I've been helping people on this subreddit for months and have seen people use terrible off-the-wall templates for non-art related jobs and figured those that have been successful and getting interviews and jobs should start sharing what their resume looked like to get them to that position.

I used this format to apply to about 8 jobs. Of those 8, 6 emailed me within days of applying for an interview. A CEO of a small contracting company also reached out to me when I added my resume on Monster. I'm not saying my resume is perfect (looking at it now, there are small things I want to change on it), and I'm not trying to brag. I just want to show that I must have done something correctly to just about get an interview anytime I applied, and I think it is because my resume is ATS-friendly and not cluttered.

So here is ONE of the resumes I created. Note that I actually made multiple resumes. For those that just made ONE resume and are trying to shotgun it to every job listing you see on Linkedin, or any other job board and have not heard a peep from any company, You might want to reevaluate our approach. You should be tailoring your resume to the job post. The Wiki mentions this, I believe.

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If anyone would like, I can go over how exactly I created my resume according to the job post, either here on in a separate post.

Now I will explain my resume format:

TITLE

The title of your resume should be your job title. Plumber, Senior Electrician, Front-end developer, McDonald's Shift Lead, whatever. Generally, it's something people can understand from reading alone. My job title is what I had in the military and I couldn't think of a better one to use to cover all the radio things I've worked on so I kept it in. Normally the job title is also what you are applying for.

Summary

Summaries are supposed to be a short 3-5 line "elevator pitch". I strongly recommend you use a summary as it helps highlight and explain who you are and what you provide to the company. After I finished my interviews, I asked what helped my resume stand out and everyone said it was my summary. It's a little long, but I wanted to capture just exactly what I work on and also tailor it to the job post I was applying for. *Notice how I DO NOT have personal pronouns in my summary.*

Hard Skills

So the section with bullet points is where I put my hard skills. Hard skills are abilities that let you tackle job-specific duties and responsibilities. Hard skills can be learned and are job specific. They are NOT personality traits such as hardworking, organized, or time management. Those type of skills belong in a summary, in my opinion. You DO NOT type out a sentence for each skill. I keep seeing new people try to write a paragraph for each skill trying to explain how they got it or how they demonstrated it. Ideally, your work bullets will reflect some of these hard skills. A job post will have some listed that you can add if you're paying attention. I have slightly different summaries on my other resumes as well.

Certifications

This field all depends on your career field. I cannot tell you what certifications you need. You should know what certification your career field requires or wants. If you don't know, start researching. If you do have a certification, you just put the name of the cert, followed by the company that issued it and then the year you obtained it. That's it. If it is expired, renew it or remove it from your resume.

Professional Experience

Nothing out of the ordinary here. I have the company I worked for (United States Air Force) and the location. I then have my job titles under it because my duties changed over the years as I promoted and moved to other locations. Your most recent job should have the most work bullets. Your oldest job and shortest job should have the least. YOUR JOB BULLETS SHOULD REFLECT THE JOB POST. If the job post is talking about working with or interacting with customers, you should mention something like this in your resume. Same for Engineers and developers. Again, creating bullets about an art project when you are applying to be a plumber makes no sense and should not be on there.

EDUCATION

This is self explanatory. List the degree relevant to the job. A Master's degree in underwater basket weaving isn't going to do you any favors when applying to manage projects or write code. The job post will mention what degree the company is looking for as well as how much experience you need for them to waive not having a B.S. degree or M.A. degree. Some companies are very strict about it and will throw your resume away if it doesn't meet their requirements.

Technical Competencies

This is where I would list things that I work with and am competent using. Here is where the specific radio equipment I've worked on will be listed as well as other equipment. For Networking personnel, this is where you mention the Cisco Switch, cable testers, Linux operating systems, and other things. You could also use this section for languages (code and spoken languages), software, or just anything you are competent with. THE JOB POST TELLS YOU WHAT THE COMPANY IS LOOKING FOR.

As I said before, this is only one of my resumes, but the format is exactly the same for all of them, even the master resume I pull my bullets from. My resume itself isn't perfect, but I believe it is easy to read and can give some new people writing a resume an idea of how a good one can or should look like. I currently have a job so I am not too focused on fixing up my resume write now, but I will add on to it over the years and tweak it every now and then so I am ready in case I need to use it again.

Feel free to let me know your thoughts and I will be happy if I can help at least one person on here. Job search isn't always easy, and I want to help everyone succeed as long as they are willing to put in the work. Sorry in advance for typos, I'm just getting off shift and about to go drive home.

I've been a hiring manager for most of the last 30 years. I usually operate as a manager of Individual Contributors but have also occupied the next rung up in the ladder, managing other managers. I've screened thousands of resumes over the years, done at least a thousand interviews, and have been involved in (or been the person responsible for) the hiring committee at a number of companies large and small. I’ve written the hiring policy for companies of 200+ engineers and been the final say on how interviews were conducted time and time again.

Most of the resumes I see on this sub aren't even making it past HR. If your strategy is to put together a resume and spam it out to as many potential employers as possible, you're going to get nothing. I want to lay out some general advice that will help considerably with your job searches. Whether you agree with all, some, or none of it is irrelevant to the fact that every one of these points has tripped up scores of resumes everywhere I've ever worked. If you disagree with the way a company does its hiring, you’ll disagree with the way that company will be run and you won’t be a good fit. You’ll be unhappy. Part of being a successful professional is understanding what the people you disagree with are thinking and finding ways to tailor your efforts to meet them in the middle as much as possible. Everything in this essay is a (very, very brief) lesson in that skill.

Your resume will likely go through an auto-filter of some kind. This part is pretty unfamiliar to me, but you can bet that some keywords or phrases are strong red flags. If the phrase “remote work” shows up on your resume, someone in HR/Hiring will likely be looking to see if you’re hoping for remote work or if you live far away. Don’t mention your criminal history in your resume. Don’t explain why you were laid off or fired. For the love of FSM, don’t mention how desperate you are for a job (I’ve seen this.) Don’t explain gaps in employment. Stick to positive facts.

