in for a transformation that—although important—may well have been more than a little uncomfortable for a lot of stakeholders?
This exercise could be repeated with any bullet that's just (as it were) hanging there in space.
Hopefully, you see my point. As I said above, an accomplishment, with no context is like a punchline without the joke—it seems random, doesn't make a lot of sense, and leaves the reader asking a lot of questions.
That's Why ConteXt Really Is King
It's the context of your accomplishments that gives those accomplishments real depth, that makes the accomplishments compelling, persuasive—and makes your CV stand out from the crowd that don't provide enough information to hiring authorities.
How to Include Context in your IT Resume
First, use the CAR method and take some time to think through your IT career—focusing on your current role—before you start writing. This can pay real dividends—and help you craft a resume that will be more than a list of random, unrelated bullets.
Once you have this structure in your mind, it can be helpful to focus first on the "C" in CAR—the challenges you were addressing, the problems you were solving. This gives the overall reasons for what you were doing. Now, when I'm writing an IT resume, I sometimes include the challenge explicitly; more often I don't. But understanding the challenge, having a the sense of the "why" you were doing something makes finding the "what" you were doing a lot easier.
Next—rather than thinking immediately about the action you took on the initiative—try to think about the results you delivered.
Did you save money? Enable new revenue? Increase uptime? Grow security? Mitigate risk? Now write a bullet to encompass that. Then look at the draft bullet and ask yourself, "What questions would I have if I read this and didn't have context? If I didn't know what the initiative was or what I'd done?"
Then, with the challenge, the results, and the questions in mind, go back and write the actions you've taken—with the objective, not of giving a laundry list of activities, but rather of using the actions you've taken to give color and depth to your accomplishments and to answer the questions the hiring authority may well have about what you've done.
Once you got this, you'll see that your IT resume is looking very different from previous versions—with a lot more to interest the reader, and keep the hiring manager's attention.
You'll see that, rather than a random list of duties or accomplishments, you're telling a story. I'll be writing about that aspect of IT resumes in a future article.
Final Thoughts
I hope that I've been able to demonstrate in this article that without context, you're limiting the power, effectiveness, and reach of your IT resume. I also hope that I've given some background on how to use the CAR method to better understand the pieces of your career—and to find the context for what you've accomplished.
If you'd like to learn more about how I craft IT resumes—based on my 15+ years as one of the best IT resume writing services...
We should talk. Because I speak IT.