Ramit Sethi has some great material. He has a download of a handful of resumes his clients have used successfully in the past including an engineer. I used those as models after seeing no results from my old resume. Then I submitted the new resume to a company with great reviews on Glassdoor and open positions I might be a fit for. I was curious to see what would happen. I was running a test and willing to follow through if anything came of it. Results are I'm flying out for final interviews next week. Time to study Ramit's interview prep material.

I've been reflecting on my experience with resumes and interviews for various positions, mostly technical, over the last 30 years. For me, getting jobs has almost always been about rapport with the person across the table or other end of the phone. Natural problem solving/engineering skills and abilities with a toolkit are important. Engagement with the interviewer via interesting, relevant stories feels like one of the keys.

A friend who used to hire engineers years ago at Sun told me he would hire based on two factors, assuming basic background/skills on the resume. One, light behind the eyes and two, could he enjoy drinking beer with the person after work? I have another friend who used to successfully hire engineers in a similar way. Not sure why we don't see more of this out there. Though the informal route probably embodies this approach by it's nature.