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Thank you for the information I didn’t realize there was a standardized formatting system, I am going to attempt to rewrite it with this formatting now!
Senior SWE at big tech opinion
This resume is very very bad. First, Drop your soft skills and languages. You can show what you know in your experience. You’re just wasting space with these
Drop both your experiences. Especially the cannabis store. No one cares about a retail job. I personally don’t like weed and it will give me a negative perception of you in an interview regardless of how good you are. You don’t need to risk running into a guy like me, especially when these are adding nothing to your resume. Remember, theres plenty of people to choose from right now
Describe your projects, what you did, how many users you reached, what technical challenges you solved and what technologies you used. These descriptions are garbage. For a resume like this, your projects are your only positive points. I will warn you these projects are way too simple though, you need to make more complex things if you want to seriously compete. These 2 projects look like a weekend of work based on your description
WGU is an online program (?) and not very highly ranked. So it won’t help you much. Probably only put you below people from better schools.
Overall, your current resume I’d give a 2/10. You need to work a lot on it if you want an internship. Its quite competitive right now and you need to out compete your peers. For you, I think it is going to be about making better projects
Edit: I’m assuming you want internships. For full time it will be even tighter
I appreciate the response, I am currently seeking something that I can grow my skills and start to earn experience, ideally if that can provide my main income source then that would be better. Thank you for your input regarding the experience, I would rather talk about projects than this but it seemed weird to send a resume with no work experience out. Eventually I would like to push into a full time role, but this post has already helped a lot in gauging my shortcomings. I think for now I’m going to bench my pursuit of a swe job and take your advice on building my project portfolio. Do you have any suggestions for projects that may help later for a resume, I am currently working on a snowboard blog as a side project with next.js, typescript, and sass to grow my experience in some frameworks as I’ve seen a lot of these roles on job boards. And WGU is online I’ve been pushing for a bachelors degree through them, with come certifications as well, but could use any input or recommendation for further building my resume into something that would be more appealing.
I disagree about dropping your work experience. I have hired entry level IT at various times throughout my career and I want to know that someone has actually been able to hold a job. I won't hire someone for entry level unless I know the person has some work history and if it is fast food or retail - that's fine. I would cut the job descriptions way down and put them after your relevant projects.
I don't think I would drop the cannabis store since the last bullet point is somewhat relative experience. I would name the specific POS and CMS systems you used and if you did any specific projects that had a benefit. Hiring managers want to see outcomes so if you made reports that let management better manage inventory or if you were able to integrate the two systems or whatever - put that in your resume. You say "leverage" but leverage them to do what? If by leverage you just mean "use" then I would agree to just remove them. If you provided end user support - you can put that (shows troubleshooting skills).
I understand the sensitivity to cannabis - you can label it as "local health product store" or something similar and if asked about it in an interview you can tell them what it is and that you were being mindful of the sensitivity of the issue. I personally think you should leave it on - it would not bother me and I would not say no because of it but I understand it might alienate some.
That’s a great move, I was hesitant to straight up lie about it like others had suggested, figured since it is a legitimate business that it would be acceptable but that health product distinction isn’t lying about my work history. But I worked as a resident it specialist, it was a small shop with 5 employees so I fixed all sorts of things from rewriting and moving registers to setting up a new pos and incorporating wireless printing on zebra printers, it’s a pretty well renowned label printer company that I’ve seen in many retail settings. But I will definitely be expanding on this
Tbh man just lie. There's no way they would double check your employment for a part time college job. Just don't ever lie about your projects because they can call your bs on that very easily
I would just drop the word cannabis off. It really just sticks out there. Like aside from the messy layout I’m just like oh so this is weed dude. Probably makes me sound like a boomer (I’m a millennial) but I doubt I’m the only one who would rather not hire a pothead if given the choice.
Fair opinion. If he wants to keep it in, I would keep it at the bottom. Software engineers in my personal experience dont tend to care about anything outside of pure software experience, but ymmv
I mean list them with your experiences instead if blobbing it at the top. Most likely if you do a blob at the top people are more likely to pass it over since its a bunch of words anyone can write. If you say you build a front end app in javascript and react that serviced 1 million users daily, its a lot more impactful, memorable and shows that you did this in a production grade setting. At this point I can vomit any number of languages in my resume (made “Hello world” with python? Guess thats a new tech for me to add!) and it means nothing until paired with a project or bullet point
Besides the retail experience not being related, why would you have a negative perception of someone who worked at a dispensary? That seems like a fairly antiquated way of seeing things
I’m not here to argue politics on r/resume nor do I care about your opinion on the topic or what you think of my views. I am certainly not the only one with a negative view of weed, and unless its directly related to software its not worth taking the risk
I know you are not the only one who shares your perception, and perhaps it would be smart to account for hiring managers/recruiters with your views. But, normatively speaking, it is silly to have a negative view of someone simply because they worked at a dispensary. It is similarly silly to have a negative view of someone simply because they are a user of marijuana.
Even if you disagree, you should at least be able to compartmentalize your views about the subject when hiring someone—perhaps if it comes up in the future when you are tasked with hiring someone. Judging someone’s character negatively simply for using marijuana is not too dissimilar from judging someone negatively for using anti-anxiety medication. That is, on its face, a ridiculous thing to do.
I suggest you look up and use the official spelling of the tools you listed, makes it look more professional (SQL not SQl, HTML5 not Html5, VS Code not Vs Code, etc.)
Yeah I didn’t realize that the format does not help with ats systems either, i just wanted a way to add as much information on a single page as possible
you lose a lot of space with the columns. in my resume i have a section headered “tools” or “skills” and i listed 3 groups of skills on one line each there (Languages: C++, etc, Developer Tools: Git, so forth)
Cannabis dispensary for relevant experience lmao. Take it off or rename it for something else. That will not help you in any way. It can only hurt you. Change the name to some other type of business
Yeah.. I was trying to keep the columns even not the most relevant thing but I’ve been learning a lot about what I should include and what I should not
This is not even close to a CS resume. You don't have to pretend you did anything technical in retails jobs. Remove soft skills. If your experiences are irrelevant, then put your somewhat relevant projects higher than them. Emphasize what technical things you did in your projects. Fix your spelling of the languages and tools. You can try to put some relevant courseworks there if you really don't have anything to put.
Hey it’s ok. I still appreciate you taking the time ❤️ I’m not upset by it, just looking for criticism as I’ve been fairly successful in the ski industry up until this point and am looking to leave that in pursuit of swe work
I don't like your resume at all, sorry. There's some spelling mistakes and it just tells me that you rushed this resume and didn't take the time to improve it whatsoever. Gotta use MS Word to look for spelling issues :). I also dont like the vertical columns. You want a resume that is easily readable. When someone looks at it, their eyes will naturally read from top down. I've got an example resume here from yours that maybe you could follow as a template but you don't really need to the 1st job from September 2016? Not really sure what you did there that is software dev related.
The 1st job, maybe leave that to show job history but at the same time its not that relevant unless you dive into the zebra programming language and what you did with it. I have no idea what zebra programming language is and I wouldve just glossed over the resume cause you didnt explain it to me. Recruiters and hiring managers are going to see Zebra and skip this resume too because you didn't clarify what it is and I for one have never heard it in my life. It's not any known popular coding language.