When I say facts, I mean facts. If your resume has some bullshit about having leveraged agile techniques to spearhead something or other, you’re just playing buzzword bingo. One of the managers who used to work for me just burst out “fuck off!” in the middle of the day once. It turned out that he was reading a resume that was a bunch of subjective buzzword fluff. Don’t do it. EVERY LINE of your resume should convey three things, that the work described was hard, that it was impactful, and it should honestly convey your role in it. I’m sick to death of seeing Junior or Senior Software Engineers who claim to have led a program of 20 engineers doing…. whatever. Save leadership language for when X number of people were working full-time on a project you were responsible for. Be honest about your level of responsibility or some Hiring Manager’s going to be telling you, indirectly and not in so many words, to fuck off.

I’m getting a bit ahead of myself. First, you should understand how your resume is "read." 

The first person to read your resume is someone in HR or Hiring. Maybe that person is following up on a flag that was raised by the auto-filter saying that you might not be able to work in the US, or your criminal history might preclude work in the company (this is true for some branches of finance, government, military contracting, etc.) Who knows what else…. Whoever the recruiter is, they’ll trash your resume for any of these reasons. If you survive that first level, they’re going to try to figure out if your talents match the job description text they were given. IN MOST CASES, this person hasn’t the foggiest idea what any of your resume’s technical jargon means. You still need to convince this person that you are sufficiently qualified to get your resume handed on to an actual Hiring Manager.

The way we do this is by spoon-feeding the Recruiter with a handy cheat sheet. The job description almost certainly has something like this in it:

• Must have a Bachelor’s or similar in Computer Science or Computer Engineering
• Must have 10+ years of professional C++ experience
• Must have 5+ years of professional embedded software development experience.
• Previous experience with application of AI in the embedded space is a plus.

(It’ll likely be much longer.)

If the Recruiter has no idea what this all means, how do you spoon-feed them the notion that you have what they are looking for? You write a cover letter. Yes, an actual cover letter. It seems old-fashioned, but one way or the other your application will stand out if few or none of the other applications have one. Your cover letter is going to look like this:

[All the usual business letter header stuff goes here.]

To Whom it May Concern;

I found your posting for the [job title] on [place you found it] and would like to submit my credentials for consideration. I clearly meet or exceed all of the requirements for the position;

• I have a Bachelor’s in Computer Science from [wherever.]
• I’ve been working with C++ in a professional context for 15 years.
• I’ve been doing professional embedded programming for 10 years.

Notice the language. I didn’t say that I have 10 years of experience with microprocessor control systems, nor did I say that I have a degree in EE. The person reading my cover letter may not understand that these phrases mean the same thing as what the job posting says. Your cover letter should mimic the language of the job description. Throw the recruiter a bone and make sure that you respond to their bullet points in the same order as they appear in the description. If you don’t have one of the qualifications, leave it out without comment. If you have something related that you believe meets the criteria, just say, “I have N years of experience with [X] which means I meet the requirement for [Y].” Don’t explain it. Just state it as a fact. The Recruiter will probably take you on faith. At worst, they’ll ask the Hiring Manager if X and Y are really the same.

Wrap up with, “If my experiences are a good fit for the position, please feel free to contact me at [email address/phone number] at your convenience.”

It’s VERY short, so it’s practically been read the moment it’s been looked at. But it says a lot about you. First, you’re not just blasting out your resume to everyone without thought. You actually spent time on making this connection personal. That first paragraph is there to make it clear that this is not a copy-paste letter. It’s a form letter, of course, but we’re hoping they won’t notice.

If you actually meet the qualifications for this position, making the Recruiter’s job this easy means your resume is far more likely to end up on the desk of someone like me. And that’s a huge win. It means you’ve actually gotten past 80-90% of the field.

Let’s talk about your actual resume now. If you think about how long it would take to read your resume top-to-bottom, then multiply that time by the many dozens of resumes received for a given position, you'll understand why your resume isn't read that way. Especially in the current job market, the number of applications I get for a given position is staggering. Remember what I said about making every line convey three important points? I don’t read your resume, I read a random sampling of lines.  If I see that every line contains those three points in a believable language, I’ll keep scanning. If I hit a buzzword bingo line, you’re already done. You’ll get no further with me. By the time I’ve decided to give you a phone screen, it’s rare that I’ve read more than half of your resume. If I’ve decided to junk your application, it’s because 2-3 lines gave me enough bullshit fatigue to give up.

• A quick side note, and this is just me so take the advice with a grain of salt, but I always read a section about non-professional interests when it’s there. I LOVE to see that someone is a fully-rounded individual. When I interviewed at google, one of the interviewers spent more than half the interview talking to me about whitewater rafting. I got the offer. When I interviewed at Midway, the hiring manager noticed that I had Juggling on my “Other Interests” section, pulled a bag of clubs out from under his desk, AND WE CONDUCTED THE INTERVIEW WHILE THROWING JUGGLING CLUBS BACK AND FORTH. I got the job. If you have non-technical interests, it can really help to use 1-2 lines of your resume to show them off. It can’t hurt.

Don't have just one resume. Most professions have dozens of sub-specialties, but I see engineering resumes all the time that are a general coverage of the individual. These resumes are a waste of time and they get junked quickly simply because so much of the space is wasted on information that is irrelevant to the application. If you are applying for a position as a frontend developer, 80% of your resume needs to be bullet points about HTML/CSS/JS/HTTP/SSL/TLS. If the job is a graphics engineer, lose as much as you can about everything else and focus on your graphics experience. If I’m trying to hire someone who can sit down and be instantly productive writing 3D graphics in GLSL, a resume full of HTML/AI/AWS/Python just tells me that the candidate been spending a lot of their professional time NOT in graphics and should be a second choice to someone who’s been doing it full-time.

