Designing a Contractor Résumé

Baiting the Job Hook: Designing a Contractor Résumé February 20, 2004 by John S. Reid When you're looking for a job the first impression that hiring managers have of you comes directly from your résumé. And the résumé is there only to serve one purpose: to get you the interview. Once you're in the interview you really need to sparkle.But getting that interview is obviously a crucial piece. Though general résumé tips abound on the internet and software management guru Joel Spolsky has even written an article on the subject, a contractor's résumé is different from a résumé for a permanent position. Since 1988 I've been put in many positions where I've had hiring influence or authority and I've seen my share of résumés for contract positions. Some of them are really bad, and others would have been great if we had intended to keep you, but only a handful have had all the elements that make up a great contract résumé.The first thing to remember is that you're applying for a contract position. This sounds obvious, but you'd be surprised at how many people miss it. That means the employer has a specific use for you for a specific duration, and then he means to collect your security pass and send you packing. Your résumé has to be written with this thought in mind if you want to end up on the top of the pile instead of the bottom of the bin.Who Are You?Put your contact information at the top of the page where it can be easily found. Managers easily forget whose résumé they're reviewing and you want to make it easy for them. A header on the page is another appropriate place for this information. It also helps in the interview when the manager calls for backup and no one would be able to remember your name if it weren't for the fact you've placed it at the top.Oh – relevant contact information includes your name, optionally your city/state/country, phone number and email address. If you have a web site address that is clean and polished and relevant feel free to include that also. Sites that display "Coming soon…" or tout the virtues of setting up a Quake server at work probably won't help you - the gaming industry excluded of course.I Don't Care about your Career Summary or Objective.This is a great section to put in your résumé if you're taking a résumé class. It's also great if you are going for a permanent position where you want to grow with the company yada yada yada. If you want to be a consultant the company doesn't care what you want - only if you can solve their problem, and do it cheaper. If you feel you must divulge this information then don't bore me with a whole paragraph, but instead sprinkle pieces of it throughout the rest of your résumé, provided it fits contextually of course. That means no cover letter either.Oh – many have asked about listing a personal overall title, like "Software Developer" or "Security Specialist" or "Help Desk Support Specialist." In general I say don't. The title isn't going to change your skill set. The only reason to use it is to limit your job options – which you may want to do if you've been around a while. If you get as many job emails as I do for positions in which you have no interest in reading, let alone applying, then you can whittle them down quite nicely with a title like "Senior Security Analyst for Financial Sector Technology Topologies."I Want to Know if I Should Read your Résumé Before I Read your Résumé.Placing your technical skills and certifications at the top of your résumé is a definite must. I want to hire you for your skill set, so let me know what it is in a list at the top. I usually title this section "Highlights," but if you have a better word for it then go for it. Not only does this section tell the manager if he should read on or not, but it's extremely helpful if you work through a recruiting agency.A recruiter may get hundreds of résumés that look similar and will need to sift through them to present the best candidates for a limited number of openings. Although recruiters these days seem to have a better handle on the technical terminology than they used to, many only have a rudimentary knowledge of the technology and will like the candidate with the most buzz words. Am I cynical? I'll stick by that statement. I would keep the list to skills, not tools like JBuilder, etc. Knowing how to write Java is far more important than the development IDE you used. You can fit the JBuilder stuff in the job descriptions below.Always put the skills you see as the most important/relevant/latest-and-greatest first. Chronology is irrelevant. You want them to see the skills, not necessarily when you achieved them, and what they first read will stick with them most. I like a separate thought/skill per line so they can go to the start of any line and read a skill. That way the recruiter doesn't have to hunt for the beginning of the sentence when they're trying to read it to their recruiting manager. It sounds silly I know, but it's been effective. By the way - most important skills first means most important skills to YOU. If you live in the Australian outback and want to photograph kangaroo more than you want to photograph crocodiles then make sure line one includes the roo and line two has the croc, regardless of what's immediately available on the market.Dazzle me with your Deeds.The Work Experience section of your résumé should come next. Unlike the Highlights section, list the companies where you worked and when in reverse chronological order. Some managers like to see a count of months spent at the client's, so you can put that down if you like, but if you work through an agency don't put the agency name down, just the client. The agency won't matter, but there's a big difference between working for Dell vs. Joe's Computer Shack, regardless of the work actually done. Then list the work done under each company. If possible keep the job description on the same page for easy reading.Be clear. Be concise. But be complete. The company wants a basic idea of what you did, and it's even better if you can show how it made the company money or saved the company money. Most of your verbiage will come out in an interview and is unnecessary on the résumé. Quick hits like "I designed the middleware infrastructure for the corporate wide e-commerce .NET and Java application that spans multiple platforms and processes over $1 Billion in sales per month" are very effective, while "I wrote a cool .NET application" probably won't get you very far.There's no easy way to say this: don't lie. Remember that the résumé is only a foot in the door, so if you tell me that you are an advanced XML programmer then I'm going to ask XSL questions in the interview. I may even ask about SOAP authentication headers. But if you tell me that you're a beginner I'm only going to expect you to be able to create an XML structure for an address book. If you embellish it can also be cause for early termination, and that goes against the whole concept of a contract worker in the first place.Make sure you write in grammatically correct complete sentences. On most contract résumés this is the only part that resembles paragraphs, and since as a programmer you document all your code in design specifications before you