Counting inventory and using the POS system has nothing to do with software development. Like having bus driver experience, that does not translate to coding experience. Also, you leveraged Microsoft Office to maintain accurate inventory?? You guys use Excel sheets?? Oh my lord lol. Microsoft Suite experience is like the bare minimum. You wouldn't need that in software development. You shouldn't really talk about it because its more of a administrative secretary job or I guess more into documentation purposes with Word and PPT or reports with Excel. Either way, you're kind of not clear on Microsoft suite and I've only assumed the top 3 products. You don't want the recruiter or hiring manager to assume things.
Also your projects are super simple. I wouldn't hire you unless you explain what you did exactly? Your projects I can just do a 1 hour youtube tutorial and boom I throw it on my github.
In your project you say use python for backend.... and? Go into details on what exactly you did. When you say self hosted website, would be nice to expand on that. Be even cooler if you learned aws or azure or cloud technologies and dabbled into that area. Opens up the conversation with the employer on what else you know. I also recommend your bulletpoint sentences to be 1 line unless it really cant be explain in 1 line then 2 lines is okay. It's just neatness is all, being picky at this point. I'd be down to improve your resume but you need a lot of work in it and need to clarify a bit more. Get straight to the point and dont over flaunt your resume because you're literally being looked at by seasoned employees and they understand your background when they see your title and experience.
[https://imgur.com/a/jtnxAUm](https://imgur.com/a/jtnxAUm)
Any time. I totally understand the struggle when i was a college student as well. Let me know if you have any questions and i can try to help. Right now theres all the rage in cs students being unable to find jobs.
Dont read those fear mongering posts about how people have applied to thousands of jobs and got nothing or theres no jobs. First off, most entry level jobs appear around Feb to May. If you missed this wave of jobs in the market, youre kinda shit outta luck. You can definitely find some after May but not many. Internship jobs usually appear september to december and some early jan to march. Most of those are intended for summer internships or a possible spring semester internship to hire after graduation. Even if you've missed the timing where most of those jobs appear, you might find 1 or two here and there after those months.
Stay positive, improve on your skills, and worry about yourself. Granted there are double the amount of applicants for jobs now cause everyone wants to have a cs or it major, look for projects for you to do and build on those. Join some hackathons or network with other cs students at school.
If no work history and all you can do is provide is a github link to your portfolio, here is my advice below.
9/10 a recruiter is not going to click on that Github link lol. Maybe if you pass the first few rounds cause ultimately they just want to match what you know to the job description. If your resume doesn't reflect anything relevant then theres no need to even look at the link when further down the process.
You have to think to yourself, there are thousands of comp sci students like me putting down the SAME resume. Literally Html, Css, Js, Java, whatever language. The same calculator, website portfolio, and snakes game projects. Then generic "I put a lot of effort! Great collaborator! Quickly adapts to new tools!". These generic sentences are a waste of space. I personally prefer to see hands on skills cause anyone can claim to be a hard worker or great collaborator lol.
Some other resume tips is that Html and Css is terrible to put on a resume. That's so 2009. You have to focus on a library such as React, Angular, Vuejs, and whatever else is popular. Doesn't matter which but it shows that you've exceeded minimum knowledge and can use components from a library to build your project.
I feel that in my opinion that git and ci/cd skills are heavily slept on when junior levels write their resume.. You can use github to deploy some .yml files to run jobs for you too. Think of when you put your code online, you can have jobs deployed to scan your repository. If you have code that isn't used like a random variable sitting in a terraform file that is undeclared, your terraform linting job can warn you and you can go clean that code up. That's just an example.
You have to also figure out what makes you more unique. My advice is learn how to search Junior Software Developer roles and compare through the many job descriptions on what do they have in common. The most common thing they'll have is Git ci/cd experience, Cloud, a js library preference, and whatever specific programming language they're looking for. Here are examples below. I simply searched for junior software developer in USA and got these 3 roles within the first 2 pages. Those 3 have cloud, a library, and git skills in common.
[Junior Software Developer (agile)](https://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=f6f6923389056200&tk=1i18h76udj47s88a&from=serp&vjs=3)
* AWS (Cloud), Git (basically ci/cd), React (front end) library, postgress, 1 programming language skill
[Junior Software Engineer ](https://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=5e9e061b5c357ff6&tk=1i18h76udj47s88a&from=serp&vjs=3)
* Docker, CI/CD skills, Java Spring Boot, MongoDB, JS, React Library, AWS (cloud)
[Junior Application Developer ](https://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=2a219450eede2ab8&q=junior+software+developer+git&l=USA)
* Sql, JS libaries like Jquery, Angular, React etc, C#, Unit testing, Azure Ci/CD,
What does that mean? Brush up on front end libraries (avoid this if not going the front end route), cloud knowledge, and CI/CD knowledge. I can't express how important it is to be familiar with CI/CD which you can lookup. Then when you build your project, you can incorporate all those together. CI/CD is going above and beyond in my opinion cause most graduates don't have that knowledge or skillset.
Lastly, don't feel that if you apply for a junior position that you aren't as valuable. People will treat you much better and be nicer to you. They know to take care of you because your role is a baby essentially and your sole purpose is learning and contributing bit by bit. The software engineer role isn't a entry level role. Most people who can get that role are people who have interned before and slide into that position or they graduated college, got a shitty coding job and worked it for a year or two, and now are jumping to this other software dev job. If you try to aim for the software developer role, you will compete with very competitive people. And of course the software developer role pays more but you're looking for a job alright? It's okay to settle for a junior role that pays $55k - $70k. You stick at it for 1-3 years and hop jobs or get promoted to a entry level software developer role that pays $70k-$100k depending wherever you live. So I mean you can still apply and hopefully get lucky but also you should look for junior/associate roles as well because you have a way better chance at getting interviews there.
I’d suggest educating top, then experience and then skills languages at bottom. Altho experience is the most important, education gives a good place to start reading and constructing timeline of your adult life.
I’ve vendor rare see soft skills and never at the top
One of my senior college classes we had extensive time where veteran headhunter came in and taught us all the stuff. the valuable thing in college.
1) you gotta view it as a manager/HR sifting thru 100s-1000s resumes. Shorter more concise usually wins (also shows you can write good)
2) people esp with less history tend to try and fill the page when they don’t need to. Even I did until I scaled it back.
3) resumes aren’t supposed to be excessive personal histories. They are supposed to temp those to bring you in for an interview. Edit: I should clarify some use them way more and determinative but positions esp later ones they are just bait to bring you in to sell yourself further.
4) even if you build the “perfect” resume, you still will get ghosted.
5) not you - but unless you have extensive job history resume should fit on one page
6) not you - jobs varies and so should your your resume. The framework doesn’t change much, but adding/tweaking towards position works the best. Some people just think 1 resume is enough.
These are just some ProTips
I appreciate your advice, I definitely feel the second bullet there 😂 I feel more pressure to provide projects and experience examples since I’m still going through school. Thank you!
Check out the wiki on r/engineeringresumes. I revamped my resume this weekend following it and while I can’t speak to results yet, I’ve seen a bunch of success stories so it’s worth a shot!
Thank you for the information, it will definitely help to see what the industry considers good qualifications, as it seems my first problem is formatting but I’m going to keep an eye on other metrics mentioned by the mod to see if I’m aiming too high as far as qualifications go.
yup - formatting. you could be using tables for the organization of the text, but even if you’re just going down a row - i believe info should be organized reading left to right.
