Hi Julie, Although I typically love a good tirade on crummy resume review, this post didn't quite hit the mark for me. I'm not sure if you're just fed up with garbage resumes or you're nitpicking because you wasted time on phone screens that went the wrong way, but at any rate I thought I'd try and help. Maybe this post should have been titled "Landing your next job - Resume tips and tricks and how to work with recruiters". A more succinct list of helpful hints might go like this: 1. Current skills - It's awesome that you passed your SQL 2008 R2 exam back in 2009, but make sure your resume contains both a mix of experience and newer technologies. Employers want to see that you've kept up with the times. 2. Relevant skills - are you a well rounded technologist who qualifies for a number of different positions in the market? Consider writing a few different versions of your resume specifically targeted with a technology profile for your dream job. If you want to be a top notch Bootstrap/Angular/modern web developer, there's no sense in telling the story about your extensive experience writing WPF applications. 3. Recruiter pitch - Work hand in hand with your recruiter to fine tune your pitch. Don't just assume the recruiter will provide a great cover or story on your behalf. In addition, consider practicing that pitch with some colleagues or professionals in the industry. 4. Details matter - take all of the time you need to assume someone will actually read your email and make sure there are no grammar, punctuation or spelling errors. Your resume should tell a story about you without any blemishes, and the smallest mistake can land you in the "no" pile too quickly. 5. Don't be afraid to stand out - Frequently recruiters ask you to send your resume without contact information, header, or footer, or maybe in "their format" so they can commoditize you. Don't do it, insist that they represent you the way you intended, with your resume design in tact. I'm sure we could spend more time dreaming up a ton of items for this list (comment below, please)! Lastly, for what it's worth, it's very possible to have 15 years' .Net experience. I remember working with the beta of 1.0 in early 2001 well before the 2002 launch. I know I wasn't alone :)