Suggested Sequence

1. Basics

2. Header

3. Professional Experience

4. Skills

📝 Basics

•  Do NOT use highly designed resume templates, they can mess up the resume upload process. Here are some templates for plaintext resumes.

• 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 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:

  • Zoe Lewtan | Senior Frontend Engineer with 7 years of experience

  • Senior Software Engineer (Full Stack | Typescript) based in Ontario, Canada

  
  

  

🏆 Professional Experience

1. Section Header:

Examples of context for company:

• “Series C influencer payments platform”

• “Travel media website with 7M subscribers on Youtube”

2. Bullet Points:

• Each bullet point should start with an action verb and be quantifiable wherever possible

• Aim for 6 bullet points for the current role. Older jobs should 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). This helps companies get an idea of what they worked on, which explains the rest. 

  Bullet Formula:

• Accomplished X as measured by Y by Doing Z

• Action verb + accomplishment + outcome

Bullet Points Structural Templates:

🏔 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.

⚒️ 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.

💥 By Role &/Or Impact

• Drove changes to web infrastructure and deployment process for testing standards, increasing test stability and reducing runtime while increasing the frequency of testing. (6x tests, 10x runs a week, 10%-> 90+% reliability)

• Created regression test suite for proxy API to ensure performance with legacy API

When possible, mention the reason you received a promotion or an increase in responsibilities

• Promoted to SWE after successful design and automation of new partner integration onboarding and building program

• 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.

🤹‍♀️ Skills

Type of Skills

Technical Skills or Hard Skills:

• Job-related skills are those that are necessary or enhance your ability to perform a job

• These skills encompass your knowledge and proficiency in technology, programming and coding, software development, and product understanding, among others. 

  
  

Non-Technical Skills or Soft Skills:

• Soft skills refer to intangible qualities, including interpersonal and behavioral skills, that can enhance job performance.

• Some examples of soft skills include leadership abilities, effective communication, creativity, innovation, problem-solving, and critical thinking.

• If you aspire to a senior software engineering role, like an engineering manager, it's important to possess these soft skills to secure a high-level position.

Great Formats:

Weak Formats:

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