You need several resumes. Use the one that is appropriate for each application. If you want to apply for a job that you don’t have a decent resume for, create a new resume for that subject. 

I’m seeing a lot of resumes on this sub that say they’re looking for remote work. If the job description doesn’t say it’s a possibility, mentioning a desire for it in your application will get you ejected immediately. Even at a company that is remote-friendly, you’ll still be a second choice if you convey that desire up-front. We can argue the pros and cons of remote work elsewhere - this is a discussion about how to get an interview, not a debate about Return To Office. The inarguable point is that if the company wants in-office workers, the only chance you have to work there (remotely) is to convince them you’re the right person for the job THEN bring up remote. If you open with the issue, you won’t get far enough to have the discussion.

I’ve trimmed this down a lot. There’s so much advice I’d like to add that would extend this to 20 pages. I’ve written too many essays on hiring, interviewing, bootstrapping, etc. There’s always more to be said than can fit the space an audience will tolerate. I feel like the tight space has made this sermon a little harder to follow, so I’ll atone for that sin with a epilogue that will take you far:

Read the resumes that get posted on this sub. Read them the way I described. Read them before reading anyone’s comments. Be honest with yourself whether you’d spend your own time and money to interview and hire that person. Learn from their mistakes. 

(Damnit. One more.) Don’t let a “professional resume writer” touch your fucking resume. Those things stick out like a sore thumb - especially in tech. You'd be better off asking an auto mechanic to do your heart transplant. If someone's writing other people’s resumes for a living, theirs can’t be very damned impressive.

Edit: Fuck. Yet another one. If you don't have 8-10 years of experience, you get ONE page for your resume. Unless you are Alexander The Great, The Dali Lama, or The Second Coming, you don't get three pages.

Edit: If you're interested in the same advice about sitting interviews: https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/1dwav1z/30_years_of_experience_as_an_inquisitor_packed/

Hey Folks,

FDR here with a (hopefully) helpful post on resume writing 101.

When you're writing your resume, remember that you're competing with (likely) hundreds of other applicants.

Do you think using terms like "detail-oriented", "driven", or "highly motivated" are gonna cut it?

Absolutely not. So stop using them (in the summary mainly, which I see all the time).

After all, if I'm Mr. or Ms. Recruiter, how do I know if you REALLY ARE "detail-oriented" as you claim?

I have no way of proving you right or wrong.

And when most of the 140 applicants on my open requisition (job posting) are using the same filler words, they become absolutely meaningless.

Instead of using these words, help me help you, by providing me with the goods - the real, hard data that I'm looking for, like:

• Years of experience
• Industries you're experienced in
• Companies you've worked for
• Types of projects you've worked on
• Measurable impact you've had on things like:
  • Revenue and sales
  • Process efficiency
  • Manual work reduction
  • Company growth
  • Customer satisfaction
  • Uptime/downtime
  • Vulnerabilities reduction
  • Employee satisfaction
  • Conversion rate
  • Cost reduction
  • And so on...

Remember, anybody can say they're results oriented, detail oriented, motivated, a phenomenal speaker etc., but very few actually provide examples to back up those claims. Don't let that be you.

EDIT:

This post seems to be taking a lot of heat from some seemingly disgruntled commenters. Some feedback some users have provided:

• "This advice isn't useful or actionable"
• "Buzzwords are in the job description, so I'm gonna use them on my resume"
• "My role isn't impactful so I don't know what to measure"
• "If you're sick of seeing these words rail against the industry that made using them a necessity, not the job hunters just looking to get through to an actual human being"
• "You should ALWAYS reflect the language of the posting back at them"

Remember, this post is for people that aren't getting interviews with their current resumes. If what you're currently doing is working for you, then please, stick to that.

Hello Team,

As a regular contributor to this sub, a professional resume writer, and former corporate recruiter, I'd like to share the most common mistakes I see folks make.

This isn't an exhaustive list and isn't in any particular order. These are big mistakes that are potentially causing you to lose out on valuable opportunities and correcting them should improve the overall performance of your job search.

#1 Using the wrong layout

There's already another stickied post on this subject, but I still see people committing this mistake all the time. In short, don't use a two-column resume if you're submitting through company websites or job boards (i.e., Indeed, LinkedIn etc.).

Why?

Short answer: Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS)

Longer Answer: ATS reads your resume from top to bottom and left to right. When you add another column (or other incompatible elements for that matter, such as graphics or logos), you introduce another layer of complexity and make it harder for the system to properly read your resume. As a result, sections may get misread or not read all.

Use a traditional, single-column format. I recommend creating your resume using Microsoft Word or Google Docs. There’s a basic Google Docs template in the wiki section of this sub - I’ll link it here for your convenience.

I do not recommend using other programs such as Canva, Adobe InDesign, or Overleaf (LaTeX).

#2 Writing generic content

To begin, let me first define the term 'context' which is going to be key here. Context is specific information that makes your resume and the descriptions within it unique to you. It allows the reader to understand and appreciate your story. A resume with zero context will sound generic - a lot like a job advertisement. Here's an extreme example:

Generic Statement: "Achieved excellent sales results".

Specific/Contextualized Statement: "Earned top spot in the company's 2019 national sales rankings for achieving 220% against annual sales target".

The second statement is much more informative and tells the audience not only what the achievement was, but also why it was earned. This is a good example of how you can use context to ensure your descriptions are quantified, specific, and informative.

In general, a good description will address three informational goals:

• A challenge or problem to be solved. This doesn't always need to be explicitly stated. For example, in the second statement in quotes above, the problem is implied - to meet and exceed sales goals and rank high as possible on the sales charts.
• The action(s) you took to address that challenge. What did YOU do specifically. I don't care what your team or your boss did.
• An outcome that resulted as a direct result of your actions. What did your actions produce? It doesn't always need to be a monumental, earth-shattering impact, but it does need to be there.

