How to write a resume that grabs our attention

As a translation agency, we end up seeing more than our fair share of resumes and translator's web sites. Based on our experience, here is what we like to see in a resume.

Put some dates on it. You may have recently started working as a freelance translator, and it is wonderful to see some new blood in our profession. I really would like to know if you have 1 year of experience vs. 20 years. And if you have worked in technical non-translation jobs earlier in your life (for example as a software programmer or as a network engineer), write those down and write some dates for them.

Focus. You may have a long career where you have tackled all possible areas of human knowledge, but claiming you are an expert in all of them does not look good. I like to see one or two areas where you have worked, maybe the areas you want to do most of your future work. If you had your choice, what kind of work would you like to get?

Tell me what software you have and use. I have seen countless resumes that let me know how much memory the PC has, that it has a high density floppy drive and that it has a 56K modem. That is wonderful but pretty much irrelevant to me. What I am looking for is what programs you know and have that could be useful in our line of work. From Acrobat to FrameMaker, from PhotoShop to Catalyst, from Trados to SDLX, write down what you have and what version you have. And if you have proprietary tools that you have used for specific customers (Microsoft, Sun, Oracle, etc.) write those down as well. While I may not be able to use them, they show that you have experience with those clients and with a variety of CAT tools.

Show me how you prevent problems. Something I never see in a resume but that I would like to see is what people do to prevent catastrophic failures in their systems. Show me that you have a strategy for backups on tape, or that you burn a CD with your work at the end of the day. Hard drive crashes happen, and you can prevent them from causing you to lose days of already completed work.

Show me some examples of the work you have done. Not actual samples, just the end client or the agency, plus a short description of the type of project.

Show me that you worked in team. Chances are you haven't worked on that 100,000 word technical translation all by yourself. Today's business requires fast turnaround, and that means teams of translators for any large project.

Show me something you are proud of. Maybe one translation project was especially rewarding. Maybe you have created an extensive glossary that is available on your web site. Maybe you have been training other translators on the use of some software tools. Chances are you have something that can make you stand out, perhaps something that shows that you are a member of the translator community that likes to give something back. If that is the casa, write it down, let us know. We really enjoy working with other linguists who share our values of community involvement,

We are looking for a wide range of skills. A majority of the work is typically translating and editing, but we are also interested in linguists who can do light DTP, take screenshots, do QA testing of help files, extract software strings, convert files from one format to another, do linguistic QA testing of localized software, align previously translated material. If you have the experience and the tools needed for these types of projects, and you are interested in doing them, write those down, let us know.