IT Tools, Vendors, and Platforms - Using Key Terms to Empower Your IT Resume

Employers and hiring managers often scan resumes to search key terms of specific tools, vendor names, platforms, or skills related to these tools, vendors, and platforms to select the most qualified candidates. The search is either done by resume software or by recruiters manually. To make your resume rank high, you must pack as many key terms as possible.

Even though you don't have actual working experience with certain tools or technologies from specific vendors, you can still list these key terms in the "Skills Summary" section in your IT resume as long as you have downloaded these tools and used them for learning and testing purpose, in this case, you did get skills on them. However, if you never touched a tool, then don't put it in resume anyway no mater how important it is. Be honest in resume.

This page is not intent to offer a complete IT tools & vendors directory. Instead, it only lists highly valuable tools and leading vendors that you can include into your resume in order to get better chance to be picked up by resume software and make good impression to recruiters.

Programming & Development
Architecture & Design
Application Servers
Enterprise Applications
Database
Business Intelligence (BI) and Reporting
Desktop and Web Design Tools
OS & Network
Geographical Information Systems (GIS)
Open Source Tools

Programming & Development

BEA WebLogic Workshop
Borland C++ Builder
Borland Delphi
Borland JBuilder
Eclipse (open source IDE)
IBM WebSphere Studio
Macromedia Flex (for Rich Internet Applications)
Microsoft Visual Studio .NET
NetBeans (Sun open source)
Oracle JDeveloper
Sun Java Studio
Sybase PowerBuilder
Natural (Software AG)

Architecture & Design

Tools
Borland Together
IBM Rational Rose
Microsoft Visual Studio .NET Architect Edition
Oracle BPEL Designer

Platforms
Microsoft .NET Framework
J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition)

Application Servers

Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS)
BEA WebLogic
IBM WebSphere Application Server
Oracle Application Server 10g
Sun Java System Application Server
Sybase EAServer
Borland Enterprise Server, AppServer Edition
JBoss (open source)
Apache Tomcat (JSP/Servlet engine only)

Enterprise Applications

SAP R/3 ERP
Oracle E-Business Suite (Financials, HR, Manufacturing, Supply Chain)
Sibel CRM
PeopleSoft ERP & CRM (now owned by Oracle)
Microsoft CRM (built on Grant Plains Navison)
Maximo (asset management system by MRO Software)
Lawson ERP
J.D Edwards (acquired by PeopleSoft)
UGS Teamcenter (PLM)

Database

Database Servers
Oracle 8i, 9i, and 10g
Microsoft SQL Server
Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE)
IBM DB2 Universal Database (UDB)
ADABAS (Software AG)

Database Tools (RDBMS management & data modeling)
Oracle Designer
Sybase PowerDesigner
AllFusion ERwin Data Modeler (Computer Associates International, Inc.)
Embarcadero ER/Studio (by Embarcadero Technologies)
Embarcadero DBArtisan (by Embarcadero Technologies)
Quest SQL Navigator (by Quest Software)

Mobile Database
IBM DB2 Everyplace
Sybase SQL Anywhere Studio
Oracle Lite

Business Intelligence (BI) and Reporting

Crystal Reports (Business Objects SA)
Actuate e.Report (Actuate Corporation)
Cognos BI & reporting tools (Cognos, Inc.)
SAS BI and analytical tools (SAS Institute Inc.)

Desktop and Web Design Tools

Microsoft Office (Access, Word, Excel, Outlook)
Microsoft FrontPage
Macromedia Dreamweaver
Macromedia ColdFusion
Sun StarOffice

Geographical Information Systems (GIS)

ESRI ArcGIS, ArcView, ArcInfo, ArcEditor (ESRI)
MapInfo Professional,MapMarker Plus (MapInfo Corporation)
Autodesk MapGuide, AutoCAD Map (Autodesk,Inc.)
GRASS GIS (open source - http://grass.itc.it/)

Open Source Tools

Apache Web Server
Tomcat JSP/Servlet Server (Apache)
JBoss J2EE Application Server

Ant Build Tool (Apache)
CVS version control tool (Apache)

Strus MVC Framework (Apache)
Axis Web Services (Apache)

NetBeans Java Development Tool
Eclipse IDE

PHP + MySQL Web Development
Perl (shell scripting and web CGI)