Resume Tips That Will Help You Land Your Software Engineering Job

Look at your résumé from the perspective of a recruiter/company. They get hundreds of job applications every day and barely have time to go through them all. Your résumé should give them the exact information they need, so put your best foot forward and keep things simple.

Don’t be a prisoner of your résumé. You wrote it to describe your past, not your future

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Index

• Clarity
• Content
• Formula
• Don’ts
• Format
• Education
• Experience
• Projects
• Extra
• Inspiring Resumes to Look For

Clarity

• The person reviewing your resume should be able to find pertinent information easily and quickly.
• PDF formatting is always preferred. The format should be clean, simple and consistent.
• Black text is always a safe bet. Keep consistent font and size.
• Try to use bullet points whenever possible.
• Use only plain text as it will be easy for Application Tracking Systems to interpret.

Content

• Focus on results and impact. List metrics and examples concisely rather than writing overly long descriptions.
• Be sure to include your contact information and email address as well.
• List your LinkedIn, GitHub or personal portfolio profile at the top of your resume.
• Try to keep your resume to one to two pages, including relevant information only.

Formula

• Be concise and don’t be afraid to brag. This is your time to show off.
• Follow the formula: Accomplished X as measured by Y by doing Z for crafting bullets in your resume.
• For example, “I increased server query response time by 15% by restructuring our API”. Or “Won second place out of 50 teams at a hackathon”, where the 50 teams show how impressive the win was.

Don’ts

• Do not write objectives or goals.
• Do not include your profile picture or gender.
• Do not write your home address or your personal family details.
• Do not include your 10th or 12th grade or anything prior to your degree.
• Do not make typos or have unfinished sentences. Use a tool like Grammarly to help yourself out.
• Do not include your achievements from high school or anything prior to your degree.
• Do not include your work experience that is not related to engineering.
• Do not use fancy colors, graffitis or abstract colors. For example, don’t use tools like Novoresume.
• Do not use the default format provided by MS Word or Google Docs.

Format

• Education should always be listed first under your contact information.
• Work experience includes internships or jobs and any other experience.
• You can list personal projects, academy projects or class projects.
• You can list awards or a leadership experience.
• And don’t forget extracurriculars. The companies want to learn more about you.

Education

• Your education should be front and centre. Please include your degree and major, and definitely make sure you include your graduation date.
• Also include your grade point average and don’t be scared by this.
• Although GPA is a factor, they look at the whole package and understand that every college and student is different.

Experience

• List your experiences in reverse chronological order, starting with your most recent experience.
• You can include your experience at an academy or internship as Full Stack Web Development Trainee at <that academy>
• Always include the employer, position, and dates that you are employed.
• Keep descriptions concise and clear. You can use the format suggested by Google recruiters: Accomplished X as measured by Y by doing Z.
• Show results for internships, jobs, academic research, teaching, hackathons or coding competitions and tutoring experience.
• You can also include experience from student groups, selected personal and class projects.

Projects

• Spend more time on this section especially if you don’t have much work experience.
• List your GitHub profile at the top of your resume and include your programming languages.
• GitHub or other prominent open-source work shows us that you’re contributing to the open-source community and that you’re passionate about the work that you’re doing and looking to improve your skills.
• They also look at the programming languages you are using. Also make sure you’re comfortable interviewing in the languages you listed and include any language you use in any specific project descriptions on your resume.
• Include the languages or frameworks used next to your projects. Also make sure to show your impact.
• Use action-oriented language as well. Words like debug, created, and designed are great. Read the job description and look at the language it uses, then write the resume for that job description.
• Use data and examples as well as things like "adding new feature, algorithmic improvements, caching data on local storage, implemented data analytics". Use comparisons and averages to provide context as well.

Extra

• They also love hearing about extracurriculars and what makes you, you outside of the classroom.
• Be sure to include things like these: student groups, leadership, position, university honors, awards or scholarships, publications, papers or patents you’ve worked on, conference presentations and any impressive achievements or activities in other areas.

Inspiring Resumes to Look For

Note: You are expected to only look at these below for reference. You are NOT supposed to use the same format/template/layout

• Jessica Pointing
• Gayle Laakmann McDowell
• Stanford BEAM