Tag: IT

10 things you should never put in your resume

Disclaimer: This list applies only to resumes that you send to technology companies.

  1. No Superlative adjectives about your capabilities. No “superior knowledge of OOD”, or “exemplary customer orientation”. This sets a very high expectation, and even a very small flaw in your interview or phone screen, can make your resume look inaccurate.
  2. Do not convert educational grading systems. If you are in India, and your university marks were in %, put it that way. No need to convert to 4.0 system. If you were in IIT, there is no need to convert to a percentile system. You are just confusing the reader.
  3. Do not put in qualities that you are expected to have as part of any job. Example – “Been an integral part of every team I have been in.” This is understood.
  4. No jargon and defenitely no abbreviations. I do not know what SCCM protocol is, if I am not in the same industry.
  5. Defenitely no fluff. Put in only things that you know. If you have have cursory knowledge say so. I actually appreciate that more. I like resumes which say “Expert knowledge in foo; working knowledge of foo2; and cursory knowledge of foo3.” This makes me believe in you.
  6. Do not make me search for vital information. The first page should have everything that I need to know. If I am interested, I would need to flip the page.
  7. Please dont end the resume with Date of birth, Marital Status, Mother Tongue, and finally a statement stating all of the above is true to the best of your knowledge. This may be required for a Govt job, but not in an IT company.
  8. No photos. No clipart. No images.
  9. Do not put in too many fancy fonts. I like an uniform font through the resume. And no fancy fonts. Plain Arial, Times New Roman, Calibri/Cambria. Font size atleast 10 point.
  10. No references to internal technology and algorithms. This makes me wary of how well you respect your Intellectual Property of your current company. If you are loose there, so will you be in my company if I hire you.

Disclaimer2: The opinions in this blog post are strictly mine and have no relation to that of my employer.

What is wrong with the Indian IT Industry?

Ok. Controversial topic alert. I agree with a lot of what Rakesh says. Unfortunately a lot of it is true. It is got to do with our mindset and circumstantial presence and we need to change it.

There is only one issue (which I had commented out also in the Slideshare page). I dont see it apt to compare TCS and Infosys with Apple. Not a good apples-to-apples (pun-not-intended) comparison. They are a hardware/software manufacturer while the other two are not. Margins are different etc. Would be fairer to compare with Microsoft or Cisco or one of those guys.

IT professionals play fair too.

What comes to mind, for a lot of non IT-professionals is that, they are being unfairly treated well, and that they are over paid, and that, the compensation is not commensurate with the work they do etc. However, it is not known for too many people (other than the family of the IT professional), that we guys usually (almost always) carry our work with us home too. We need to check email, and sometimes even work from home. Most times, IT professionals do not have the luxury of doing work only at work, and not carrying work home.

Coming to the fairness part of the post, today in lifehacker, there was a reader poll, asking if we should get paid overtime, for the time we spend at home, checking email. This is the current status of the poll.

Look at the option having the largest votes. I rest my case.