I responded privately at some length on the resume in question, and I
thought I'd summarize my comments for for the list as well...

1) If you're going to provide a text resume, it should be formatted
   appropriately for text (yeah, less than 80 characters wide.)
2) The resume of a student, applying for co-op or summer job, should
   go into some detail as to the sort of material covered in the classes
   they've take so far.  Whether or not you got good grades.  Especially
   if you manager to take any exceptional classes.
3) Even if you're hoping that your hobbyist work will make you stand out,
   it shouldn't dominate the resume at the expense of education/previous
   jobs.  Say enough to make it clear you have "extra" skills, but the
   actual details are more of an interview subject than resume subject.
   The ability to solder is an "extra skill", BTW - you don't have to
   be designing 4 layer circuit boards to stand out - there are far too
   many CS/EE students that have never put together a KIT...
4) You should be modest and avoid overuse of terms like "excellant", unless
   you're an industry-recognized expert.  "Boast modestly."  Be honest
   about the sorts of differences you get between "most classes used fortran",
   "one class used pascal", and "I read about Forth and lisp" and similar.
5) Resumes should be "keyword/trademark rich", so as to get attention from
   the first-level screeners.  Instead of "I program 16F PICs", you should
   say you "have experience doing SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT for EMBEDDED SYSTEMS
   based on the MICROCHIP PIC MICROCONTROLLERS."  Instead of "windows and
   unix", you should say "MICROSOFT WINDOWS XP, WINDOWS NT, WINDOWS 98,
   Linux, FreeBSD and NetBSD Unix."  I'm not sure about the highlighted
   text thing (all caps, here.)  I think it looks bad, but it's not obvious
   to be that it's a bad idea.  Seems a bit like it would help the first
   level screeners and not really bother actual hiring managers/etc, but
   (ahem) some people have strong feelings about formatting irregularities.

BillW

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