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So I just "finished" a job that was a remarkably ill fit. I took it as a matter of expedience.
Now I'm in a really strange spot. It was full of very sparkly keywords. I'm writing up the resume synopsis block for it and I don't see how, aside from showing that I did have a programming job, it can do anything but market me straight for more miserable opportunities.
I like perl feeds programming as much as the next nerd. But I've been a C++ guy for something distressingly close to 20 years.
The resume block for this job just can't help but shoot me in the foot.
GRUMPH!
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madwilliamflint wrote: resume synopsis block
madwilliamflint wrote: resume block
What is a "resume block"? Are you talking about the section of your resume that describes what you did at that job?
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For lack of a better phrase, yeah. That single chronological bite.
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I think in this block, you are expected to summarize why you are great for the position as advertised as if somebody asked "why should I hire you for this job?" and you give them a quick 10 second summary:"Well, I've written something similar" or "I've had X years of experience in such and such"
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Well right. But going from what was largely a maintenance job, monitoring and developing nightly data load processes in perl back to c++ server side (or, hell, client side c++ if there even is such a thing any more) is a tough massage on a resume.
Once I'm sitting in front of someone, I've no worries. I interview pretty well (15+ years of career contracting will do that to a guy.)
But the search engines, hr pre-screens and recruiters are just going to blow past it for anything other than another craptacular ETL job.
Alas. What I wouldn't give to get out of Financial.
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Oh really, interesting...I just started my career and one of the companies I interviewed for REALLY tempted me to go into financial industry, but they told me to ask them around Christmas since they weren't ready o.o so Meh
So in this case, it's not important to say that you did C++, unless of course the job you are hoping to get uses c++, in which case you want to highlight that
But what IS important is to relate the stuff you did with what they do.
Sorry I didn't quite get you by developing nightly loads in perl to c++ so can't help you with the specifics. But just some example, I may be way off, but hopefully they can be a good pointer (hehe) show what I'm talking about:
X years of experience with real time (just adding real time because C++, again I'm just making things up) data monitoring for servers
Maintained ____ for _____
Depending on the job, you want to try to highlight the more relevant aspects
I've always said this section is like a table of contents, or an abstract of your resume, maybe it will become more clear after you tailor the rest of the resume for the jobs you are interested in.
Now since I mentioned I'm an inexperienced Junior, I must mention that I did half a year of resume peer editing at school's career centre so I do know a bit what to put on a resume
But one thing I really like to tell people is that when writing your resume, think as if you are talking to the person directly, what would you tell them about your experience to get them interested in you, then you would apply the same logic on paper because they are essentially the same thing. A form of communication to get people interested in hiring you.
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Interesting idea. The problem with "...as if you're talking to the person directly" is that the first couple/few things (sometimes even people) that see the resume have no ability (much less desire) to actually interpret its contents and are more interested in keyword searches. It's a strange balance of tweaking a single document to show different things to different audiences.
What it comes down to is that the cross section between "what I just did" and "what I want to do" is so VERY thin that highlighting it would be a bald faced lie. Sure I did some C++ legacy code remediation. But most of it was perl and csh/bash crap.
I ended up listing technologies in a general sense, keeping specific details of "what language soandso was written in" out of it and highlighting "value to end users."
At least that way I don't bury myself.
We'll see what happens.
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replace "perl" with "web scripting language" 
Steve
_________________
I C(++) therefore I am
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GAK!
Then they'd want me to be one of those prancing rubyists.
No no. Perl stays perl. At least they'll know I write code that serves a function other than generating css.
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