I got the Air Force civ job, and I start May 15th. I believe it was worth the 4 month wait. Warner Robins GA, here I come!
Thanks everyone for resume help and job advice!
*****
I am finishing my MS in Computer Science, and I'm working on getting my resume ready to send out. Can anyone critique it for me? Any comments are appreciated, especially those from those of you working as (or hiring ) programmers. I'm particularly interested in your thoughts on the profile section. Also, do I need GPA on there anywhere? It is 3.9+, so I'm not really trying to hide it.
The resume is 3 lines too long - I think I'll cut out the non-CS related items.
You can comment on the website too, if you'd like... but it's not meant to be a great one, nor will it be my professional home on the web.
2) I would give a brief summary of the research project you mention in the profile. An employer will likely care more about that then, say, your experience as a grader. Add it to the "Professional Experience" section and rename it "Research Experience." Or whatever.
3) Unless you're submitting online I might cut the "relevant coursework." Having lots of keywords helps with online searches, but doesn't give a nice visual interpretation.
4) Take any significant research projects you did for those classes listed in "relevant coursework" and summarize them in a "Research Experience" section at the top.
5) Limit the Honors to the three or four you are most proud of. For instance, President of your local ACM chapter is great. Being a member of a sociology honors society is not very relevant for this resume (unless you're working in a-life or something, but even then I don't find it very wow-ing).
Overall, I like the presentation; it's well organized and scannable. My biggest point is that your potential employer will likely care more about specific projects you've worked on (especially team projects) than almost anything else.
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If not, can you study some of the key concepts and practices enough to know what you are talking about in an interview?
Because I haven't checked in the last seven months or so, but for the six months I was looking for a programming job before that, literally 90% of the programming jobs I found were doing J2EE development. A quick look at a local Omaha job site, and this appears to still be the case. There are a couple .Net jobs, a couple mainframe jobs, a handful of C++ jobs, and then literally dozens and dozens of J2EE jobs.
I wasn't getting any luck getting interviews, because just about every company wanted J2EE experience. One head-hunter I was talking to was desperate to fill a J2EE position, and asked me if I could take a J2EE proficiency test even though I told them I didn't know much about it.
So for the next week I studied J2EE for about 14 hours a day, and ended up getting a respectable score on the test. I didn't end up getting offered the position, but this gave me the confidence to put J2EE (along with EJBs, Servlets, JSPs, and all the related J2EE technologies) on my resume.
The difference was immediate. I started getting some very promising interviews, and I now have an awesome job doing J2EE development for some pretty decent pay.
So that's my advice to anyone looking to get a programming job, especially if you know Java.
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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I've looked at a lot of computer resumes and yours is one of the shortest and ironically I was able to get an idea what you can do more from yours then I could from most of the long ones I've read.
Every time we have an opening we get dozens of resumes and they all start looking so much alike. It is nice to be able to see quickly what skills you have. Ironically, the long ones seem to be try to write down everything they've ever done on a computer so it seems like they have experience. I think they do this to make up for their lack of knowledge and skill.
Personally, I look for 3 things in a resume.
First, the minimum requirements. My group works on Macs, and so many resumes I get just plain lack any Mac experience (why would someone even apply????).
Second, I look for the ability to work in the group. Once we hired someone who knew too much. Didn't work out well.
Third, I look for someone who can grow. It is almost easier to hire a newbie who is still interested and capable of learning and try to train them to be what we really need.
Posts: 1209 | Registered: Dec 2003
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Xavier - thank you, that is very helpful! Can you recommend some J2EE resources? I've done a little bit (Distributed Computing class), but I don't think I can use it.
human - clarity was my goal, thank you for the positive feedback in that regard.
I have lots to think about, and lots to do. Keep it coming!
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No problem, dude, happy to help in any way I can. I spent a very long time without a job, and I would love to spare other talented programmers the same limbo I was in.
Pretty straightforward. I concentrated on chapters 1, 3, 4, 11, 12, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30. Basically, you need to know about Servlets, JSPs, each type of Bean (especially session beans and entity beans), and about the J2EE webserver in general (what the different containers do, Ears, deployment descriptors, that sort of thing). Knowing the difference between bean-managed-persistance and container-managed-persistance is key as well. Chapters 15, 16, 17, 28, 33 are helpful, but aren't as essential.
I also looked at a bunch of other online resources, basically googling "Session Beans" or "Servlets" or whatever specific thing I felt that I didn't know as much about as I should. There's a lot of helpful stuff out there.
Oh and one thing which tripped me up at the interviews was not knowing about the different application servers.
Basically, there are two J2EE application servers which businesses use: weblogic (BEA), and websphere (IBM). Not knowing much about either was a hard thing to overcome at an interview, and knowing the basics of both should be very helpful if you are in the same position. I'm not sure what resources are out there about either.
