English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

1) Zebulon W. Rouse
-Quantified specifics on experiences
-Design was easy to read

2)Kristin M. Hines
-Precise objective statement
-Lots of relevant experience, with quantified details
-Design-good horizontal page utilization.

3)Michael J Sheridan
-Good positioning of text and good use of bullets
-Parallel action verbs, quantified experience

4)Emil Stefanov
-Parallel action verbs
-Excellent experience
-Impressive education background

5)Joseph R. Davies
-Excellent and well directed objective
-Well organized layout-nice use of page break lines
-Good use of parallel action verbs

Kristen M. Hines
-Strong objective
-Looks professional and somewhat unique
-Employment section is well laid out and easy to read

Joseph R. Davies
-Good personalized objective
-Work experience section is well designed
-Activities and honors are well thought out
-Clean looking resume, would pass the quadrant test well.

Emil Stefanov
-Good education section with strong numeric indicators
-Professional Experience section is well laid out
-Patents section is a nice unique way to show off your skills
-Strong relevant skills section
-Nice awards section with numerical values to express your skills in these events

Jack Kennedy
-Strong specific objective
-Good job on showing your strong work experience before your schooling. This can help reduce biased decisions based on education.
-Clean professional layout

Zebulon W. Rouse
-Great overall appearance, grabbed my attention very well
-Relevant coursework section is laid out well and has a nice symmetric appearance
-Experience section has a nice professional look to it
-Overall appearance is very professional and unique

After quickly scanning all of the attached resumes, the five individuals that I think I would likely call first for a hypothetical position would be Zebulon Rouse, William Dietz, Shane Coleman, Kristin Hines, and Adam Waters. I think these people did the best job of catching the reader's attention and really taking full advantage of the one-page layout. In each case, there is no issue with excessive white, or negative, space and information is very well formatted and displayed. I also preferred these resumes because of their simplicity and ease of use. There were many others, being similarly formatted, that I thought contained too much information (including mine). I think these weren’t as aesthetically pleasing and made it much more difficult to find information.

The five people I would interview are Matthew J. Moryl, Emil Stefanov, Isaac Townsend, Brian O’Leary, and Michael J Sheridan. I noticed that these resumes had work experience where they helped the company by stating the contribution they made. I also noticed that some had extracurricular activities that show that they do more than just study as well as belonging to groups that do not have negative associations to them. In the case for Emil, I noticed he had worked with major companies as well as a lot of technical skills associated with each job. He also had various awards and patents which stood out.

I noticed while reviewing these resumes I skipped the objective and education part right off the bat. I figured I would look closer at them if I needed to narrow down the candidates. I let their experiences speak for them instead of their educational background.

The top 5 resumes that I would choose to call the individual for an interview were of Adam Persohn, Patrick Griffin, William H. Dietz, Matthew W. Mckissick, and Shane Coleman.
I thought the organizational and design aspects of Matthew, William, and Patrick immediately made them easy to read.
Shane, Adam, and William all had very impressive experience that I think would make them a good candidate for a lot of different jobs.
All of these resumes had the valuable information that job recruiters look for without having too much information to scare the recruiter away.

The five top resumes that I would pick would be Adam Persohn, Adam Waters, Bobby Dunford, Joseph R. Davies, and William Dietz.

Every single one of these resumes I stopped on and decided to scan them over because they were so neat and they were by far organized the best. All of them did the best job in catching my attention by having amazing personal information about themselves, especially Adam W. and William. None of them really had any wasted or white space left throughout their resumes either. Both Adams and Joseph also had great work experience and did a good job relating to the job they were applying for. All of these resumes did the best job of catching my eye and they all made it easy to read once they had. They all had just the right amount of information for me to continue reading, and not look over because they were too long.

