đź“ť Structuring Your Resume and Why It Matters

TL;DR - The first impression of your resume sets the bar for the recruitment process. Following a predictable + impact forward approach will help recruitment know quickly if you are a prime candidate for the role.

NOTE: This post is primarily geared toward university grads entering a technical field, but these principles can be applied to any resume.

🤔 Resume Sections + Ordering

Your resume needs the items below in the following order. I will be diving deeper into each section later in this post.

  1. Contact Information
  2. Education
  3. Skills
  4. Professional Experience
  5. Projects
  6. Awards/Acknowledgements

Advice on Resume Content coming up in a future post!

📱 Contact Information

Q. Who is the candidate I am reading about? Do I have a way of contacting them if there is a match?

Your name should be first and foremost on your resume. Followed by your contact information so the recruiter can reach out via email or phone to chat more. If this is not clearly in your face - it’s on to the next resume in the pile.

Q. Can I find additional material to learn more about the candidate?

Your resume should speak for itself, but on the off chance recruitment needs additional information they can visit your online profiles. Simply having this on your profile sets you apart from candidates who don’t. A website is already a project you can plug in before recruitment reads your Projects Section. A Github account means you have some grasp of version control. A LinkedIn is more in depth version of your resume - its 2020, please create one if you haven’t already.

🎓 Education

Q. What stage is this person in his career? How recently was he in school?

The graduation date + degree automatically puts you in a bucket for certain roles: Internship? New University Grad? PhD Candidate? Sanity check - if you’re a new grad you probably do not fit the skill set for Staff Engineer / Director.

Skills

Q. Will his skill set fit the tech stack we use?

Drop in buzzwords that are relevant to the job role. This section can sound like a laundry list because your experience detailed below will expand on the skills you mentioned. If the skills do not speak to the role, this can turn into a quick pass on the resume. For example, an iOS Engineer should be able to identify technologies needed to be successful: Swift, Objective-C, UIKit, Xcode, TestFlight.

đź’Ľ Professional Experience

NOTE: If you’re just beginning your career it is okay to put more content in your Projects Section. These two sections follow similar principles/guidelines.

Q. What professional work has the candidate done? How many years of experience? How does the work compliment the job role?

Companies in a similar field + products in a similar domain are good signals for a stronger candidate. Without getting into the content of this section, at a baseline this section should plug what role you filled, what company, and how long you worked. If the role proposes 8+ years of experience a resume showing < 1 year does not align with expectations.

🧪 Projects

Q. What projects has the candidate worked on that compliments the job role?

Again, similar story as professional experience. Although this is not strongly tied to a company you can still highlight how you used your skills to push a working product.

🏆 Awards/Acknolwedgements

Q. How active is this person in the technical space?

If the read-through went this far, it’s a good sign. The remainder of the sections are to convince readers who are still on the fence. Show that you are active in the community by listing anything notable that you’ve accomplished.

🏎 Optional - Interests

Q. How do I start a conversation with this person before we do a technical interview?

If you are struggling to fill space, you can put a small section of your hobbies and interests. This is largely just for conversation starters when you chat with team members, but a filled resume is better than a lot of white space.

Conclusion + Next Steps

I hope reading this post makes you revisit your resume and question if your structure is easily digestable for recruitment to pass you through to the next stage. The structure is the first hurdle to jump through when the recruiter is skimming through your work, the next is your content — the make it or break it moment of your recruitment process. In my next post I will dive deeper into each of the sections about what content should be included and how to communicate your impact.

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👍 If you learned something new or this post helped you in your job search, please consider sharing! Comment below with your recruiting tips! Is there something you wish you knew when you started your job search? 🤔

Alex Takahashi is a software engineer working in San Francisco. He finished his Bachelor’s Degree from UC Berkeley in Bioengineering and eventually found himself becoming a programmer in Silicon Valley. Visit his profile to learn more about his path to become a professional in the tech industry.