Resume

The following content is by Christina Ng and rephrased for the purpose of this handbook. You can follow her on Medium or Quora.

Table of Contents

  1. How Your Resume is Screened
  2. 10 Ways To Improve Your Resume

How Your Resume is Screened

While many engineers can be rather qualified for the role they are applying for, they miss out on getting a shot at the interview as they might never get past resume screening. The main issue was that they do not understand how recruiters worked.

Before writing your resume, it is important to understand the recruiting structure and how recruiting is done.

The Skill Set Checklist

Before opening up a position/starting the search for candidates, I usually consult very closely with the team manager/decision maker to find out the specific skill sets that are relevant for the position. These skill sets are typically grouped into “Must have”, “Good to have”, and “Special bonus”.

Now that I am armed with this list, the search for candidates begin.

Typically, I do not seek that “one perfect candidate”. What I seek for is the “best fit candidate”. The search is essentially a numbers game. I know that for a specific job posting, there would perhaps be X applicants. At each stage of the interview process, some percentage of the candidates will be eliminated, leaving only a final Y% of the initial pool to choose from. Since Y tends to be a rather small number, recruiters will try to maximize X.

The 10 Seconds Glance

When I am looking at your resume, I am doing a keyword match against the skill set checklist. If I see a good amount of the right keywords in your resume, it is a pass. If I need to spend more than 10 seconds trying to figure out what you are writing about, it is a fail. If I see an excessive amount of keywords (much looking like spam), it signals a red flag and goes into the “maybe”. Depending on whether I think I have enough candidates for the day, you could eventually go into the pass or fail stack.

There are lots of articles writing about how recruiters only spend an average of about 10 seconds to screen each resume. The news is, this is true because resume screening is such a menial, robotic and repetitive task. In fact, many applicant tracking systems (ATS) now are so advanced that they can parse your resume automatically, search for specific keywords in your resume, and score your resume based on the weights pre-assigned to each keyword.

Finding a job is a two-way fit — the company wants someone with the relevant skills required, but it is also important for the applicant to fit in the company culture, and be able to gain something out of his stint. Hence, honesty is the single most important criteria in a resume.

There is a delicate balance between finding the right job vs. finding a job. Getting rejected does not always mean you are not good enough. Sometimes, it just means you are not a right fit for what the company is looking for.

When hiring fresh grads, I know that many of them will not have as much experience as someone who has years of industry experience. Hence, I would look out more for soft skills, such as attention to detail, initiative, passion, ability to get things done, etc. Note: this applies only if you have met the minimum threshold of proficiency/competency in the skill set checklist.

10 Ways To Improve Your Resume

Now that you are aware of how recruiters screen your resume, here are 10 actionable ways you can do to improve your resume.

1. Cover letter

I’ve often received resumes with no cover letters, and I am perfectly fine with it. If you ask me, it is better to have no cover letter than to have a bad cover letter, especially if your cover letter is a “templated” content. An effective cover letter needs to highlight the fit between the job requirements and your skills/experiences. Do not just tell me what you have done in your cover letter; Tell me how it is a fit for what I am looking for.

Some small nitpicks:

2. Length of resume

Your resume should be kept to 1 page or a MAXIMUM of 2 pages. Include only your most recent and relevant experiences.

Information that a recruiter wants to know:

Information nobody needs to know:

Ideally, keep it short, concise, but as detailed as possible.

3. GPA does matter

Everyone wants the cream of the crop. In the absence of a standardized test, GPA serves as that indicator. While GPA may not necessarily be a good indication of how well you can code, a high GPA would definitely put you in a more favorable position to the recruiter.

If your GPA is rather low, but you have loads of technical experiences, you can try not listing your GPA in the resume. This kinda “forces” the recruiter to read through your projects/job experience, and perhaps grant you a first interview. If you manage to impress them, who cares about your GPA? But if your GPA is low and you do not have skills for the job… maybe you should work on one of them and revisit job applications later.

In a different scenario, some students have low GPA, but it might be due to some irrelevant classes which they did badly in. E.g. Student X is scoring A for all his programming classes, but did not do well for his language classes. If I am hiring a developer, Student X would still be a suitable candidate despite his low GPA. In such cases, it might even be recommended to attach a transcript along with the resume.

Also, when you list your GPA/results, try to benchmark it. Instead of simply listing 4.6, write 4.6/5.0 (First Class Honors or Summa Cum Laude). To the recruiter, 4.6 does not mean anything if he/she is not familiar with your grading system.

4. Be clear about your objectives

Are you looking for a summer internship/full-time employment? What position are you applying for? Read the job description and know the job you are applying for!!

“Work experience” does not mean any work experience; it means relevant work experience. If you are applying for a developer position, the recruiter is not interested to know that you were a student escort for girls walking back to their apartments at night, nor that you were a cashier at Starbucks. You would be better off writing about the project you did for some programming class - yes, even if it was just a school project. Tailor your experiences and projects according to the job you are applying for. Pick relevant details to emphasize on and do not be hesitant to drop stuff completely if they are totally irrelevant. Quality over quantity.

5. Reverse chronological order

Always list your resume in reverse chronological order - the most recent at the top. Recruiters are more interested in what you have worked on recently than what you worked on 3 years ago. Chances are, you probably forgot the details too anyway.

6. Make sure you are contactable

7. Formatting/Design

8. Listing Your skills

It is useful to list your relevant skills in a quick summary section for easy reading/matching. However, many people make the mistake of listing as many skills/programming languages in the resume as possible. This may get you through the ATS scoring, but it definitely would not leave a good impression on the recruiter - the actual human reading your resume and deciding whether to call you up for an interview!

Ideally, if your resume is good enough, the recruiter should already know what you are proficient in. The skills section is just a quick summary/reiteration. Listing a bunch of technologies you claim you know without actually showing how you have worked with them is pointless.

9. Projects

10. Online profile/other interests

Here’s the news - Recruiters do search for your name! Definitely pre-empt that by Googling/Facebook-ing/searching yourself on all forms of social media to see what turns up. Make sure your privacy settings are restricted so your online profile shows only the image you are trying to project.

If you have some space on your resume, it is good to list additional interests outside of coding. Eg. skiing, water sports, soccer, etc etc. Gives the interviewer something to talk to you about. It also shows that you are a well-rounded individual/cool person to hang out with.

11. Resume Layout

Absolutely, no headshots.

It’s important to note the layout of your resume. If you choose to quickly upload your resume via an auto-fill program, understand that the program will read your resume from top to bottom, left to right. This is good to keep in mind when developing the layout of your resume.

Try to keep white space down to a minimum. This will also help reduce the length of your resume to one page. For instance, white space usually exists near the sides of your resume. Use that space to list out your skills in a vertical column!

References