Dean Basso
-Simple yet effective design
-Plenty of work relevant work experience that demonstrates skills

Emil Stefanov
-An extraordinary amount of work experience at a variety of companies
-Having patents prior to graduating from college is incredible
-Good organization of numerous skills

Joseph Davies
-Very clean and professional looking design
- Natural organization and flow of information
- Strong objective that clearly states the purpose

Kristin Hines
-Resume clearly show her ability to create professional looking publications
-Plenty of employment while maintaining a 4.0 GPA

William Dietz
-Strong objective that ties in directly with the targeted company
-Good use of bullets

Among the top five, I have chosen are: Adam Persohn, Joseph Davies, Gary Scamehorn, Brandon Jones, and Kristin Hines. These resumes were well organized, easy to scan, and had minimal white space showing. The information wasn’t cluttered making it easier to sort through. Name, experiences, and relative class work, were the order in which I found myself looking at the resumes. The name was bold and at the top. The experiences were well laid out and descriptive. The class work had purpose in the pursuit of a particular field of work. Overall these are the ones that grabbed my attention and made me want to read further into them.

I felt like this exercise was difficult because the resumes weren't all designed for the same job, or even the same field. Because I didn't know most of the time what people were going for, I tried to pick resumes with focused objective statements and content that clearly and effectively supported those statements. Two of the resumes stood out to me just because they came from people who've worked for companies I have worked for. I know it seems lazy, but it demonstrates the power of networking, which really just gives your target a bias toward you and a reason to give you special consideration. Besides that they both had good resumes and I already know both are competent workers: Kristen from personal experience and Isaac from talking about a job we've had in common. No joke; networking is important and it certainly made an impression me when I was trying to get to 5 resumes from 35 in 10 minutes.

Kristin Hines

• Focused objective
• Good Design
• Good experiences with simple but effective descriptions

Chris Kirkwood

• Highly speciallized resume for desired job
• Resume simple and to the point

Joseph Davies

• Focused objective
• Good design, though written statement could use a little more clarity
• Impressive experiences and activities/honors

Emil Stefanov

• Diverse and impressive list of experiences
• Descriptions effective and to-the-point

Isaac Townsend

• Focused and concise objective
• Mass. Electric means something to me
• From my standpoint in a similar role, I'm impressed by what's been accomplished

There was one item I used as a filter: objective statements that talked about gaining experience and/or developing skills. I was actually surprised to see so many of these. I'll refer to Instructor Blog 2, which says:

"Be careful also to not talk about what you want. HR professionals often see resumes that say 'To secure an entry level position that will develop my network of contacts in the medical field.' This essentially admits that you are using the job as a stepping stone to something better. What company wants that employee?"

After reading through all of these resumes, I realize working in HR may not be all that easy. I tried to get as much as I could out of the first few, until I realized I was taking way too much time. The primary thing I ended up looking for was a good layout that made it easy to find different information. I also looked for a good balance of information in different sections, rather than too much in certain areas. The resumes that I chose for an interview were: Justin E. Greer, Kristin M. Hines, Joseph R. Davies, Matthew W. McKissick, and Zebulon W. Rose. All of these people utilized the space on the resume page well. I was able to find all of the information that I was looking for without having to search and they also didn't have excessive white spaces. Interestingly enough, when I went back to give these a second look, they pretty much all had a great deal of relevant experience and activities. I also realized afterwards that I completely ignored the objective statements of all the resumes. Overall, I found these five to be either the most suited candidates for a hypothetical position or the people that are best at formatting their resumes and gearing them for their primary audience.

The five resumes that I chose were Stella, Kennedy, Hess, Davies, and Coleman. All of these resumes have common qualities that i liked. The one main thing that was recognizable was how well organized they were and the use of bullets and other extras that helped catch my eye while glancing over them. Another reason why I chose these five were the descriptions that were provided for describing their past work experiences and the activities that they had participated in. Lastly the over all layout of the resumes was done well. They used space well and didn't leave any spaced unoccupied.

The resumes I chose were Adam Waters, Dean Basso, Zebulon Rouse, Bobby Dunford and Joseph Davies. All of these resumes caught my attention when I came across them, and most of them looked much like I expected a resume too. They all had strong layouts without a lot of excessive white space, and used bullets and bolding effectively to organize their information and make it easy to find. They all had strong active verbs and specific objective statements. In particular, I thought Joseph did a good job with his objective statement in telling what he could offer the company specifically (as recommended in Instructor Blog #2).

