Resume Dilema

Resume Dilemma

After several years of electronics and microcontrollers as a hobby, I was hoping to find a job that involved these elements. Being in my late 50's, it has been a long time since I had a couple of EE courses in college. Never had a job in electronics. So you see the problem(s) here. How can one convey experiences or knowledge that has been gained away from formal education, or previous employment, to a prospective employer? Does such experience belong in, or outside of a resume? If one has been involved in an open source project on the web, how do you account for that?

In my era, it seemed that resumes were pretty much a chronological order of job titles and duties, has this changed greatly? Any links to a modern resume builder, tips, examples would be great.

The reality of it is, at your age, with no experience, and no degree in EE (I assume), you will have tough time finding work. At best I think you should shoot for a tech job. Pardon me if some of my presumptions are incorrect.

No offense taken, a job as a tech is something that I imagined, and shooting for. Mock ups, prototyping, testing, soldering, cad, documentation, light duty coding, or whatever else that could be required of a tech?

I am an ME, and worked in the power generation field of steam turbines out of school. Was also self employed as a general contractor and designer of single family homes. So after a handful of years of inactivity, it's time to move on to a third career that I have a passion for.

I realize at my age, I may have to create my own job. Or, I could join tcmtech out in North Dakota where jobs are dripping off the trees !

Age isn't a problem.... If you really wanted to you could still do a diploma.... I have a friend, who is in his late 50's, and he has very little electronic experience, but he manufactures relay boards... The boards have a tiny holtek processor and the relay is completely programmable.... They are used in automatic doors... he sells over 6000 a month.....He was a plumber....

It just shows that if you want to be an electronic engineer.... you can.

It just shows that if you want to be an electronic engineer.... you can.

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Sure, but that requires a 4 yr degree. A hobbyist will be hard pressed to get an engineer position with no credentials. Lets be realistic.

If you can pass drug tests, have a good driving record and a willingness to show up for work when you are supposed to you can make good money in any number of professions here.

Where I am working now a Class A CDL with a tanker and Has Mat endorsements will get you $55+K plus good benefits and a very generous 401K just for the base pay on a 5 day a week work schedule putting fuel in trains.

Bring your own housing though!

tcmtech said:

If you can pass drug tests, have a good driving record and a willingness to show up for work when you are supposed to you can make good money in any number of professions here.

Where I am working now a Class A CDL with a tanker and Has Mat endorsements will get you $55+K plus good benefits and a very generous 401K just for the base pay on a 5 day a week work schedule putting fuel in trains.

Bring your own housing though!

Click to expand...

Oops, brain fart, never mind...

@Ian Rodgers
Great story, thanks for sharing. Always heartening to hear of someone finding their niche with success.

@Mikebits
Doesn't matter what the relay board mfg. calls himself, who cares because he is the owner? I put that in the create a job for yourself category. Again, I am not trying for an EE job.

@tcmtech
I appreciated your Vac truck pictures from the oil patch. No CDL experience or credentials on my part. The oldest brother got a class A CDL, and worked for a short while double shifting with a FEDEX long haul contractor. He got sick and that was the end of that. Then he did a stint hauling drill pipe, tubing, etc. for a while.

I have a casita on wheels, does that count? That would be a slide in camper for the pickup truck. Probably wouldn't work during the cold winters up there

nickelflippr said:

How can one convey experiences or knowledge that has been gained away from formal education, or previous employment, to a prospective employer?

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Show them something you designed and built. Cuts through BS like a knife.

In my era, it seemed that resumes were pretty much a chronological order of job titles and duties, has this changed greatly? Any links to a modern resume builder, tips, examples would be great.

Click to expand...

Take this for what it is worth. I read countless resumes and that is after human resources scans them. I place more stock in the cover letter as to bringing someone in for an initial interview be it a technician position or an EE position. Keep the resume short and sweet and place emphasis on the cover letter. The cover letter is what will net an interview in most cases. You want in the door with an opportunity to present yourself. The days of a chronological order resume are long dead and the older we get the more boring they become. Most resumes are canned as are the cover letters, get creative.

That brings us to age discrimination. My take is that age discrimination is very much alive and well here in the US. We recently hired a facilities engineer. The guy had been unemployed for 2 years plus and was 55 years old. I petitioned for his hire and met opposition with one engineer actually complaining the fellow was too old. I wanted, and still want that young engineers head. Wasn't one of my hires. I was lucky and prevailed and we got a damn good engineer who has worked out extremely well.

