The Optimum IT Professional Resume: How to ensure yours is the desired length with the necessary details.

The Optimum IT Professional Resume

IT Career Transformation tips on how to streamline and optimize your resume to your target IT role.

How long should my IT Professional Resume be?

Experienced IT professionals generally have a vast array of role-specific experiences and skills. Sometimes it is difficult deciding which details to include on your resume. In fact, many clients come to us with resumes that are six or more pages and often ask: “how long should my resume be?” The short answer is: usually two pages for IT professionals.
​I bet you are asking: How do I fit all my career details into two pages?
​This article provides great tips for optimizing your resume to the ideal length to pass through Applicant Tracking Systems (ATSs) into the hands of potential employers.
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​Fact: Most employers spend approximately ten seconds scanning each resume. This indicates the importance of streamlining all sections of your resume. To grab employers’ attention and make them want to keep reading, it is essential to have effective, concise statements highlighting your skills/achievements/experience while eliminating redundant information that has no benefit to your targeted role.

​WHAT ARE THE “MUST HAVES” IN YOUR RESUME?

​A strong opening statement
Remember: you want to grab their attention, making them want to learn more about you! Your opening statement is where you have the strongest ability to stand out. Streamlining it is essential to make employers want to keep reading your resume instead of moving on to the next.
The following is an example of many peoples’ opening statement—this does not provide any value to the hiring company and will not make you stand out.
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​A detail-oriented Business Intelligence Analyst with over 10 years of experience seeks the opportunity to join your organization as a Senior Business Intelligence Analyst and work with various departments to manage teams and deploy strategies for your business intelligence environment.

​However, this example makes the reader immediately want to learn more about you and what you can do for their business:
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Results driven Business Intelligence analyst with strong technical background and hands-on leadership skills. Experienced in multiple Business Intelligence (BI) solutions. Strong communication and interpersonal skills; trusted by peers, management and clients. Passionate about technology and consistently driving cross functional teams throughout the development lifecycle to implement and support strategic projects. Provide solutions for strategic business initiatives in fast-paced environments.

For more tips on optimizing your profile introduction, visit our previous post: creating resume and LinkedIn profile introduction that standout. 
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​​Outstanding accomplishments
After your opening statement, you should identify recent accomplishments using concise statements. This not only reduces redundancies you may have throughout your experience; it also gives the employer a broader picture of how you fit in with their company.

Keywords for your targeted position
There is a fine balance between controlling the length of your resume and opportunities to incorporate targeted keywords for your desired role. Incorporating these keywords (even using the same keywords multiple times) throughout your resume means the difference between having your resume stand out and having it filed in the circular file.
If you aren’t sure what keywords and proficiencies you should use, IT Career Transformation offers a service that provides our clients with a target role analysis that identifies specific keywords and desired proficiencies for your targeted career.

​An area of expertise section that succinctly identifies your technology and people skills.
Many of our clients have a “skills” section in their resume, but it is essentially a list of experience statements using specific technologies. This example is typical of many resumes:

Technology Skills                                                                                                                

• Working towards the migration/conversion of reports from payroll system software A 3.1 to software B v 4.3.
• Proficiency using Oracle databases.

Soft Skills

• Strong written and verbal communication/presentation skills
• Outstanding training skills

​Converting it to the format below clearly identifies your skills using the desired keywords for your target role. Its condensed format allows potential employers to review your skills quickly.

Key Areas of Expertise:
Business Intelligence (BI) and Dashboards | Payroll Reporting technologies (Software A 4.1/Software B v2018.3) | Training and Mentoring | Cross Functional Team Leadership 

​Concise and effective achievement and experience statements.
Many IT professionals reach out to us with an existing resume with lengthy descriptions of non-added value responsibilities and outdated technologies. IT Career Transformation excels at streamlining your resume by using concise achievement statements with essential keywords.
For example, instead of using multiple bullet points to describe the different platforms you successfully migrated, the statement below relays the same information but is streamlined and uses keywords for your target role:

• Successfully led multiple data and reports conversions and migration efforts (From Payroll 4.1 to software B v 2018.3; From Business XI R2 to Business 3.1), reducing data related errors by 35% and improving business decision velocity by 20%. 

​These types of statements not only shorten your resume but also concisely define your credentials.
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If you are a recent graduate, have up to two years of IT experience or are transitioning to an IT field, all of the above information applies to you as well. However, you may only need a one-page resume. Your relevant skills can be streamlined and highlighted, while those not specifically related to the IT field can be moved to a separate section. With the appropriate keywords and statements, your resume can be one that grabs potential employers’ interest.

If your resume is too long and you are unsure how to begin optimizing your resume, let the experts at IT Career Transformation work with you to create the ideal resume that makes employers want you on their team. We encourage you to visit us at https://www.itcareertransformation.com/ for more information. Schedule your complimentary initial consultation to discuss your career goals and how best we can help!

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IT Career Transformation is devoted to helping IT professionals and leaders advance their career. We work with IT professionals from entry-level / transitioning into IT to senior management and all types of IT roles to create the Optimum IT Professional Resume, Cover Letter and LinkedIn Profile, optimized with keywords relevant to the target IT role and specialty areas.  We provide specialized career development services that help IT professionals accelerate their job search.
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​Do you need help streamlining and optimizing your resume to your target IT role?
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Visit us at https://www.itcareertransformation.com/ for more information and to schedule your complimentary initial consultation.

www.itcareertransformation.com | (470) 210-7955 | [email protected]