My career and skill sets have evolved from being a technologist who developed software applications, to an entrepreneur who built and sold a successful global consulting organization. In my twenty four years of technical and operational experience, I have designed & built software applications, led dozens of engagements, and established a proven track record of building and leading engaged and motivated teams while successfully delivering strategic business value through technology solutions.
I've been helping emerging companies evolve from a handful of people and ad-hoc processes to mature product delivery organizations since 2002. I am passionate about technology, design, and working with smart individuals. This passion has directed my focus to engage with early stage ideas & companies in order to create & grow something that did not previously exist. Along the way, I've taken up photography and designing & selling t-shirts or as I like to call them b-shirts.
I’ve recently been updating my resume, this is something I haven’t done in over 8 years. I’d recommend that you don’t wait as long as I did to get yours current. Let me tell you, it more difficult than I thought it would have been. I think there are a few reasons for this. The first issue is that I don’t think I’m a good writer, anyone see the irony here. The second issue was, it’s really hard for me to remember what I did last week let alone over the past 8 years. The third and most significant problem that I ran into was how the information was being presented. I’ve hired plenty of people over the years and have seen a ton of resumes. So my natural reaction was to copy the style and format of what I had seen in the past. The problem with that approach was that I didn’t like what I was putting together and I couldn’t figure out why. I was having a really hard time trying to articulate what I was really good at and what I wanted to do. Â I then got a bit of inspiration from Garr Reynolds. After watching a few videos of Garr presenting and reading his book, I realized that my resume was a tool that I should use to present myself to others. Â It’s really about showing who I am and what I am capable of. Â Everyone has their own story and you should show off your uniqueness by telling that story. Â I’ve tried to craft my resume in a way that tells my story. Â Most resumes are just a bunch of bloated bullet points in which people are trying to cram in as much information as possible. Â Hence the title of this post. Â I am not a bullet point person, although my resume does contain them. Â I am much more comfortable explaining complex ideas visually, drawing out relationships. Â Why couldn’t I do that for my resume? Â Why do I have to follow the same format as everyone else? Â The key thing was to make sure I presented all of the relevant information. Â The text of my resume now revolves around two diagrams that I created that for the most part capture everything I was trying to articulate in words.
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In a fairly quick glance someone will get a really good idea of where I worked and what roles I played at each organization and for how long. Â
The second diagram, which I think the more useful, shows the growth in my skill sets and the level of influence as my career evolved.
I am by no means saying that my approach is better than what has been done in the past.  I am merely showing there are alternatives than the status quo.  I’m always trying to learn so if you have any suggestions on how I can improve my resume please feel free to comment.
As I was putting this post together, a bunch of other questions came to mind. Â I’ll talk about those in future posts.
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Although I really like the version of my resume that I have linked in this post, I have received some feedback from recruiters that have altered my thinking a bit. It turns out that for most recruiters if the resume isn’t in the format they expect, it is really difficult for them to search and categorize that particular candidate. Even though most of the recruiters I have spoken with really do like the format, it just doesn’t work with their process/tools. So I have created another version that conforms to a more standard format, http://watsol.bardolia.com/wp-content/uploads/resume/mbardolia-resume.pdf.