IT Resume Makeover: Moving Your Job Search to the Senior Level

CIO - Gunawan Santoso is a senior IT executive in Bangkok. He has worked in financial services for more than 15 years and specializes in infrastructure strategy and enablement. He has proven experience with virtualization and data centers within his niche.

From a supervisor to IT operations manager and eventually to vice president of systems and infrastructure, Santoso has seen a lot over the years. He had also distinguished himself as a thought-leader in his niche, speaking at events and publishing articles over the years.

Santoso's job search hadn't been going well. "With the economic downturn it has been difficult to find senior positions," says Santoso. Although he was getting interviews companies weren't offering him the money that he desired so he decided to something about.

He knew from the start that he needed to update his resume, but he didn't know where to start? "My resume was too long at four pages and is geared toward mid-level positions, not executive ones," says Santoso.

[Download: Gunawan Santoso Original IT Resume]

Enter Ross Macpherson, president of Career Quest and an expert in advanced career strategies. Macpherson has more than 16 years of experience in his field and is certified as a personal branding strategist, an online identity strategist and a interview and job search coach. He's also appeared in more than 17 different career publications.

Macpherson says he believes the old marketing adage holds true here. "There is a big difference between what you're selling and what your audience is buying. You need to approach your resume from your targeted employer's standpoint. What are they interested in buying," says Macpherson.

Knowing that Santoso isa thought-leader in his specialty, Macpherson's goal was to highlight all of Santoso's skills in his area of expertise and make him appear on paper to be the expert that he actually is.

The first thing Macpherson noticed were grammatical errors. "Effective writing and accurate grammar are absolutely mandatory in a resume but people still struggle with it," says Macpherson. So get rid of grammatical mistakes. Have a friend read it and use (but don't rely exclusively on) a spellchecker. Using words correctly can mean the difference between sounding like an educated professional or a slack-jawed gawker.

The next issue: At four pages it was clear to Macpherson that this resume was too long and more of a data dump. "Thinking from a marketing perspective requires a target audience. It requires a strategy behind it," says Macpherson. Gun tended to put everything down making it appear more like a data dump.

Approaching your resume this way Macpherson notes is akin to saying, "Here's everything I've ever done you figure it out." "This is a dangerous resume strategy to take," says Macpherson. Ross says that in his experience as a career strategist, that IT resumes tend to be the most guilty when it comes to data dumps.

This story is reprinted from CIO.com, an online resource for information executives. Story Copyright CXO Media Inc., 2012. All rights reserved.

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