Introduction
When it comes to first impressions for your application, it’s nearly always the résumé that gets you to the next round. While the document you pen with all your accomplishments or feats may be an irritating write, I recommend sticking to Jake’s Resume, which is written in LaTeX. It’s not particularly time-consuming to learn LaTeX, as you’ll primarily be editing cells with your own entries instead of creating new elements. I also advise against using online Resume makers, as they can take your information and provide resumes that aren’t always optimal. As for the resume looking bland with computer modern, that’s a given, but the format is also straight and to the point. You may find that a more artistic/creative resume works, too; however, I have opted to stick to a resume that delivers information despite having interned at Canva. This article will also be opinionated, so you don’t have to follow every bit of advice listed here. You could undoubtedly adopt another style of resume writing, but this is what has worked for a wide range of people.
So, what is the goal of creating a perfect resume? Creating a resume past a point is very subjective, and you should lend yourself to various opinions and adapt the advice of the industry you’re applying to. Our goal here is the tech industry. But there are some key bits of terminology for you to know about.
What recruiters look for (The Black Box Problem)
A lot of advice you’ll receive is often anecdotal and comes from people who’ve found what works for them. You can ask recruiters what they are looking for. Still, it’s important to note that recruitment can vary across companies, and recruiters can look for different attributes on a resume. As I suggest below, your best option is to aggregate the advice you receive. My frustrations with resumes are how the whole process of recruiting, or at least vetting resumes, can seem like a black box, with the strongest resumes surviving into the next generation but carrying potentially pointless artefacts.
The Applicant Tracking System
The ATS (Applicant Tracking System) is software typically used by companies to track the progression of applicants for a role. But you may commonly hear terms such as ATS-friendly for a resume. Many companies will scan your resume, and the software will then rip out keywords and try to make sense of your resume. For this reason, sticking to one column is one of the most important things you can do when writing your resume. Whether a place uses an ATS depends, though larger companies typically use them.
Word or PDF?
There’s always a debate about whether you should be submitting your resume as a docx file or as a pdf file. This depends on whether they ask you for a pdf file or a docx file, but if they don’t, use a pdf file. In the past, resume parsers would struggle with pdf files, but times have caught up, and pdf files don’t vary as much from computer to computer.
Curriculum Vitae, Cover Letter, Resume, What’s the difference?
A Curriculum Vitae (CV) is typically a long-form record of your professional journey, and is often a comprehensive document detailing all your achievements, publications, experiences and so on. They can range from two to ten pages. A resume, on the other hand is a concise document detailing relevant experiences to the job you’re applying for. For this reason, a resume is usually kept to one or two pages. A cover letter is a separate document detailing why you’d be a fit for the role in particular, and is usually composed by expanding on your experiences and relating them to the qualifications for the job. I recommend just throwing your resume, and the job description into ChatGPT, and asking it to draft up a cover letter for you.
The importance of one-page resumes
While you may be tempted to fill your resume with a bunch of random leadership roles from high school to make your resume longer, note that you’re only making it harder for a recruiter to pick up valuable insights about the type of candidate you are. While you’re a student, ensure that your resume is at most one page; anything more and a recruiter may miss additional content. Most students won’t have anything meaningful that stretches beyond one page, and if your resume goes beyond two pages, consider re-evaluating the importance of each dot-point on your record.
Common Nit-picks
- Don’t put in the complete link for something, hyperlink it instead, so you have Google instead of https://www.google.com.
- Don’t use skill rankings for your technical skills; there’s no way to quantify your expertise and the upper limit of knowledge for a skill in general.
- Stick to one page, one column resumes.
- Don’t add your face in; it takes up space and can lead to unintentional discrimination.
- Don’t add your personal hobbies or interests.
These are short and fast rules that I’d stick to.
An Objective?
Some resumes have a short blurb describing the candidate and any information about them. I’m on the fence with these. You can include them, and it could be helpful; however, you could also argue that it’s a waste of space, up to you.
