How to Write a Winning Software Engineering Resume
montywrites.com
montywrites.com
As much as people try to make resume writing science, it's anything but.
It's funny how the author focuses on how formatting and style are unimportant, but then makes a case how rewording stuff is the winning combination. None of it is substance, and there are people who'd be fooled by either, and those who'd be fooled by neither.
I'd much rather interview someone who says how "they were part of the team responsible for developing rocket engine control software" than someone who claims to have "personally created an URL shortener service that's raking in 100k a month of ad revenue". Even if that rocket engine never flew.
Perhaps the resume writer is someone who knows real stuff in brilliant teams has everyone contributing bits of brilliant ideas, and/or they are modest about their part? Or their part is brilliant in the context of the team and project, but hard to put into a sentence or two.
And sometimes, accomplishments to list are far too many.
But the key takeaway is that, like with marketing, you can use tricks to fool most people, but you are targeting your resume at different people, and each one of them might like a different thing. And they might see how you won't like their opening either, if you make the CV represent the real you (or at least not represent a fake you because CV cam hardly represent anyone).
Where I disagree, is with Jake resume(1) - that has to be one of the worst formatted resumes I've seen for tech(sorry Jake!). Just the fact that the tech skills are at the very bottom, makes it a non-starter for me.
Personally, I like:
1. Tell me what skills you have (skills)
2. Show me how you've used them (accomplishments)
3. Everything else..
"Better: “Designed and implemented a self-service internal tool for clients to onboard onto CompanyName’s customer relationship management system, reducing client onboarding time by 85% (14 hrs to 2 hrs)“
Even Better: “85%(1)Reduction in client onboarding time achieved by designing and implementing a self-service tool(2) for CompanyName’s(3) (4)customer relationship management system“
Best?: "85% reduction in client onboarding time, achived by design and implemention of self-service tool"
1)85% looks better then 12 hours. Reader may assume it went from 100 to 15...
2.) Not sure how you have an 'internal' customer facing tool? But the important part was it was customer facing production code.
3.) You may not be able to mention company name - depends on your contracts/ndas/etc.
4.)This is all redundant. You already said it was a client on-boarding system - leave some details to talk about at the interview