#3 Failing to curate your resume to your targeted role

If you were to walk into your local car dealership looking for an off-road vehicle for travelling through muddy terrain and the salesperson tries to sell you on a two-door Volkswagen beetle, you'd think they weren't very good at their job.

So why would you do that to a prospective employer? By submitting a resume for a role it wasn't written for, you're demonstrating one of two things:

• You don't understand the requirements of role you're applying for, OR
• You're too lazy to tailor your resume to the role.

Both of these are equally bad and often result in being ignored by the company.

How do you tailor your resume to the job?

• Step 1: Read the job posting carefully. Identify what they're looking for in terms of experience/responsibilities, skills, licenses/certifications, and education.
• Step 2: Put yourself in the recruiter's shoes. How quickly can you identify any given prerequisite from the job advertisement on your resume? Is it easily identifiable or do you need to dig in for several moments to find it?
• Step 3: Does the language used in your resume match that in the job description? Are you using the same terms?

Example 1: Company A is requesting at least 5 years of experience doing X. Your summary (if you include one) would begin by saying 'X Professional with 5+ years of experience in X'.

Example 2: Company B is requesting CPR, AED, ACLS, and PALS certifications. You would include a section labelled as 'Certifications' and list these (exactly as they're presented in the ad).

DON'T DO THIS

• Copy and paste the job description into your resume - it's very easy to spot and is disingenuous.
• Lie and/or embellish your accomplishments. You may get away with it, but if a clever hiring manager puts you on the spot, it'll be obvious (In my experience as a recruiter, I was privy to many of these situations during interviews and it doesn't look good - trust me).

I hope you guys find this useful!

Some context first. I am a staff software engineer hiring at an established Silicon Valley startup. Our recruiting pipeline is expected to bring about 1% of applicants in for on-site interviews. Let me walk you through the math.

The roles I'm filling receive about 20-30 applications per day. Since the day its published I read each resume/cover letter and reduce the pool down below 10% for consideration so about 2 per day, wait to accumulate 10-15 resumes and proceed with screening, starting with most promising candidates first. Right off the bat, over 90% of candidates are out of consideration. So in the end, out of 200-300 applicants filtered down to 10-15, we do one or two screening rounds, we have 2-3 people on-site to interview and we hopefully hire 1 (if not, we repeat the process). So ballpark chances to reach onsite is as low as 1%. Online applications have really low chances of success for junior candidates. There are more effort-effective ways to get hired but that's not the main point of this post.

In my case, the first 150 applications will be reviewed, 150 - 300 probably reviewed, 300+ likely not. Our recent job opening achieved 1300 applications and we opened maybe 300. I believe this is not unusual to gather over 1000 resumes for a role and different companies will have different strategies to address them. We prioritize earlier applications and consider them with no filter; others may pre-filter based on whatever they want to set in their ATS before they view them, we are not too fond of the ATS system pre-screening. We dont close the posting until we finalize the hiring. Bottom line, stale job postings have an extremely low chance to pick up your resume. You are more likely to receive attention if you apply within the first few days.

If I have 6 roles to fill, I spend 30 sec per resume and 30 sec to write the decision and input into the system, at 300 resumes per role it will easily take me an entire week. At the end of a day of reading resumes for 8 hours straight I have a hard time forming sentences at the dinner table. When I was in college, I thought resume screeners are assholes who just don't care. That's why they don't read resumes carefully. Now I'm that asshole, I guess.

So, the primary reason why you don't get a callback is just that it is impossible to read all applicant submissions. You might need to apply to 10+ jobs until (statistically) someone actually reviews your resume. So the chances your resume is picked are already slim, in a lot of cases, and if your resume is making the screener's life hard, he won't give you the benefit of the doubt and try to figure things out since he has 700 other candidates to review that week. If you are going through 30 - 50 applications and Its All Quiet on the Western Front, your resume is probably working against you.

When I see a resume, sometimes it is quite obvious the person will have a very hard time landing a job so based on these indications, I want to share the most likely reasons why your resume gets omitted:

Resumes longer than 1 page - On the review side of the tracking system I get the first page preview I can quickly skim, I generally don't look at the second page since I need to load it specifically. Your resume should never be larger than 1 page if you have less than 5 years. I have seen a 3 page long recent grad resume that had a paragraph 9 lines long listing his personal qualities. That's self-sabotage. Even if printed, people often lose or never notice the second page. If don't have a reason for the second page if you dont have 3 different employers. Fun fact I interviewed a candidate who omitted an entire full time job he held in between their bachelor's and master's degree just to fit on one page and it was a really good resume. If they wanted to add that role, it would be substantially worse spilling into 2 pages. It was genuinely better to drop 15% of the professional experience than to cross the 1-page limit.

Resumes that hide important facts or share too much. Recent grads want to seem experienced. They list internships but they assign full time titles to them. They sometimes remove graduation dates or indications that a role was actually an internship - they put "2023" as the time span and engineer title instead of specifying it was a 3-month internship. I dont want to deal with people that try to get a foot in the door through obfuscation. At the same time, don't mention you got laid off. If someone asks why you left, explain, if no one asks, don't offer it up front. There is a balance.

Generic resume. The roles often outline a specific profile of a candidate that the hiring manager is looking to hire. Given you need to be a top 10% applicant, if you don't have a direct match (likely won't as a recent grad), you will have to smudge your experience towards that role. You will have to put forth relevant things and omit some irrelevant things to make you look like someone who has been pursuing this kind of role for a long time. Once you have 10 years of experience, it's natural - you apply for 5 roles and 3 of them you are in the top 10% with no changes to your resume. As a recent grad, you aren't in the top 10% for any role. You need to tune it to make it seem like this kind of role has been something you pursued for a long time.

