I’ve recently been reviewing student resumes as part of a university recruiting program and a few best-practices stand out.

Google has a good video on resume formatting that describes most of these practices. In these cases, I mention a time in the video.

Ok. Here are the best-practices:

• Recommended resume format at ~2:30
• Resumes are read in the context of a job description (example). Companies hiring for a job read a resume to see if you have the training and/or experience to do that job, so
  • You can briefly describe what the project was, but invest most space describing what you did and how you did it. Google recommends a phrasing at ~6:00: “Accomplished [x] as measured by [y] doing [z]”
  • Bold key words to highlight your toolkit (~5:25), eg “backend engineer”, “python”, etc, so the reader can match the resume to the role at a glance.
• It takes a lot of effort to tune a resume for all applications, but may be worth it for the 1-2 jobs you really want
• Ideally, your resume tells a story, eg some Python in year 1, more Python in year 2, created a service using Python in year 3 –> this person has experience in Python and is using it to start exploring service eng
• Submitting a resume may feel like an impersonal process, but it’s just people on the other side looking for new teammates. That’ll be you after you’re hired 🙂 The points above try to make it easy for that person to see you’re a great fit for the job.