Career Help - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: richardnhoffman
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: May 26, 2018, 02:34:06 pm
content: Thank you everyone for the help. Due to the concern I have removed my initial post with resume due to the amount of information given. *For the time being I cannot remove this post for some reason (move forum error)* But again thank you for the feedback that I was able to get. I understand now somewhat how my resume may read now to others and what I should provide. If you have anymore info do hesitate to post it.Thank you all for the help,Richard

author: Bicurico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 26, 2018, 02:40:46 pm
content: Hi Richard,I cannot give you the advice your are looking for, but I would strongly recommend against:- Publishing your full name on a public forum- Publishing your CV on a public forumThis kind of information will live on in the internet much past beyond the time frame where you could find it useful. You WILL sooner or later regret having published it, so please do yourself a favor: remove the CV ASAP and edit the post to at leas not show your surname.As a potential employer, what I would do is to ALWAYS type the name of the candidate into Google, to find out more.Finding this exact post of yours would be a HUGE downer for me: if others have refused to interview you, they know something I don't - probably they were right and as such, I would lose interest in talking to you, as well. See how the dog bites it tail?Good luck!Regards,Vitor

author: rstofer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 26, 2018, 02:46:42 pm
content: Call your local military recruiter (probably Air Force, maybe Navy), tell them you have a technical degree and want to be an officer working in/on the <pick a field>. I guarantee you will get an interview. You will also get additional schooling and an opportunity to work on the most advanced systems in the world.When you get out, you won't have any problem getting a job at the company that builds the systems. Your contacts alone are the kind of thing the employer will be looking at. You will have been an officer and thus exposed to the people who make decisions. You probably won't deal with Generals but you will hang out with mid-level managers, Lieutenant Colonels and Colonels. It's probably best not to think of them as 'mid-level', they can get kind of testy...Yes, it's probably 6 years but if you don't have anything else going on, why not? You won't be designing but you will be deeply involved with the operation.

author: dmills
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 26, 2018, 04:36:20 pm
content: That CV says "Maintenance technician" to me, sorry but it does.You list lots of fairly mundane skills, that do not tell me anything about what you have done with them, I mean 'scopes 6 years? So what? It don't take 6 years to learn everything there is to know about a 'scope, same with multimeters and sig gens! Any (or all!) of these things I would expect to be able to teach a competent graduate to drive within a week, and i would expect to be demonstrating the peculiarities of whatever instruments we had, not principles...You list mathematics, but give me no clue as to level, can you design filters? Can you solve second order ODEs? Does the determinant of a matrix mean anything to you? You give me no clue, same for all the rest of the stuff in that list.You list one employer who clearly has you working in a maintenance role, and list a whole pile of tools, but give no insight as to what you have done with any of them (And frankly, lists of software packages are not that interesting).If you could (And I would dig at interview) say "Developed new ATE jig and software that saved the company three days of manual testing on each unit shipped" or "Revised inspection process to use XJTAG and cut rework time by 40%" or "Designed new bearing wear monitor for rail cars with remote radio reporting that improved availability 10% and reduced in service failures", that would be the sort of thing that would make me go consider interviewing if you applied to me.As it is, no grades, no GPA (And early in the career this somewhat matters), no work achievements, just a pile of tools, this is an easy reject as written.DeVry is I understand also not a good thing these days, altho being rightpondian I have no direct experience, and it is not something you can really change anyway.If that security thing is really a Federal clearance of some kind it should probably go in the personal section, under whatever it is formally called, a TS clearance for example opens up some jobs, but you need to call it what it is.Finally, drop the "Experienced Professional" wording, Second job out of school (and in design where the first was maintenance, very different) just makes claiming that embarrassing and makes it look like you don't know how much you don't know.Regards, Dan.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 26, 2018, 05:37:59 pm
content: As was already mentioned, you really should remove any personal information if you are going to post something like this, you just put your full name, personal email address and phone number out on a very public worldwide forum which is also indexed by search engines. This is overall a really bad idea.Now aside from that, the first thing I notice about the resume is that it's too long, it spills onto a third page and contains a lot of irrelevant fluff. When I look through a stack of resumes I give them a quick scan looking for interesting tidbits, I don't have time to read pages and pages of random stuff. For someone who has had just one or two jobs since school one page is a good goal, certainly no more than two. When you apply for a job you should do some homework about the company and the position you are applying for and tailor your resume to that job. There are people you can pay to help you write a resume and if you have the budget you might consider doing that. You might also look for a book called "What color is your parachute", it's a classic source of job hunting help, make sure you find the latest edition as it is constantly updated.

