Any experience? Related experience? Recent experience? Those are all good questions! I have been told on a few occasions that my resume was overlooked because my experience was not relative to the position. Yes, an extremely valid point. I reciprocated and removed everything aviation, maintenance, weapons, and Navy related. There was my new and beautiful empty resume (Side note: we can talk about resumes somewhere else at a later time, or just go back to LinkedIn to go down that rabbit hole!). I had to do a lot of reflecting, resume example finding, and revising. Needless to say, my newly revised resume(s) included my previously removed experiences. Although they were not techy or IT related, they were my only professional experiences that could speak to my work ethic, soft skills, leadership, and accomplishments. There is a loud dialogue going on right now and it sounds something like below.
you don’t need a degree, get your certs
but do you have 5-7 years experience for this entry-level position?
you don’t have a degree nor certs?
I’d rather bring someone on the team with real experience over any degree
I have 3 certs, a bachelors, and am having a hard time finding a job
do entry-level jobs, internships, or apprenticeships even exist?
Believe me when I say this, I am not negating the roles or importances of degrees, certifications, related experience, non-related experience, entry-level jobs, internships, apprenticeships, and good ol’ fashioned hard work. I am simply illustrating that resumes are tricky-but-not-tricky documents that might be lucky to have 15 seconds spent glancing at it. One of my best soft skills and attributes has been my life long commitment to the process of improvement. Resumes can always be improved. Your work experience can always be improved. Your professional knowledge can always be improved. You get the gist. That is where beginning a personal website comes into play. My goal is to capture my commitment to process improvement through my experiences (related to IT or not, but mainly IT), educational endeavors, IT projects, and blog entries.
I have to give a humongous shout out to #networkchuck. Beginning this domain project has been a faint idea in the back of my ADHD brain for months but watching his content on Youtube really got me into taking action and practical steps to better my experiences and career in IT. TY NWCHUCK!
Certifications
CompTIA A+, through 3/31/2025
CompTIA Security+, though 10/1/2025
Self-Paced
Formal Training
I currently have one more semester left to complete my undergraduate degree in Philosophy & Religious Studies. My anticipation graduation is December 2025!