How To Write a Technical Resume

Writing a resume is highly crucial to getting the job you desire, as it is your first impression on your potential employer. One to three pages of your exceptional qualities, accomplishments, skills, work and education background, personal information, and other details pertinent to the job you are targeting are your self-marketing tools to get invited for an interview.

While there are basically two types of resume, the chronological and functional, you have to create one that ideally complements the job you are seeking. If you are an IT professional, programmer, web developer, software engineer, and so on, you will need a technical resume for a job position in the technical industry. The following are tips in creating an attention-grabbing technical resume.

1. Organize and emphasize your functional strengths. Write statements that identify your fields of expertise, years of experience, and knowledge of strategic technologies and methodologies. Emphasize key certifications that would best draw attention to your industry expertise.
2. Feature your personal strengths relative to your functional capabilities. These are skills like leadership, communication, commitment, flexibility, self-awareness, planning and monitoring, goal setting, time management, etc. If you have experienced handling teams in the past, write statements proving your ability to motivate high performance teams. This will inform the reader that you have had success in leadership in your previous work and that the new company can invest not only in your functional expertise but in your personal strengths as well.
3. Include major certifications, trainings, and education relative to your areas of expertise. If you have, for instance, built or enhanced software systems in the past, write a statement that presents your productivity in this particular experience. You may create separate sections for technical skills and experience. If you are an expert in languages such as Java, Visual Basic, C, C++, C#, or are highly qualified in databases such as MySQL, Oracle, Sybase, Postgress, or specialize in particular hardware, environment or communication protocols, let the reader know.
4. Do not hesitate to include awards and citations. If you earned recognition or promotion in your previous work and that is relevant to the position you are aiming at, mention it.
5. Remember to keep your statements clear and simple. Avoid using overwhelming self descriptions that your resume would end up like a work of fiction owing to the superfluous adjectives.
6. Follow business writing format and resume layout standards when writing your resume. Business standards are easy on the eyes, clear, and concise. Avoid using too many different fonts and do not decorate. Use one font and vary sizes if necessary for emphasis. Standard font sizes in business writing are 10- and 12-point. 

If you are unsure how to start creating your resume, you can view free samples on the internet to give you ideas on resume building, resume layout, and other sources applicable for technical or technology resume. You can also seek a resume consultant if you need to otherwise simply stick to simple business standards and learn to organize appropriate details in order to make your resume stand out from the crowd.