Resumes
Creating a Resume
Recruiters spend, on average, between 6 and 10 seconds looking at your resume. Its important that your resume makes a strong first impression and demonstrates why you're a strong candidate for the position. Your resume should be at most one page, cover your past experience, technical skills, projects, relevant education, and soft skills. Do not include your secondary school education - if you've made it to University, you probably did well in secondary school.
Passing the ATS Scanner
It's no surprise that resume checkers have become automated especially for larger companies who get thousands of applicants. Companies now use ATS (applicant tracking system) to parse your resumes before it reaches an actual human being.
Knowing how to pass the ATS scanner is important in getting an interview. So, how do they work? ATS software uses artificial intelligence and natural language processing to score and sort resumes based on how well they align with job requirements. An ATS will scan your resume for keywords and relevant work history to make a decision on whether you will advance to the next round, optimizing your resume so that it passes the ATS scan is an important step in your job search. Otherwise, your resume can be rejected despite your qualifications for the job.
A few simple strategies can help set your resume up for success in passing through an applicant tracking system.
Keep Things Simple
An aesthetically pleasing resume with headers, different fonts, and visuals won’t do much to impress an ATS. Also, use a resume template. Resume templates have a higher chance of being parsed properly by an ATS compared to a resume made from scratch. Also, the content of your resume should be aligned to the left. It makes your resume more readable this way.
“Most ATS strip out formatting and parse the plain text, but you can still make your resume look nice. It is best to stay away from inserting graphics, columns, headers, footers, or tables. ATS reads top to bottom and left to right, if you have columns built into separate information the ATS might read two separate categories of information as one. Standard headers for categories, bold, capital letters, italics are all ok. Most ATS can read a PDF but Word document is almost always the safest bet.” says Carolyn Kleiman, career coach and expert at ResumeBuilder.com
I recommend using templates from Overleaf since they're designed to be properly parsed by ATS. Even so, stick with simple looking templates without anything fancy.
Don't Forget to Include Keywords
Another tip is to carefully tailor your resume to the job description. If there are skills listed in the job description that you have, make sure to add them before you submit it. ATS scans for keywords that were listed in the job description. This also helps once your resume reaches a recruiter. Recruiters aren't people with programming knowledge. They'll be asked to look for the listed keywords from the posting.
Different Sections of a Resume
Header
- Include your name, contact information, GitHub, Linkedin and your personal website (if you have one)
- Your name must be the largest font
Education
- Put down the University you're studying at and the name of your program
- Include relevant coursework
- Only include your GPA if it's above a 90
Skills
- Refer to the job description and add essential keywords on your resume to increase your chance of getting an interview
- DO NOT simply list all the keywords on the job description for the sake of showing you’re a good fit. You WILL be questioned on the skills you've listed in the interview
Projects
- The most important section if you don't have experience
- Projects can showcase your passion for programming and your knowledge on languages and tools a company utilizes
“Build some iPhone apps, web apps, whatever! Honestly it doesn’t matter that much what you’re building as long as you’re building something. You can build a fairly meaty project in one weekend. This means that with about 3–4 weekends of work, you can make your résumé go from so-so to fantastic. Seriously — I’ve seen lots of people do this.” - Gayle McDowell, former Google Engineer and Author of Cracking the Coding Interview
Experience
- Focus only on including work experience that has relevance to the job that you are applying for
- Keep your points brief and to the point
- Have various versions of your resume tailored for each job you are applying for. There is no one-size-fits-all resume
The most important thing is to describe what you've accomplished, not just what task you were assigned.
- Use the “Accomplished [X] as measured by [Y] by doing [Z]” formula. It’s the most effective way of showing recruiters your impact. In general, numbers and metrics are a great way to show off the positive impact you had at your workplace
List of Action Words to Use on your Resume - When you have no clue how to word your accomplishments, use this website for ideas :)
Others
Other sections include extracurriculars, awards, certificates, volunteering, etc. Include them if they relate to the job you're applying to or if it's something exceptional.
Things to include can relate the following:
- Computer science related volunteering experience
- Certificates that relate to the skills the job is asking for
- Getting 1st or 2nd place at a hackathon
- President, vice-president or a head of a club
Perfecting your Resume
- This article on resume design explains how to optimize your resume to improve your chances of being interviewed.
- Jobscan can help you optimize your resume to give you the best chance to get past the robots and get seen by a real recruiter.
- How to Write a Killer Software Engineering Resume - A must read if you want to inprove your resume