Below are tips for improving a technical resume

Your resume is a distillation of who you are; your experience, accomplishments, strengths, and goals. It should explain how you are a potential fit for a position. It is NOT an accounting of your work history. Failure to understand the goals and mechanics of a good resume will eliminate you from contention for all but commodity jobs. If you don’t understand how a resume works and take the time to make this critical document the best possible representation of your work, how should a hiring manager interpret that?

90% of the reader’s attention is on the “skeleton” of your profile – intro, education, firms, positions, dates, and important skills. If the outline of your career is what the reader is looking for, the rest of the details will be skimmed, probably only the first page. A long resume is simply a non-starter. Yes/no is reached long before the 2nd page of the resume, never mind the 6th. Detail is ignored and only serves to get in the way of the important content. And the fact of the matter is, inability to summarize information at the right level of detail and communicate it effectively is disqualifying.

Your resume needs to tell who you are, list (not explain) relevant skills/experience, and demonstrate your strength as a candidate. Read this first. It’s a great big picture view of how to build your resume and why. Note that technical candidates need to modify this advice accordingly. Most resume advice emphasizes highlighting measurable accomplishments. Technical resumes are different. The goal of a technical resume is to highlight your proficiency in the field. Including claims like “wrote 5000 lines of code saving firm $10mm” is meaningless.

Every reader is looking for a great developer (QD, QR, etc.), and they know the ratio of good/great developers to mediocre/poor developers is low. So, the reader’s inclination is to reject a resume unless what they read makes them think, this candidate seems to know what they are doing. That’s the key – you need to demonstrate to the reader that you know what you are doing. Show technical sophistication, only include what’s relevant, make the document clean and efficient.

Format

Note that the employment and education history represented on your resume will be confirmed as part of a background check w/ any prospective employer. Dates must be accurate.

Name/contact in header
Summary/Intro paragraph
Skills table (optional)
Work History

  • Company Name, Dates (Company on left, Dates right justified)

  • Title, Job description

  • Description of role

    • Bullets

Education
Other

Frequent issues:

  • Too long – nobody has time, respect that

    • If you can’t distill information on your resume, what does it say about your ability to do so on the job?

    • It is NOT a list of everything you’ve done

      • Do not include mundane items that everyone in your job probably does – Ex: “Used JIRA to track bug fixes.” (yawn, delete)

    • It IS a list of relevant experience, capabilities, and strengths – I want to know what you CAN do

    • You want the reader to have a “yes” impression when finished reviewing. You may end up changing the reader’s mind with detail about older experience that feels irrelevant to them and a waste of their time

  • Too much prose

    • Don’t write “The ABC system is for XYZ. My responsibilities were to do …”

    • Use concise, bulleted statements to list relevant information

  • Do everything you can to make your resume as efficient as possible, as it’s an example of your style, and everyone wants efficiency

  • Software development is a completely fungible skillset. Emphasize your expertise in the craft, not the domain. What you built is much less important than how you built it.

    • Expose your technical know-how – make sure its clear what technologies were used in each context. Emphasize sophisticated technologies/concepts that you work with

      • “I wrote a report showing A, B, C” is largely irrelevant to the reader

      • “Developed reporting framework using technologies A, B, and C” is highly relevant

    • The reader wants to be impressed by your technical sophistication first and foremost, so you need to express it directly on your resume

  • Give your reader the benefit of the doubt – they know the context

    • A lot can be assumed from context and doesn’t need to be stated. Ex: “Worked with users to gather requirements…” - standard operaring procedure. The reader doesn’t learn anything from that statement.

  • Remove Summary – your resume is a summary. If you feel a need for a bulleted summary at the beginning, something is wrong.

  • An Introduction/Profile paragraph is important, see #3 in the linked article.

  • Don’t describe the companies you worked for (unless in circumstances where the company isn’t known), i.e. “JP Morgan is a global investment bank…”

  • Make sure it’s clear where you were a contractor!

    • Job movement is a red flag to hiring managers. Contracting explains movement, so don’t omit where appropriate

  • Related: Don’t split time at one company into multiple sections w/ date ranges that may be construed as job hopping by someone skimming your resume

  • Spelling/formatting are important – what does it say to the reader that you can’t be bothered to check/fix obvious errors?

    • Make absolutely sure there are no misspellings, grammar issues, etc. MS Word is your friend and enemy – it will immediately show the reader every mistake in the document. Extra/missing spaces are common

    • Have someone proofread, especially if you are not a native English speaker

    • Formatting should be clean and consistent

  • Additional articles on resume writing

  • Remove detail for older positions, especially when not relevant

    • Once you’ve graduated and have real job experience, high-school server/store clerk/lifeguard jobs should go

  • Don’t include GPA’s and other scores that aren’t notable

    • Don’t include if it’s more than a few years ago

  • Don’t use the third person

  • “Available on Request” – additional information, references, etc. – no need to say this

  • Don’t name your resume JohnSmithML, so the reader knows this is your resume tailored for ML jobs

 At a glance, your resume should say:

 I’m a darn good Engineer/Quant/Whatever. I “get it.” Look at my track record. You don’t need length/detail to accomplish this goal, in fact, quite the opposite.