My top five picks would be Sheridan, Davies, Moryl, Stefanov, and Rouse. The main reasons I chose these five were from their organization and experience. Organization of the resume was a much bigger factor than I thought it would be. These five made good use of their white space and they grabbed my attention. It was also surprising just how much a bland font made it tough to stand out when being compared to many resumes that utilized an original font. They also had good prior experience where they were given responsibilities where they seemed to excel. Lastly, if they included G.P.A. then that was a big boost for me (if it was good of course).

Joseph G. Meisberger
-Skills section was very easy to read and pick out skills that an employer would be looking for
-Showed how work experience has benefited company

Justin Greer
-Formatting made the positions easily stand out. Being knowledgeable about the position in the tech field I could easily guess what he had done without having to read the position summary
-Extensive skills section

Dean Basso
-Use of horizontal lines to break up sections made it is to skip to the section that I was most interested in
-Bolding the positions made it very clear what he had done. I could skip to the position that interested me and read what task he had performed.

Scott Stella
-Summary of qualifications was like a ClifNoted version of resume, told me what he as going to tell me and then told me
-Formatting was very easy to read

Stephen Shubeck
-Objective clearly stated what he was looking for in the position
-Bulleted work experience was very easy to scan

One thing that bothered me about a majority of the resumes was this sentence: "References available on request". In my opinion this a pretty obvious and therefore unnecessary statement. If you want a job at a company and they want references, you'd better provide them. Just my two cents.

The resumes I would select are:

1. Kristin M. Hines
- I really enjoy the layout of this resume and it is extremely easy to read.
- Skills and education are easily found and worded well.
- Employment history is thorough.
2. Michael J Sheridan
- Overall design certainly caught my eye.
- Relevant information is easily available.
3. Brian O’Leary
- This resume design is simple, but informative.
- I am able to identify most everything I needed to know with a simple glance.
4. Matthew W. McKissick
- Simple overall design but clearly identifiable information is available.
- Education and relevant course work is very informative
- Clean design would scan easily
5. Scott M. Stella
- I like the design of this of this resume; it seems a bit more modern.
- Though the design is much different in comparison to all the others, all info is clear.

Deciding which resumes were the best was somewhat difficult, but I think I've come up with a good list (which is in no particular order). The first is Michael Sheridan. He makes good use of the available space and the page seems to be balanced well. He also quantifies his job experiences and accomplishments. Kristin Hines makes good use of column alignment, she highlights her job experience with bold font, and she has a clear objective statement tailored for the job. William Dietz also highlights his experiences and activities with large font and uses parallel verbs in his descriptions. Scott Stella uses eye-catching fonts and formats along with enough detail to effectively fill the page. Zebulon Rouse's is easy to read, the details are organized nicely, and many of the verbs agree with each other. Looking over all of these resumes in such a short period of time made me realize that I only notice a few things from each one. It's important that the page is balance from left to right and top to bottom, because it's more difficult to read otherwise. I also found that I prefer an objective statement to be included so I know what kind of job the person is expecting. Some of the resumes were either overcrowded to the point that I didn't want to read them or too lean, giving me the idea that the applicant may not have much experience to offer.

1.) Kristin Hines
-Clear\Professional objective statement
-Easy to read layout/design
-Experience in the field that shows development

2.) Shane Coleman
-Good use of space (catches attention)
-Has valuable experience
-High GPA

3.) Joseph Davies
-Captures attention with professional design (colors)
-Very focused and professional objective statement
-Very high GPA for field

4.) Justin Greer
-Good use of alignment, eyes follow easily
-Experience shows development
-Extensive/Detailed Skills list

5.) Michael Sheridan
-Bullets draw attention well
-Uses detail oriented phrases to describe work experience
-Extracurricular activities apply to the field

The five resumes I selected are from: Davies, Stefanov, Nolan, Sheridan, and Hines. All of these resumes caught my attention because of their clean layout and were easy to scan quickly and effectively. There is great use of space on each without being too wordy. All of the information I wanted to see stood out easily and was written in a clear concise fashion. It was also easy to notice the use of parallel verbs to clearly state job experience and accomplishments. Doing this in such a short time really made me realize what I look for when reading a resume quickly with the intention of grabbing as much information as possible.