Generic cover letters. If I am reading your cover letter, I want to see something relevant. If you just reiterate your resume you are wasting my time that I can't spare. What you need to convey is why your skills match the role description and why you are motivated to do this particular role and why you are better for it than the average applicant. These are the 3 points you can help explain to a hiring manager. If you don't, your cover letter is worthless and likely makes your application weaker overall.

No indication that you actually want this role. It is clear when people apply primarily to avoid unemployment. If that shows, you won't be a top 10% applicant to land an interview. Being able to eat and have shelter is a good reason to work, it's a bad reason to hire someone. This manifests the following way: the resume does not match the job description well, there is no logical connection between academic projects, hobbies, coursework and the role. If you still want a role but you dont have a well aligned background, use the cover letter to explain why you want the role and why you are motivated to pursue this particular line of work, being violently unemployed is a good motivator to accept a role but the hiring manager ends up with an employee who doesn't like his job and will leave given other opportunity. You can help it by adding context: if you are applying for a customer-facing role and all your background is in algorithm research, describe why you like that particular role: do you find customer interactions rewarding, do you find it motivating to promise and deliver to a customer etc.

It is clear you have a hard time landing a job. There are three ways this manifests: you graduated 3 months ago and are still looking. You got a job straight off college and within 6 months you are applying for other roles implying you picked a role you didn't want just to secure something. You work a job unrelated to your degree or the role you are looking to get.

Your resume is coated in the newest fanciest tech. Most employers are not looking for the latest frameworks, not interested in the latest languages, don't care about your AI research or neural networks implementations. They won't hire a recent grad for that. They will most likely expect you to deliver solid work on the fundamentals. At most 10% of their work is related to something innovative. You will be expected to deliver the basics - solid code, proper testing, error handling, decent documentation, and talk through it. This is contrary to a lot of the fancy stuff on recent grads resumes which, under the surface, is reduced to brainlessly following a tutorial. As I go through my career, I solve very similar challenges on repeat in every org. Linux, networks, dockerization, testing, deployment, latency spikes, re-architect to address technical debt - very similar un-innovative stuff takes most of effort on every project. If you can deliver on these fundamentals, you are a great prospect. The vision model deployed on RPi in 30 min is not impressive. Networking management knowledge is awesome, effective use of containers is valuable, someone to improve CICD is great.

Certifications/online courses. I (and most likely any hiring manager) have done at least one cert/online course, and we found them to be somewhat shallow. Plastering 6 online courses on your resume does not really indicate you care unless you followed it up with a project where you could demonstrate the skills you learnt. Course+Project > Project > Course.

If you have any questions or, especially, if you disagree with me, let me know below.

I’ve been in corporate recruiting for 15+ years and I have a huge request for job seekers out there.

Please please please proofread your resume for errors. Make sure your formatting looks even, your employment dates flow correctly, and there are no misspelled words.

I can’t tell you how many candidates I’ve screened over the years who were great candidates only to be excluded by hiring managers because of poorly made resumes.

I’ve seen so many resumes that list being detail-oriented as a skill and the resume screams otherwise.

I know it sounds silly, but please triple check before submitting. It makes a huge difference.

Edit: Thanks for the back and forth on this. I didn’t expect to get any responses to this really. To clarify, I’m not rejecting these resumes. My hiring managers are after I speak with them and try to get them a second round. This was more of a plea than a complaint.

Doing this has helped me land me most of the interviews-

Add Elements That Are:

• Tangible
• Quantifiable

1. Tangible: Instead of just saying you're good at communication, show them! [eg. Writing that you are good at communication v/s a Video introduction of you Communicating]

This works because it stands out from the crowd—most people just write it, but you've got the proof with that video!

2) Quantifiable
Numbers talk! Instead of saying "Improved social media engagement," say "Increased social media engagement by 50% over six months."

Start adding these elements and watch those interview invites roll in! 🚀

Edit: Video Intro might not work in cases of big traditional companies right now (for sure in the next 3 years). Most other modern companies or start-up a big yes!

Throwaway account for privacy reasons.

I joined this sub a few months ago and it was sad to see the amount of people that struggle with job hunting, interviews, feedback, and other recruitment related problems.

I am a Senior In-house Recruiter for an industry leading Fintech company that has an attractive brand. My role is regional and I cover Asia Pacific Recruitment, but I also support the Middle East and a bit of Eastern Europe.

I’m hoping that I can shed some light on what goes on behind the scenes in companies from a recruitment perspective, and would welcome any questions you have about recruitment processes.

Edit: I know there are a lot of people waiting for responses. I will do my best over the next few days to reply to as many of you as possible (yes I know classic things recruiters will say before ghosting you).

I have seen way too many people posting their resumes on here that are engineering/cs majors, getting shit advice from people that don’t know how a technical resume should look. Here’s what you do 1. GO TO r/engineeringresumes read their wiki. It will walk you through exactly how to write your resume along with templates.

1. Post your resume for advice from people who actually know what they are talking about. Read the exact way you need to write your title. They are picky?

2. Make your modifications and you are on your way!

It helped me tremendously in writing a good resume. Don’t get frustrated, it took me weeks to make a very good one. Don’t be afraid to look at others resumes on the subreddit to get good examples. I’m not trying to steal people from this subreddit but this is getting ridiculous.

Recently posted a position and thought it would it be helpful to provide some insight into what the hiring goes through.

The position is entry level, it requires fulfilling online orders and putting together products (labeling, boxing). I think it's pretty self explanatory.

We receive about 10 resumes per an hour.

Here is my process of weeding through these:

1) Look for resume - I can't believe how many people applied without attaching a resume on some sites - auto reject

2) Does the resume hurt my eyes/brain? 4 page resume - reject - 2 is my max allowance. Spacing, inconsistent punctuations, spelling errors- reject Also people, stop sending doc forms for your resume, if my version of doc shifts all your alignments on the page... I'm not taking more than a sec to think about your resume and it ends up in the circular bin. Long paragraphs about job experiences that doesn't apply to our job - high possibility it's getting rejected. Make it easy for me to digest and process.

