Regardless of how you organize your content, your resume needs to scream "software engineer" or "data scientist." With too much space taken up by your education, prior professional experience, or personal section, people will be confused about what kind of job you are seeking. To avoid this, make sure that an overwhelming majority of your resume is data science or software engineering-related.
It is mandatory to use Google Docs to create your resume. This allows the outcomes HiRs to make comments and facilitates peer editing.
- Avoid using a Google Docs template. You don't want your resume to be exactly identical to someone else's.
- Avoid using any other basic template you find online. Recruiters have seen them a million times and they generally look bad.
- You’re welcome to make a non-Google Doc resume for your final version (e.g., Illustrator, online template, etc.). If you do so, make sure the HiRs and your Career Services Manager know you’re creating a second version and tell them where to find it.
- Start and save your resume is in your student work folder.
Your header is informational, and answers the questions: who are you and how do I get in contact with you? It should contain the following things.
- Your name
This is the name you will consistently use for the rest of the career search and your other online profiles. It should be easy to spot, and more prominent than the rest of the things in your header.
- Location of your job search (optional)
Make sure it states where you intend to search if you’re not currently living there. Leave out your exact address.
- Phone number Double check it. Triple check it.
Check it one more time! We've had students who have put the wrong phone number on their resume. Check your voicemail and make sure it is professional. Starting in week 12, potential employers will start calling.
- .edu emails show you're young/fresh out of college; it's best to use a regular email account (Gmail is recommended). If your email address is something partyboy27@gmail.com or stardustinthesky800@yahoo.com you might consider creating a new, professional email address for the purposes of your search (and beyond!). Professional email addresses are usually a derivative of your name.
- Hyperlink it (not underlined or blue)!
- Shorten the format, but make it clickable (i.e., github.com/userName not https://www.github.com/userName)
- Hyperlink = not underlined or blue
- If you don't have one, use a placeholder until you make one in Week 12.
- Shorten the format, but make it clickable (i.e., linkedin.com/in/userName not https://www.linkedin.com/in/userName). You can do this by clicking the settings wheel by the link listed under your profile picture, which will open a new page. On the top right part of the page, you’ll be able to change your URL.
- Hyperlink = not underlined or blue
- Do not include a blog on your resume if you have less than 10 posts. This will make you seem like you're just starting out or are a junior engineer.
This section is for resume parsers. Leave out irrelevant skills like Microsoft Office, Photoshop, or anything else that's not used in software development or data science, specifically. Developing software and developing models is more than just knowing a language, so don't let this section take up too much space on your resume. The way you write these in your skills section (e.g., Angular vs. AngularJS, python vs. Python) should be the way you write them in the rest of the resume.
- Write "Technical Skills" as the header for this section.
- Put skills into “buckets” (e.g., “Languages and Frameworks” “Databases and ORM’s” and “Tools,” etc.)
- List out your skills. Don't list things you don't want to speak about.
- If you're nervous about the number of skills you have, don't worry. Look at this section as an opportunity to decide what skills you'd like to learn/get better at as you work on your capstone project.
- Does not need to be comprehensive
- Edit for different positions based on what they are looking for.
- Include only fairly impressive items (no need to mention small libraries like Underscore, or simple APIs like Google Maps)
- Don’t go overboard or “reach” for something that you don’t actually know
This section should take up 80% of your resume so that at first glance, people will automatically know what kind of job you're looking for. Do not associate dates or years with any of these projects, so you’re not highlighting the recency and brevity of your apps.
Make a conscious effort to avoid a common anti-pattern which is to describe what the tool you used does out of the box. A bullet that reads: 'Used Socket.io for real time bi-directional communication between server and client' is unacceptable. This is simply repeating what Socket.io does out of the box. A seasoned engineer knows this. Instead tell them what interesting thing you did with Socket.io.
EXAMPLE FORMAT: Project Name | Software Engineer | Technologies Used
- Short sentence describing the project
- Expertly crafted bullet points that highlight what you did.
- Discuss how you creatively utilized multiple technologies.
- Think “what can I say that will make them want to talk to me?”
- Three bullet point minimum, don’t pad with unimpressive details.
Thesis Placeholder: Do not skip this step. Start by writing: Capstone Project Name, Software Engineer, Technologies On the next line, write a placeholder for your project description. The description should be short (no more than one line) and just describes what the product is/does. Make the description of the app stand out somehow. For example, you can italicize or change the color (not too light so it's easy to read). Beneath your description, put in four empty bulleted lines. This will be the placeholder for the content that you will write about your thesis project.
Legacy Project Keep the format consistent with your thesis project. Write the title of your legacy project, followed by your role, and then the technologies used. Do not write "Legacy Project!" If you have a deployed link you’re proud of, include it on this line and make it clickable. If you don’t believe the deployed link is an excellent representation of your work, leave it off. Be cognizant that recruiters will make snap judgments about your skills based on the titles of projects in your resume. Keep it professional. Omit roles like "Product Owner" or "Scrum Master" - let your bullets speak for themselves. If you do list these roles, make sure you write it as Software Engineer, _______. Beneath this, write a description for your project (e.g., "Real time tracker of news impact on financial market movement") The description should be short and describe what the product is/does. Don't talk about whether it's a web or mobile app. Make the description of the app stand out somehow. For example, you can italicize or change the color (not too light so it's easy to read). Beneath your project description, include at least two bullets for technical content. Three is ideal. For each bullet, write the technologies and rough idea that your bullet will focus on or interesting thing you did with the technologies. We'll learn about how to write technical content in the afternoon lecture. For now, concentrate on the ideas of each bullet. For example: What did you build? What technology did you use to build it? What interesting technical thing did you do using the tool? What was your accomplishment?
