Technical Resume-Education Part

You have a number of options regarding the information that you may want present. Usually, the further away from the college courses or degree the less information you present.

Experience is almost always a better seller than education, unless you are in an Academic field. Therefore as you gain more experience, focus less on your experience. With the exception of entry level professionals, the education section should fall below the experience section.

Information that is required:

The name of the degree or certification
The institution where you received the degree or training

Information that is ideal to include:

The date you received the degree, certification or training (unless you received the degree over 20 years ago)

The city, state and sometimes country of the institution.

Graduating with honors or Cum Laude

Information that you may include:

GPA. Make sure to also include the scale (3.5/4.0). Do not include if your GPA is B average or below. (mostly used for less experienced job seekers or students)

Other honors affiliated with your performance

Social, athletic and academic organizations

Scholarships and academic awards

Listing of key courses (only recommended for entry-level)

Other sections - You will often see a number of other sections within the resume. Of course some of those sections are reserved for specific fields and professions. For example, you will always see a list of publications in the resume of an Author or Writer. But for the IT resume here are a few sections that you may want to include IF they quality is of information presented is of a high degree.

Professional Affiliations - The Project Management Institute (PMI) is a good example of a high profile organization in the field of Project Management and membership is highly regarded. I would not recommend adding this section if the extent of your professional affiliations is something like.... Member of the South Orange Country Computer Users Club.

Publications - Again this is straightforward. Only provide this information if your work was published within well know publication in your field. If you are highly published, it is often a good idea to create a separate document as an addendum to your resume.

Volunteer Work - Sometimes IT professionals set up significant systems within local organizations. In this case, it may be a good idea to add this content, but it really depends on the extent of your career and the level of effort involved in your volunteer work.
Other options to be wary of:

Be careful when adding information about your race, religion or sexual orientation. For the most part they should play no bearing on your ability to perform the job. There are a few exceptions, such as if your experience was primarily setting up information systems for Christian Churches and you are a member of a Christian organization. By all means, you should include that information. In these situations, let common sense prevail.

In most cases, avoid adding the interests, sports and hobbies. If you are too the point of adding this information, you should seriously consider the detail in your work experience or the overall length of your resume. I know it sounds good to talk about how you were the golfing champion at your country club, but unless you are prepared to only accept jobs where you can be the star on the company golf team, you should probably leave that information out.

Overall length of the resume is a highly debated topic. It is very difficult to generally recommend a specific length for a resume without knowing anything about an individual's career. For people with limited experience, a 1-page resume is ideal. For those with substantial careers a 2-page resume is necessary to document experience. For IT Contractors its often ideal to break down details of each specific project and 3-4 pages are necessary. These days, it is more common to see longer resumes, especially in the complex IT industry and especially since it is much more common to electronically distribute resumes. You really need to weigh the positives of quality information vs. the negatives of excessive information.

In summary, the technical resume should accomplish these goals:

Introduce yourself with compelling, detailed information using brief statements that summarize your career.

Identify your key areas of technical expertise and IT skills sets.

Document the scope of your work experience.

Demonstrate your past success through statements of achievement.

Define your training and education.

Utilize action verbs and action oriented statements.

Above all else --- GENERATE INTERVIEWS.

It cannot be stressed enough. If your resume generates interviews, don't change it. The resume is a tool and these guidelines can help you build a more effective tool for generating interviews. However, there is no secret system or no 100% guarantees. These guidelines are based on research and personal experience of our technical resume writers, based on what has been successful for the majority of IT job seekers. And remember, the resume is not the only tool you have to generate interviews. You also need a good, aggressive job search plan along with a strong initiative to succeed.