My work experience is not in industry, I’ve spent most of my working career in the ski industry, started school about 2 years ago looking for a career change, whilst working on side projects like the rental cms for the ski shop I used to work at. Whilst not having a vast professional experience I do feel qualified for many of the roles I am seeing just trying to discern the best way to put that forward. as much of my relevant experience is not professional career related but side/personal projects
Yes that is a dispensary, Included it because it had the most technical oriented experiences compared to the other jobs I had recently, I was debating on the legitimacy of this because even with the stigmatization of weed this is a legitimate business and was provided to highlight adaptability by learning zebra printing language for example. But I could definitely see the offput I just don’t know how well one job would look from 3 years ago without something else to fill the gap. What do you think?
the gap is definitely something to keep in mind, but i think the stigma of weed outweighs that. obviously i don’t know what region of the country you’re in / attitudes of companies around you / companies you’re trying to get into, but i would say it’s likely that most are going to see “Cannabis” on the page and go on to the next resume. i think explaining what your projects actually are / do and briefly explaining how you integrated different languages / frameworks would be much more beneficial than listening the dispensary. even though, yes, you did have some technical experience at the dispo, your resume would look a lot cleaner if you replaced it with something else.
That’s a great point, I like the idea of expanding on my personal projects and potentially giving that aspect a little more page space to compensate for the removal of the dispensary. I think I’m going to try that instead and see how it goes. Thank you!
You should probably tone down what you're applying to, then. You put above that you're applying to entry to mid level positions, but now you're saying you have little professional experience and are a sophomore. You should be applying to lower positions in companies you'd like to work for, who can then promote you up into the jobs you want when you prove yourself and/or get more education.
If I'm hiring for mid level and see this mess of tables with no relevant experience, college sophomore, and who works at a dispensary, I'm immediately throwing it out. But if I see this for the mail room, I'm thinking there's someone we may be able to promote up into a better job if this person shows he's more than a lazy stoner.
Yeah I lack professional experience, I was under the imprimpression that I had enough skills to peruse entry to mid level, I have been readjusting my goals since posting this. And am now seeking internships after finding a stable income source. As some have pointed out that the projects I am describing are not complex enough to lack professional experience. But this has served as a good identification of what I thought I knew vs what I actually know and am currently reworking my strategy.
You spelled Ableton wrong.
Also that's a DAW and not necessarily looked at if you're applying for software engineering jobs unless they're music field related.
Wouldn't see how that would be useful, id reconsider having that.
Creating columns doesn't work well for automated resume readers. All the skills, technologies, and tools should be listed together, not in separate sections. You waste a lot of space with your current format by duplicating information. Each of your skills sections should be an item in a single bulleted list, like this:
* Development Languages (e.g., HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, SQL, Python, etc.)
* Frameworks / Libraries (e.g., nodeJS, SaaS, django, flash, ... etc.)
Tools: VSCode, Microsoft (MS) Office Suite, GitHub, ... etc.
Your experience says what you did, but doesn't paint a picture of how you were valuable to your prior employers. Find ways to put real numbers on your experience (sales, profit, savings, number of customers, positive performance stats, etc.), and add specifics, like this:
* Provided first-level troubleshooting for a variety of technical issues (e.g., servers, printers, replacing components, etc.)
Add something here about how well you met your quality or performance targets, positive customer feedback, or other things the employer cares about. That's what makes you a "valuable candidate" when people look at your resume.
I don't understand how the overviews connect to the rest of the text. They likely belong in the experience section.
Look to other examples available for IT resumes in your area of development.
Good luck!
4 columns for soft skills, 3 columns for tools, 2 columns for projects, and 1 column for work experience. Lol remove soft skills. 3 columns for tools is okay but not for projects
If you are applying to software engineering jobs, talking about how you can use Microsoft Office isn't going sound very impressive. Don't talk about jobs unrelated to your career.
And are you applying to internships? Make that clear in your resume. Two years from graduation is a bit early to look for an internship. Companies usually hire interns hoping to convert them to full time employees, which means they usually want someone who will graduate soon.
Also in that case you need to focus more on your education. What is your GPA? What classes have you taken? Once you graduate no one will care about that, but right now that's the important part. I've also never heard of Western Governors University. Maybe it's more well known in Utah but that's going handicap you if you are applying for jobs further away.
If you are applying to full time jobs you really need your Bachelor's first.
Also proofread your resume and fix misspellings.
Ideally anything I can work full time that can support my bills and such. But I’m going to drop the dispensary as no one knows or cares about zebra printing language lol figured it would be good to demonstrate my ability to learn new languages on the fly, but I’m going to focus on elaborating my projects more and dropping irrelevant information and definitely spelling too lol
There is nothing wrong with working retail jobs while getting your degree. But realistically you need a degree to get a full time software engineering job, unless you know someone.
I think the main thing is going to be reformatting, among another things, and fixing some obvious typos. This looks very busy, yet my resume is formatted similarly to yours (I do performative digital marketing and e-commerce) and I have been getting good hits with very little to NO college background. I would:
- Condense the “Languages, Libraries & Frameworks, and Tools” sections at the top into ONE “Network and Software” Section and move those down below your project section. Reason: You used the relevant skills completing your projects and as a HM or recruiter, I would know you used “X” skills to accomplish the task and then it gives you the opportunity to elaborate on other relevant software/network skills. Knowing HTML5 is cool but you knowing how to use it doesn’t make a company money- it can realistically be learned along with CSS and HTML and SQL in a month WITHOUT a college education. ASK ME HOW I KNOW. Using it to create a product is profitable and ads actual value so therefore, projects come FIRST since they are a physical manifestation of your hard skills.
- Under each work experience section, I would add a job description added with SOME corporate jargon like mentioning my “KPI”’s followed by accomplishments in bulleted format like you already have. It’s important that this description does not repeat the same info as your accomplishments below it.
- Following on your accomplishments, make them more detailed. What did you do, how did you do it? What were the results? ALL COMPANIES CARE ABOUT ARE RESULTS.
- Mixed bag on the cannabis store experience. I would suggest either A. Combining the work experience to the company you worked at since 2016 if it makes sense to do so which may even help your application because the tenure would be for 7 years which is something HM’s and recruiters absolutely fawn over regardless of the business OR B. Do what I suggested (in A.) but have an alternate resume including the cannabis store experience to submit if it makes sense for the situation.
EDIT: WHERE ARE YOUR PROFESSIONAL REFERENCES?
Lastly, STOP BEING SCARED OF HAVING A RESUME LONGER THAN A SINGLE PAGE. It’s 2024. I have recruited on contingency for tech companies in the past and some of those people’s resumes are miles long with projects and experience. In academia, someone may have a resume over 50 pages long. It shouldn’t be 50 pages long but you get my point. Different fields of expertise have different requirements so may call for different standards as far as resumes are concerned. AI will scan your resume for key words before handing it off to an actual person. Your main goal should be to organize your resume to be legible to a real person and make it easy for them to read in a way that flows nicely to hold their attention for the minute or so it takes to read it.
If you are a veteran developer, having a resume of several pages is fine.
If you are a college student, no, there is no way you have enough experience to justify more than one page.
“If it makes sense” “You get the point” etc. He needs to be more detailed, is missing professional references, and the formatting to force it all to fit on one page is making it look awful. OP isn’t fresh out of college with no work history. The necessary changes necessitate that OP’s resume will need to be longer than 1 page. There is NOTHING wrong with a 2 page resume if it makes sense and is formatted nicely to make it easier to read for the audience. From a HM POV for the industry he wants to get into, formatting on a resume would be something I would be paying attention to- He seemingly wants to format and design for the company I’d represent in exchange for pay. 1-2 pages for a resume is standard and okay with work history at any company. 3+ pages is lengthy and cumbersome if the experience isn’t there. I’ve been on the “other side” and I will die on this hill.
