The Best IT Resume Tips of 2014

CIO.com takes a brief look back at the IT Resume Makeover series and some of the best resume advice from the past 12 months.

The Best IT Resume Tips of 2014
Over the last year, our resume experts and career consultants have helped numerous IT professionals put their best foot forward. Here's a quick look at some of the top resume tips from 2014's IT Resume Makeover series.

For a deeper dive on resume tips with expert commentary, please read, IT Resume Makeover: Top 11 Resume Tips From 2014.

Clear Out the Clutter
Instead of a "laundry list" of job responsibilities and daily tasks, focus your resume on how you've solved problems for employers -- and in what context.

Know Your Audience
Tailor the message to your audience. Ask yourself who will read your resume and what they expect to see.

Tell a Compelling Personal Story
Finding a career success story within your work history will make your career narrative more interesting and engaging for potential employers.

Use Sales Tactics to Sell Yourself
A sales resume is built on metrics: sales figures, number of deals closed, revenue targets achieved. Without these metrics, it can be nearly impossible to differentiate yourself from other sales candidates.

For a deeper dive on resume tips with expert commentary, please read, IT Resume Makeover: Top 11 Resume Tips From 2014.

Keep Your Resume Fresh and Updated
Make time to review and refresh your resume each year. Make sure all information about current and past employers and responsibilities is correct and add any new skills, experience or knowledge you've gained.

Don't Sell Yourself Short
This is the place to showcase your achievements. Make sure to hone in on unique achievements, successes, skills and knowledge to really grab the reader's attention.

For a deeper dive on resume tips with expert commentary, please read, IT Resume Makeover: Top 11 Resume Tips From 2014.

Don't Lie
It can be tempting to embellish your work history, exaggerate your IT skills or even claim to hold advanced degrees. In the long term, this can not only kill your chances to land a specific job, it can be a black mark that follows you your entire career.

Avoid Information Overload
Most employers want to quickly see dates, the scope of an applicant's responsibility, the types of projects managed, and other pertinent details, but make sure you're not using too much detail, which can become overwhelming to a reader.

For a deeper dive on resume tips with expert commentary, please read, IT Resume Makeover: Top 11 Resume Tips From 2014.

Avoid Buzzword Burnout
If your resume is crammed with buzzwords, jargon and gibberish, you're dooming yourself. Make sure your language is plain and clear to better appeal to readers.

Know How (And When) to Break the Rules
If you've created something big at the beginning of your career and spend the rest of your professional life building on that initial success, you must turn the traditional resume on its head to showcase that accomplishment.

Position Your Accomplishments for Maximum Impact
Typically, a resume has between 10 and 15 seconds to make an impact on a recruiter, hiring manager or HR professional. That's why it's crucial that attention-grabbing achievements and information be positioned close to the top of the first page, where it's more likely to be seen and have maximum effect.

For a deeper dive on resume tips with expert commentary, please read, IT Resume Makeover: Top 11 Resume Tips From 2014.

---

Best Microsoft MCTS Certification, Microsoft MCITP Training at certkingdom.com

BYOD brings corporate contradictions

CIOs naturally want a BYOD policy in place to give them some level of control, but the reality is that employees will do whatever they want regardless of the policy.

During a roundtable discussion on the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend, a tech leader candidly offered this bit of real-world insight: "My wife is a nurse. There is no BYOD policy at the hospital. But all of the nurses communicate with each other via SMS, because that's the most efficient way to do their job."

Be sure not to miss:

12 most powerful Internet of Things companies
It's a good bet that those text messages, which are practically impossible for IT to monitor and record, are out of compliance with healthcare regulations. It's an even better bet that this kind of BYOD-related breach is happening en masse across the country, in virtually every industry.

BYOD Policy Needed but Do They Really Matter?
Organized by Wisegate, an IT advisory service, the roundtable discussion was chock full of contradictions. For instance, CIOs need a formal BYOD policy in place to give them some level of control and, presumably, to cover their butts when something goes wrong. Yet they're quick to point out that employees will do whatever they want regardless of the policy.

Even standard-fare BYOD practices are running into roadblocks.
A mobile device management (MDM) system is usually the first line of defense to ward off malware on the devices and prevent company data leaks from lost or stolen devices, but MDM has been met with resistance.

For instance, a Wisegate member says his company moved away from ActiveSync's total remote wipe to an MDM solution that identifies and segments corporate and personal data and apps and thus can remotely wipe only corporate data. Sounds like a win for BYOD-empowered employees, right? Wrong. Many employees saw MDM as the secret listening agent on their personal devices.

"There were many comments about a Big Brother approach," the Wisegate member says. "We found the users don't want the company they work for to know what is on their device. Some have chosen not to register with the MDM, either insisting on a company device or not having the access capability at all."

Most Users Don’t Read BYOD Policies
Educating and training employees about BYOD policies is tricky business. Policies tend to be like every other IT policy, which is to say, excruciatingly difficult to comprehend. Most people scroll to the bottom of an IT policy, check the agreement box and click "OK" -- all without reading a single word.

"I don't think the users understand anything, because you have to read and learn," says another Wisegate member. "Generally speaking, our society no longer does that very well."

Then there's the Cochran v. Schwan's Home Service case throwing a monkey wrench into BYOD. In the first ruling to be binding in the BYOD space, the California Court of Appeal stated in August: "We hold that when employees must use their personal cellphones for work-related calls, Labor Code section 2802 requires the employer to reimburse them."

The ruling was a hot topic at the roundtable, and Wisegate has this to say about it:
"Several participants commented that this ruling had forced them to suspend or delay any BYOD policy while their legal departments work out what it actually means. The general feeling is that if you allow staff to use their own devices, you will have to pay for any use that was required for business purposes. But what would happen if a member of staff has not been told to use his personal device but does so and then claims it was necessary to do his job properly?"

CIOs might have to reward roguish behavior. In the case of the texting nurses working at a hospital without a BYOD policy, it's even worse. These nurses are clearly putting the hospital at risk by skirting healthcare regulations on patient privacy. Nevertheless, the nurses may still be entitled to reimbursement for those text messages, if they can show that they were necessary to get their jobs done.

"There's a wariness with BYOD," Nelson says.

---

 

Best Microsoft MCTS Training – Microsoft MCITP Training at Certkingdom.com