Resume Review

Resume is your marketing pitch.

Following is an excerpt from "RE:View Series - Resume Review" that I organised for WWCode Frontend in February 2022.

A good advice I have received is - apply for jobs not when you need them but apply for jobs when you need the least so that you have nothing to lose, can perform well under pressure. So that also applies to make sure you constantly update your resume to know the trends, what works vs what does not. 🙂

For non-English speakers, would recommend to use a grammar checker. I am not a native speaker myself and always use Grammarly.

+100 to recruiters/hiring managers scan the resume very quickly. Personally, I can scan a resume very quickly and will get an initial impression less than 10 seconds.

I recommend .pdf resumes but with working hyperlinks if you include them. .doc or other formats can corrupt when you upload/share.

Any guidance on what should go first, experience or education? Me to Everyone (18:27) Relevant experience would be better. Since education although important these days we give value to project work and experience. C S to Host and Panelists (18:27) Question. For skill section, should we include html, css, and javascript? Or if I say React and taiwind(or any css frameworks) is just fine? Jiaqi to Everyone (18:28) Hi all! By default chat is set to send to Host and Panelists only. If you’d like your questions or comments to be viewed by everyone you can switch the To: field to Everyone C S to Host and Panelists (18:28) got it Me to Everyone (18:28) For general skills: better to keep it generic - html, css, JS. For project specific mention in depth about react, tailwind etc.

Hi, what if internship project was developed in php and we want to apply for other tech then can we keep it in resume?

1 page vs 2 write bullet points write what you are comfortable with grammar checks

the internship project was not deployed due to some issue, still we can put it right? Yes sure. Internship projects are still useful. If this is your first real job or another internship application, then as long as you have lessons learned from your project, put it down. For juniors being able to show and demonstrate your learning curve is very important

what if the unrelated job experience is your current employer and you only point out collaboration, problem solving, and adaptability bullets? assuming you will switch jobs. then it is ok to list unrelated job experience as a brief summary. and be able to show anything relevant experience/projects to the job you are applying itself would be good

Also, Can you please tell if someone wants to switch career from full stack developer to Data scientist, then what to put in resume? All work related to full stack wont help much right? or we should wait and do some data science projects and then switch? For example, let’s say you have been a full stack for a few years. Now you want to switch to data scientist. If you switch within your existing company you have higher chances since they know you and your work already. Externally if you apply for a different job then you will have to prove yourself how can you navigate through the role. so sometimes high chances you will be considered junior there. Makes sense?

How closely does the resume need to match your LinkedIn profile, structure-wise and wording… esp if we’re building more than one resume (i.e., to, say, apply for 2 different jobs) Jiaqi to Everyone (18:55) It doesn’t need to match. But having a strong LinkedIn profile makes you more discoverable. There’s different strategies there. Jana Panarites to Everyone (18:55) Thanks Jiaqu! Jiaqi :-/ C S to Everyone (18:56) very helpful critiques! thank you so much Jiaqi to Everyone (18:56) By more discoverable, I mean if you have a strong LinkedIn profile, recruiters and Hiring Managers will come to you and reach out to you for relevant roles. Stephanie Rideout to Everyone (18:56) Your LinkedIn profile is an excellent space to include additional information, such as extra portfolio links, participation in hackathons, volunteer commitments, etc. Me to Everyone (18:56) +1 to what Jiaqi says. It doesn’t have to match. But the overall gist of your message that you want to tell via resume needs to be consistent. Or would be nice that you are consistent 🙂

If I'm transitioning into tech, how much previous non-tech experience should go on the resume? non-tech experience would not matter. so keep it short and brief. try to highlight your learnings

Men apply for jobs where they have 60% of the “required skills” posted; women apply only when they have 100%. I’ve learned that as women, we must get over it and APPLY APPLY APPLY

normalise taking career break!

Hi! I have a question about obtaining metrics for a resume, ex. "Increased user efficiency by 30%.....", "reduced compile time by 15%", etc. I often hear an emphasis to include numbers and data concerning your responsibilities at a job to make it sound more concrete, but I was always curious as to how you can get these!? Do you talk to your engineering manager, tech lead, or is this something you estimate/calculate yourself? I mean in all seriousness, those are best guess metrics. You can talk to your EM or Tech Lead but they’ll probably have to guesstimate too. If you have a healthy relationship with your co-workers, you can get their perspective. But generally if you own a project, own an initiative, you are the best qualified person to measure success metrics.

https://thetechresume.com/table-of-contents.html