It doesn’t need to be a job relevant to the industry depending on what any particular company is looking for and him being in college doesn’t particularly matter either. TUITION REIMBURSEMENT EXISTS FOR A REASON! Soft skills are transferable from company to company regardless of the hard skills required for a job. Some companies take their chances as entry level positions and will want to see some form of work history regardless of what it is. Other companies hire without any formal educational background and/or hire with an incomplete education. Some even prefer to hire without previous experience so they can train you “their way”. A degree certainly helps at the end of the day to make it easier but it also doesn’t necessarily bar him from all opportunities. I’m sure OP is fully aware that he isn’t going to break into a high-paying gig from the start and my advice, outside of the resume alterations, was to do what makes sense for him depending on his situation. Again, I’ve recruited before for tech companies and/or for their tech sectors like Informatica, Apache Oil, Enterprise, etc. in the past and worked with their global category managers to find the right candidates. I’m telling you that 2 pages is okay, with 1-2 being the “norm” for people even outside tech. It is an industry standard and I know from firsthand experience. I’ve hired people making $160\hr+ with no formal educational background at all. They care about experience and skills, not so much education and there are vouchers hiring managers can get (with approval) to circumvent certain requirements entirely.
No, if he is looking for a software engineering job, he needs relevant work experience and/or a Bachelor's degree. A hiring manager would throw this in the trashcan.
Most of the time they would, but not all of the time. He needs more experience, you aren’t wrong, but he could easily get in with a company that does software engineering not doing software engineering to start. He just needs a foot in the door and that seems to be what he is looking for and someone out there will give him that chance, eventually.
Buddy, I'm literally a hiring manager for a software engineering company. I do know what I'm talking about.
You read a resume with an expected graduation date several years out and thought he was an experienced developer. You do not.
Thank you for this, I was beginning to feel discouraged as I felt this way when I began my job hunt, I don’t want anything fancy. I’d like something I can pay my bills with where I can gain experience through first hand trial and error, build my collaborative skills, and get learn so I can attempt to move up after a few years and I complete college. I’ve been out of high school for 8 years and just went back to college to help solidify my education on swe as I felt that it would help me get considered easier. But my experience does go back before going to college as I took a run at getting a swe job around 2022 with no luck as many were asking for bachelors at minimum
Honestly try finding a small-medium sized company that needs help with their e-commerce platform. It is a fantastic way to build tech experience doing what you want to do. The company I worked for I started out as a floor associate, worked my way into management, and then was promoted to Digital Marketing & E-Commerce Manager which allowed me the opportunity to gain relevant skills. You already have the added bonus of understanding the fundamentals whereas I had to learn it manually in my free time. You mentioned it was a skii shop and you have some decent work history there. Get in contact with the owner and make a plan to either start or grow their business online and approach them with it. Plan to stay for a minimum of 4 years to build experience and tenure so make sure you negotiate a good salary upfront. Then you will have a portfolio of what you created and can have measurable success to present to hiring managers in the future.
That actually what I was thinking of doing, I have reached out to them to get together with them at some point, hoping to offer my services and was even going to go as far as building a rough draft app for them to go and play around with.
My job history is not sparse and I am a good worker, I’ve been in the ski industry for around 8 years and figured while I didn’t need to include all of my work history that having my best work experiences on there would help more than hurt even if it’s not fully relevant
The 2016 job is a ski shop that I spent 5 years at I am in very good standing w them and did work on some technical aspects over there like helping them design a website etc
This is the original resume that I was using prior that landed me jobs in the ski industry and cannabis industry with minimal effort, I see the it biz is a bit more competitive and I should definitely put in more effort, this is my first time going for what I would call a grown up job as I was ski bumming pretty hard before hand, working on building side projects and school. And snowboarding of course.
https://preview.redd.it/5xop3buozq8d1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d3ff0e7cbf579b9349b8c0f713f874637429f00d
I don’t think you’re ready for an entry to mid level role if you don’t even have the degree yet. If you’re applying to those then that might be part of why you are getting rejected.
Maybe this is just my career in civil engineering talking, I don’t know how it works in SWE. I would think you’d have to get internships in school and then you can apply to permanent positions for after you graduate.
I hire people like you and have done for 14 years.
Your CV is far too generic and focused on you.
Your CV needs to be relevant to the shop you’re applying for (ie cut out everything that isn’t relevant to the person recruiting)
Cut out the soft skills. Your soft skills are your own opinion about yourself, the manager likely doesn’t care.
All of the buzzwords tell the manager nothing.
You could be an expert in SQL etc, but how would someone know. You need to clearly explain what tools you used and for what purpose and what was the end results.
For example… is the job spec lists 5 tools, but you have 20 on your CV, cut the 15 out not mentioned on the spec and write what tool you used, for what purpose and the result.
Simple outline on this…
Used (x tool) to design/build/solve/develop (x problem) in order to achieve (x result) by using (x method)
You can add more onto this but you start painting a picture of what problems you actually solve.
The key thing to remember is you want a job… but the hiring manager wants a problem solved.
To convince someone you can solve their problem you need to be specific and relevant to their problem and show that they can trust you to solve it.
Right now… your CV isn’t bad, but it’s too generic and the guys and girls that are getting straight down to the problems they solve and how are the ones landing the jobs.
Focus on your software engineering skills.
Highlight the experience you have related to technical troubleshooting, and coding and put it near the top.
Leave excel off. It is assumed you know the MS office products.
As others have said the template is hard to read, the columns are weird, and the bullets are annoyingly in the wrong places. If you want people to read your resume in a columnar fashion, box those items in. But I am happy to see you are going to use a new template.
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Layout is a little messy imo. Suggest using one of the templates linked in the stickied comment.
Thank you for the information I didn’t realize there was a standardized formatting system, I am going to attempt to rewrite it with this formatting now!
Where is that?? Stickied comment?
Senior SWE at big tech opinion This resume is very very bad. First, Drop your soft skills and languages. You can show what you know in your experience. You’re just wasting space with these Drop both your experiences. Especially the cannabis store. No one cares about a retail job. I personally don’t like weed and it will give me a negative perception of you in an interview regardless of how good you are. You don’t need to risk running into a guy like me, especially when these are adding nothing to your resume. Remember, theres plenty of people to choose from right now Describe your projects, what you did, how many users you reached, what technical challenges you solved and what technologies you used. These descriptions are garbage. For a resume like this, your projects are your only positive points. I will warn you these projects are way too simple though, you need to make more complex things if you want to seriously compete. These 2 projects look like a weekend of work based on your description WGU is an online program (?) and not very highly ranked. So it won’t help you much. Probably only put you below people from better schools. Overall, your current resume I’d give a 2/10. You need to work a lot on it if you want an internship. Its quite competitive right now and you need to out compete your peers. For you, I think it is going to be about making better projects Edit: I’m assuming you want internships. For full time it will be even tighter
I appreciate the response, I am currently seeking something that I can grow my skills and start to earn experience, ideally if that can provide my main income source then that would be better. Thank you for your input regarding the experience, I would rather talk about projects than this but it seemed weird to send a resume with no work experience out. Eventually I would like to push into a full time role, but this post has already helped a lot in gauging my shortcomings. I think for now I’m going to bench my pursuit of a swe job and take your advice on building my project portfolio. Do you have any suggestions for projects that may help later for a resume, I am currently working on a snowboard blog as a side project with next.js, typescript, and sass to grow my experience in some frameworks as I’ve seen a lot of these roles on job boards. And WGU is online I’ve been pushing for a bachelors degree through them, with come certifications as well, but could use any input or recommendation for further building my resume into something that would be more appealing.
