As a Cobol developer, you may struggle with translating your extensive experience with legacy systems into terms that resonate with modern tech-oriented recruiters. Our guide offers tailored strategies that can help you highlight your valuable COBOL expertise while ensuring your resume appeals to current industry trends and demands.
- The most effective Cobol developer resume samples, reflecting on experience and skills.
- +10 simple, yet impactful methods to tailor your Cobol developer resume to the job advert.
- Using your professional achievements as the North Star to your unique value as a Cobol developer candidate.
- 'No one cares about your education nowadays …' Let's prove this statement wrong with the best-kept industry secrets to your education and certifications.
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Formatting the layout of your Cobol developer resume: design, length, and more
When it comes to the format of your Cobol developer resume , you've plenty of opportunities to get creative. But, as a general rule of thumb, there are four simple steps you could integrate into your resume layout.
- If you have plenty of experience, you'd like to showcase, invest in the reverse-chronological resume format . This format focuses on your latest experience items and skills you've learned during your relevant (and recent) jobs.
- Don't go over the two-page limit, when creating your professional Cobol developer resume. Curate within it mainly experience and skills that are relevant to the job.
- Make sure your Cobol developer resume header includes all of your valid contact information. You could also opt to display your professional portfolio or LinkedIn profile.
- Submit or send out your Cobol developer resume as a PDF, so you won't lose its layout and design.
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If you're in the process of obtaining your certificate or degree, list the expected date you're supposed to graduate or be certified.
The five (plus) definite sections your resume for a Cobol developer job should include are:
- Header with your headline, contact details, and/or a preview of your work
- Summary (or objective) to pinpoint how your success aligns with the role
- Experience with bullets of your most relevant achievements in the field
- Skills to integrate vital job requirements (both technical and personal)
- Your further dedication to the field, showcased via relevant higher education and/or certifications
What recruiters want to see on your resume:
- Experience with COBOL programming and a thorough understanding of COBOL syntax and structure
- Familiarity with mainframe environments such as IBM z/OS, CICS, JCL, and DB2 databases
- Proficiency in debugging and maintaining existing COBOL codebases and legacy systems
- Kknowledge of financial and enterprise systems, which commonly use COBOL
- Ability to integrate COBOL applications with modern platforms and understanding of current IT standards and web services
Quick formula for writing your Cobol developer resume experience section
Have you ever wondered why recruiters care about your Cobol developer expertise?
For starters, your past roles show that you've obtained the relevant on-the job training and expertise that'd be useful for the role.
What is more, the resume work experience section isn't just your work history , but:
- shows what you're capable of achieving based on your past success;
- proves your skills with (oftentimes, tangible) achievements;
- highlights the unique value of what it's like to work with you.
To ensure your resume work experience section is as effective as possible, follow this formula:
- start each bullet with a powerful, action verb , followed up by your responsibilities, and your workplace success.
The more details you can include - that are relevant to the job and linked with your skill set - the more likely you are to catch recruiters' attention.
Additionally, you can also scan the job advert for key requirements or buzzwords , which you can quantify across your experience section.
Not sure what we mean by this? Take inspiration from the Cobol developer resume experience sections below:
- Led a team of developers in modernizing legacy COBOL applications for a global financial institution, improving system efficiency by 25%.
- Engineered robust data migration strategies that securely transferred terabytes of sensitive data, enhancing data integrity and accessibility.
- Introduced automated testing procedures for legacy systems that decreased downtime and improved the reliability of daily financial transactions.
- Spearheading the integration of cloud technologies with existing COBOL-based systems to optimize scalability and cutting operational costs by 30%.
- Crafted custom financial reporting tools using COBOL, resulting in a 20% reduction in month-end closing times for accounting departments.
- Providing mentorship to junior developers in COBOL, DB2, and CICS, fostering a culture of learning and technical excellence in the team.
- Implemented a new authorization module for a major insurance platform, enhancing transaction processing speed by 40%.
- Collaborated with cross-functional teams to develop and deploy an enterprise-wide batch processing system, streamlining operations.
- Optimized core banking COBOL applications, resulting in a 10% reduction in CPU usage and significant cost savings on mainframe operations.
- Developed and maintained COBOL programs for a high-volume transaction processing system, processing over 5 million transactions daily.
- Automated periodic maintenance tasks using COBOL and JCL scripts, freeing up over 50 hours of manual work per month.
- Revamped the existing COBOL codebase for a payroll system, thereby boosting the performance and reducing errors by 15%.
- Directed the design and implementation of a new COBOL-based accounting system that supports the handling of over $1 billion in transactions annually.
