Fresh out of college - 5 yrs of work experience in IT. Looking for any tips from hiring managers on otherwise on how to get resume to the top of the stack (or get a call back). Thoughts?
Try keeping it to one page. Make sure you have a clear objective. Put your education at the top if you don't have a lot of experience. Make your cover letter explicit to the role you are applying for. Generic letters get skipped by me
Any preference on formatting choice? Photoshop "pretty" resumé or standard word template?
I would bring yours to the top if you have no gaps in employment. Last behavior is a future predictor.
Don’t waist time on photoshop “pretty”, most systems will scrape your text and feed it to hiring managers in plaintext. Standard and simple word templates are easier to produce and update and when a hiring manager actually sees the real thing they are still fairly decent looking.
Your resume should have: clean formatting, clear objective, minimal use of buzzwords, organized listing of skills, no typos, good grammar. If a resume is at all difficult to parse, I skip it during the first pass. Hope this helps. good luck!