Day 4 of What's Next

Day 4 of what's next. The world of the Resume.

It's daunting for most of us. Spartan vs Overstuffed. Vintage MSWord layout vs Markdown. Tailored per application vs focused on what you're looking for. There are services of course, there's Claude, there's a myriad of ways to approach this question.

When I've been on the hiring side and a resume makes it to my hands, I'm mostly interested in what kinds of questions it might generate. Topics that I would want to chat through with a candidate in person. I understand that a resume can be part of the ticket that gets you on the ride, but for me I find it critical to hear someone talk me through what they have done, and more importantly what they want to do.

Of course now I'm on the other side of this, and I know instinctively that I need to find a way to present enough on a resume to appear relevant. I need to compress ~25 years of doing into a set of inspiring bullet points. I need to convey the harrowing nature of the business critical applications I've shepherded from idea to massive customer impact. It must be the greatest document ever created.

It would be amazing to have the perfect resume already, but I don't. Instead I'll do what I always do, start with what I know, and iterate. I need to spend a few days really thinking about what I want and finding a way to tell that story. I need to craft an argument around the core tenant that knowing everything needed for my next role isn't as valuable as my track record of being able to learn what's needed. I'm starting with the boilerplate at jmayeur.dev and will build, and begrudgingly edit, from there.