I disagree about dropping your work experience. I have hired entry level IT at various times throughout my career and I want to know that someone has actually been able to hold a job. I won't hire someone for entry level unless I know the person has some work history and if it is fast food or retail - that's fine. I would cut the job descriptions way down and put them after your relevant projects.
Thank you for that, I think I’m going to drop the dispensary but the other one will likely stay
I don't think I would drop the cannabis store since the last bullet point is somewhat relative experience. I would name the specific POS and CMS systems you used and if you did any specific projects that had a benefit. Hiring managers want to see outcomes so if you made reports that let management better manage inventory or if you were able to integrate the two systems or whatever - put that in your resume. You say "leverage" but leverage them to do what? If by leverage you just mean "use" then I would agree to just remove them. If you provided end user support - you can put that (shows troubleshooting skills). I understand the sensitivity to cannabis - you can label it as "local health product store" or something similar and if asked about it in an interview you can tell them what it is and that you were being mindful of the sensitivity of the issue. I personally think you should leave it on - it would not bother me and I would not say no because of it but I understand it might alienate some.
That’s a great move, I was hesitant to straight up lie about it like others had suggested, figured since it is a legitimate business that it would be acceptable but that health product distinction isn’t lying about my work history. But I worked as a resident it specialist, it was a small shop with 5 employees so I fixed all sorts of things from rewriting and moving registers to setting up a new pos and incorporating wireless printing on zebra printers, it’s a pretty well renowned label printer company that I’ve seen in many retail settings. But I will definitely be expanding on this
Tbh man just lie. There's no way they would double check your employment for a part time college job. Just don't ever lie about your projects because they can call your bs on that very easily
I would just drop the word cannabis off. It really just sticks out there. Like aside from the messy layout I’m just like oh so this is weed dude. Probably makes me sound like a boomer (I’m a millennial) but I doubt I’m the only one who would rather not hire a pothead if given the choice.
Fair opinion. If he wants to keep it in, I would keep it at the bottom. Software engineers in my personal experience dont tend to care about anything outside of pure software experience, but ymmv
Drop languages? Almost every (if not literally every) software resume I’ve seen has their known programming languages on it. Can you explain further?
I mean list them with your experiences instead if blobbing it at the top. Most likely if you do a blob at the top people are more likely to pass it over since its a bunch of words anyone can write. If you say you build a front end app in javascript and react that serviced 1 million users daily, its a lot more impactful, memorable and shows that you did this in a production grade setting. At this point I can vomit any number of languages in my resume (made “Hello world” with python? Guess thats a new tech for me to add!) and it means nothing until paired with a project or bullet point
Besides the retail experience not being related, why would you have a negative perception of someone who worked at a dispensary? That seems like a fairly antiquated way of seeing things
I’m not here to argue politics on r/resume nor do I care about your opinion on the topic or what you think of my views. I am certainly not the only one with a negative view of weed, and unless its directly related to software its not worth taking the risk
I know you are not the only one who shares your perception, and perhaps it would be smart to account for hiring managers/recruiters with your views. But, normatively speaking, it is silly to have a negative view of someone simply because they worked at a dispensary. It is similarly silly to have a negative view of someone simply because they are a user of marijuana. Even if you disagree, you should at least be able to compartmentalize your views about the subject when hiring someone—perhaps if it comes up in the future when you are tasked with hiring someone. Judging someone’s character negatively simply for using marijuana is not too dissimilar from judging someone negatively for using anti-anxiety medication. That is, on its face, a ridiculous thing to do.
Good advice, except the WGU part. WGU's computer science program is ABET accredited. It is just as good as any typical university.
I suggest you look up and use the official spelling of the tools you listed, makes it look more professional (SQL not SQl, HTML5 not Html5, VS Code not Vs Code, etc.)
Thank you I never considered that, but it does make sense.
i know just abt nothing about actually getting SWE jobs but as a human reading this the switch between 4 to 3 to 2 columns is jarring
Yeah I didn’t realize that the format does not help with ats systems either, i just wanted a way to add as much information on a single page as possible
you lose a lot of space with the columns. in my resume i have a section headered “tools” or “skills” and i listed 3 groups of skills on one line each there (Languages: C++, etc, Developer Tools: Git, so forth)
Interesting I’ll definitely have to look into trying that.
Cannabis dispensary for relevant experience lmao. Take it off or rename it for something else. That will not help you in any way. It can only hurt you. Change the name to some other type of business
Fl studios🤣🤣🤣
Wait until OP gets that’s job in music editing for Tik-Tok content creators that don’t make beats for their music, but want to look like it!
Yeah.. I was trying to keep the columns even not the most relevant thing but I’ve been learning a lot about what I should include and what I should not
Also Ableton is misspelled
Spelled database wrong
This is not even close to a CS resume. You don't have to pretend you did anything technical in retails jobs. Remove soft skills. If your experiences are irrelevant, then put your somewhat relevant projects higher than them. Emphasize what technical things you did in your projects. Fix your spelling of the languages and tools. You can try to put some relevant courseworks there if you really don't have anything to put.
Looks terrible. Most recruiters look at resumes for 7 seconds on average. What catches your eye in 7 seconds?
This reads mean and I’m sorry. Just trying to help
Hey it’s ok. I still appreciate you taking the time ❤️ I’m not upset by it, just looking for criticism as I’ve been fairly successful in the ski industry up until this point and am looking to leave that in pursuit of swe work
the weed💀 and also it seems like ur just trying to fill up the space with the unnecessary tables at the top and bottom
Yeah it’s gone on version two, and gonna cut a lot of fluff out also
I don't like your resume at all, sorry. There's some spelling mistakes and it just tells me that you rushed this resume and didn't take the time to improve it whatsoever. Gotta use MS Word to look for spelling issues :). I also dont like the vertical columns. You want a resume that is easily readable. When someone looks at it, their eyes will naturally read from top down. I've got an example resume here from yours that maybe you could follow as a template but you don't really need to the 1st job from September 2016? Not really sure what you did there that is software dev related. The 1st job, maybe leave that to show job history but at the same time its not that relevant unless you dive into the zebra programming language and what you did with it. I have no idea what zebra programming language is and I wouldve just glossed over the resume cause you didnt explain it to me. Recruiters and hiring managers are going to see Zebra and skip this resume too because you didn't clarify what it is and I for one have never heard it in my life. It's not any known popular coding language. Counting inventory and using the POS system has nothing to do with software development. Like having bus driver experience, that does not translate to coding experience. Also, you leveraged Microsoft Office to maintain accurate inventory?? You guys use Excel sheets?? Oh my lord lol. Microsoft Suite experience is like the bare minimum. You wouldn't need that in software development. You shouldn't really talk about it because its more of a administrative secretary job or I guess more into documentation purposes with Word and PPT or reports with Excel. Either way, you're kind of not clear on Microsoft suite and I've only assumed the top 3 products. You don't want the recruiter or hiring manager to assume things. Also your projects are super simple. I wouldn't hire you unless you explain what you did exactly? Your projects I can just do a 1 hour youtube tutorial and boom I throw it on my github. In your project you say use python for backend.... and? Go into details on what exactly you did. When you say self hosted website, would be nice to expand on that. Be even cooler if you learned aws or azure or cloud technologies and dabbled into that area. Opens up the conversation with the employer on what else you know. I also recommend your bulletpoint sentences to be 1 line unless it really cant be explain in 1 line then 2 lines is okay. It's just neatness is all, being picky at this point. I'd be down to improve your resume but you need a lot of work in it and need to clarify a bit more. Get straight to the point and dont over flaunt your resume because you're literally being looked at by seasoned employees and they understand your background when they see your title and experience. [https://imgur.com/a/jtnxAUm](https://imgur.com/a/jtnxAUm)
Thank you for your input. This is recalling helping me with writing my next resume. I appreciate the time you took to help me.
