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If you’re writing a resume for a technical position here are a few resume tips.

The first resume tip is to put your technical skills, training and knowledge at the top of your resume. Make sure it is detailed and organized and that your technical expertise is clear. Keep in mind that prior to finding its way to the prospective employer the resume is going to be read by a gatekeeper, and will likely be electronically perused for the important keywords. The best resume tip to get your resume in front of the employer is to make sure you include relevant keywords, such as industry or job jargon, an all operating systems and programs with which you are proficient.

The second resume tip is to document your qualifications according to their relevance to the position for which you are applying, with the most relevant listed first. Your degree or certification is only listed if relevant to the available position. Don’t worry about reverse chronology. If, for example, you are applying for a system administration position and one of the prior positions you’ve held is as a system administrator that job should be listed first - no matter where it appeared in your work experience chronologically.

The third resume tip is to be factual with your experience, quantifying it where you can. You could, for instance, enumerate the code lines you debugged, the amount of money your budget costs saved, or note the number of computers and servers whose maintenance you were responsible for.

The fourth resume tip is to be active rather than passive in your resume. Begin each sentence with an action, keeping it in the past tense.

The fifth resume tip is to blow your own horn. This is not the time to be shy. Treat your resume as a marketing and sales tool for yourself. Write it as if you are the product and the employer the consumer. Sell yourself. If you have a significant accomplishment that doesn’t seem relevant to the job list it separately, but do list it.

The sixth resume tip is to keep your resume as concise as practical, without minimize the point size to make it hard to read, or eliminating needed white space. If your resume includes fewer than six years of experience you should be able to keep it to one page. Unless you are applying for a senior executive position, however, you shouldn’t exceed three pages. Some of the ways to be concise is to leave out the details of projects of which you were not the key part. Articles and pronouns can be eliminated - you don’t need a, an or the - and you definitely don’t need I.

The seventh resume tip is to eliminate all unimportant, or non-pertinent information, as well as those things that will give away your right to be considered without bias. You should never, for example, include your resume, your marital status, any indication of your health or age, or any associations that would make clear your religious, sexual preference or political affiliation. You don’t need to tell a prospective employer, for example, that references are available, nor do you need to name supervisors at this point.

The final resume tip is to check for errors. Check yourself for grammatical and punctuation errors as well as typographical mistakes. Have someone else proofread your resume whose opinion and ability to catch errors you are confident about. This is probably the most important resume tip of all.

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