Hi everyone I just got recently laid off and I was wondering if anyone could help me by looking at my resume and tell me what I could do to maybe improve upon it and make it better. Here is a link to it. Original Resume Latest Version [Edited by - ECrevecoeur on August 20, 2009 8:16:18 AM]

Please read the countless other "critique my resume" threads recently.



I strongly do not like the layout. A list of stuff on the side is distracting.


A list of published games with dates and platforms should be the first thing they see. It does not belong on the bottom-right corner as the last thing they notice.

If the first thing I notice is a list of published games with dates and platforms, you will survive the first few rounds of applicant cuts.

As you already have career experience, it should be up front before education.

All your skills should be incorporated to the details of the jobs, not as a detailed list on the side.

Include publication dates for the titles.

Hi frob

Thanks so much for the feed back. Ok well I got rid of the side column and I moved the published titles to the top of the resume. What do you think of the layout now? I guess Ill also have to tailer make my resume for each job now as well.


Resume

A little better but it still needs a lot of work.

As a programmer there are very few times where you need to focus on public appearance.

This is one of those times.




Take the same effort and care you would spend on your code and show it in your resume. Think of it as a kind of white-tie event. This document will be presented to people who dramatically influence the rest of your career. You want every thread of the document to be perfect, and any single flaw is a critical error.

I feel that your heading is poorly formatted. It is a distraction that screams "sloppy" to me. You and possibly others may believe it to be somehow artistic, but I do not.


The Published Titles section is very ragged and does not suggest a professional attitude. There does not appear to be any reason to the ordering. There is stray punctuation. It is inconsistent between using hyphens and dashes. They are neither chronological nor alphabetical. It is typical to display them in chronological order. If you want to display it in a tabular format then do so, just make it look clean and orderly.



The work experience is divided by platform, which makes it difficult to read.

It is normal to list the details chronologically by employer, most recent first. I should be able to tell at a glance what you focused on, and also be able to see how you have progressed in your career. As written I must do some mental gymnastics to see that "Cooking Freenzy" [sic] was the one written on the custom hardware, and that it was also your most recent project even though it is at the bottom of the list.


You need to clean up the clutter.

My resume-reading glasses feel like you are trying to hide something with the clutter. Looking over the dates reveals several trends. Since I am now on the lookout for reasons to throw it out, I note the dates: Oct 05, Feb 07, Oct 07, May 08, Jan 09, Feb 09, April 09. So the time between shipping games are 16 months, 6 months, 7 months, 8 months, 1 month, 2 months. Those should addressed.

When you do a lot of projects within a single company, this is a common format:

Quote: Company Info
Project 1 (dates and platforms)
* details
* details
Project 2 (dates and platforms)
* details
* details
Project 3 (dates and platforms)
* details
Project 4 (dates and platforms)
* few details because it is old
Project 5 (dates and platforms)
Project 6 (dates and platforms)

So is this:

Quote: Company Info
Project 1 (dates and platforms)
Project 2 (dates and platforms)
* details
* details
* details
Project 3 (dates and platforms)
* details
Project 4 (dates and platforms)
Project 5 (dates and platforms)
* details
Project 6 (dates and platforms)
* details

Note that the projects are all in order by date, most recent first.


In your education, you are putting the emphasis on the school. Is that your intent? I can imagine doing this only if there was a compelling reason to put the emphasis on the school for a specific job. Normally put the emphasis "Bachelor of Computer Science" as the first line in bold. The school name, the emphasis on Game Design and Development, and any notable aspects are subordinate details to the fact that you completed the degree.



Clean up the clutter and let's see what remains.

Thanks for that feedback. Ok well I did majority of the suggesstions. How is it looking now? I decided to remove some of the games mainly because it was too much to fit. I decided leave the ones I had the most involvement in.

Resume


Oh and the reason for the strange publications dates is

1. At my studio it wasnt unsual for an engineer to work on more than one project at once. Which is why some of the dates are close together.

2. After the development of some of the projects ended it would sometimes take a while before the game was actucally released. There were various reasons given for this. Somtimes it was due to the carriers not wanting the game at that moment other times the game was put on hold for bigger and better things.

I'm surprised no one has pointed out:

All implementations wherewere done in C on a stack based system.

Nice catch. Thanks :)

It is still very ragged and appears sloppy. Look at the whole page.

* The margins are uneven.
* Horizontal space is both uneven and unbalanced.
* Text in your heading overlaps.
* You are emphasizing dates and non-transferable details
* The document text is not functional. Copy the text and paste it into a text editor to see how bad this is. The first line of the text is "8918 VaOlernlacniad oG, aFrLde 3n2s8 D25r" which is not exactly clear. Many companies will extract the text so they don't have to deal with opening files in countless formats.

Cut the "Languages" section completely, and incorporate the details in with the projects themselves. A bulleted list of languages is mostly useless from an employer's perspective. I don't know when you last used each language (except Java, which is implied with J2ME). I don't know how extensively you used Mel Script, or Python. I can't tell how much C or C++ you have written, which languages you have used on each project, or the extent of your specialized knowledge.

The writing style within the document is inconsistent. For instance, you have "Responsible for ..." in one place, in another you have "Had the responsibility of ...". Pick a style and stick with it.

You still have a lot of unnecessary words and general concepts rather than specific details. "Had the responsibility of" could be "Responsible for". "The lowest being a device with", "The slowest device being", "the highest memory constrained devices with" could be reduced to simple "system limits included". The text, "allow for a menu system that was more robust. This allowed us to have ... behaved in various ways." is completely subjective. More robust in what way? What various ways?

You still have improper use of punctuation. Your use of hyphens and dashes are both inconsistent and incorrect. You are missing periods at the end of statements.

As d00fus pointed out, you still have grammar errors. I pointed out one spelling error and multiple grammar errors in the earlier edition, hoping this would prompt you to find them all. I can still see seven significant grammar errors.

I don't know if your Full Sail education included courses on English, communications, or technical writing. If so then it appears you did not learn enough from them. If not then I strongly suggest you pick up those necessary skills.

The top 2 lines of your address overlap a bit. Put a little more spacing in between.

Ok I finally got some time to my self again. Here is the newest version :). Followed most advice and triple checked every thing. I left it in word format because my pdf converter did weird things to the formating. Thanks for all help so far.

Resume