- Typical Technical Resume Content
- Essential Resume Elements
- Work Experience
- Educational Experience
- Emphasize Contribution
- Summary
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Emphasize Contribution
An effective resume emphasizes the applicant's contribution to past employers. Because my business is technology training, people seeking training positions send resumes all the time. This is particularly true when the both the technology and the training business is as slow as it is now. These resumes emphasize technical knowledge of telecommunications, which is what we teach, but virtually no training skills, no training experience or desire to become a trainer. When I interview these people as perspective trainers, I find someone who wants a nice fat paycheck, but who lacks the ability to successfully teach a seminar. They cannot teach because they often have very narrow and specific telecommunications knowledge—they lack the broader perspective and knowledge needed to successfully teach a seminar. Because they need the broader technical knowledge, they get easily intimidated by the seminar audience. Finally, they are unwilling to put in the study and seminar preparation time needed to become successful teaching seminars. A successful trainer must enjoy training (and the traveling that comes with training).
My best candidates are people who have done some training. I need to know that they have some technical knowledge and, more importantly, that they have successfully taught and enjoy teaching technology seminars. A resume listing technical skills does little to convey their ability to be a successful trainer. Evaluations from seminars they have taught and a strong statement that they want to become or remain a technical trainer would provide considerably more confidence in their ability to successfully teach seminars.