Disclaimer: This article was written few years ago and may no longer be relevant as software engineering has changed a lot in the last few years. This is what may be more relevant now: Future of Software Engineering - Gaurav ChandakResume, or as old school people like to call, Curriculum Vitae (CV) is one of the most important things that you need to focus on while looking for a job. It is usually the first impression that you make on the company.
Having reviewed multiple resumes, I've seen a few common mistakes that people make. To help candidates create a good resume that might help them get shortlisted at product-based companies, I've listed down the DOs and DONTs of resume making through a QnA format.
Most of these should be valid for you irrespective of your years of experience (students, freshers, experienced professionals) or your role (SDE/Fullstack/Backend/Frontend/Mobile/SDET/SRE/DevOps Engineer).
What is the ideal size of a resume?
- The ideal size of a resume is 1 page.
Why should I keep my resume under 1 page?
- Recruiters spend less than 20-30s on resume
- They mostly skim and look for stuff that can get you in
- If they cannot find important stuff fast then your resume gets rejected
- Important stuff is difficult to find in 1+ page resumes
How to keep my resume under 1 page?
- If your resume is greater than 1 page, start by removing the least relevant stuff. Trust me, you don't need it.
- Start by removing objectives, bio, headline or any other information that does not add value.
- Do not put your photo or any personal information as those are generally not relevant for the job.
- Use ideal font-size for different parts
- Name: 14 pts
- Section Headers: 12-13 pts
- Everything else: 11-12 pts
- Having larger fonts may increase the size of your resume and smaller fonts might decrease readability.
- Remove/reduce old stuff that does not show any additional competency.
- That prize you won in the 6th standard might not be valuable in your resume. If that honor you got 10+ years ago deserves a place in your 1-page resume then it shows that you didn't perform well in the last 10 years.
- If you're facing space-crunch, do these:
- Experienced (2+ years): Remove CGPA. Your work experience is your new proxy for competence.
- Experienced (2+ years): Reduce details about your internships/college projects. If you interned at a top tech company just mention it for credentialing. Don't add much detail about it though.
- Experienced (5+ years): Remove everything about your college apart from the college name, major, degree and graduation year.
- Remove old projects unless it is exceptional compared to other projects that you've done recently.
- List only relevant activities
- Do not list activities that don't signal any competency directly or indirectly related to your job role.
- Do not list participation certificates or training certificates.
- List only your top projects with details. Avoid listing down all your projects in the resume.
Do you've any formatting tips?
- Follow reverse-chronological order in employment and education (Latest to Oldest).
- Use the font size mentioned above.
- Use bullet points to divide your content for anything beyond 2 lines.
- Use the same font family everywhere. Do not use fancy fonts.
- Keep the spacing consistent everywhere.
- Use tables and remove table borders.
- Mention dates in MMM YYYY or MMM 'YY format.
Example: Jul 2020 or Jul '20 - Always submit your resume in PDF format.
- Name your resume as FirstName_LastName.pdf to make it easy to find and identify.
What is a good resume format according to you?
- Header
- Only Name, Location, Contact Info, 2-3 Relevant Links (Personal Website, LinkedIn, GitHub, Twitter, Medium, etc.)
- If you're based out of Bengaluru, for jobs in India mention: "Bengaluru, KA". For abroad, mention "Bengaluru, India".
- Sections
- Employment/Work Experience
- For each role, mention the company name, team name (optional), location (optional), duration (start and end date) and details.
- Projects
- For each project, mention title, duration, demo/code link (if possible), details
- Education
- Mention college name, major, degree, graduation year, CGPA (optional) and any other relevant information (optional).
- Additional Activities
- Performance in relevant contests/events
- Being part of relevant societies/clubs
- Being TA, mentor, instructor, etc
- Any other activities that might show relevant competency
- Skills
- Only add languages, technologies, and frameworks that you are skilled at.
- Do not mention the OS, Browser, IDE or other software that you use.
- CareerCup resume and Deedy resume are two popular resume formats.
Can I lie on my resume?
- Do not mention skills you don't/barely possess, projects you have barely or have not at all worked on or internships, jobs that you've not done.
- Many interviewers may actually try to verify if what you've mentioned is true or not.
- Lying on your resume might get you rejected, if not blacklisted.
Do you've any additional tips to make my resume relevant?
- Keep each bullet point short. Do not bloat details about your projects.
- Focus more on impact. Companies care more about the impact you created and not the responsibilities or the work that you were assigned.
- Use numbers to signify impact. Examples: increased performance by x%, scaled the service 4x, increased product usage by y%, etc.
- Mention high-level details about your work.
- Low-level details that an outsider won't understand would be useless.
- If there is no way to explain your project at a very high level. Give context to make it easier to understand.
- Emphasize on stuff that someone skimming your resume should notice.
- Use bold formatting for stuff you want to emphasize.
- Impact or core parts of the projects deserve emphasis. Languages and technologies don't.
- Do not list mediocre/negative stuff
- Omit your CGPA if it is low.
- Omit the company that you joined for 2 months and then left for another job.
- Omit any work that is mediocre compared to the rest of your resume.
- Spell-check and grammar-check everything. Use Grammarly or the inbuilt spell and grammar checker of Microsoft Word/Google Docs to make your resume error-free.
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