Good Customer Service - Exhibiting empathy, Being conscious of your tone,

Acknowledging the person you're talking to, Developing trust with the user.

Documentation - Bugzilla , JIRA ,Redmine

Crafting Your Resume

Your resume is usually the first impression that companies have of you, so you want
to make sure that you include relevant information in it. If you’d like to build
your resume from scratch, make sure to scroll down to the bottom of this page to
download PDFs of resume templates to help you get started. Keep in mind, these are
just sample resumes, and you should customize them as you see fit!

What you want to include

Who you are: name, address, phone number, email

Education history: where and what you’ve studied (or are studying)

Employment history: where and in what roles you’ve worked (or are working)

Relevant Skills

When listing out your education, include colleges attended, certificates obtained,
and any additional education programs you’ve completed. You can include a GPA or
grade average for degrees if you wish. It is not necessary to include dates for
your education section.

If you are a new graduate, or are still studying, you’ll want to include a few
additional details, like interesting projects that you did during your studying or
highlight an elective subject that you took. After a few years of professional
experience, though, you may simply include the degree, year and location.

A “Functional” or “Skills based” resume format works well for new graduates or
candidates with limited work experience. The focus of this format is more around
your skillset, rather than your work experience. You can include a brief summary of
qualifications, followed by a list of skills with examples for each. This format
works well for candidates with less employment history, but lots of applicable
skills.

For your employment history, you’ll want to highlight the skills that are most
relevant for the position that you are aiming for. Use a chronological or reverse-
chronological format for your employment history. List the month and year for each
role accurately. List out achievements, not just tasks performed, and make them
quantifiable. Use the sentence format of Action Verb + Specific Task + Quantifiable
Point”. For example: “Automated imaging process for new computers, reducing 90% of
manual work for the IT team.” Include responsibilities of your role, but don’t fill
your resume with lots of bullets about every small task. Summarize and tailor your
bullet points around the job description you’re applying to. For example, instead
of saying “Created new user accounts, deleted old accounts, set passwords….”, say
“Administered and maintained all user accounts”.

Similarly for relevant skills. You want to include the general topics that you are
knowledgeable about, as in customer support, networking, system administration,
programming, etc. You may list the operating systems that you’ve worked with and
the programming languages that you are skilled in, but don’t try to list every
networking protocol you’ve heard about or every IT tool that you’ve ever used. The
noise distracts from the relevant information.
Regardless of the format you decide to use (chronological, functional, etc.), make
sure you keep the format and structure consistent throughout. For example, if you
use full sentences for your bullets, be sure to use that format for all of them and
include proper punctuation and grammar. Check your font sizes and styles to ensure
those are consistent as well.

Tailoring the resume

Before sending a resume to a certain job position, it’s a good practice to check
that the contents of your resume match what’s in the job description. You should be
tailoring your resume to each job you’re applying to. Sending generic resumes to as
many roles as possible, is not a good strategy. A targeted approach is always
better.

If you are applying for an IT support role, you may want to highlight your customer
support experience, even if it only comes from a volunteer organization at your
university. Whereas, if you are applying for a programming job, you’ll want to
highlight your software development experience, regardless of whether it was
acquired in university or on the job.

Your online presence

Many companies nowadays contact candidates through online sites like LinkedIn, so
it’s important to keep your online profile complete and up to date. Start by
writing a summary that describes both your current role (if applicable) and your
career aspirations. Include a professional photo and up to date contact info
(although recruiters may also contact you directly via LinkedIn).

LinkedIn profiles are much more in depth than resumes. You can include specific
accomplishments from as many roles as you like, but use the same format as your
resume (Action Verb + specific task + quantifiable point).

Adding in personal projects can also be helpful, especially if you have something
tangible to show from it. For example, if you’ve created an application, a website,
or similar type of product as part of a hobby or school project, include it and
provide a link to it.

Just like a resume, list your skills, your experience and what you are looking for
as your next step. Make sure that you include all the relevant background
information that a recruiter looking at your profile might be interested in. Make
sure you are descriptive, don’t assume the reader will have context.

Elevator pitch - A short summary of who you are and what kind of career you're
looking for.

Creating Your Elevator Pitch

An elevator pitch is a short description of yourself. The name comes from the fact
that you want it to be so short that you can deliver it to someone that you are
meeting in an elevator ride.

The goal of the elevator pitch is to explain who you are, what you do and why the
other person should be interested in you.

For example, this is my elevator pitch for this program:

My name is Rob Clifton, and I’m a Program Manager at Google. I manage all of our
hiring efforts for our junior IT support roles. I’ve interviewed hundreds of
candidates, and I help train our interviewers on how to find the best talent in the
industry.

I’m telling you who I am, what I do, and why you might be interested in what I have
to say.

In an interviewing context, you want to be able to quickly define who you are, what
your current role is and what your future goals are.

For example, if you are a student, you’ll want to include what and where you are
studying, and what you are looking to do once you have graduated.

Hi! I’m Jamie, I’m in my senior year at Springfield University, studying Computer
Science. I enjoy being able to help people and solve problems, so I’m looking
forward to putting my tech skills into practice by working as an IT Support
Specialist after I graduate.

If, instead, you already have a job and you are looking for a change, you will want
to include what you do and what difference you are looking for.

Hi! I’m Ellis, I’ve been working at X Company as an IT Support Specialist for the
past two years. During those years, I’ve learned a lot about operating systems and
networking and I’m looking to switch to a system administrator position, where I
can focus on large scale deployments.

Remember that you want to keep it personal, you want to get the attention of the
other person and let them know why they are interested in you. Even if you don’t
meet them in an elevator, you want to be ready to give people you meet a quick
impression of yourself.

New terms and their definitions: Course 1 Week 6

404 Not Found: An error message you might see on websites that have been moved or
deleted

Error message: Helpful indicators that can point you in the right direction

Permission denied: An error message you might find when accessing a protected file

Root cause: The main factor that's causing a range of issues

Troubleshooting: The ability to diagnose and resolve a problem