When I did get J2EE job, all the concepts I'd studied so hard made it very easy to learn the more practical aspects (as opposed to the conceptual ones), and I've been doing extremely good work here.
One last point, most job listings for J2EE will request that you have 3-5 years experience or something similar. Ignore that, apply anyway. There are a lot more J2EE jobs than there are good J2EE programmers to fill them. Most will interview a promising young graduate who has the concepts to build from. Especially if you have an M.S. degree.
Oh and work on your cover letter. After I was hired, they told me that after reading my cover letter, they just had to interview me. It was confident, well written, and to the point. They even mentioned it again at my six month review (which was about as glowing a review as possible ).
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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Will B, there is a bit of a story behind the papers. Our first paper was accepted, but then we decided to pull the paper. Our reason was simple - the deadline to submit and the acceptance date were less than a week apart. We read that as a money making scheme, and didn't want to waste our research there. The ACM paper is being reviewed now, and we won't know until later if we've been accepted. Of course, the theses are unpublished.
As for the language, I hesitate to call it a compiler. There's a lexer and a parser, but no AST is created and no code generated. The end result is a list of clauses in LISP format {(1 2 3),...} which are created via complex SQL statements. So, the first two steps are compileresque, but it deviates at the end. Maybe my compiler mental construct is too constrained?
Posts: 1069 | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote: I've looked at a lot of computer resumes and yours is one of the shortest and ironically I was able to get an idea what you can do more from yours then I could from most of the long ones I've read.
Every time we have an opening we get dozens of resumes and they all start looking so much alike. It is nice to be able to see quickly what skills you have. Ironically, the long ones seem to be try to write down everything they've ever done on a computer so it seems like they have experience. I think they do this to make up for their lack of knowledge and skill.
I've found that in this line of business, the resume is less relevant than in others. I don't mean Human2.0 specifically but most tech recruiters don't even look at the resumes to see if you're really qualified. They'll pass you on as long as the acronyms (J2EE, HTML, SQL, etc.) match up to the search terms they've been given.
Posts: 176 | Registered: Aug 1999
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About publications: even if you didn't publish it, it's still worth citing. ("Submitted to Publication X" or "Technical report #blah-blah-blah" are OK.) If I see a list of papers w/o any citation information, I wonder if it's just term papers for a class, and if the author doesn't know the difference. If you submitted to an ACM pub, it shows you're in the right ball park, even if you don't get an acceptance.
You could refer to your non-compiler as an interpreter. Or you could point out that you "implemented" the language.
Posts: 1877 | Registered: Apr 2005
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"Implemented a not-quite-but-pretty-close-compiler..."
Thanks for the ideas on the pubs, Will. We're going to submit a long paper on the work later, assuming the ACM paper is accepted. Honestly, the work we've done on the SAT system has been exciting and interesting. Who says it's work? I enjoyed every minute of it... well, except debugging hundreds or thousands of lines of PL/SQL. ACK!
Posts: 1069 | Registered: Feb 2005
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I'm no programmer but I couldn't help but cringe when I heard that you wanted to put your GPA in there. Nothing screams "student" and "fresh out of school" like advertising your GPA. If you really must, do it subtle. For example, if you have an Education section, add your school and mention you graduated with honors.
EDIT: I see you have already done this.
I second Xavier's idea for the cover letter. Go ahead, be a little cocky.
EDIT: Yeah, and try to keep it to one page.
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How does Omaha sound? It's really not that bad, I assure you. Put J2EE in there and I'm sure Xavier would pass it on. I think they are still hiring.
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I must admit, this is the first time I've heard of doing a cover letter. I'm totally clueless on what to include in that.
To add GPA or not to add GPA, that is the question. Personally, I want to leave it out. If they want to know, they can ask, right?
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Valentine- Really? GPA=bad? What if you are fresh out of college or looking for an internship? I'm also a Political Science major, would that make a difference?
Posts: 4655 | Registered: Jan 2002
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Another thing you could try is to taylor your resume to fit the specific job requirement. Employers prefer you to have specialized knowledge in one platform rather than basic knowledged in a variety of areas. For example, if the job is for Java then emphasize your Java knowledge instead of just putting it down as one of the things you know.
I had a friend who would change his resume so that it looked like he had prior experience. If it was a VB requirement, he would say he did a previous project in VB even if it was actually done in some other language. It works well enough for him. He had the basic knowledge and was good enough that he could pick things up quickly once he got the job.
Posts: 176 | Registered: Aug 1999
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I think if you're just graduating from college or still in college and looking for an internship, by all means put the GPA on there. In your case, it looks like all of your professional experience is in the academic arena, so the GPA (as an indicator of your success in that arena) should probably be included, especially if it's in the 3.9 range.