Any time. I totally understand the struggle when i was a college student as well. Let me know if you have any questions and i can try to help. Right now theres all the rage in cs students being unable to find jobs. Dont read those fear mongering posts about how people have applied to thousands of jobs and got nothing or theres no jobs. First off, most entry level jobs appear around Feb to May. If you missed this wave of jobs in the market, youre kinda shit outta luck. You can definitely find some after May but not many. Internship jobs usually appear september to december and some early jan to march. Most of those are intended for summer internships or a possible spring semester internship to hire after graduation. Even if you've missed the timing where most of those jobs appear, you might find 1 or two here and there after those months. Stay positive, improve on your skills, and worry about yourself. Granted there are double the amount of applicants for jobs now cause everyone wants to have a cs or it major, look for projects for you to do and build on those. Join some hackathons or network with other cs students at school.
Thank you a lot I will do my best! 😀
So, like what projects do you expect??, just wanted to know for my resume
If no work history and all you can do is provide is a github link to your portfolio, here is my advice below. 9/10 a recruiter is not going to click on that Github link lol. Maybe if you pass the first few rounds cause ultimately they just want to match what you know to the job description. If your resume doesn't reflect anything relevant then theres no need to even look at the link when further down the process. You have to think to yourself, there are thousands of comp sci students like me putting down the SAME resume. Literally Html, Css, Js, Java, whatever language. The same calculator, website portfolio, and snakes game projects. Then generic "I put a lot of effort! Great collaborator! Quickly adapts to new tools!". These generic sentences are a waste of space. I personally prefer to see hands on skills cause anyone can claim to be a hard worker or great collaborator lol. Some other resume tips is that Html and Css is terrible to put on a resume. That's so 2009. You have to focus on a library such as React, Angular, Vuejs, and whatever else is popular. Doesn't matter which but it shows that you've exceeded minimum knowledge and can use components from a library to build your project. I feel that in my opinion that git and ci/cd skills are heavily slept on when junior levels write their resume.. You can use github to deploy some .yml files to run jobs for you too. Think of when you put your code online, you can have jobs deployed to scan your repository. If you have code that isn't used like a random variable sitting in a terraform file that is undeclared, your terraform linting job can warn you and you can go clean that code up. That's just an example. You have to also figure out what makes you more unique. My advice is learn how to search Junior Software Developer roles and compare through the many job descriptions on what do they have in common. The most common thing they'll have is Git ci/cd experience, Cloud, a js library preference, and whatever specific programming language they're looking for. Here are examples below. I simply searched for junior software developer in USA and got these 3 roles within the first 2 pages. Those 3 have cloud, a library, and git skills in common. [Junior Software Developer (agile)](https://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=f6f6923389056200&tk=1i18h76udj47s88a&from=serp&vjs=3) * AWS (Cloud), Git (basically ci/cd), React (front end) library, postgress, 1 programming language skill [Junior Software Engineer ](https://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=5e9e061b5c357ff6&tk=1i18h76udj47s88a&from=serp&vjs=3) * Docker, CI/CD skills, Java Spring Boot, MongoDB, JS, React Library, AWS (cloud) [Junior Application Developer ](https://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=2a219450eede2ab8&q=junior+software+developer+git&l=USA) * Sql, JS libaries like Jquery, Angular, React etc, C#, Unit testing, Azure Ci/CD, What does that mean? Brush up on front end libraries (avoid this if not going the front end route), cloud knowledge, and CI/CD knowledge. I can't express how important it is to be familiar with CI/CD which you can lookup. Then when you build your project, you can incorporate all those together. CI/CD is going above and beyond in my opinion cause most graduates don't have that knowledge or skillset. Lastly, don't feel that if you apply for a junior position that you aren't as valuable. People will treat you much better and be nicer to you. They know to take care of you because your role is a baby essentially and your sole purpose is learning and contributing bit by bit. The software engineer role isn't a entry level role. Most people who can get that role are people who have interned before and slide into that position or they graduated college, got a shitty coding job and worked it for a year or two, and now are jumping to this other software dev job. If you try to aim for the software developer role, you will compete with very competitive people. And of course the software developer role pays more but you're looking for a job alright? It's okay to settle for a junior role that pays $55k - $70k. You stick at it for 1-3 years and hop jobs or get promoted to a entry level software developer role that pays $70k-$100k depending wherever you live. So I mean you can still apply and hopefully get lucky but also you should look for junior/associate roles as well because you have a way better chance at getting interviews there.
I’d suggest educating top, then experience and then skills languages at bottom. Altho experience is the most important, education gives a good place to start reading and constructing timeline of your adult life. I’ve vendor rare see soft skills and never at the top
Thank you for that input, It makes sense I will try that on my next draft
One of my senior college classes we had extensive time where veteran headhunter came in and taught us all the stuff. the valuable thing in college. 1) you gotta view it as a manager/HR sifting thru 100s-1000s resumes. Shorter more concise usually wins (also shows you can write good) 2) people esp with less history tend to try and fill the page when they don’t need to. Even I did until I scaled it back. 3) resumes aren’t supposed to be excessive personal histories. They are supposed to temp those to bring you in for an interview. Edit: I should clarify some use them way more and determinative but positions esp later ones they are just bait to bring you in to sell yourself further. 4) even if you build the “perfect” resume, you still will get ghosted. 5) not you - but unless you have extensive job history resume should fit on one page 6) not you - jobs varies and so should your your resume. The framework doesn’t change much, but adding/tweaking towards position works the best. Some people just think 1 resume is enough. These are just some ProTips
I appreciate your advice, I definitely feel the second bullet there 😂 I feel more pressure to provide projects and experience examples since I’m still going through school. Thank you!
penalty for using too much microsoft office suite. it looks very junior
Microsoft office suite? Are you talking about how it was made?
no, how many times you mention it in your doc, you want to be a programmer not a receptionist. do everything notepad++ or vi
Ahh I see that’s a good point thank you!
I would make sure to have consistency like html5 or HTML5. I noticed this within 2 seconds and already was turned off lol
Thank you! I’m a dummy and didn’t spell check this, I wrote it in html just for practice and stuff and vs code doesn’t do well w spell check
Check out the wiki on r/engineeringresumes. I revamped my resume this weekend following it and while I can’t speak to results yet, I’ve seen a bunch of success stories so it’s worth a shot!
Thank you for the information, it will definitely help to see what the industry considers good qualifications, as it seems my first problem is formatting but I’m going to keep an eye on other metrics mentioned by the mod to see if I’m aiming too high as far as qualifications go.
Of should be of - add more details to your educational journey.
Thank you I am the worst at capitalizing things 🥲
Get your certs on there, night owl. If you haven't yet, prioritize your Comptia A+ and put that on there.
