Resume Workshop

Below are some tips I’ve gotten about how to format your resume. These tips may work for you or they may not. The idea is to put something out there

What do you want your resume to say

Look at the potential of what we can do together!

Certifications

  • Place them on there even if they are expired. It shows that you’ve at least held them at one point. This is greatly dependant on the hiring managers desires (and yours) but it will help with recruiters when they check for desired skills

Contact Information

  • Make it legible. I haven’t gotten a lot of feedback on this part, but from what I was told, keeping things simple on your contact information is better. My email used to look like this: bob[at]alice[dot]com and it’s now bob@alice.com so recruiters and hiring managers can easily click to send me an email

What tools/frameworks do you add?

  • Over the years my resume has grown to have quite the impressive but exhaustive and unnecessary list of tools and frameworks.
  • I reduced my list to things that I felt are important. I removed things like Kali Linux, Active Directory, Bash, etc..

Length

  • If you have a lot to say about yourself, then great! Keep it as long as it needs to be. The idea is that your resume should and does tell a story. Depending on how well you write it depends on how good the story reads

General Rules

  • The most recent gets the most verbiage
  • The later ones only need one or two bullet points to tell overall what you did
    • What’s one badass thing you did?
    • If you didn’t do one badass thing then can you group all the badass things you did into one sentence
  • Don’t call out technologies in the bullets
  • Clear, actionable bullets or elements that allow you to speak to it and not all-encompassing of everything i did
    • Think: Death by PowerPoint
  • Are you tactical or strategic?
    • Are you a blunt instrument that can work by yourself and get things done?
    • Or, are you more long term planning and all about the long game?
  • Is there anything in your resume that shows that you work as a team, managed a team or led anything?
  • Start each bullet with an actionable verb like Led, Spearheaded, Implemented, Streamlined, Orchestrated or Executed
    • Those are just suggestions and by no means all encompassing
  • Lean into where you want to go
    • This means taylor your resume towards the position you want, not the one you have or had
    • Think about where you want to go

Questions to ask yourself

  • What do you get by adding certifications?
    • Does it make a difference?
    • Is it a desired cert for the position?
  • What do you like?
    • Do you enjoy protecting or defending?
    • If you don’t have a preference then what do you like about each discipline?
    • Which discipline brings you the most enjoyment?
  • Where do you want to be in 3-5 years?
    • As annoying as this question is, it FINALLY helped me. I had to talk through my career and decide do I want offensive or defensive security? My response, after a lot of back and forth was Defensive. It’s where my passion lies
  • Does your resume tell a good story about you?
    • Does it look like you manage, work on teams well, work by yourself?
      • None of that is bad, it should just reflect the types of positions you are applying for
  • Do you have too many bullets for any one position?
    • My rule of thumb… which will likely change, was to have 1 bullet for anything greater than 5 years out
  • Your resume is your book, the cliff note of your career
    • How do you want that to read?

My resume

Here’s my resume if you want to see what I’ve done. As of January 31, 2024 it is still in draft form and may have a lot of edits. I’ll update this page when it happens