- Integrated modern API interfaces with legacy COBOL applications, empowering mobile and web applications with vital back-end services.
- Conducted extensive code reviews and optimizations to ensure compliance with the latest industry standards and security protocols.
- Pioneered a COBOL-based fraud detection system that decreased false-positive rates by 22% without compromising detection speed.
- Mastered mainframe performance tuning techniques for COBOL programs, delivering significant throughput improvements to customer-facing applications.
- Regularly consulted on complex problem-solving for real-time transaction processing, ensuring 99.9% system availability.
- Authored detailed technical documentation that augmented the understanding and utility of legacy COBOL applications for new IT staff.
- Liaised with business analysts to translate intricate business requirements into effective, scalable COBOL code for insurance claims processing.
- Orchestrated a major data cleanup project that remedied years of data discrepancies, boosting the integrity and value of the underlying datasets.
- Implemented a comprehensive refactoring plan that streamlined thousands of lines of COBOL code, improving maintainability by over 30%.
- Championed a collaborative development environment using COBOL and agile practices, reducing the time-to-market for new features by two months.
- Focused on building resilient back-office systems that handle complex actuarial computations and support critical business decisions.
- Developed a COBOL-based reporting engine that enabled the automated generation of regulatory compliance reports, saving approximately 100 manual hours per quarter.
- Revolutionized transaction payload validations by coding advanced algorithms in COBOL, reducing processing errors by 18%.
- Cultivated extensive unit testing suites for COBOL applications, leading to an overall decline in production bugs by 25%.
- Coordinating with multinational teams to ensure seamless integration of COBOL-based systems with foreign financial platforms.
- Accomplished a series of performance enhancements which resulted in the acceleration of batch processing times by 35%, boosting company throughput.
- Ongoing development of mission-critical COBOL-based systems, consistently meeting the evolving needs of the financial service industry.
Quantifying impact on your resume
- Include the number of years of experience in COBOL development to showcase expertise and longevity in the field.
- List the size of the databases (in records or gigabytes) you have worked with to demonstrate your ability to handle large-scale data.
- Quantify any performance improvements (in percentage) you've achieved through optimization of COBOL code, showing your impact on efficiency.
- Mention the number of successful projects completed to highlight your track record and reliability.
- Detail the amount of cost savings generated from your code enhancements or system upgrades in COBOL to show financial impact.
- State the number of users or transactions supported by the systems you've developed, underlining the scale of your projects.
- Cite the number of lines of COBOL code written or maintained to convey the depth of your hands-on experience.
- Specify any reduction in processing time (in terms of percentage or actual time saved) due to your COBOL programs to emphasize efficiency gains.
Action verbs for your Cobol developer resume
Cobol developer resume without experience: a walk-through guide
If you don't happen to have any relevant experience yet, you can substitute this with:
- Short-term gigs and stunts - like month-long internships, that you have done during your university days
- Contract work - be specific about the relevance and outcomes of each role you include
- Resume format that prioritizes your skills - the functional-skill-based format or hybrid format could work
- Research roles - feature those especially prominently if you've participated in a noteworthy project or your role was of utmost importance to the project's success.
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Highlight any significant extracurricular activities that demonstrate valuable skills or leadership.
The heart and soul of your Cobol developer resume: hard skills and soft skills
If you read between the lines of the Cobol developer role you're applying for, you'll discover that all requirements are linked with candidates' hard skills and soft skills.
What do those skills have to do with your application?
Hard or technical skills are the ones that hint at your aptitude with particular technologies. They are easy to quantify via your professional experience or various certifications.
Meanwhile, your soft skills are more difficult to assess as they are personality traits, you've gained thanks to working in different environments/teams/organizations.
Your Cobol developer resume skills section is the perfect opportunity to shine a light on both types of skills by:
- Dedicating a technical skills section to list up to six technologies you're apt at.
- Focusing a strengths section on your achievements, thanks to using particular people skills or technologies.
- Including a healthy balance of hard and soft skills in the skills section to answer key job requirements.
- Creating a language skills section with your proficiency level - to hint at an abundance of soft skills you've obtained, thanks to your dedication to learning a particular language.
Within the next section of this guide, stay tuned for some of the most trending hard skills and soft skills across the industry.
Top skills for your Cobol developer resume:
COBOL
JCL
DB2
CICS
VSAM
Mainframe Systems
SQL
IBM Z/OS
Rexx
Micro Focus COBOL
Problem-Solving
Attention to Detail
Communication
Team Collaboration
Adaptability
Time Management
Analytical Thinking
Critical Thinking
Organizational Skills
Customer Service Orientation
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Mention specific courses or projects that are pertinent to the job you're applying for.
