Jeffrey Walker wrote an article on what he looks for in a resume. I was going to write a long "me too", but it seems more efficient just to list the links I was going to use as source material:
- Rands in Repose: A Glimpse and a Hook" -- this article comes pretty close to describing how I read resumes
- Mike Cannon-Brookes: Applying for a Java job - HOWTO -- some hard-earned wisdom from Mike recruiting for Atlassian
- John Rotenstein: How to get a job at Altassian -- John managed to compress all the most important information in his resume down to a single diagram
I think what many people forget is that a resume is an exercise in marketing. You're trying to sell yourself to a prospective employer, but so often I get little more than a dry list of technologies, and some useless self-assessments of the applicant's ability.
For the kind of developer who considers him or herself above marketing, it might be something of an alien landscape.
What surprises me most as one of the pool of Atlassian developers who reads incoming resumes, is not that we get so many submissions, but that so many of them come through recruiters. Don't recruiters have an incentive to make sure their candidate makes the best possible first impression?