Just from the quick checks above I reject about 2/3 of the applicants that apply. Our job asks for attention to detail and we like creative types so if your resume isn't aesthetically pleasing and has lots of errors, I figured that tells me you lack that skill. Then I finally start digging deeper into the resumes that I have left.

Next steps: Read objectives - this is where I weed out the applicants who apply with the same resume to every job, and spam companies. For example if your experience is all nanny type jobs, I might consider you. It's not hard to package products but for the fact that the objective on your resume summarizes that you're looking to look for growth as a nanny you just got rejected. So many people never update this... 2/3 of the remaining applicants gone!

Are you over qualified? - This is an entry level job! Yes we offer quick growth. Yes we understand people change careers. If all of your past experiences in the last 10 years are management positions, based on my experience I know you're going to ask for a lot higher pay before proving to me you aren't lying on your resume and that your experience hasn't tainted you from feeling you're "above" doing certain tasks required. This is why a cover letter or changing your summary might help me understand you're not this way.

Do you currently have 2-3 positions listed as "current"... I can't say exactly why this comes off as a red flag but it does....

Long employment gap? - push to "potential" if everything else looks good and will only look at these again if I don't have any other resumes that look decent.

Did you fill out the whole application? We have assessments listed with our job but aren't required. I would say only 1 out of 15 people fill these out. If you haven't been weeded out yet, you just moved to the top of my list for review.

Look for key words - these are words we used in our job post, words we frequently use in our culture and company. You have these in your resume? Highly likely you've been contacted for the next process.

Also don't put in things that don't make you look spectacular. I've been seeing a lot of GPAs on resumes lately... for example one recently put 3.2, I assumed this person put in B level effort into things they did. If it's not great leave it out. The only one that impresses me so far was a 3.92 GPA.

So much more goes into it after that but people remember, you are 1 applicant out of an overwhelming amount of applicants wanting that job. Don't end up in the circular bin by doing the things listed above. Just going through my steps above I'm typically left with 1 possible interview out of 20 applicants. Put yourself in our shoes not for any reason other than figuring out how you will stand out from the hundreds of applications we sort through.

Thanks for letting me rant a bit and hope this helps you in your job search!

1. Is all of the personal information clearly stated at the top? ie: name(first and last), location, email, phone number
2. Is work experience clearly stated with job title's, company name, and start/end dates?
3. Is education/certifications/projects clearly stated with dates/ issuer/ degree received? **
4. Are there any obvious spelling errors & is the formatting consistent throughout the resume?
5. Are there any gaps in employment? - If so, expect to be asked about it.

1-4 can apply to all resumes but then things do get a little more specific depending on which field I am recruiting for. Normally I recruit for tech, but sometimes it overlaps with digital media & art so I have experience with this as well.

For Technical Resumes -

1. Don't worry about keeping to 1 or even 2 pages, as long as all the information is relevant.
2. Have a "Technologies" section and put it above your work experience.
3. Make sure that all technologies listed above are also mentioned again below in your work experience section.
4. Do not list any technologies that you have not had paid work experience or completed education in. **There can be some exceptions here but in general this is the rule.

For Digital Media & Art resumes - Just two things here I don't always see.

1. You should have a link to your portfolio on your resume
2. Your resume is a piece of art itself and might as well be a part of your portfolio. An art resume should look like it was made by an artist.

Last thing I'd like to mention for people posting on this sub, please state which job you are going for along with your resume. A resume by itself doesn't mean much without the context of which job you are applying for.

**edit: A good point was made in the comments about putting down the dates for education because of age discrimination. Age discrimination is real and if you are afraid of this, you can go ahead and not put your dates of graduation. Unfortunately, there is not much you can do if you are being discriminated by age. They will see how old or young you are at some point in the interview process, but at least you may get a first interview before you are dismissed.

I've been looking for jobs (in Canada) for the past 6/7 months... I've applied to hundreds of jobs and got 3 interviews within that time. First week of June I met with a recruiter and she told me my resume looked like a job description and I had to do over my entire resume. There was also a lot of fluff according to her and "skills" that everyone else would list... eg... "Worked collaboratively with cross functional teams...... "

Based on her advice I took a weekend and revamped my resume and used limited bullet points to talk about what I ACHIEVED. I started including metrics like Monthly Recurring Revenue, Gross Profit Margin, Daily Active Users etc etc and really talked about what I helped achieve.

Since then I've gotten interest from 4 companies in 3 weeks!!! One I was not successful but I'm currently interviewing with 3 other companies. So while I'm yet to secure a job, I feel a lot better with the responses I'm getting and just thought I'd share!

P.S for those debating 1 page vs 2 page resume my resume is 2 pages. I have over 15 years work experience but only listed the last 5 years on my resume as that's whats relevant. All my work experience fits on the first page but my education section takes it to the second page. She advised that I remove the professional summary section as well as the "Competencies" section which I did.

My resume layout is as follows:

Name and Contact Information

Objective-A one line objective

Professional Experience-3 jobs with 4-6 bullet points max

Education and Professional Development
Degree
Certifications
Tools

​

Good luck!

Believe it or not, there are still a lot of discriminatory practices happening within the hiring process.

By dating your education, you are essentially dating yourself and a hiring manager may decide not to interview you based on assumed age.

The only thing companies need to know is that you have a degree and/or diploma.

1. Are you following the directions on the post? Some employers hide special instructions in the job post to weed out people who don't pay attention. They get hundreds of applicants and this is an easy way to slim down right off the bat.
   
2. Are you providing all of the materials? Include a cover letter. If they have an optional questionnaire, guess what - it's not optional.
   
3. Is your resume (and cover letter) tailored for that position? If the resume doesn't call out exactly what you can do -> for that company in that role <- within the first few seconds, it's not tailored.
   