Regardless of the position, learn how to sell yourself, be the best salesman you can expect to be. Convince those who may interview you they would be a fool not to hire you. What it comes down to is a very brief but cohesive cover letter and resume that gets you in the door then the ability to sell yourself.

Just My Take
Ron

@duffy
I think bringing along a small micro project, "IF" I can get the foot in the door, is a great idea. For me I feel there is hope if given the chance to demonstrate/show my abilities.

@Reloadron
Thank you very much for the tips, your opinions carry extra weight. More questions....Thoughts on whether a resume is supposed to be one or two pages? Does being listed as a team member of a Sourceforge project make it into the resume?, or in the cover letter? Do web links belong in either?

My thinking is two pages maximum or resume and a cover letter. Each cover letter should be tailored for the specific company right down to the position sought. Remember, that few pages and a good cover letter have a single purpose and that being to get you in the door. Being a team member of anything helps and doesn't hurt to list. It demonstrates the ability to work as part of a team which is a big buzz word today when the adage of "none of us is as smart as all of us" thing prevails. Also, along the team effort thing, if you get in the door and any team projects come up always use WE as in we, we, and we. Never stress I when referring to a team effort. For example; working as a team we developed an improved widget packaging method, I was responsible for improved widget flow to the final package. Remember you need in the door, then you sell yourself. Additionally while the team effort things are nice to have, they are not always a big plus. A position may require an individual to work independently with little or no direct supervision. Those abilities should also be stressed. "Because of my ability to work independently with minimal supervision and work instruction I feel I would fit in well and be an asset to the company....."

Depending on the position sought it doesn't hurt as mentioned, to bring a work specimen along. However, I would keep it in a briefcase and only bring it out if the opportunity arises. Photographs of projects don't hurt either but again, only presented if the opportunity arises.

Once the resume earns you an interview you are generally first seen by an HR administrator. This should lead to being seen and interviewed by a department manager assuming things go well. That department manager or supervisor will likely be the one making the decision to hire or not. All of that depending on company size and the position.

Personally and this is just me, I likely would not include web links in a resume. That just being my opinion. I want to read what the applicant has to say and get familiar with their background for the position sought. Now obviously there can be room for web links if I am looking to hire a web designer as their best work would be online and likely in a few other cases but generally speaking no I would not use web links unless they have a direct and strong bearing on the position sought.

Kent, I can't speak for Oregon but here in the Cleveland and NE Ohio area it is not unusual when we look for what is known as a control rod technician to receive 300 to 500 resumes with 90% of those applicants currently unemployed. Right now in the US it is an employers market with fewer jobs than qualified applicants. There is no shortage of competition out there for open positions.

All of this is just my opinion. While I have not submitted a resume in 25 years I sure have read hundreds in the past few years.

Ron

Ron, things are tough out here in Oregon also. I am not under any illusions about the steep wall ahead of me. One thing that kind of surprises me is the media thru which jobs are now posted, like craigslist, as opposed to the newspaper. Call me old fashioned.

Really appreciate the valuable insights, and will try to incorporate your ideas into the resume and cover letter.

Best of luck and when and if there is rejection just don't let it bother you and keep on trucking.

Ron

I'm not sure whether my recent experience will carry any weight or not, but here it is.

I've been doing software development of one form or another since about 6 months after leaving high school. After graduating high school, I came to Phoenix, Arizona to go to a local technical school to learn "computer electronics"; basically troubleshooting and building circuits (analog and digital - though analog is still, to me, somewhat a "black art" that only the truly skilled master), with an emphasis on computers and industrial control. Anyhow, about 6 months into that schooling I quit my job at Osco (they had cut my hours back to nothing), and cold-called for an apprenticeship job in electronics - and somehow I landed a job as a "computer operator" at a small mom-n-pop shop.

At the time, I had been programming on my own since I was about 10 years old - so I had a base of understanding of software development from that vantage point; mainly in BASIC and some assembler. I learned a bit more while going to the tech school (I'll tell you something - 68K assembler isn't bad - we were coding on the Amiga at the time). This place that hired me, though, told me they wouldn't hire me as a programmer because I didn't have a degree. So - they stuck me in the small computer room with a chattering line printer and taught me how to run reports and mount a 9-track tape on a vacuum column drive. I was being paid more than at Osco, and I thought I would graduate and leave back for home...