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ET, you make a good point. Perhaps GPA is the best way to indicate my success in my academic experience. Now, do I include all GPAs or only the latest (grad school)?
Posts: 1069 | Registered: Feb 2005
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In my experience, the only time you should ever include a GPA is when you're fresh out of school and you expect that all the other applicants will also be fresh out of school -- and, furthermore, expect that your GPA will be better than theirs. The vast majority of the time, it'll do you no favors -- especially if you've actually managed some non-academic success in other categories.
Putting a GPA on a resume is like saying "Hi! I'm young and eager and will work for next to nothing because I don't know any better! And you can mold me into the type of human being you want me to be!" Which is a great disguise if you're actually nothing like that, but probably not something you want to admit if it's true.Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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edgardu, I expect that I'll be developing in Java, so I should emphasize that. I am good with C as well , but I expect most people don't care about that. My experience with C++ is casual at best, but I could pick it up pretty quickly.
Your friend must have gotten into some interesting situations when he was hired on a resume like that. I think I'll keep my resume practices ethical, on both moral and practical grounds.
Posts: 1069 | Registered: Feb 2005
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So Tom, I am fresh out of school... and it wouldn't surprise me if my competition is as well. For the last point, I'm not too sure if a 3.95 is strong enough to add. Your thoughts?
EDIT: On the other hand, I don't want to give the impression that I'm willing to work for nothing!
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I think a 3.95 is perfectly presentable, especially in Computer Science. You should be proud of it. And if you think your competition is also likely to be newly out of school, I'd absolutely put the GPA on there -- or else just mention your Honors degree, without assigning a number to it. And if you aren't actually willing to work for nothing, you don't need to SAY that until they make their first salary offer. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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I'd be more proud of it if I had gone to some other school than Emory. Granted, they have a good reputation... in the humanities and social sciences. Pretty much all of the students in the MS program were over 3.5.
Thanks for the input, Tom!
Posts: 1069 | Registered: Feb 2005
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No wait! I do remember! I did tell you that shouldn't put your GPA on there but you fought me. We ended up working it in because you were so damn proud of it.
Posts: 2064 | Registered: Dec 2003
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Why bother doing well in college if you aren't going to put your GPA on a resume? Seems like if you aren't going to grad school, there's no reason to get anything better than the minumum grades to pass your classes.
I'm not saying you guys are wrong about this, but I think it stinks that its probably true.
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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Yea, I have a 4.0 and right now it's about the only thing I do have going for me, since I'm not really in any organizations and I don't have much work experience.
Posts: 4655 | Registered: Jan 2002
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I've incorporated some of your ideas into the resume. Also online are summaries of my papers/research. Resume Publications
Again, comments about the website are appreciated, but not expected or solicited. I'm no web designer, nor do I aspire to be one.
Posts: 1069 | Registered: Feb 2005
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I like it. I like the way you incorporated the GPA; it allows you to brag a little, but it's obviously not your main point, which I think is appropriate.
My only comment is you are a little long winded about your thesis project, especially since it's the first thing on the resume. I'd try to decrease the description to its bare bones, something that will picque a reader's interest but not give a full exposition. If they want more info they'll ask, which is exactly what you want them to do.
<edit> I should also say that my favorable regard for GPA may be influenced by working at an academic research lab. I always judge applicants by their GPA first, and then use other information to flesh out the picture. This is probably due to the academic nature of my work more than anything else.</edit>
Posts: 2926 | Registered: Sep 2005
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I'd remove your A.A. degree. It'd give you another line to work with, and doesn't present any new information.
blacwolve, it's perfectly acceptable (even expected, I'd say) to leave your GPA on while you're in school. College is your main "job" for the time being, and a high GPA shows that you're good at your "job." For undergrads, anything above a 3.0 should be put on the resume, since most interviewers will assume it's less than that if it's not on your resume. If you don't have at least a 3.0, but, say, you do in the classes you've taken for your major, then you can list "major GPA" and whatever the score is. (This doesn't apply to you, of course, blacwolve - awesome GPA )
This is what I've been told by my career center, the Management Fellow program here at DePauw, and by actual interviewers/recruiters.
Posts: 2409 | Registered: Sep 2003
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In "programming languages," there's a space before a comma. It should be after the comma.
Other than that, looks good.
I agree with X -- cover letters are important. You can show that you've done a bit of research about the company in your cover letter, which is something you can't do in a resume.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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Xavier, I've been spending some time reading the Sun J2EE tutorial. I've found it quite useful for learning concepts - but the specifics elude me. For one, the tutorial is almost annoyingly Sun-centric. Of course I expect it to be... but for a tutorial, it is very lacking in actual teaching. I have no idea how to use the tools or application server, as the source code already provides everything you need to get running - with no real input from the user. I don't understand what asant is doing.
