I don't get a good feeling about this. It sounds good overall, but there are some red flags as well: GIMP? Why even list that? Why would I (or anyone really) c

I don't get a good feeling about this. It sounds good overall, but there are some red flags as well: GIMP? Why even list that? Why would I (or anyone really) care if he likes GIMP or Photoshop? Regex? XML? What does that mean? That he knows what a regex is (which I'd expect anyone to know) or has he written an RE parser? XML - same thing. Mint, Debian, Ubuntu - just linux distros - again - shouldn't matter. Just put "Comfortable in a UNIX environment", I'd know you meant 10-12 distress plus Free/Open/NetBSD, no need to list them all...or if he does list them, put them next to each other. Back-End - ? Assembly - which kind? x86, MIPS, ARM? Parser - definitely interesting "Transcoding" - buzz word Writing - ummm....not a good skill actually, don't put it there Recruiting...? CSS/HTML/HTTP/TCP/IP - list them next to each other maybe? Here's what I'd do if I were him. 1. Drop the buzz words and irrelevant info like "Writing" and "Transcoding" 2. Don't list every single Linux distro you've played with - I've probably used over a dozen and nobody cares as long as I don't panic at the sight of a bash prompt 3. Group things better. Web stuff, Database stuff, language stuff, etc 4. List the things that are relevant to the company you're applying to first. Don't just mash them up wight the rest. They're actually not equally important. He's probably a very smart guy. But this resume sucks. To me, it reeks of typical "old coder" syndrome - a guy looked up the latest 20 buzzwords and dropped them in there then lectures me on how I need to write all my business logic in PL/SQL. This wouldn't be good for a mature, conservative company, but for Silicon Valley, which is a culture that worships 20-something Rubyists who write templating engines for fun, it's basically career suicide.