6 months passed and I got my associates degree (today I think going to that tech school was probably the worst decision of my life - but that's life); at the place I was working, by that time I had already shown them I could code (they had given me an account on the machine - and they were gradually teaching me the discipline of professional coding - vs my old-style self-taught spaghetti coding methods) - and they offered me a permanent position, and a (what I thought) was a fairly substantial raise (something like 50 percent!). What I didn't know was that they had got me for a song...

Well - that launched my professional software developer career. It's been 20 years now, and I'm still coding (and approaching the "big 4-0" - lol). Currently I work for a web applications development company out of Scottsdale. That's got a little backstory to it...

Back near the tail-end of October, I was up to my eyeballs in a few projects: I had taken on two free online Stanford classes (the AI and the ML classes), plus I was involved in a heavy project for my previous employer. That was taking a ton of my time, but so were the classes. It was a constant struggle to do everything and still make the grades and understanding of the material for the classes. I'll admit freely - I had bit off more than I could chew, but at the same time, if it hadn't been for the project at my work - I could've did it (barely, most likely). But that project was eating into my time - at times forcing me to stay late - sometime 'til 1 or 2 in the morning (and then my boss wanting me to come in the following day at my normal time - 9 am).

Oh - I forgot to mention - I was also owed about a month's worth of back-pay by him (over a year due), and I hadn't had health insurance coverage for about 1.5 years. I had given everything to try to stick with it, stay loyal, help the company recover, and hopefully get back what I originally was promised (and had gotten) when I had started working there 5 years earlier. I'm nothing if not loyal to a fault. With all of this - wondering if the project would ever finish; worrying about my school work; wondering if I was ever going to get health insurance coverage or if I was going to see my back-pay I was owed...something had to give. At the end of October, something did...

I was staying late one more day for this project, knowing I wouldn't have time to do the homework for my classes - I tried to tell my boss that I couldn't do it anymore, that I wanted off the project, on something else, that it was impacting my education. Here I was - learning new things via an online class about a love of mine (Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning) - cramming and understanding math which I had barely encountered before (probabilities and statistics) - this was a dream of mine. I'll never have a chance to actually go to Stanford (couldn't afford it even if I had the transcripts to go) - but this was helping me, and it made me feel good to participate. My boss didn't seem to care; he basically told me I could either drop my classes or resign.

So I resigned.

I went home late - again - that night; frustrated, angry, and upset. Someone I thought who would understand my hopes and dreams cared more about wringing every last ounce outta me; yeah, I'm approaching 40 and I am still naive, I guess. But anyhow - I talked it over with my wife, and decided I had finally had it. Fortunately for us, we had some savings, so I did something that I thought I was crazy to do, and stepped into the void of unemployment in a down economy - wondering if I had made the biggest mistake of my life (second only to not getting a real degree in computer science). I went back to my work a couple hours later (about 4 in the morning), cleaned out my desk, left behind a bunch of old computer junk I wanted (better not to take such stuff when you're quitting, though - I'm not stupid), and wrote my resignation letter. I carried out my box-o-crap, and left the key behind as I locked the door and reset the alarm. Then I drove back home - still wondering about what the future would hold.

The next day I dropped my AI class (which made me upset, and a somewhat bitter - but I kept going with my ML class)...

Ok - well, this is getting a bit long in the tooth, but to make the story a bit shorter, I put my resume out on Career Builder, Dice, etc - and hit up Craigslist and anywhere/anyone else I could think of. Eventually, the recruiters started calling me back, and helping me out. Ultimately, though, I answered a Craigslist posting for this place in Scottsdale. I took along with me an extra copy of my resume, and more importantly, a sample of my code (from my personal website), as well as a sample of the code I had wrote for my ML class (where I learned a new programming language called Octave - kinda like Matlab). They asked me some questions, I showed them my code, talked about my skills and interests, etc. I made sure to mention that what I was learning in the ML class was for my personal edification (and my hobbyist robotics projects), but that I enjoyed keeping my skills up like that, because I feel such knowledge could be of assistance to my employer as well.

It must've did the trick - less than a week after I had walked out of my old job, I ended up getting an offer (which I accepted) for my current position - ultimately for more pay, and after 90 days - more benefits.

This past Thursday I had my review (a few days early, I might add) - they wanted to keep me on. They got me set up with the medical insurance package, plus they gave me a raise. They told me that they had gone through more than a few programmers prior to me, but that none had the skill level or talent that I had brought to the company. They've hinted at wanting to transition me to management (in the software dev group, I imagine), depending on company growth. I'm now working on new projects with, I feel, a competent set of real business-oriented people; they don't seem to take any flak from their employees and expect the highest from them. They also seem to be bringing in the business needed to keep the company going, and they know when to say "no" to projects and clients as well (that's always an important point).