Having said that, I do feel that I have a pretty good theoretical grasp of the technology. It's not nearly as complicated as I thought. In fact, the only part that I don't get (at the moment) is building and deploying applications.
I'm going to start reading up on the servers, now. I think I might go buy some J2EE books, as I've grown tired of sitting here reading web pages all day.
****
I posted my resume on Monster 1/1, and got my first call today. Apex Systems in Charlotte. He didn't have anything for me, but it was pretty exciting. He obviously found me with the J2EE keyword, and was disappointed that I had no 'real world' experience with the technology. I wasn't going to lie to him and say I have actually used it instead of reading about it.
One thing that worries me about Monster is most of the positions that I see are contract slots. I don't want to do that kind of work - I want to work for someone on a long-term basis. You know, a real career. Am I expecting too much for a newbie?
Some days I think I'll never get a job. Some days I think my qualifications are crap. Some days I realize that my resume has been 'searchable' for less than a week. Posts: 1069 | Registered: Feb 2005
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If I'm going to be doing J2EE for a living, I think I'd rather own the texts. Thanks for the thought, though.
Posts: 1069 | Registered: Feb 2005
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The first job in the computer field is always the hardest one. Don't get too discouraged. You may have to take a few contract spots to gain the experience and then move into a long term spot. Sometimes contract work becomes long term. Take some contract work at first, you're young and a broad experience can only help you You did the right thing in not overselling your J2EE experience. There is nothing worse than an employee who says they can do something, and then they can't
Posts: 1918 | Registered: Mar 2005
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Yeah, the tutorial does have some serious flaws, one of them being that you lack a lot of practical knowledge of the application building and deployment process.
And you know what? I've been doing J2EE development for a year, and I still only have a sketchy knowledge of how to do that sort of thing.
See, we use Websphere and WSAD here (the IBM application server and J2EE development tool), and almost all of that stuff is automated by the tool. How do I write deploy code for an EJB project? By right clicking on the project, and selecting the Generate-->Deployment and RMIC code option. Building an Ear is as easy as telling the tool to do so. I only change the deployment descriptors through wizards .
Its sort of like having a high powered calculator, and never learning the math behind the calculator's functions. Its not a problem at my company, but it may be an issue for me if I switch to a company that uses Weblogic. You have to know how to do all the low level stuff to use Weblogic, I hear.
I'm not sure what resources you can use to learn that sort of thing, but I'm sure they are out there.
quote:I posted my resume on Monster 1/1, and got my first call today. Apex Systems in Charlotte. He didn't have anything for me, but it was pretty exciting. He obviously found me with the J2EE keyword, and was disappointed that I had no 'real world' experience with the technology. I wasn't going to lie to him and say I have actually used it instead of reading about it.
I'd be lying if I claimed I didn't oversell my J2EE experience in interviews. I admit to making vague mentions of having used it in a limited capacity in an academic environment. I had just gotten an 85% on a J2EE proficieny test, and I was pretty confident in my abilities to learn quickly if I got the job. Plus, my Java skills were top notch.
It worked out even better than I thought it would. In my six month review, the Human Resources woman at my company told me that I was the best hire they'd ever made. If I had told them when they called that I'd never done anything more than read about the technology, I would have never gotten my foot in the door.
I'm not telling you to lie, of course, but I wouldn't exactly blurt out the truth. Don't do anything that makes you uncomfortable.
And Monster isn't the site it used to be. Especially for tech jobs. Post your resume, sure, but don't expect much out of it.
My best resource, by far, was careerlink.org. Its only for the Omaha area though. Maybe see if there's a similar site for the areas you are looking for a job in.
I think I found my current job on Careerbuilder. I also found some decent hits at softwarejobs.com. That site is way better than Monster. Don't forget to check your local newspaper, but don't expect to find much there.
You'll notice that a lot of the jobs you are applying to are posted by technical recruiters, or headhunters. When you apply to these, you will get an interview no matter what. Not necessarily for the position listed, but they will bring you in to interview you and see what sort of positions they can plug you into. I interviewed with three different headhunters. They never offered to place me in anything (though the third was about to when I accepted this job), but I learned some valuable interview lessons. It really helped me nail the interview which got me this job.
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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Because I'd hate to live in DC. (no offense to FIJC or other DCers)
Edit: I don't want you to think I'm ungrateful. I appreciate the time you took posting the link. Unfortunately, it's not for me.
Posts: 1069 | Registered: Feb 2005
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) programmers. I'm particularly interested in your thoughts on the profile section. Also, do I need GPA on there anywhere? It is 3.9+, so I'm not really trying to hide it.![[Blushing]](graemlins/blushing.gif)
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