Leopard.FYI on ChatGPT
You can also get all of these tips personalized to your resume using the Leopard.FYI Chatgpt bot. To access it,
Go to the Leopard.FYI Chatgpt bot here: https://chat.openai.com/g/g-XFXEQOmYu-leopard-fyi.
In the chat window, type or paste the following prompt: "How can I improve my resume (upload pdf) using context about the companies I've worked at previously?"
Click on the "Upload PDF" button and select the PDF version of your resume from your device.
Hit the "Send" button to submit your resume and prompt to Leopard.FYI.
Suggested Sequence
Basics
Header
Skills
Professional Experience
📝 Basics
Do NOT use highly designed resume templates, they can mess up the resume upload process.
Use an 11-12 pt font for regular text and 14-16 pt for section titles.
Avoid repetition of verbs/phrases
It must be 1 page!!!
Export as a PDF with a clean title that includes your name, the resume, and the year.
👑 Header
Name: It is recommended that the name be set in a font size of 20 points. This standard font size is easy to read and will ensure that the name is visible and legible.
The contact line should include clickable LinkedIn, GitHub, and email links. The font size should be 11 points.
Include a super brief overview that includes some combo of your title/ type of role, years of experience, tech stack/area of focus & location (whatever fits the setup best).
Examples:
Senior Frontend Engineer with 7 years of experience
Senior Software Engineer (Full Stack | Typescript) based in Ontario, Canada
Senior Full Stack Engineer passionate about AI Infrastructure
Full-Stack, Backend-Leaning Engineer at early stage startups
🤹♀️ Skills
Use one compact, comma-separated Skills section with ~10–20 relevant technical skills near the top of the resume
Put the strongest, most current, and job-relevant skills first, including AI skills when relevant. Skip soft skills & outdated tools.
Skip skill category sub-headers to save space
Company Context Descriptions
Examples of context for the company:
“Series C influencer payments platform”
“Travel media website with 7M subscribers on YouTube”
Bullet Points:
Use Bolded Sub-Headers: it helps the reader's eye know where to look! If this is the only thing you take away from the Leopard resume guide, make it this!
Aim for 6 bullet points minimum for the current role. Older jobs can have fewer, around 1-2.
Start with 1 bullet that describes your high-level contribution to the business. Scale gets extra credit here (ie, the platform used by thousands of Fortune 500 companies/millions of users).
For older roles, you can use even more of the context method rather than detailing your contributions. Example:
Led project for a high-performance game engine built on WebGL, a fully integrated automated test suite, advanced asset build, and optimization tools.
Framework-powered multiple online games with revenue between $2-4 million.
When possible, mention if you were promoted + the reason you received a promotion or an increase in responsibilities.
Bolded Sub-Header Ideas
🏔 Organized By Features/ Parts of the Product
API & Integrations: Technical Project Lead for a medium-sized project for the API team (of 10) to expand functionality on the API to improve scheduling workflows for partners. Integration used by 1000+ customers, 500k interviews scheduled in the past quarter.
Identity Management: Implemented single-sign for Google, Apple, and Facebook social platforms across web and iOS clients utilizing federated identities in Cognito.
⚒️ Organized By Type of Engineering Work
Frontend Development in React: Creating reusable React components. Using styled components for styling. Creating a State management system based on Redux slices and supporting consistent user experience across the app.
Refactoring Frontend to React: from Ruby on Rails to React + TypeScript.
Tip for Making Your Bullets More Impactful:
If you're struggling to find the right words to describe your impact on your resume, you can start by using these ChatGPT prompts to make your existing bullets more impactful:
"Help me rephrase [FILL IN] to show more impact in a software engineering context."
"How can I describe my role doing [FILL IN] in a more impactful way?"
"What's a more impactful way to say '[FILL IN]
"My project improved customer satisfaction by 25%. How can I phrase this to highlight its impact on the company?"
"I reduced the time to deploy new features. Can you help me phrase this to show its impact on the business?"
Here are a bunch of examples of impact:
Early Stage Examples:
Quick Adaptation to Changes: Showcasing the ability to adapt swiftly to changes in the market, technology, or business priorities.
Ex: "Collaborated with the founders to assess the emerging generative AI landscape, which led to realigning our engineering efforts to focus on high-demand features (data entry) that our customers needed.”
Rapid Prototyping Skills: Demonstrating your ability to quickly turn ideas into functional prototypes, and to deliver value with minimal resources
Ex: "Developed a functional MVP for our new AI note-taking product and got it in the hands of beta users just three weeks after uncovering their key need.”
Good Technical Judgement: Highlighting your ability to select and implement the most effective technologies for the startup's needs.
Ex: "Chose to build the app in Django, which made the AI note-taking features easier to spin up and test in days instead of weeks with Python”
Technical Leadership (Even on a Small Team): Highlighting your ability to provide technical leadership and strategic direction that aligns with the startup's needs.
Ex: "Led the technical direction, scoping, and delivery of a new time-tracking feature, from requirements through launch"
Versatile Skillset: Showcasing your ability to wear multiple hats and contribute across different areas of the business.
Ex: "Did all aspects of development (front-end development, back-end architecture, and database design) for the early stage fintech startup’s v1 mental health platform”
Growth Stage Examples
If you’ve worked in a growth stage environment (or want to work in that kind of environment in your next role), you should try to highlight your ability to make smart, informed decisions that meaningfully push the business forward. Some examples:
Product Development Work: Illustrating your contribution to the development or improvement of a product.