The top five resumes I chose were from Adam Waters, Kristen Hines, Mike Sheridan, Joseph Davies, and Scott Stella. I tried not to focus too much on too much on education and a lot of details, but mainly on the feel and layout of each. These five made their information very clear and easy to find. Some I notice were overly crowed, while other seems stretched too thin trying to fill up the page. I also liked how I could get a lot of information from each of them in a short period of time. I did notice I skipped through some of the resumes quicker if I didn’t see something I liked early on. This really shed some like on the resume reviewing process.

1) Michael Sheridan
-Very well organized resume. Good use of bullets/spacing
-Used all parallel verbs
-Quantified all work experience

2)Jack Kennedy
-Very clear objective
-Used parallel verbs well
-Lots of relevant work experience

3)Scott Stella
-Summary of qualifications sections makes it very easy to see if he fits the job requirements
-Well organized work experience

4)William Dietz
-Well organized and easy to read
-Quantified job descriptions/experiences

5)Matthew McKissick
--Clean well organized layout
-Clear objective
-Doesn't over do anything. Everything on the resume is relevant to his skills or experience in the field

The five resumes I spent the most time on, and the five people I would be interested in are Zebulon Rouse, Isaac Townsend, Joseph Davies, William Dietz and Dean Basso, in no particular order.

I found myself looking for strong designs with a good education/relevant coursework/skills section. If the resume was easy to comprehend, then I moved on to their objective and education. These five people provided resumes with good, easy to read layouts. The designs are neat and fit in the page well and their objectives were strong and focused. The resumes contain a good use of vocabulary without reaching or being too wordy. They present relevant work experiences that will help their employer.

I found this rather easy and difficult at the same time. As I scanned through all of the resumes, I filtered out ones that were poorly formatted or uneasy to read. While this made my decision a lot easier, I realized that I had eliminated some resumes that exhibited very strong educations and work experiences. My time ran out before I was able to fully comprehend these resumes.

1. Emil Stefanov
Out of everyone’s resume, this one by far the best. The layout was great and very clear and clean cut. The resume speaks for itself and does not exaggerate. The experience section is unreal and very impressive.
2. Kristin Hines
I really liked the layout of the resume. It was very clean and unique. I usually do not like bullets but they really work well in this resume. Also a 4.0/4.0 is not bad either.
3. Brandon Jones
The resume is clean and not cluttered. Each section is properly organized and easy to navigate through the document. Even though some say white space is not good in a resume I like this one.
4. Bobby Dunford
The resume is easy and to the point. The sections are properly separated and well spread out. The work experience shows gradual increase in jobs.
5. Matthew Moryl
Flight careers are hard to show experience and this one shows it very well. I like the statistics in the custom section of “Flight Experience”. This shows that the resume was well thought out.

After reviewing the set of all resumes, the following 5 individuals submitted the most appealing, readable and professional resumes, in my opinion.

Adam Waters
- Clean, easy to read layout
- Ample real-world experience in fields relating to personal objective
- Reputable list of activities and community service

Kristin Hines
- Perfect 4.0 GPA from Purdue!
- Specific personal objective
- Employment history directly relates to desired career goal
- Professional and appealing resume layout

Emil Stefanov
- Impressive educational history
- Highly reputable list of professional experience
- Pending patents
- Ample list of skills relevant to desired position

Jack Kennedy
- Professional, easy to read resume layout
- Impressive GPA
- Relevant skills correlating to career objective

William Dietz
- Specific career objective
- Impressive educational history
- Relevant coursework and activities
- Effective resume layout

The resumes that stuck out for me were: Zebulon Rouse, Young M. Yang, Jack Kennedy, Michael Sheridan, and Kristin Hines. I liked the overall design of these resumes. I felt that they were easy to view and made good use of the page. I liked how they each had a type of style that made them stand out in a way that you remembered as you viewed all of the resumes at once. They each had a pretty good column feel to them that balanced them out.