Is there a way to quantify your impact? Examples:
- Refactored search algorithm to reduce component load time by 2.1 seconds
- Architected new testing suite with Mocha and Chi, reducing unit testing time by 1.4 seconds per build
- If you faced interesting technical challenges, talk about how you overcame them (E.g., scalability challenges, load times, etc.)
- Examples:
- Built modular front-end views with React for complexity management and scalability
- Designed responsive UI/UX with HTML, CSS and react-bootstrap for a seamless experience across device sizes
- Created RESTful API with Node and Express for scalability and maintainability.
- Integrated scheduling and SMS services with Iron.io and Twilio for open communication channels
- Designed document-based schemas with MongoDB and Mongoose for flexibility in data modeling
- Implemented authentication with Bcrypt and JWT for proven security and encryption
- Integrated Google Maps API for greater location-based functionality
Additional Projects If you have other projects you'd like to include, follow the same format as your other projects and add them below your MVP, unless they are more impressive. If you have multiple other projects you'd like to include it's best to follow this format:
Other Projects, Software Engineer Mazerunner: Customizable chrome extension that populates a new tab page with algorithmically generated geometric shapes using D3 and scalable vectors graphics Loggerlite: Lightweight and exceedingly customizable logging tool with built in templating for node’s console
Most likely, your professional experience section is going to be much smaller than in your previous resume. Regardless of how much experience you have, it should not take up the majority of your resume. For whatever amount of space you have left after allocating space for your projects, condense all your professional experience and make it work with the space you have left, but do not omit experience. You still have two sections after this, education and personal, so leave some room for them. The word "professional" implies that you were paid for it. If you were not paid for the experience you put in this resume, call it "Additional Experience." You can talk about volunteer work, research, or unpaid work.
The format of your professional experience should be identical to your projects. Switching up the format makes it harder to scan the document, so stay consistent.
- List your experience in reverse chronological order
- Start by writing the position you were in, and then the company you worked for. Unless you worked at a notable company, there usually isn't a need to highlight the organization. You'll want to highlight your role, instead. On this same line, right align the years that you worked there. If you worked there less than a year, write the year you left.
- Your job doesn't need a description like your project does. Do not include one (you'll want that space later).
- All bullets must start with a verb in the past tense. There is no exception. Adverbs do not count.
- For each bullet point, answer the following questions:
- Why should the reader be impressed?
- Why was this a big deal/significant?
- How can the reader tell I was above average?
- What was I most proud of about this experience/project?
- Don't try to make your professional experience sound technical if it's not. Just talk about what you accomplished.
- If it is technical, highlight the technical aspects of your work, but again don't try to make it sound technical.
- Accomplishments, outcomes, and impact, not tasks
- Qualify: What was the significance of your work, your role, your team or your company? Why it is a big deal?
- Quantify scope: How many people, how much money, what volume?
- Quantify impact: reduced work effort by X%, used in over 100 projects a year, increased accuracy by X%, etc.
- Outcomes are the most important part of your resume. The "outcome" must have benefited the company, your team, or the product in some way, otherwise you won't seem like a contributor.
- Highlight your transferable technical skills
- Automation, working with engineers, project/product management, software testing, complex thinking, design
- Led a team of 4 while managing day-to-day operations of an import-export company
- Acquired new customers and leads through strategic marketing efforts, competitive bidding, and client referrals, resulting in $50,000 of increased revenue
- Title this section "Education"
- Include Galvanize on your resume as: Galvanize, Advanced Software Engineering Immersive Program
- Right align the year you graduated on the same line.
- Write the last institution you attended and your major: collegeName, B.S. in fieldOfStudy
- Right align the year that you graduated on the same line (some exceptions apply - see your Career Services Manager if you have questions).
- If you didn't graduate, write "College Name, Field of Study
- Right align the years that you attended on the same line.
- If you have scholarships or awards, include them on the line below. Toss out fancy names of awards and scholarships and write something more generic like "Academic Award Recipient.”
- Include relevant courses you took as well, leaving out the class code. Convey the topic only. i.e. "Computer Science" not "CS 2120"
- If you attended more than one college include it as well in the same format as above.
- If you didn't go to college, it doesn't matter! You will only have Galvanize in this section.
- If you have certificates you'd like to include, the education section is a good place to include them.
You can consider this section optional, but it can be a good opportunity to showcase your personality and humanize your resume. There have been instances where engineers only look at the personal section of a resume if they've already passed the tech screen, for example. Write a couple sentences about yourself. Allot 1-2 lines for content.
There are two ways to do this optional section Personalize it for every company, using key words that stood out to you in the job description. Write something compelling, interesting, that tells them what your style is - what drives you.
If you find you've run out of space, there is a lot of space on the document that you may not be using.
- Adjust your page margins. In File --> Page Setup, you can see the size of your margins. Adjust them to find more space in the document, but make sure when you look at the document, there is the same amount of whitespace on both edges of the page. This doesn't necessarily mean that they have to be the same number in page setup.
- For all the empty lines on your resume, they're likely taking up the size of your font. Click into an empty line and adjust the size of the font to 6. Repeat for all empty lines.
- You can also adjust the amount of a space a "horizontal line" takes up (insert --> horizontal line). Highlight the horizontal line by clicking on it and adjust the font size to 6.
Objective/About Me Why you? Why this role? Why are you qualified? What is something they won’t know about you from the rest of this page that they need to know when making their decision?