English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

Resume attached

Résumé attached.

The quotation in the instructors blog regarding resumes, “I keep seeing resumes that are little more than buckets into which a lot of data has been dumped in the apparent belief that I will fill in the gaps,” certainly hits home with me due to my IT background. It is completely understandable that just filling any report and or resume with loads of data just to give it bulk would be an overall bad idea. In writing my draft resume I will try to be careful about needlessly including insignificant details.

*attached (maybe)

This weeks readings about resumes has only reinforced what I have already learned and have been told, resumes are the most important part about getting a job. Most of the work that needs to be done when trying to get a job needs to be working on the resume. When working on the resume the single most important part would have to be overall appearance. If your resume looks like trash your chances for getting that job will be going there as well.

Although different employers may handle resume’s differently, they all have something in common: they only glance or scan through the resume’s until they convince themselves that the resume is worth serious attention. Because of the limited time that employers have to read resume’s, many people believe that a resume should be as short as possible so that the employer can read it all. “Instructor Blog #2” says just that. At a first glance this sounds like good advice, but let’s examine it carefully.

So it appears that writing the perfect resume based on the courses reading and past advice will be harder than IU basketball winning another game or the Cubs winning the World Series. CCO stresses to have a clear cut objective and good cover letter, while the article from Tech Life even said not to bother with a cover letter or objective.

I found all of the posted articles to be very informative and quite interesting. I actually came out of reading these, thinking to myself that my resume really sucks when I think of it. Fortunately I haven’t needed it in over a year now! I really think the most key point I got out of these readings was to put yourself in the shoes of a recruiter/resume reader. Really this goes back to considering your audience, as we have discussed before.

This week's reading featured a gauntlet of tips and information on creating a good resume. I've never had to craft a resume in the past, so this is all new to me. In my attempt to absorb all this information and in a few days churn out a rough draft of my first resume, I'll highlight some things I'm going to seriously take into consideration.