I tend to think that being able to present and discuss those code examples was the edge I needed. I don't know what the future holds, but I do know that for me, my software development career seems to have a turnover of 5-10 years with any given employer. My hope is to finish up this robotics project, and turn that into my "ultimate" portfolio (that, or a business venture). In the thick of it, I should have documentation on my mechanical design skills, my programming chops (mobile, web application, microcontroller, etc), electronics design and implementation, possibly some machining skills (I'm getting my mini-mill slowly set up!), AI/ML, etc. I think having such a portfolio is what will help keep me employable, if not something better.

So I would advise to try coming up with that portfolio, and focus it toward the type of job/career you are trying to land. Continue in the meantime to work on your projects, and throw that in the portfolio as well. Above all, keep learning the new stuff, and don't get complacent or apathetic; don't get stuck in a rut, so to speak. Try to keep your skills general (in my case, I always emphasize to employers that I don't consider myself to be focused on one particular language or platform above all others, but that I am flexible and capable enough to learn a new platform or language very quickly - that I have learned over the years that most languages/platforms all have the same general principles behind them, and it is those principles that I study and know).

I hope this long post helps in some manner - good luck on your search!

crOsh, Thanks for sharing and the encouragement. I have felt over the years that ending one job and moving on, has led to new possibilities, and usually a better job. Much like you, there seems to be a little voice on the shoulder that tells me the job satisfaction just isn't there anymore, and it is time to change things up. Best of luck with the new job and studies.

I look toward tremendous job satisfaction in my next job...

Retirement!

On an interesting and off topic note we just had my compliment in my department retire. He was 67 and had been with the company 45 years. He actually had to see a psychologist with a fear of retirement, we talked about it. I researched it and found the problem to be more common than I would have believed. Though I don't see me suffering from it. I will be 62 next week and I figure another year or two at most and doubt very much the need for a psychologist for the transition.

Ron

Ron, good luck with the retirement when it comes along. Some people don't adjust very well, others not a problem. So many factors come into play on if retirement bodes well.

During my unintended off time, traveling in the camper, fishing up and down the West Coast, British Columbia, and the Baja, was lots of fun. There comes a point though, when you can't just do that all the time, at least for me. The one thing I missed a lot from the job, was the interaction with my subcontractors, suppliers, and the public.

on the other hand..... i was looking for work a few years back and my short (3pages or less) resume just wasn't cutting it. so i went back and rebuilt my 10 page resume, and started using it. i had several interviews pretty much right away, and had a decent job offer within a month and i'm still at that job 4 years later. i guess it depends what's in the resume, and what kind of job you're looking for. something i've seen that has changed in the last 10 years is that many engineering jobs will say for instance "BSEE or equivalent work experience" meaning, while they may prefer somebody with a diploma, the diploma isn't as important if you really know what you are doing and have experience.

Hi All, thought I would check back in with an update, and there is good news, I got an electronics job!!!!!

Unbelievable stroke of luck, I feel like a kid in a candy store. Its with an electronic gauge manufacturer, so this is a production environment, and I am soldering thru hole pcb's to start with. There are a couple of pick and place machines, bare lcd's, graphical lcds, leds, analog circuits, and even some PIC chips, OMG. Only been on the job a couple of days, so no real particulars to pass on. I would say the economy is starting to show some signs of life, as they are currently trying to work through a backlog of orders.

As far as my original question goes, about not having professional experience, I followed a couple on online resume guides for those just getting out of school. So, I put an OBJECTIVE up front stating the position I was interested in, my personal goals, and how I could help the company, for a nice opening paragraph. Then on to a RELATED SKILLS section where I could detail my participation in, and completed projects (like my the rc tank blog, and several others). Also included, was tools, hardware, and software, I am experienced in and comfortable with. The skills section section was several paragraphs and my point of emphasis. Then it was on to the boring chronological PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE and EDUCATION, for two pages total. That very well may be how things are done with resume's now, but remember I was stuck in a the past version on how they went.

An interesting note about the labor force, the shop is heavily weighted with people my in my age group (say 40-60 yrs. old), now that was a surprise.

Just wanted to say thanks to everyone for sharing their personal experiences, and encouraging words, it helped a lot. And if this post helps someone else in their search in the labor market, all the better.