How to include your education and certifications on your resume
We're taking you back to your college days with this part of our guide, but including your relevant higher education is quite important for your resume.
Your degree shows recruiters your dedication to the industry, your recent and relevant know-how, and some form of experience in the field.
Your Cobol developer resume education should:
- Include your applicable degrees, college (-s) you've graduated from, as well as start and end dates of your higher education;
- Skip your high school diploma. If you still haven't graduated with your degree, list that your higher education isongoing;
- Feature any postgraduate diplomas in your resume header or summary - this is the perfect space to spotlight your relevant MBA degree;
- Showcase any relevant coursework, if you happen to have less professional experience and think this would support your case in being the best candidate for the role.
As far as your job-specific certificates are concerned - choose up to several of the most recent ones that match the job profile, and include them in a dedicated section.
We've saved you some time by selecting the most prominent industry certificates below.
The top 5 certifications for your Cobol developer resume:
- IBM Certified Application Developer - COBOL (IBM)
- IBM Certified Associate Developer - COBOL (IBM)
- IBM Certified System Programmer - Mainframe Computing (IBM)
- IBM Enterprise COBOL for z/OS (IBM)
- Micro Focus Cobol developer - Certified Professional (Micro Focus)
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List all your relevant higher education degrees within your resume in reverse chronological order (starting with the latest). There are cases when your PhD in a particular field could help you stand apart from other candidates.
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Cobol developer resume summaries or objectives: real-world samples for best industry practices
Grasp recruiters' attention from the get-go of your application with a professional Cobol developer resume summary or objective.
It's wise to select the:
- Resume objective , if you don't happen to have much experience alignment and would like to more prominently feature your dreams and personality.
- Resume summary , if you'd like to have a more standard approach to your application and feature up to five career highlights to help you stand out.
Writing your resume summary or objective should be tailored to each role you apply for.
Think about what would impress the recruiters and go from there.
But, if you need further help with this introductory section, check out some real-world samples in the next part of this guide:
Resume summaries for a Cobol developer job
- With over 12 years of COBOL development experience concentrated on financial systems, I've spearheaded the digitization of national banking infrastructures, significantly reducing processing times by 30%. My expertise spans mainframe technologies, DB2, and CICS, underscored by a consistent track record of enhancing legacy system efficiency.
- Equipped with a robust 15-year background in software engineering and a recent pivot to specialize in COBOL development, my career is highlighted by the successful overhaul of a multimillion-dollar inventory tracking system, integrating seamless COBOL solutions that increased inventory accuracy by 25% for a major retail chain.
- Bringing a wealth of knowledge from the healthcare sector, I have successfully transitioned into COBOL programming, delivering custom patient management systems that improved data retrieval times by 40%. With 5 years in software development and a new-found zeal for mainframe technologies, I’m poised to tackle complex legacy code challenges.
- Transitioning from a decade-long career in mobile application development to COBOL, I have leveraged my intricate understanding of user interfaces to modernize mainframe-based customer service tools for a large telecommunication company, resulting in a 35% increase in user satisfaction due to enhanced response times.
- Seeking to apply my passion for problem-solving and a strong foundation in computer science principles as I embark on a new journey in COBOL development. My objective is to deliver innovative and robust mainframe solutions by using my fresh perspective and commitment to continuous learning in a dynamic technological environment.
- As an enthusiastic recent computer science graduate, I am eager to delve into COBOL programming. My aim is to contribute to the sustenance and evolution of critical legacy systems by harnessing my knowledge in modern development principles and a steadfast resolve to master the intricacies of COBOL and related technologies.
More sections to ensure your Cobol developer resume stands out
If you're looking for additional ways to ensure your Cobol developer application gets noticed, then invest in supplementing your resume with extra sections, like:
These supplementary resume sections show your technical aptitude (with particular technologies and software) and your people skills (gained even outside of work).
Key takeaways
- Your resume layout plays an important role in presenting your key information in a systematic, strategic manner;
- Use all key resume sections (summary or objective; experience; skills; education and certification) to ensure you’ve shown to recruiters just how your expertise aligns with the role and why you're the best candidate;
- Be specific about listing a particular skill or responsibility you've had by detailing how this has helped the role or organization grow;
- Your personality should shine through your resume via the interests or hobbies, and strengths or accomplishments skills sections;
- Certifications go to provide further accreditation to your technical capabilities, so make sure you've included them within your resume.
