How to draw attention on your résumé

[Lahmaneed 0]

I was not sure where to post this on the forum so it ended up here.

 

This might be a strange request, but I think asking actual Delphi developers and possibly Delphi developers that also are managers might be the best way.

 

I have been in IT for most of my 40+ year life and for my whole adult career. I have always been a programmer, but only in the last 5 years have I been employed as a programmer. Before that I have mostly been employed as IT Support, Network Engineer and have owned small businesses, mostly within the IT sector. I was always programming professionally in all those non-programmer employments as a means to assist with my day-to-day job, but that was never part of the employment contract and of course I always programmed at home.

 

The problem I face is that my résumé (CV) does not draw attention from "passers-by". I suspect companies previously would consider interviewing me only because they were desperately looking for someone to fill the position. Then they would realize I have some skill and if they were happy with me as a person they would consider hiring me. I highly doubt my résumé was impressive enough for them to influence the decision, but they would be happily surprised to find afterwards that I could hold my own in the job.

 

I think the lack of punching power in my résumé makes possible employers and most probably recruiters push me to the bottom of the stack and that is with the assumption that they even placed me in the stack in the first place.

 

Furthermore, I never worked at a programming position that made some "wonder software" or anything impressive. It was mostly your average Delphi programming position with the average grind and as such nothing in them are so impressive to draw attention from a résumé reader.

 

As a side-note; I am fond of component, package and framework/backend coding.

 

Now I am looking for another opportunity and I am wondering how to improve my résumé to draw first-glance attention. I understand it's hard to provide advice without you seeing my résumé, so I would like to rephrase the question and ask any of you that have managed employees or had input in selecting Delphi candidates at your company to hopefully chime in...

 

What do you look for when looking at a Delphi programmer's résumé before you have even spoken to him/her? What draws your attention? What would you look for in my case as only a "recent" addition to the "Official Professional Delphi Programmers Guild" that was previously mostly part of the "Official Professional IT Support Guild"?

 

Thank you for your input.