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The day I realized my resume was a total lie
After 6 months of zero callbacks for IT jobs, I finally asked a buddy who's a hiring manager to look at my resume. He pointed out I'd been writing "skilled in network troubleshooting" but never mentioned any specific tools or systems I'd actually used. Turns out I was just listing generic buzzwords from job posts instead of real stuff I did. He told me to swap out phrases like "team player" with actual examples, like how I fixed a ticket backlog of 50+ in one day. Now I gotta rewrite the whole thing. Has anyone else had that moment where you realize your resume was basically boilerplate junk?
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the_brian3mo ago
Has anyone dug into whether your resume gets past the computer bots before a human even reads it? I spent way too long formatting mine with fancy columns and graphics, then found out the automated systems couldn't parse half my info. That "team player" stuff doesn't just look weak to people, it also gets flagged as filler by the software. Swapping to specific actions and numbers is smart, but also check that your file type and layout aren't getting your resume filtered out before it reaches a hiring manager. Did you run yours through a resume scanner yet to see what it catches?
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hugo_coleman283mo ago
Did you try running your resume through one of those free ATS scanners yet? @the_brian makes a REALLY good point about file types and columns because I had the EXACT same wake up call after months of silence. My resume looked nice but it was basically unusable for the robots. What worked for me was taking every single bullet point and making it start with an action verb like "fixed" or "built" then adding a number or result right after. Another thing nobody tells you is to save it as a basic .docx instead of PDF sometimes because older systems choke on PDFs. The big lesson here is that hiring managers see the same buzzwords ALL DAY so your actual boring day to day work is way more impressive than any generic skill you can list.
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