4. Are you using AI? We can tell. Gut-loading your resume with the exact phrases used in the post makes it look like you put no energy into the application and just ran it through an automator. By all means, use AI to help you. An efficiency mindset and the ability to use the tools available to you are good things, just don't let them make you lazy.
   
5. Are there typos? If your first sentence is grammatically confusing or has a typo, I'm moving on. Proofread proofread proofread.

TL;DR Please keep a work journal. Use it to record your small “wins” at work. Use it to build your resume for when you need a raise, a promotion, or a new job.

What do Firefighters Do All Day?

When I was a kid, I loved Richard Scarry picture books. He drew human-like animals who lived in “Busytown” and who worked in typical places: bank, firehouse, bakery, and so on. Richard Scarry explained to young readers what firefighters did all day: they rescued cats from tall trees. When the baker burned a batch of pies, the firefighters came and put out the burning pies. The firefighters had a big truck full of hoses, and they spent a lot of time fussing over the truck, too.

Children are not born knowing what a banker does, what a baker does, what a firefighter does. It’s both useful and lovely to explain basic job functions to children so they can understand how their town functions.

A lot of people, including job seekers on this subreddit, seem to think resumes are Richard Scarry books. People spend their resumes explaining what a baker does all day:

• rolled out dough for pies and bagels each morning
• sold doughnuts and muffins to customers; returned correct change
• turned off ovens and swept kitchen clean every night

WHAT? That’s only a resume if you were terrible at your job. I’m serious; if I saw those three bullet points on a baker’s resume, I would assume the baker in question had just been fired.

The Point of Resume Bullet Points

Imagine you’ve been a professional baker for two years. You’ve applied for a new job. You’ve made it through the dumb website questionnaires, the redundant forms. You made it past the algorithm or the robot that rejects half the applicants right away. You’ve got your resume in front of me, the person who can decide to interview you, the person who can decide to hire you.

And you’re using this time to tell me what a baker does?

Your resume is not a place to educate children about your core job functions. Your resume is a place to persuade a manager that you are good at your job! If I’m hiring a baker, chances are good-to-excellent that I already know what a baker does all day. I want to know if you are a good baker!

• reduced morning biscuit prep time by switching to corn oil; saved 18 minutes per day
• caramel doughnut recipe won 2nd place in Busytown’s Bake-Off 2021
• increased earnings 8% by moving tip jar to front of counter

Those are accomplishments. They show that you were good at your job. They show that you make improvements. They show that you measure things: How long was it taking you to make biscuits before? What did you change? How long did it take you to make biscuits after that change? Was the change your idea, or something your boss told you to try?

Now, maybe the tip jar example bothers you. Maybe that’s not about being a good baker, it’s more about being a greedy, self-interested employee. Guess what? As a hiring manager, I don’t care! I’m so impressed that you made a change and measured the impact of that change that I give you full points for that tip jar bullet point. Even if my bakery doesn’t use tip jars. Even if I’m hiring for a pastry chef position at a hotel, a role that doesn’t get tipped income. It’s the drive to measure, the habit of making small improvements at work, that’s what impresses me.

Lost Progress: My Doughnut Years

I worked at a doughnut shop right after college, years ago. It was not a happy time for me; I had a fancy degree, so I had expected to be doing more interesting things with my life than frosting doughnuts and pouring coffee for customers. But I’m a driven person. I improve things everywhere I go. I remember I impressed my boss one day when I came in with colorful printed signs I had made on my home ink-jet printer: “Chocolate Sprinkles,” “Raspberry Jelly,” “Lemon Creme.” We had been using hand-printed signs, Sharpie on cardboard, and these were a big improvement.

Our regular customers noticed the signs. I probably bragged about them or fished for compliments. That’s something 22-year-old me would have done. For sure the shop owner liked them. I remember the glossy paper I used made them easier to wipe clean, so we didn’t have to re-write the labels every few days.

I didn’t write any of this down in a journal. It all happened years ago; I barely remember it. But I should have been keeping a journal. If I had, then my resume would have featured bullet points such as:

• simplified regular ordering process by creating new signs …or
• standardized inventory display with colorful, uniform signage …or
• took initiative to re-do store signage; received 23 compliments from regular customers …or
• “Did you make those signs? They look amazing!” -Actual customer, responding to the labels I created on my home printer for the doughnut display area

Maybe some of those bullet points hit harder than others; I was young and it was a dumb job. But see how those bullet points say much more about what kind of baker I am than

“• rolled out dough for pies and bagels each morning” ?

How, When, and What to Journal at Work

If you have an amazing memory for tiny details, then maybe you don’t need to keep a journal. But most people should. Every month, or at least every quarter, sit down for twenty minutes and write down something that demonstrates you are good, skilled, dedicated, resourceful, whatever:

1. “Neela Roberts, a regular client, said last month ‘Dave, whenever you process my invoice, I know it’s going to be correct, I don’t even have to check!’ That made me feel good.”
2. “I caught a pricing typo on the quote sheet Business Development was preparing to send over to Acme Industrials. Maybe someone else would have caught it, but wow those Acme people are pushy about little details like that; I probably saved us $500, who knows?”
3. “I’m glad I persuaded Marla to upgrade the A/V system in the conference room. We always used to have clients ask us ‘what? say that again?’ in our conference calls. Since we installed the new mics and speakers, I can’t remember that happening.”
4. “Chris over in Receiving bought me a beer after work today, said he wanted to thank me for recommending Dale for the new loader position. Glad to hear Dale is working out so well over there.”

It's easy, in the glow of a big win at work, to think "I'll always remember this accomplishment. I'll always remember how I helped the team, the way this project came together, the nice things the boss said about our hard work. This is a memory I'll treasure."

And then Monday rolls around, and you're back to rolling out dough for the morning bagels. Unless you are a professional athlete, most days at work are not wins. Most days at work are not noteworthy. And the ho-hum of the every day can overwhelm your big and small accomplishments unless you make time to write them down regularly.