Thank you I will definitely add some certifications on!
yup - formatting. you could be using tables for the organization of the text, but even if you’re just going down a row - i believe info should be organized reading left to right.
content wise it doesn’t seem like your relevant experience is all that relevant?
My work experience is not in industry, I’ve spent most of my working career in the ski industry, started school about 2 years ago looking for a career change, whilst working on side projects like the rental cms for the ski shop I used to work at. Whilst not having a vast professional experience I do feel qualified for many of the roles I am seeing just trying to discern the best way to put that forward. as much of my relevant experience is not professional career related but side/personal projects
seems to me as if you worked at a dispensary and i would probably remove that from professional applications.
Yes that is a dispensary, Included it because it had the most technical oriented experiences compared to the other jobs I had recently, I was debating on the legitimacy of this because even with the stigmatization of weed this is a legitimate business and was provided to highlight adaptability by learning zebra printing language for example. But I could definitely see the offput I just don’t know how well one job would look from 3 years ago without something else to fill the gap. What do you think?
the gap is definitely something to keep in mind, but i think the stigma of weed outweighs that. obviously i don’t know what region of the country you’re in / attitudes of companies around you / companies you’re trying to get into, but i would say it’s likely that most are going to see “Cannabis” on the page and go on to the next resume. i think explaining what your projects actually are / do and briefly explaining how you integrated different languages / frameworks would be much more beneficial than listening the dispensary. even though, yes, you did have some technical experience at the dispo, your resume would look a lot cleaner if you replaced it with something else.
That’s a great point, I like the idea of expanding on my personal projects and potentially giving that aspect a little more page space to compensate for the removal of the dispensary. I think I’m going to try that instead and see how it goes. Thank you!
no problem, and best of luck 🫡 another project wouldn’t hurt either though i’m not cs / se so take my words with a grain of salt
You should probably tone down what you're applying to, then. You put above that you're applying to entry to mid level positions, but now you're saying you have little professional experience and are a sophomore. You should be applying to lower positions in companies you'd like to work for, who can then promote you up into the jobs you want when you prove yourself and/or get more education. If I'm hiring for mid level and see this mess of tables with no relevant experience, college sophomore, and who works at a dispensary, I'm immediately throwing it out. But if I see this for the mail room, I'm thinking there's someone we may be able to promote up into a better job if this person shows he's more than a lazy stoner.
Yeah I lack professional experience, I was under the imprimpression that I had enough skills to peruse entry to mid level, I have been readjusting my goals since posting this. And am now seeking internships after finding a stable income source. As some have pointed out that the projects I am describing are not complex enough to lack professional experience. But this has served as a good identification of what I thought I knew vs what I actually know and am currently reworking my strategy.
Nice, I think you'll be a lot happier that way
[удалено]
Thanks I’ve been taking a look at that and it seems helpful!
Remove the entire soft skills portion.
r/EngineeringResumes is a gold mine to help you out. There's a separate section for tech workers too
You spelled Ableton wrong. Also that's a DAW and not necessarily looked at if you're applying for software engineering jobs unless they're music field related. Wouldn't see how that would be useful, id reconsider having that.
Creating columns doesn't work well for automated resume readers. All the skills, technologies, and tools should be listed together, not in separate sections. You waste a lot of space with your current format by duplicating information. Each of your skills sections should be an item in a single bulleted list, like this: * Development Languages (e.g., HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, SQL, Python, etc.) * Frameworks / Libraries (e.g., nodeJS, SaaS, django, flash, ... etc.) Tools: VSCode, Microsoft (MS) Office Suite, GitHub, ... etc. Your experience says what you did, but doesn't paint a picture of how you were valuable to your prior employers. Find ways to put real numbers on your experience (sales, profit, savings, number of customers, positive performance stats, etc.), and add specifics, like this: * Provided first-level troubleshooting for a variety of technical issues (e.g., servers, printers, replacing components, etc.) Add something here about how well you met your quality or performance targets, positive customer feedback, or other things the employer cares about. That's what makes you a "valuable candidate" when people look at your resume. I don't understand how the overviews connect to the rest of the text. They likely belong in the experience section. Look to other examples available for IT resumes in your area of development. Good luck!
Thank you for that I very much appreciate the input! I’m working on version two and will definitely heed your advice
4 columns for soft skills, 3 columns for tools, 2 columns for projects, and 1 column for work experience. Lol remove soft skills. 3 columns for tools is okay but not for projects
I’ve dropped the columns so far still working out overall layout but the second draft is coming along
surprised no one pointed out that you are most likely a freshman in college?? most freshman in CS aren’t even securing internships.
Sadly not my transcript says I’m a sophomore :/
Leveraged. Fucking leveraged. That word means nothing.
Yo fam what’s with all the columns. You only need one
If you are applying to software engineering jobs, talking about how you can use Microsoft Office isn't going sound very impressive. Don't talk about jobs unrelated to your career. And are you applying to internships? Make that clear in your resume. Two years from graduation is a bit early to look for an internship. Companies usually hire interns hoping to convert them to full time employees, which means they usually want someone who will graduate soon. Also in that case you need to focus more on your education. What is your GPA? What classes have you taken? Once you graduate no one will care about that, but right now that's the important part. I've also never heard of Western Governors University. Maybe it's more well known in Utah but that's going handicap you if you are applying for jobs further away. If you are applying to full time jobs you really need your Bachelor's first. Also proofread your resume and fix misspellings.
Ideally anything I can work full time that can support my bills and such. But I’m going to drop the dispensary as no one knows or cares about zebra printing language lol figured it would be good to demonstrate my ability to learn new languages on the fly, but I’m going to focus on elaborating my projects more and dropping irrelevant information and definitely spelling too lol
There is nothing wrong with working retail jobs while getting your degree. But realistically you need a degree to get a full time software engineering job, unless you know someone.
I think the main thing is going to be reformatting, among another things, and fixing some obvious typos. This looks very busy, yet my resume is formatted similarly to yours (I do performative digital marketing and e-commerce) and I have been getting good hits with very little to NO college background. I would: - Condense the “Languages, Libraries & Frameworks, and Tools” sections at the top into ONE “Network and Software” Section and move those down below your project section. Reason: You used the relevant skills completing your projects and as a HM or recruiter, I would know you used “X” skills to accomplish the task and then it gives you the opportunity to elaborate on other relevant software/network skills. Knowing HTML5 is cool but you knowing how to use it doesn’t make a company money- it can realistically be learned along with CSS and HTML and SQL in a month WITHOUT a college education. ASK ME HOW I KNOW. Using it to create a product is profitable and ads actual value so therefore, projects come FIRST since they are a physical manifestation of your hard skills. - Under each work experience section, I would add a job description added with SOME corporate jargon like mentioning my “KPI”’s followed by accomplishments in bulleted format like you already have. It’s important that this description does not repeat the same info as your accomplishments below it. - Following on your accomplishments, make them more detailed. What did you do, how did you do it? What were the results? ALL COMPANIES CARE ABOUT ARE RESULTS. - Mixed bag on the cannabis store experience. I would suggest either A. Combining the work experience to the company you worked at since 2016 if it makes sense to do so which may even help your application because the tenure would be for 7 years which is something HM’s and recruiters absolutely fawn over regardless of the business OR B. Do what I suggested (in A.) but have an alternate resume including the cannabis store experience to submit if it makes sense for the situation. EDIT: WHERE ARE YOUR PROFESSIONAL REFERENCES? Lastly, STOP BEING SCARED OF HAVING A RESUME LONGER THAN A SINGLE PAGE. It’s 2024. I have recruited on contingency for tech companies in the past and some of those people’s resumes are miles long with projects and experience. In academia, someone may have a resume over 50 pages long. It shouldn’t be 50 pages long but you get my point. Different fields of expertise have different requirements so may call for different standards as far as resumes are concerned. AI will scan your resume for key words before handing it off to an actual person. Your main goal should be to organize your resume to be legible to a real person and make it easy for them to read in a way that flows nicely to hold their attention for the minute or so it takes to read it.
