⤵️ I’ve been reviewing a lot of resumes recently, so here is a thread of advice I’d like to give to those of you who are currently applying here and there for tech positions.
☝️ Take it with a pinch of salt as some comments might be a little subjective.
☝️ Take it with a pinch of salt as some comments might be a little subjective.
1. Take good care of your resume. Make sure there are no typos. Make sure it has enough spacing. Make sure the structure is obvious.
Make it nice.
Make it clean.
Make it consistent.
Nothing like a visually off-putting resume as a first impression.
Make it nice.
Make it clean.
Make it consistent.
Nothing like a visually off-putting resume as a first impression.
2. Take the time to join a (personalised) cover letter. It might seem like an unnecessary burden, but it shows that you care (at least a little), took the time to write something, and made your research on the company you’re applying to. It makes a difference.
3. Humility goes a long way. I know it’s important to sell ourselves so we get a chance to get an interview, but there is something such as going too far. Be careful with the amount of hyperbolic adjectives and buzzwords you use in your bio. Be true to yourself.
4. Don’t detail 15 years of experience. This is very long and likely to be irrelevant. Similarly, skip your old internships, especially the ones that are not related to the job. Focus on what matters: the latest related experiences you had. Stay on topic.
5. If you are going to provide a link to your GitHub profile (which you don’t have to by the way), make sure it displays things you want people to see. Mark old awkward/bad repositories as outdated. Make sure the ones you want to showcase are in good shape. Clean it up.
6. Keep in mind that your resume is not the package.json of your last project. Don’t list all libraries you have ever used, focus on the ones you are good at and want to keep using. Similarly, only specify the version of a library if really relevant. It’s usually just noise.
7. Remember that your job as a developer is not just crunching code all day. Don’t overlook experience in other fields that could help making your profile stand out such as community work, design, accessibility, mentoring, tech ops, writing… I cannot insist enough on this.
8. More of a pet peeve of mine but try to avoid skill charts (e.g. star rating). Charts are meant to represent quantitative information such as numeric data. You cannot put a number on your skills, which makes these charts rather moot. Just mention your expertise with words.
9. I know it’s an annoying fact to acknowledge, but people will skim rather quickly through your resume. They won’t carefully read all of it.
This is why you need to make sure that the relevant information is right there, and that the whole thing is clean and tidy.
This is why you need to make sure that the relevant information is right there, and that the whole thing is clean and tidy.
10. If you apply as a front-end developer and provide a link to your own website, expect people to look at it. More than that, expect people to browse through the code. The code doesn’t have to be spotless of course, but it should probably be of good quality.
I just remembered that this is not the first time I’ve been ranting about this:
Maybe I should expand on this, because some developers, especially more junior ones, tend to think everything is about code. I was very much like this too.
Coding is not the hard part of the job. Solving problems, working with others, showing empathy, dealing with humans is.
Coding is not the hard part of the job. Solving problems, working with others, showing empathy, dealing with humans is.
Of course technical skills are important. However I think sometimes we give them too much credit. It’s trivial to become good (enough) as part of a team. Anyone will rank up to speed quickly.
Eventually, technical skills are not what makes the big difference in my opinion.
Eventually, technical skills are not what makes the big difference in my opinion.
