Resume Advice for Software Engineers

As a recruiter I have come across a lot of intelligent men and women in the tech industry who are out there attempting to try and land a great job for Yahoo!, Digg, Box.net, Pandora and many others. But what they don’t realize is, RESUMES are the first source of concern to these type of companies. It’s the very first thing that they look over to choose whether to proceed to an interview over the phone, or drop your resume into their e-mails trash.

With that being said, I am going to take it as my responsibility to share helpful tips that I have. Being a recruiter who looks over hundreds of resumes a week to fill roles may actually be of some service.

Theme

A theme is very important to have in a resume. If you can keep a theme going in the area that you are looking for a role in, your on the right track. For instance if you are looking to do a front-end role then you better have a theme that can support your efforts. We as recruiters need to see a lot of JavaScript, HTML5, CSS, website optimization, and also showing signs staying up-to-date because front-end technologies are constantly changing here on out.

Education

Education can go two ways. Either you have come from a top 10 tech university with a computer science degree,  physics degree or something along these lines.

OR 

If you didn’t have the ability to go to a top 10 school of some sort or didn’t go to school at all, we need to see some type of real life experience. We need to see passion.

If your going for a front-end role, maybe you have some open-source code that you have leaked to the public community of developers. Or if your role is that of an SA then you might have started doing some real life experience work at some decent companies and are strong in your ability to perform the job well.

Open Source Code

Here is where I will begin to show you some visualizations of what a good resume can consist of, if you have some open source code.

Here is a friend of mine who I have helped modify his resume. Before I started working with him, his resume was kind of dry, he has a lot of experience and passion for what he does, but his resume did not portray that. It had no links or information about what he has done or what he really enjoyed doing (coding for a hobby and releasing it on github.com)

As you can see from the above we added a summery that can show evidence of his passion for coding. We have a github profile link, a efficient and direct statement that expresses his passion and even shows that he stays up-to-date by learning new technologies. This is money!

Down below you can see how many public repositories he has and even how many people are following him. These are subjective as far as numbers go, however, they can still be used to influence someones idea about the candidates capabilities. It’s money!

lorenzos profile

No No’s

General no no’s I can think of are.

• Please do not put on your resume that you know how to use Microsoft office. I have friends who have sons and daughters who are like 7-8 years of age who know office. Putting this on your resume does you no good what so ever.

• Please keep your resume to one to three pages. Past that, it gets kind of boring.

• Keep it simple, keep it direct.

• “Objectives” this is personal opinion but I think they are pointless. Don’t need them. They waste space.

As of right now I think that’s all I have for now. Remember this is my opinions based on what I have learned and experienced. I hope it carries some value for you as you read it, and that you can use it in the future to land that awesome job you have been wanting!

Good luck, and God bless – sharustar