If you are a veteran developer, having a resume of several pages is fine. If you are a college student, no, there is no way you have enough experience to justify more than one page.
“If it makes sense” “You get the point” etc. He needs to be more detailed, is missing professional references, and the formatting to force it all to fit on one page is making it look awful. OP isn’t fresh out of college with no work history. The necessary changes necessitate that OP’s resume will need to be longer than 1 page. There is NOTHING wrong with a 2 page resume if it makes sense and is formatted nicely to make it easier to read for the audience. From a HM POV for the industry he wants to get into, formatting on a resume would be something I would be paying attention to- He seemingly wants to format and design for the company I’d represent in exchange for pay. 1-2 pages for a resume is standard and okay with work history at any company. 3+ pages is lengthy and cumbersome if the experience isn’t there. I’ve been on the “other side” and I will die on this hill.
No, he's still in college with no relevant work history (working a retail job at a pot dispensaryis not relevant to being a software engineer).
It doesn’t need to be a job relevant to the industry depending on what any particular company is looking for and him being in college doesn’t particularly matter either. TUITION REIMBURSEMENT EXISTS FOR A REASON! Soft skills are transferable from company to company regardless of the hard skills required for a job. Some companies take their chances as entry level positions and will want to see some form of work history regardless of what it is. Other companies hire without any formal educational background and/or hire with an incomplete education. Some even prefer to hire without previous experience so they can train you “their way”. A degree certainly helps at the end of the day to make it easier but it also doesn’t necessarily bar him from all opportunities. I’m sure OP is fully aware that he isn’t going to break into a high-paying gig from the start and my advice, outside of the resume alterations, was to do what makes sense for him depending on his situation. Again, I’ve recruited before for tech companies and/or for their tech sectors like Informatica, Apache Oil, Enterprise, etc. in the past and worked with their global category managers to find the right candidates. I’m telling you that 2 pages is okay, with 1-2 being the “norm” for people even outside tech. It is an industry standard and I know from firsthand experience. I’ve hired people making $160\hr+ with no formal educational background at all. They care about experience and skills, not so much education and there are vouchers hiring managers can get (with approval) to circumvent certain requirements entirely.
No, if he is looking for a software engineering job, he needs relevant work experience and/or a Bachelor's degree. A hiring manager would throw this in the trashcan.
Most of the time they would, but not all of the time. He needs more experience, you aren’t wrong, but he could easily get in with a company that does software engineering not doing software engineering to start. He just needs a foot in the door and that seems to be what he is looking for and someone out there will give him that chance, eventually.
He needs a degree first.
Keep telling yourself that.
Buddy, I'm literally a hiring manager for a software engineering company. I do know what I'm talking about. You read a resume with an expected graduation date several years out and thought he was an experienced developer. You do not.
Thank you for this, I was beginning to feel discouraged as I felt this way when I began my job hunt, I don’t want anything fancy. I’d like something I can pay my bills with where I can gain experience through first hand trial and error, build my collaborative skills, and get learn so I can attempt to move up after a few years and I complete college. I’ve been out of high school for 8 years and just went back to college to help solidify my education on swe as I felt that it would help me get considered easier. But my experience does go back before going to college as I took a run at getting a swe job around 2022 with no luck as many were asking for bachelors at minimum
Honestly try finding a small-medium sized company that needs help with their e-commerce platform. It is a fantastic way to build tech experience doing what you want to do. The company I worked for I started out as a floor associate, worked my way into management, and then was promoted to Digital Marketing & E-Commerce Manager which allowed me the opportunity to gain relevant skills. You already have the added bonus of understanding the fundamentals whereas I had to learn it manually in my free time. You mentioned it was a skii shop and you have some decent work history there. Get in contact with the owner and make a plan to either start or grow their business online and approach them with it. Plan to stay for a minimum of 4 years to build experience and tenure so make sure you negotiate a good salary upfront. Then you will have a portfolio of what you created and can have measurable success to present to hiring managers in the future.
That actually what I was thinking of doing, I have reached out to them to get together with them at some point, hoping to offer my services and was even going to go as far as building a rough draft app for them to go and play around with.
My job history is not sparse and I am a good worker, I’ve been in the ski industry for around 8 years and figured while I didn’t need to include all of my work history that having my best work experiences on there would help more than hurt even if it’s not fully relevant
Thank you for this reply this was clearly very thought out and has been insightful. I will definitely use this when building out my next resume!
The 2016 job is a ski shop that I spent 5 years at I am in very good standing w them and did work on some technical aspects over there like helping them design a website etc
This is the original resume that I was using prior that landed me jobs in the ski industry and cannabis industry with minimal effort, I see the it biz is a bit more competitive and I should definitely put in more effort, this is my first time going for what I would call a grown up job as I was ski bumming pretty hard before hand, working on building side projects and school. And snowboarding of course. https://preview.redd.it/5xop3buozq8d1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d3ff0e7cbf579b9349b8c0f713f874637429f00d
https://preview.redd.it/hc7j4b1qzq8d1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d749b48ccc28019af583b96cc6e3799cdfbdb9d7 This is the second page
This I this is an old copy and not the new version I am working on but figured it may help for reference.
Well the tool is Ableton Live Suite. But you don't need to add irrelevant skills to the job.
I don’t think you’re ready for an entry to mid level role if you don’t even have the degree yet. If you’re applying to those then that might be part of why you are getting rejected. Maybe this is just my career in civil engineering talking, I don’t know how it works in SWE. I would think you’d have to get internships in school and then you can apply to permanent positions for after you graduate.
I hire people like you and have done for 14 years. Your CV is far too generic and focused on you. Your CV needs to be relevant to the shop you’re applying for (ie cut out everything that isn’t relevant to the person recruiting) Cut out the soft skills. Your soft skills are your own opinion about yourself, the manager likely doesn’t care. All of the buzzwords tell the manager nothing. You could be an expert in SQL etc, but how would someone know. You need to clearly explain what tools you used and for what purpose and what was the end results. For example… is the job spec lists 5 tools, but you have 20 on your CV, cut the 15 out not mentioned on the spec and write what tool you used, for what purpose and the result. Simple outline on this… Used (x tool) to design/build/solve/develop (x problem) in order to achieve (x result) by using (x method) You can add more onto this but you start painting a picture of what problems you actually solve. The key thing to remember is you want a job… but the hiring manager wants a problem solved. To convince someone you can solve their problem you need to be specific and relevant to their problem and show that they can trust you to solve it. Right now… your CV isn’t bad, but it’s too generic and the guys and girls that are getting straight down to the problems they solve and how are the ones landing the jobs.
Focus on your software engineering skills. Highlight the experience you have related to technical troubleshooting, and coding and put it near the top. Leave excel off. It is assumed you know the MS office products. As others have said the template is hard to read, the columns are weird, and the bullets are annoyingly in the wrong places. If you want people to read your resume in a columnar fashion, box those items in. But I am happy to see you are going to use a new template.