Throughout my career, I’ve mentored over 25 students and early professionals, and reviewed more than 100 resumes as they sought guidance and referrals. Drawing from my experience and credibility, which have earned me a few interview opportunities at MAANG and promising startups, I’d like to share some key learnings, strategies, and common mistakes to avoid when crafting resumes. While I’ll lean towards Software Development Engineer (SDE) resumes, the suggestions are applicable across various fields.

A perfect resume and Rome were never built in a day. While you are at it, this article might be of some help.

• Use a professional email. This one sounds like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised by how many people still use extremely casual emails ([email protected], anyone?)

An Ideal format: firstnamelastname@<acceptableemailservice>.com

• Always double-check your contact information. You typo that phone number or email, and you’re not getting a callback.

• Try to mention achievements over responsibilities when possible. HR knows what your responsibilities are. What they WANT to know is how you stand out from the rest of the candidates. Keep in mind, though, that some positions don’t have achievements as such. In cases like that, it’s OK to go for responsibilities.

• QUANTIFY YOUR ACHIEVEMENTS with data and numbers. A lot of the resumes miss numbers and quantities. Think to yourself, don’t numbers and statistics show the actual impact of a work done? This allows you to stand out from the other candidates & show the recruiter that you’re a high-achiever.

Good Example:

• Hit and surpassed the monthly KPI by 20% for 5 months in a row.
• Networked and served 12 international clients, catering to their needs.
• Successfully migrated 10+ live apps from on-premise to AWS Cloud.
• Improved a model accuracy to 98.83% by incorporating x algorithm/tweaks
• Managed and optimized the client’s Facebook ad account, increasing the ad ROI from 42% to 65%

Bad Example:

• Generated leads through cold calling.
• Managed the client’s Facebook ad account.

• Mention only relevant work experience. If you’re applying for a job in the software domain, HR doesn’t care much about your experience in marketing. I had a lot of robotics and hardware engagement too during my undergrad, but I strongly focused on the software aspect. Though, I did mention it during interviews to showcase my diverse/adaptable nature.

• If you are a student with not a lot of work experience, jam-pack your resume with other experiences.

Think, of extracurricular activities, personal projects you’ve worked on, open-source contributions, volunteering, or whatever else you can come up with. Don’t have much of that, either? Proactively work towards getting skills and experiences that are going to be useful for your future job.

Influencer, Youtuber? You can still mention it with its reach and impact- it shows that you’ve done SOME work in your life, and aren’t afraid to get your hands dirty.

• Are you about to switch careers? Mention it in your resume summary. Do something like:

“Data analyst professional with 5 years+ years of experience looking to transition into the position of a front-end web developer. Previous experience developing websites for 3 local business clients.”

This shows that you’re not just applying to random jobs - you’re ACTUALLY trying to transition into a new field. The 2nd sentence can be used to show the experience you DO have (if you have any).

• DON’T spray and pray. Most job-seekers go all-out with their job-search, applying for dozens of jobs per day. This, if you ask me, is counterproductive. You’re better off hand-picking the 5 best jobs each day, and tailoring your application to each of them.

• Speaking of tailoring - it’s pretty generic advice to “tailor your resume to the job you’re applying for,” but what does it mean in, y’know, practice?

So here’s how this works - most people make a single resume, and apply to dozens of positions with it.

The optimal approach is, instead, to create a different variation of your resume for each position you’re applying for, and apply to a handful of positions each day instead.

As for how to do the actual tailoring, first off, you need to read the job description in-depth. Then, go through your resume and see if you’ve mentioned all the skills and responsibilities that are required for the position.

In most cases, you’ll see that there ARE several essential skills and responsibilities that you DO have, but you didn’t mention on your resume because you just didn’t think they were that important. This, usually, makes a huge difference.

• AVOID going over 1 page. Common advice, but again, a TON of people disregard this. Unless you’re a senior professional with 20+ years of experience, there’s no excuse for going over 1 page.

The recruiter doesn’t care about every single thing you’ve done in your life - they care about your relevant work experiences.

If you have 10 years of work experience in accounting, for example. 80% of your resume should be all about that, and 20% about any other experiences that help build up your profile for the position.

You shouldn’t mention what you did in high school, for example. Or which extracurricular activities you did in uni.

Surprisingly, students tend to be the ones that make 2–3 page resumes. Since they have a ton of extracurricular activities from university and want to stand out, they just jam everything they’ve done at uni into the resume.

Or, they also tend to go the other way around - they just mention their university, classes they’ve taken, and end up with a half-a-page resume. This isn’t a good approach, either.

• Don’t fluff. “Critical thinker” “good communicator” “strong teamwork skills.” What do these words have in common?

Well, it’s that every single recent graduate stuffs these in their resume. Avoid generic buzzword terms, because, let’s face it - they don’t help, and they are just space-fillers. Instead, showcase it via your work.

• Keywords. Search for job descriptions that match your preferred profile and copy 3–4 of them onto a Google Doc. Create a word cloud from these descriptions to identify the keywords required for that job. These keywords are what HRs are looking for.
  
  

  Copy-pasted 3 SDE Job Descriptions from LinkedIn Jobs and created this word cloud on https://www.freewordcloudgenerator.com/generatewordcloud

• Don’t include a photo. You want to get a job, not a date.

• ATS Friendly resume. Ensure your resume formatting and layout are compatible with applicant tracking systems (ATS) to increase your chances of getting noticed.

• Proof-read your resume. Use Grammarly for this, or ask a friend to give you a 2nd opinion.

• Feel free to include a hobbies section, but ONLY if you have space to fill, and no other relevant experience to fill it with. Hobbies are a good way to show a bit of your personality, but it’s not what’s going to get you the job.

Most recruiters are 50/50 on the section - some think it’s a waste of time, others think it helps humanize the candidate a bit more (and you might end up talking about the hobbies in the interview)

• Follow up on your application. Sometimes, your application ends up lost in the recruiter’s inbox - and that’s OK. HRs make human errors, too. Pro tip: use an email tracking tool like Streak to see if the recruiter opened your email. If they didn’t, you know for a fact that you need to follow up.

• Finally, keep in mind that when it comes to resumes & recruitment, a lot is opinion-based. Every single recruiter or HR manager has their own opinion on the resume specifics. Some of them hate the hobbies section, others advocate for it.

After more than 30 iterations, incorporating feedback and making improvements, I arrived at my current resume version. Hence, a perfect resume and Rome were never built in a day. Take your time, iterate, rewrite, and you’ll arrive at the penultimate, better version of your resume every time.

tl;dr: Quantify your achievements (add statistics and numbers), Use good unique action verbs, proofread multiple times, make it ATS friendly, recommended 1 pg resume, add job specific keywords.