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Review my resume

Started by
21 comments, last by Concentrate 13 years, 4 months ago
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Your objective is unclear and vague and completely focused on you. Your objective should be focusing on what you're going to contribute to the company. Compare these two objectives:
  • GOOD: Game design or development position that utilizes my programming knowledge and management abilities while advancing my career in the computer gaming industry.
  • BAD: Game design or development position that advances my career in the computer gaming industry.
    The first says why they want me and highlights general skillsets, while the second says what I want.

    Your education section is wishy-washy. "Third Year Student" doesn't make any sense. They're only going to care about when you graduate. Formatting could also be sexier to preserver vertical space.

    None of your related experience is actually related.

    All of your "related experience" stuff is vague, wishywashy, and not result-driven. Talk about what you did that makes you special. How did your projects make impacts to the company? What modules did you specifically create? What were the programs you made?

    Just taking some more stuff off my resume again:
    • [font="garamond"]GOOD: Established new company-wide internal bug reporting system on the Force.com platform using Apex. Migrated all previous bug reports to new system. Wrote detailed user guide for employees.[/font]
    • [font="garamond"]BAD: Created new program for employees using Apex.[/font]
      [font="garamond"]If you're laughing at the bad, look at yours: "Developed software programs for Professors" - how much more vague can you possibly get? The word "software" is redundant here too.[/font]

      [font="garamond"]Youth of the year - no one cares what happened to you in high school.[/font]

      [font="garamond"]Comcast scholarships - no one cares[/font]

      [font="garamond"]Dean's List - no one cares.[/font]

      [font="garamond"]Co-founding NSA is cool, and should be expanded out more.[/font]

      [font="garamond"]Game Development - Talk about what you actually DID for your games. Expand this section out. If this section doesn't take up 50% of your resume, it's not big enough.[/font]

      [font="garamond"]Research - pitiful. This is working against you in its current iteration. Tell us what you did in your research. Describe the methods used. What was YOUR part.[/font]

      [font="garamond"]Tutor - No one cares.[/font]





      [font="garamond"]The core problem with your resume is that there's absolutely 0 focus on the skills related to the gaming industry. You list off project "categories" rather than actual projects, and you don't come anywhere close in describing the projects themselves or, most importantly, your contribution.[/font][/font]
      [font="Garamond"] [/font]
      [font="Garamond"][font="garamond"]You need to talk about your contributions, your skillsets, and why you matter. Your resume should read as "Here's my skillset - here's why I matter." Right now, your resume is formatted to be just one in the crowd, or in this case, one in the "reject" stack.[/font][/font]
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Thanks guys. I will revise it again. I just can't find the correct wording for some things. For example, "Integrated large C++ ..." by that I mean I took my professor's C++ code, and by using java and JNI, I made it an Applet so it could be used online by anyone. What I contributed to that was now it could be used by any browser that supports applet and it allowed the user to interact with it graphically.

Originally, I left thrid-year student out. Someone told me that it might be a good idea to put it in, now someone is telling me to take it out. I think I will leave it out, since they shouldn't care what year I am as long as I fit for the job.

And I was trying to make my objective short and to the point, as I was told it should be. Any help on how I could re-word it? Basically, I am looking for a summer internship that I could develop software in.

And I know MIPS from personal development and class projects.

I will try to revise it again. Thanks for the criticism. I would be lost without this community.
Edge cases will show your design flaws in your code!
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I do not have a critique on the actual computer science related portions of your resumes, but I would suggest blacking out your name, address and telephone number when positing it on a forum such as this.
Ok guys, been busy lately. Anyways, I got around to rewording the resume and makes changes accordingly from your advice. Also realize that I don't have much to put in my resume because of the lack of experience. Anyways, here is the current resume. And BTW, there is a career fair this tuesday, so I need to make this look up to par. Thanks for the criticism.

<EDIT IMAGE REMOVED>
Edge cases will show your design flaws in your code!
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Work history: November 2010-December2010, December2010-current [s][color="#FF0000"]2010[/s]
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Isn't all of that academic work? Keep it all together and list it under academic work.
Yes related work experience is academic work. So you are saying I should change the word related to Academic? Any other advice for now? Is the wording more clearer than before? Also you
said that there were some grammatical errors, is it still there? Thanks for the help.
Edge cases will show your design flaws in your code!
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17667011.png

you have the exact same format, sections, and font as my resume o.O

I'd get rid of your objective. It should be pretty clear what your objective is from your cover letter and the position you apply for.

edit: I'd put the "cashier" on the same line. Other experience for starting people I'd consider important just to plug gaps in work history so you don't look lazy.

Get rid of "Worked with a Team:" and just use the sub bullets. Same with "developed software programs for professor," and mush your two bullets on the biological algorithms into a single bullet point.

Use the 6+ lines I just saved you to elaborate on, "Created games in 2D or 3d..." Be specific.

double edit: I'd also change the Made deans list... line to just "Deans List Spring 2008,... [if you get on again]"

One good rule of thumb on your resume is never say anything twice unless it is amazing. A lot of your bullet points are a little redundant. Make sure if you say it twice that you are saying something new about it.

Ordering can also make it appear better. In your related coursework for example, order with the most applicable in the top left to the least applicable in the bottom right. You want your resume to be as skim-friendly as possible.
Thanks for the tip. Actually, I got the format from go0gling here in gamedev and found your format quite nice compared to my initial ones. So I hope you don't mind that I used it.

Here is what I have now. Oh and as for the Objective, I think I will leave that there for now, since I do not have a cover letter right now.

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Also note, that I am not trying to particularly get into game development. I am just trying to get into software development for right now.
Edge cases will show your design flaws in your code!
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Looks like you're getting there. Once your resume is at the point where you start getting conflicting information that is a good sign imo. Hopefully that means that there isn't anything glaringly bad with it.

My only nitpick is that you have your programming skills in "Other Skills". Those are pretty important considering you're trying to get a software development job don't you think?!
Your objective is wordy:
- Seeking an internship for the position of Software Development...
- Change to: Seeking a Software Development internship that utilizes my programming knowledge and capabilities.

Under your work experience, you still haven't told us what the programs actually did. It's great that you're listing off technical experience, but we still don't have any information about what the program actually does. Saying "made a program that uses XYZ programming languages" lacks what the program does.

Doing better, but still not all the way there.

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