author: Rick Law
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 26, 2018, 09:35:35 pm
content: Quote from: rstofer on May 26, 2018, 02:46:42 pmIf you do go the military route, having already gained a college degree, you can probably try for OCS directly (officer candidate school) - you are exactly one of the two kinds OCS is designed for, college grads wanting to join, and the other being enlisted with potential to become officer. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines all have their own OCS,Word of advice if you do go - stay focus on what you want! From personal experience (of having given someone a ride to Navy recruitment station, I stayed and listened in): At least for that few limited instances I listened in, itappears to methat recruiters are train and focused on getting candidates to enlist. The person I gave the ride to was interested in NROTC. The recruiters seem to fall back to talking about enlistment whenever the question is unclear/non-specific. If you don't stay focus on OCS, you may well come out with enlistment paper in your hand. Once the target is clear, they are very helpful.Keep in mind, not everyone employed by the military are in the military.They have a boat load of civilian employees as well. As to whether if recruitment station is a place for those, your guess is as good as mine.

author: rstofer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 26, 2018, 09:53:54 pm
content: Quote from: Rick Law on May 26, 2018, 09:35:35 pmIndirectly, that was my point above. So you do the job for the military and then you get out and do it for a civilian contractor using all the education and experience provided by the military. At a minimum, you will walk into the contractors HR already having a security clearance. This is actually a pretty big deal.It was my understanding (and I'm probably wrong) that there are separate enlistment centers for officer candidates. You sure don't want to sign up for just anything the recruiter recommends because what you will get is 'grunt - mod 0'.https://www.airforce.com/frequently-asked-questions/officer-path/I don't know what the military thinks about DeVry.

author: Rick Law
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 26, 2018, 11:12:42 pm
content: Quote from: rstofer on May 26, 2018, 09:53:54 pmEcho that. On the military side, once you are commissioned, you are already a leader by definition in the military. Once you've done your time, you have the experience, the knowledge, the contact, the clearance, etc... Plus, for some industry/company/state/federal openings, veterans has (in some cases, by law) a preferential hiring status.I also know a number of people who did their 15 years (min for retirement benefit) or 20, collect their by then fairly sizable pension and start a second career.I have to add thought, while the benefit is there,serving has to be in your heartas well. It would be a pretty awful way to go if you are there, bleeding out on the battle field and saying to yourself: wish I had taken the burger flipping job for less money. Granted, probability of that is very low but it could happen. You need to make sure you are okay with the risk of being the unlucky few.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 27, 2018, 12:56:58 am
content: While I have a great deal of respect for those who serve in the military, these days it comes with too much risk of being sent out to some awful place to get involved in foreign civil wars, possibly killed or seriously injured and certainly having a miserable time. Defending one's nation is a noble cause but too often I feel we (the US) stick our noses into things we have no business getting involved in. IMHO the last really worthwhile war we fought was WWII. Vietnam was a major catastrophe and a complete waste, then throughout most of my lifetime we've been mired in various endless conflicts in the middle east. Looking around at the number of homeless or injured (physically or mentally) veterans is enough to stop me from recommending it to anyone.

author: JohnnyMalaria
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 27, 2018, 03:30:45 am
content: Just to emphasize Bicurico's point, I saw this thread for the first time after the OP's post was changed. Here's what a two minute web search revealed:QuoteI got this by searching on Bing for 'eevblog Hoffman cv' (without the quotes) and looked at Bing's cached version. Google will do the same thing. The whole post is there but I just copied the first bit.Then I looked at Richard's eevblog profile which shows where he lives. A search for 'Richard Hoffman - Electronics Engineer.pdf' (copied from the cached post) gave a first hit as Richard's LinkedIn account.Not bad for two minutes. A little more time and I'm sure I could get an aerial view of Richard's house via Google or Bing maps. Or street side. It's scary how easy it is to get this kind of information.

author: JohnnyMalaria
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 27, 2018, 04:02:11 am
content: Richard, I've had a look at your LinkedIn profile where you state:QuoteI'd modify it to be more along the lines of:QuoteFor <example>, concisely state what the situation was, what you did (not help do!) and the consequence (time/money savings etc)Doesn't need to be overboard, just enough to give a sense of the scope of your work and the impact your work has for the team/department/company overall.This is very rough and ready but I hope it gives you a sense of how to make your CV/profile quickly tell the reader what you are responsible for and the impact that *you* have, preferably with examples.

author: rhb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 28, 2018, 06:35:14 pm
content: Quote from: JohnnyMalaria on May 27, 2018, 04:02:11 amI completely agree with this. Put a minimal description of this in the initial summary paragraph and then expand on it in the rest of the CV.I was run through a Drake, Beam and Morin week long outplacement course. Out of curiosity I was looking a a wall of resumes at a professional society meeting during one of the biannual downturns in the oil industry when someone nearby commented to a companion, "You can really spot the Drake, Beam and Morin resumes."It's a very effective style:SummaryAccomplishmentsEmploymentEducationOther (e.g. professional societies, significant hobbies, etc)Switch Accomplishments and Employment if Employment is short. Put whichever has the most appeal to other employers first.