Kent Osborne and "The Computer Guys" (Amos Aesophe, Joel Broveleit and Jeff Litterick) welcomed Victoria Darling to Tech Radio. Darling has been in the technology industry for more than 20 years, including a recent stint managing six buildings and staffing needs for Electronic Arts (EA) as they ramped up from 100 employees to over 1000 in about four years. After two and a half decades of writing resumes on the side for friends and clients of nonprofit agencies, she took her love of writing and technology and ventured out on her own to write resumes and Linkedin profiles full time.
Contact Victoria through her website at: www.RockStarResumes.net
Tips for finding tech jobs:
- Know your stuff, and stick to what you know. Don't try for a gaming-company's Community Moderator role if you've never played a video game or posted to a forum before. If you've just repaired computers, focus on those type of jobs. If the recruiter likes what they see in relationship to another job type they'll pluck you out of the stack and call you to say so.
- Try to connect with someone who already works in the firm you want to work at. Hang out and be friendly with the folks in the coffee shop across the street from that company, send a friendly hello to an employee on LinkedIn, or use your geek network to find a connection. If you can get someone on the inside to pass your resume to the recruiter you'll almost always get a callback.
- Make sure your resume focuses ONLY on tech interests and transferrable skills. If you were an administrative assistant, don't talk about the travel you coordinated or the lunches you ordered for executives. Instead talk up how you quickly learned software to better meet deliverables, how you managed complex projects, and where you excelled at problem-solving in a team environment.
- Beef up your LinkedIn profile NOW. Recruiters are tired of sifting through hundreds of resumes to find a couple of good ones. LinkedIn has been a game changer. Now recruiters can surf out and scout a half dozen good candidates on LinkedIn and never even post the job publically. If you aren't on LinkedIn (or your profile is crappy or out of date) you're easily missing out on half the available positions.
- Be creative; show a little personality. Tech companies want great skills and experience, but they won't even consider you if you don't seem like a match with their company culture. The best games and best technologies are made by people, so human capital is -- without exception -- the #1 resource at any tech firm. If all your best developers leave to go to another firm because you have a jerk working on the team, the quality of your products or services goes way down. They have to get and keep the best talent to make more money, so they're careful about who they add to the team. Whether you use a graphic resume to catch their attention or fly your geek flag in the cover letter, just be sure they can see "who" you are. (Note: I said show a little personality, but not too much. I have stories about folks who tried too hard and scared the bejeezus out of us! LOL)