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Discussion on: Critique My Resume!

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Ben Sinclair

OK, this is going to sound wildly picky, but the way you split your name into "Ryan M" and "Doyle" reminds me of people putting too much big text into a div and it splitting somewhere they didn't expect. Maybe it's the "M", I'm not sure, but it's exactly the sort of thing that clients always complain about when you give them a nice new website and they start putting unexpected content in it.

I'd get rid of the shadow on the photo, for that matter. I think it's quite a nice picture and makes you instantly look more approachable than a wall of text or a straight headshot, but some prospective employers might find it a bit strange to include other people in it.

I'm not a fan of the purple. I don't know if you feel it's like a personal brand thing, in which case it's fine, but if not then it seems a bit odd, especially in the heading, and also because everything else is black or grey.

I like the simple dates (years is plenty granular enough for an employer) and general "Granite Bay" area you use, because some people fill their header with complete addresses and so on and it's just unnecessary.

I'd put the skills section first, before the projects. In fact, I'd probably leave the projects until the end, or maybe put it between experience and education, because I'm trying to think how this would be laid out in the order of importance a recruiter is most likely to want. For them, the experience and skills sections are the most important, even if you don't have a huge amount of "relevant" experience.

What I'd recommend is to take the experience section and try to flesh it out with something in each role that you could start with an action word, like you did on the first one ("Developed curriculum..."). It feels like you have a few things to say about one, and nothing about the others, which gives the implication that you didn't really do anything while there - and I'm sure that's not true.
If you can't think of anything off the top of your head, write down a page full of things you did there, no matter how trival, over the course of a day or so, and then look through them for the most interesting one or two. They don't have to be related to the job you're applying for but it obviously helps :)

If you're not trying to keep it short, under a page, then flesh out the sentences a little. You're quite terse.

Try rephrasing things to not use the passive voice. "Users can add multiple cameras..." could become, "I designed and built a service to let users add as many cameras as they like through an intuitive, accessible UI." That sort of thing.

Good luck :)