The five that i would call for an interview would be Zebulon Rouse, Joseph Davies, Kristin Hines, Emil Stefanov, and William Dietz. These resumes each had something that caught my attention. When reading them more thoroughly I found that that all had either a strong objective statement or relevant experience. The organization was effective and when using and they passed when I used the resume critiquing techniques.

Emil Stefanov
-Very impressive professional job experience
-Three majors while maintaining a 3.8 GPA
-Outstanding awards,skills, and patents

Joseph Davies
-Past job experiences are relevant to job desired
-Impressive GPA in a demanding major
-Active in community while being a full time student

Adam Waters
-Professional written resume,easy to read, and grabs my attention
-Dynamic in skills,work experiences, and activities
-Strong work experience that relates to objective statement

Zebulon Rouse
-Relevant course work towards objective
-Professionally organized and displayed
-Great work experience that are relevant to job desired.

Justin Greer
-Excellent work experience
-Certification with software
-Resume is very easy to read to find information fast

I really enjoyed looking over everyone's resume and I found five that I felt were layed out well enough to recieve a call for an interview. They were: Kristen Hines, Joseph Davies, Isaac Townsend, Emil Stefanov, and Zebulon Rouse. I felt that these resumes did the most effective job of using the white space on the page. Most of the resumes included relavent information and used action words to describe their experiences, but after the readings we have done, that should be a given. These individuals combined those neccesities with layout design principles that will get them noticed. Many of them used different fonts and exagerated their important information to make it easy to find. They also utilized the entire page, which allowed them to used a font size that people don't have to squint to see.

The top 5 resumes I noticed were from Kristin M. Hines, Jack Kennedy, Adam Waters, Dean Basso, and Emil Stefanov. Each of these had a very organized easy to read layout. They all followed many of the keypoints we have read about writing resumes and were tailored to their audience. Kristine had plenty of experience with her listed companies and was precise about what she did there and wrote them relevantly. Jack too had some very relevant and qualified work experience that would make me very interested in him as a potential employer. The rest of these resumes had many other great aspects also. The all did an excellent job of making them easy to read through quickly and the flowed well from section to section. They also took a good advantage of using whitespace appropriately.

Emil Stefanov
-Great Experience – research, Microsoft, NVIDIA
-Numerous programming languages
-Nice awards

Zebulon Rouse
-Great use of different fonts, small caps, and italics
-Good experience

Joey Meisberger
-Easy to read skills
-Numerous past experiences
-Organized resume

Adam Waters
-Good experience
-Nice relevant coursework
-Great supplemental minor

.
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1. Young Yang
- Bicycled 4,000 miles across the US. That shows persistence and it stands out.
- A very elaborate list of skills and experience
- Well organized considering the amount of information
2. Kristin Hines
- Very relevant experience
- High GPA
- Fast graduation from Purdue (2007 – 2009)
- Well structured and clean resume
3. Michael Sheridan
- Significant and relevant work experience
- Specific details in work experience
- Clean, short, and to the point
4. Joseph Davies
- Very good mechanical background with 3 jobs
- High GPA
- Clear organization and great use of bolding
5. Dean Basso
- Three very relevant work experiences
- Specific details on accomplishments
- Very clear separation between sections with lines

Top 5 resumes.

Adam Walters- his resume was very organized, contained a strong, specific objective statement, and also had perfect reader friendly formatting.

Justin Greer- his resume contained great job experiences, also his in depth list of skills and certifications stand out.

Kristen Hines- Her resume was very eye catching because it is set up differently than most other resumes, that made it interesting.

Michael Sheridan- His resume contained a lot of great content, was very organized, and contained a lot of activities that will likely spark interest in an interview.

Matthew McKissick- his resume was different in that it contained his relative course work which was nice, also it was very organized and easy to read.