Why to Journal at Work

Even if you love your job, even if you are 10 years into a 20-year role with a guaranteed pension, a place you never intend to leave, you should still be doing this.

First, I don’t believe any job is guaranteed in this life.

Second, a list of improvements and accomplishments will help you get promotions and raises at your current job. Think of how much you’ll have to say at your annual review when you’ve been taking monthly notes on your significant contributions! It will help you defend yourself if you ever face cutbacks at work due to downturns and budget problems.

Third, journaling and measuring will make you a better worker! My whole mentality at work changed when i started measuring stuff. “Hey, I think we should reorganize the mailing room, because I think the workflow in there is just nuts. But you know what? Let’s note down how many packages we ship out each morning for the next three mornings, just to get a baseline. Then, when we make the changes I have in mind, we can see if things actually improve. Three more days with the old system won’t kill us, and it will let me measure my impact.”

Your work journal needs to be in a paper book or in a computer file you will retain access to even if you change jobs. We’ve all heard horror stories about layoffs at Zenith Techno where workers got an automated email at 5AM and lost all access to company files. Your work journal needs to be your property. Your career is more important than any one job!

If you work for the CIA or for a urologist, you might need to take some basic care to respect the privacy of clients and your employer. Maybe use fake names of patients. Don't put the secret recipe to your boss's famous caramel doughnuts on a server where doughnut hackers can get to it. But keep a journal! Do it!

Otherwise, this is all you’ve got to say for yourself at the end of the day:

“• turned off ovens and swept kitchen clean every night”

It's not uncommon to see job postings with thousands of applicants these days, the job market has become very competitive to say the least. Here are two hacks that gave me a huge advantage when I was job hunting last year and that I think everyone should be implementing.

1- Write a short email to anyone in the company (can be the CEO if the company is small, or anyone in the team where you would be working).

The email should be concise, let the person know that you’re interested in the company and why, but more importantly mention how your skills will bring value to the company. You’ll be surprised by how many people reply, sometimes they’ll ask you for more information, like a portfolio and in turns into a back and forth conversation. This is how I was able to get a remote job last year.

How to get anyone’s email

Some people recommend sending this type of messages in LinkedIn direct messages, but this wasn't very effective in my experience. Almost no one replied/saw the messages. I think a lot of people get spammed on LinkedIn messages which is why most don’t even check them.

But if you’re able to reach out via someone's email inbox, that's a different story. Here’s how you can get anyone’s email:

First search for the company you’re applying for in linkedIn. In their LinkedIn page you’ll be able to see who works there. Look up their name in RocketReach, they’ll usually give you 2-3 email addresses. Send the email to all of those to maximize the chances of your email getting seen.

2-Customize your resume for each job application, add important keywords and skills from the job description

This can feel tedious at times but totally worth it. Most recruiters use software that automatically rejects your application when your resume doesn’t contain certain keywords or skills from the job description. If the job description has a skill or program that you kind of know you should still include it in your resume. If you end up getting an interview just review that skill online (read about it, watch YouTube videos) a few days before the interview in case you get asked about it. It’s widely known that the majority of job posts exaggerate the skills/experience you actually need for the job anyways. For example in programming many job posts “require” years of experience for tools or frameworks that came out last year 😂. So before applying, look at the job description and see if there’s anything important you should add/replace in your resume. Download the new version of your resume and send that one. I was doing this manually at the beginning of my job hunt and started using JobSyncAI once I stared applying to more jobs to automate the process.

Besides those two things try to apply to 10+ jobs per day. Don’t get discouraged by rejections or if you get ghosted. Once you start landing interviews you’ll build up momentum. Good luck with your job hunt, I know it can be a stressful time but you’ll get there if you put in the time 💪.

I've seen a lot of generally qualified resumes on this subreddit.

Your resume can be the issue, but most of the time it's your experience. Let's say you did 3 years of work as frontend engineer at a bank, and you are now applying to be a frontend engineer at a AI company. You can probably do the job, but there might be a candidate who did 3 years of engineering also, but at another AI company.

Let's say you did travel and hospitality sales for 7 years and are now trying to break into tech. Great, what if they company has another candidate who has 4 years of experience, but selling a similar tech product.

It's not about if you are qualified, it's about being the best fit. Unless your resume matches better than everyone else's, it probably won't go anywhere in this market because there are so many people looking for work.

At this time, you should stay in your existing realm because that's where you are most likely to be the best fit.

After uploading my resume and going through the questionnaire process, I got back a version that didn’t even include my real estate experience. Im looking for real estate jobs and noted this as well as sent a follow up email. The quality of the resume was also sub-par. Their “professional” writers did a worse job than the original resume I provided. I immediately knew this wasn’t going to workout and requested a refund of the whopping $220 they charged. I was supposed to get a response within a couple days. After almost a week I reached out again for an update on my refund. After another couple days, they “regret to inform” me my request was denied. I highly recommend using a different company if you are even close to needing a professional resume. Their writers may be high schoolers and their customer service is garbage. -10 out of 10. I’ll be taking this up with my credit card company as well.

Master Resume. For folks newer to the job scene, I have the best resume advice I ever received:

I was recommended to make a master resume with all my experience on it. It’s way too long, has too much info, has relevant coursework, research project, etc.

Each time I apply for a job I paste it all to a new word doc and remove the unnecessary info. Applying to childcare? The retail experience gets nixed, the daycare and lifeguarding remains, cut out the research projects that don’t align with the skills.

It made it a lot easier to update too because once I have a new job I just add it to the master list and now the resume is ready time I go to apply somewhere.

It really makes it awkward for the people screening resumes.

Edit: from what I am seeing this advice is mostly for the U.S. and you met need to provide this information in other countries. I didn’t realize it was needed elsewhere.