References
If a company wants your references, they’ll ask for them. For this reason, I omit any mention of references, as they take up space without giving new information about you. Remember, a resume is a summarised document of your professional history, and you should work to ensure each point reflects that.
Should you lie on a resume?
While I heavily discourage lying on a resume, the standard rule is if you can’t justify or talk about a point, then leave it out. Sometimes, an interviewer will go over your resume and ask you about it, so you should be able to talk about everything you’ve written down.
Standard Order of Sections
So, let’s talk about how you should order your resume. Your education typically comes first, followed by work experience, volunteering work, projects, and a skills section. You’re free to switch up the order of volunteering work and projects or omit one if you have nothing for that area. Still, I recommend having the section with more significant information higher up.
Education
There should not be too much ambiguity here. Put your degree on there, with any majors or minors you are undertaking, along with an expected graduation date. If you have any achievements, such as a scholarship, a unit prize or similar, you can briefly note them here. If you’re a first-year and have anything relevant to your high school, it wouldn’t hurt to put it down. Still, I recommend removing it early on, as your high school is irrelevant to the job you’re applying for. If your WAM/GPA is noteworthy, then you can briefly list it, but you won’t be looked down upon if you don’t list it.
Experience
When ordering your experiences, ensure it’s ordered chronologically, that is the most recent role at the top. When you start university, it’s okay to have unrelated work experience listed; however, as you progress and gain new material, you can remove those experiences. The golden rule for mentioning what you did during each experience is to note frameworks, libraries and languages and also signify the impact of the work you did. Google uses the “X by Y by Z” formula, where you “accomplished X as measured by Y, by doing Z”. I highly recommend doing this where possible. Also, prefer using dot points over sentences; they convey meaning faster (assuming you format them correctly). You don’t need to use the X-Y-Z formula for every dot point, but ensuring its presence helps a recruiter understand what work you did.
Volunteering / Leadership
Any volunteering opportunity you’ve participated in, such as being an active committee member of a society, is invaluable on a resume. My advice for this section is similar to the experience section in that you should use the “X by Y by Z” formula and mention anything that you believe would be relevant to the role. Additionally, discussing any responsibilities or experience with leadership is generally regarded well.
Projects
The projects section is a valuable way to demonstrate your competency with technical frameworks if you need to gain relevant professional experience and also demonstrate initiative. When adding projects, link the repository it’s hosted on (ensuring it’s public) and any websites they’re linked to. Once again, use the X-Y-Z formula if you can find any impact, for instance, speeding up a slow process, helping students, or making the action point qualitative. Demonstrating your skills in various ways, including showing you’ve brought the application to production, published it on the internet, and so on, are good ways of solidifying the work you’ve done.
Skills
The skills section is more contested for its value, primarily since collections of words don’t convey much meaning, and you can often expand upon technical skills in the other sections. Nonetheless, I highly discourage stating soft skills such as “communication”, “teamwork”, “team player”, and “hard-working” as they convey nothing, and a recruiter will inevitably test you on that in a behavioural interview.
Achievements
If you have a lot of achievements, it may be worth creating a new section, briefly outlining each achievement and what the achievement is for. For instance, if you won a scholarship for academic results, briefly state the scholarship is awarded to students who maintain a particular grade.
Conclusion
This article was split from the other pieces, as it belongs outside the candidate advice section. Still, it is also significant enough to warrant its own .5 Final Mix, 358/2 days section. As mentioned, I’d be happy to vet resumes if you DM me. The following article will discuss the various interview formats and how to best approach different interview assessments. In summary, keep your resume concise, and ensure that every point contributes to your potential as a candidate for the job you’re applying for.
More Resume Advice
As I previously mentioned, what constitutes a good resume is subjective, and you should consult various sources on what your resume could include. I have listed some resources below. Some of these articles may provide advice that contradicts each other, but that’s inevitable when you scrutinise a resume. Alternatively, you could disregard all of my advice and try your hand at tailoring a resume from scratch!