[Anonymous]

What does a great Piping Designer’s resume look like?

TWEAKING
This subject has intrigued me my whole 35 year career. You have ideas I know, and I’d like to hear from you here. Me? I noticed that not one Piper’s resume is the same. Not one. Each one is formatted different, some contain bullets, others are underlined, with pages ranging from one page to 10 or more. I read all the time about resume requirements because ours are quite different from another discipline. Between assignments I will tweak mine till I’m blue in the face. Recently I’ve tweaked mine (again) and listed only projects on each job, instead of a whole paragraph having the same blah, blah, yada, yada. Recruiters want two pages, as they only have ten seconds to scan our resumes, and decide to throw it in the “yes” pile or the even bigger “no” pile. I can’t get all my last 25 years, certificates, and stuff into two pages, so I made mine (again) into three pages. I worry if this is too long for those quick ten seconds that they take to decide. I know a Piper (degreed) with only one page who has never had a problem finding employment as a contractor.

HISTORY PROBLEMS
Some recruiters say, “That’s too many jobs, we need a more stable work history. Funny, in each job, the client was pleased with my frequent three or six month assignments. In fact, I was on the job till the very last day and did’nt quit early. One thing is certain. The Piping Designer resume has to “pop,” or stand out in the crowd. It has to be crisp, neat, and contain the expected key words. Nowdays the recruiters convert our resumes into a pile of “key words” on the computer, and when they need resumes from their database, they type in the keyword(s). So, it is very important to cram your resume full of these piping related “keywords” but keep it accurate. The Great Recession of 2009 left a huge hole in my resume. I noticed someone on Linkedin had “Professional Development” in place of the job company. And, underneath it he had “Skill Upgrades” where “Piping Designer” would have been. He listed all of his training and credentials during that time beneath it. I did that, but once in a while during an interview, the interviewer will ask me about this as a j-o-b. I give up!

RESUME OR CV
Curriculum Vitaes (CV’s) are not used here in the U.S. I’m told but I made one anyway years ago thinking that I was gonna travel abroad. It contains every job I ever had, with full descriptions… very usefull in an interview. Mine breaks down the years of experience in each area, like Pharmaceutical, Offshore, Chemical, HVAC, Refinery, Plants, etc. Another section list all my years of computer skills. Yet another lists my Safety Experience, i.e. TWIC, HASC, GERT, OSCA, etc.

What are your coments or experiences on Piping Designer resumes?

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