write it you should be pretty good at paragraphs. You do document first don't you? Of course you do. You are after all a contractor who is going to leave the permanent employees well trained on your application when you go – aren't you?Don't list basic programming concepts like hand-coding a linked list. If you're applying for a C++ position they'll expect you to know how to do it, but to have the intelligence never to do it. You should be using the STL for basic containers, not hand-coding what others have painstakingly optimized. Unless you're Bjarne Stroustrup or Scott Meyers I can guarantee the STL authors have done a better job than either of us.Many people also struggle with how to address time off in between contracts. I have an easy answer: don't. Since most companies won't ask for previous employment dates to the day or even month it will largely go unnoticed. If you have a larger gap in your timeline then I assume that you were either unwilling to put up with dreary positions at a huge cut in pay and maybe a bad commute, or you took some time off. It's perfectly acceptable to take a couple of months off by choice, so call it a sabbatical and no one will question it at all.What about Formal Training?I would put an "Education" section next. In addition to the schools you've attended I would list your certifications and extra-curricular projects as well. Like the highlights section you'll want to list them in order of relevance. Not to impugn an English degree, but if you're applying for a Windows network administrator's position and also have your MCSE you can guess which is more relevant. If you have a college degree or higher it's important to list it, but if it's not in a related field then list it last. Of course if you have a masters or doctorate in computer science you may want it at the top of your list.If you've attended any training seminars or conferences this is a good place to stick them too. If there are projects that you've completed that are not part of a listed job (side work or home experimenting) I would stick them at the bottom of this section too if you think they're relevant.Please Don't Waste PaperI don't want to spend the time it would take to read 4 and 5 page résumés – so I don't. When I have many to get through I'll only read the first and last page. When you accumulate enough experience that the listing would push you into page 3, resist! Push the oldest work experience off your résumé altogether. Some companies do request a record of continuous employment for the last 53 ½ years, so don't lose the record of those jobs that get pushed off. Honestly, technology changes so fast that relevant job experience may only be from the last 5 years anyway. If you're still programming with 10 year old technology then the contractor life may not be for you.Take Advantage of Weighted QueriesMany companies like Intel, Microsoft and IBM scan your résumé into a database (or receive it directly via email) and it goes into never-never land until someone runs a matching query. If they're using an advanced query engine then the results are weighted, so the person with more hits on the query terminology is going to show up higher on the list. The challenge is to repeat key words and skills in your résumé enough times to give you an edge in the search engines without sounding stupid for saying "MCSE" or "C#" too many times.Another key concept that will help with both the search engines and brevity is the use of acronyms. After you've called out a skill or name it's perfectly acceptable to refer to it further with an appropriate acronym: "Microsoft Certified Solution Developer" becomes MCSD and "Visual Basic 6" becomes VB6. If it's really obvious for your industry you may not need the long name at all, but the variance in naming can give your résumé greater weight in that database query.I also believe you can get your résumé to stand out to the humans by bolding key words to draw the eye. I've bolded key words throughout my résumé, but some would say that too much bolding is distracting or annoying. It's definitely a subjective call.If You Must Include Job TitlesI don't recommend you put down the title of each position you held at every company, but there are cases where it works to your advantage. Just make sure your title is relevant. Don't write "Systems Programmer" if the description of work done is systems administration.Never put down a title of "Owner." That won't help you at all. If you're going for a management position it might work to your advantage, but only if you actually had a large number of employees. Since you were the top dog you could have given yourself any title you wanted, so you might want to go with something like "Sr. Systems Consultant." I'm actually not a fan of the word consultant either - it conjures up dollar signs in the heads of managers when you're supposed to be saving them money. So maybe "Sr. Systems Analyst" would be more effective.General NotesDon't bother citing references or letters of recommendation. It just takes up space you could use to tell me how well you know regular expression syntax or WSH. Managers aren't typically shy, so if they want them they'll ask for them.Don't say what you can't do or point out your weaknesses – especially if they're not real. It's nice to be humble, but you make your living off convincing others you can solve their problems and then doing it. That doesn't mean you have to know all the answers. I don't have a problem saying "I don't know," but neither am I shy about my opinions when asked. It's also okay to not purport to be an expert. If you're just starting out in a technology or applying for a junior level position then there's certainly no need to inflate your inexperience to higher heights.As a general rule your résumé should look good visually. Too small a font and too much dark space is difficult to wade through. It's gloomy. By way of contrast too large a font looks childish. Clearly defined areas will help lead the manager's eyes through and allow him to easily return to a section he wants to review again.Don't feel bad if you submit your résumé through an agency and they "butcher" it into their specific format. Many agencies do this for branding or to conform to a specific request from an employer. Government contracts are notorious for that. If you're going through an agency it isn't necessary to bring your own copy in your format, considering they liked the other format enough to call you for an interview.Your Résumé is the Bait.If you want to create a great contractor's résumé then you have to think like a manager who hires contractors. Fill the need. Fill the need. Your job is to get in, save the day, and get out. In order to prove you're the right guy for the job you're going to have to interview well, but you're not even going to get that far if your résumé doesn't inspire.Unlike a manager hiring for a permanent position, a manager hiring for a contract position only wants to know if you can get your assignments done and work well with the rest of the team. He doesn't expect you to grow with the company, nor does he want to invest in your training. Do you fit the position? Can you get the job done? If so you'll get the interview. Nail that and you're hired.