Ex: "I worked with 2 engineers on launching the mobile web version of the enterprise SaaS workflow platform, which was important given that 33% of users were logging in organically via mobile.”
Customer-Focused Engineering: Ensuring engineering decisions contribute to an exceptional customer experience.
Ex: "Developed a real-time monitoring system that proactively identified and resolved uploading issues, reducing new customer complaints by 20%”
Creative Problem Solving: Sharing unexpected ideas that ultimately work out.
Ex: “Developed a machine learning-powered recommendation engine that personalized user content, leading to a 50% increase in reactivations
Growth & Expansion Work: Highlighting your role in helping the company enter new markets, and segments, or generally unlock new user and/or customer growth.
Ex: "Spearheaded the expansion into the Latin American market, resulting in a 50% increase in regional sales and the acquisition of key strategic partnerships."
Direct Revenue Impact: Demonstrating how your actions directly contributed to increased revenue.
Ex: "Revamped the e-commerce checkout process for mobile web, resulting in a 20% increase in sales within the first month of implementation."
Strong Cross-Functional Skills: Ensuring that engineering decisions enhance product value and market fit.
Ex: "Led a cross-functional initiative to integrate AI-driven personalization into our platform, resulting in a 30% increase in MAUs & opening new revenue streams”
Automation Mindset: Demonstrating your ability to automate important processes and meaningfully improve operational efficiency.
Ex: "Automated repetitive tasks using scripting and workflow automation tools, freeing up 20 hours per week for the team to focus on strategic initiatives."
Meaningful Cost Reduction: Showcasing how you helped the company save money or reduce expenses.
Ex: "Implemented a new cloud storage solution, cutting monthly data storage costs by 50%, saving the company $150,000 annually."
Data-Driven Decision Making: Utilizing data and analytics to inform engineering strategies and product development.
Ex: “Implemented a data-driven analysis of user session lengths at Centered Mental Health, which led to the development of personalized therapy pathways within the UI. This approach resulted in a 35% increase in user engagement and a 25% improvement in reported mental well-being outcomes.”
Understanding of Business Operations: Highlighting improvements in processes or systems that led to more efficient operations across the business.
Ex: "Developed an automated reporting tool that reduced the time spent on monthly financial reporting by 70%, freeing up significant time for the finance team to focus on strategic initiatives."
Customer Satisfaction Impact: Showing how your work led to higher customer satisfaction or retention rates.
Ex: "Initiated a customer feedback loop that resulted in a 30% improvement in customer satisfaction scores and a 15% increase in customer retention."
Scaling Stage: Making Non-Trivial, High-Priority Improvements
If you’ve worked in a scaling environment (or want to work in that kind of environment in your next role), you should try to highlight the scale of what you’ve worked on, and what types of initiatives actually moved the needle in those environments. Some examples:
Long-Term Technical Thinking: Showing that you make good technical decisions that align with the company's long-term goals and market positioning.
Ex: "Championed the adoption of a serverless architecture, reducing operational costs by 40% and significantly improving scalability, aligning with our goal to become a market leader in cloud-native solutions for HR."
Quality Mindset: Highlighting your contribution to improving the quality of the product through rigorous testing and quality assurance practices.
Ex: "Introduced a comprehensive automated testing framework that decreased defect rates by 70% and significantly improved overall product quality."
Thoughtful Issue Prevention: Highlighting the ability to anticipate and address potential issues before they escalate, ensuring smooth operations.
Ex: "Implemented proactive monitoring tools that detected and resolved 90% of potential system issues before they impacted users, significantly improving system reliability."
Thoughtful Risk Management: Making informed decisions that balance innovation with risk mitigation.
Ex: "Implemented a phased rollout plan for a major system upgrade, minimizing downtime and ensuring a smooth transition, which preserved customer trust and avoided potential revenue loss from our biggest customer 1-800-FLOWERS.”
Security and Compliance: Prioritizing decisions that strengthened the security and compliance posture of the company.
Ex: Led the implementation of robust security protocols and compliance measures, securing our first enterprise contracts and positioning us as a trustworthy solution in the industry."
Meaningful Efficiency: Focusing on decisions that have a meaningful impact on the business’ operational efficiency and resource utilization.
Ex: "Optimized our CI/CD pipeline, reducing build times by 50% and enabling more frequent deployments, which accelerated our product iteration cycle."
Performance Optimization: Demonstrating how you improved the performance of a system or application.
Ex: "Optimized database queries for the company's core product, resulting in a 40% reduction in load times and a significantly enhanced user experience."
Technical Debt Reduction Impact: Demonstrating how you reduced technical debt and improved code maintainability.
"Refactored a legacy codebase, reducing technical debt by 60%, which resulted in a 30% increase in development speed for new features."
Infrastructure Expertise: Showcasing your efforts in automating infrastructure tasks to improve efficiency and reliability.
"Implemented a CI/CD pipeline that automated testing and deployment processes, reducing release cycle times by 50% and increasing deployment frequency by 200%."
Successful Architectural Decisions: Making architectural decisions that ensure the platform can handle growth and maintain high performance.
Ex: "Architected a scalable and resilient product recommendation infrastructure that supported a 300% increase in user traffic without compromising performance”
Bonus!!!
Ways to list employment gap in your resume:
More than 5 years ago = Don’t mention it
Under a year = Don’t mention it
Maternity Leave = Parental Leave
School = Educational Leave
Just couldn’t find a job = Personal Sabbatical
Laid Off = Post-Layoff Job Search
Family Issues = Family Care Leave
Health Issues = Family Care Leave
Travel = Travel Leave
You moved = Relocation Leave
