Industry Skills
• C++
• Object Oriented Programming
• Cypress, Jest, Test Driven Development (TDD)
• TypeScript, GraphQL, Next.js
• Relational database design, SQL | • HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, React, Nodejs
• Engineering tools: Git, JIRA, Confluence
• IOS / Android - React Native
• Amazon Web Services (Cloud)
• Agile Methodologies |
Feedback:
- My first thought when looking at your skills: are you a web dev? are you a systems dev? backend dev? mobile dev? which ones are you most comfortable with?
- “Seems like he is attempting to make up for a lack of expertise by showcasing a variety of limited skills.”
- I think it’s fine to list all the tech you have experience with, but when you have C++ next to HTML and React, I question which one you are more comfortable with.
How to improve this?
- Which work experience did you use C++? Or was it only during your coursework? If it was only during coursework, then you can remove it from your industry skills.
- Maybe replace this section with a summary section and just kind of highlight your top skills and how you’ve applied them. Maybe something like this:
- Now that you’ve replaced the skills section, you can add a bullet point below each work experience with the tech you used.
As a versatile developer, I have experience in a wide range of technologies, including C++, HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, React, and Node.js. I am skilled in object-oriented programming, test-driven development, and relational database design. With a strong foundation in engineering tools and agile methodologies, I am capable of delivering high-quality solutions for web and systems development projects.
Work Experience
Developed several feature flows on four new products - .
- Engineered the blog frontends for A and B, from core functionality to implementation, in Next.js
- Built dozens of components that appear on our core products to be performant, precise in design, responsive to different layouts and content shifts, and to look consistent and to behave in a reusable manner across mobile and web applications
- Implemented the change plan and cancellation flow on each of our core products (A, B, and C)
- Wrote Cypress integration and E2E tests for login, cancel, and profile update flows on A and B.
Feedback:
- What are A, B, C and D?
- bullet 2 is ok, but very vague and kind of buzzword filled. I do the same thing my resume probably has some bullets like this. But when I read it it doesn’t really tell me anything special about what you did, anyone can say this.
- What was special about the change plan and cancellation flow?
- Last bullet is ok, but I’d like to maybe know how that helped prevent bugs or some more detail about the impact
How to improve this?
- If those products are publicly available, you can add links to them. Make your resume “interactive” so someone reading it can quickly get a feel for what you’ve built.
- If they are not publicly available, I would try to focus on your impact on the projects, and any details about the projects that are important to telling the story that you are trying to tell via your resume.
- Imagine your experience as one of those native serpent mounds. If you are standing right in front of it, it just looks like dirt and grass, maybe it looks like a hill. Nothing special
- But climb up to some kind of observation deck, and look at it from 100ft up. 500ft up. etc. The higher up you go, the more impressive the mound looks. You can see the details that make the shape of the serpent.
- In the same sense, go up as high as you can and view your experience from your boss’s point of view. Their boss’s point of view. The customer’s point of view. etc. How would you describe your experience from those viewpoints?
- The point being, when you go up to that level, you don’t notice that it was built with dirt. You notice how the pieces come together to create something beautiful.
- As you keep creating your “brag list” based on the job qualifications, use those write ups to replace these sections in your resume. You’re writing about the same experiences, but now your writing is targeted to the correct audience.
- Space on your resume is limited. You have ~30 seconds of the reviewer’s attention. Every word counts. Come in hot at the top with the summary, and then back it up with bullets that quickly tell your story. If the reviewer won’t be familiar with a product then either don’t mention it at all, or link to it or describe it if you think it adds value.
Additional Feedback
Regarding your Company 2 and Company 3 experiences, the same feedback from Company 1 applies. So I’d like for you to go through and based on my feedback above update your resume. Then we’ll do a re-review.
I think it’s more about how the space on the resume is being used. And the contrast of having C++ next to React. I just don’t see there being many any jobs where both of those skills would be utilized.
But I totally get your point of wanting to show that you can learn multiple things. That’s why if you just remove the skill section altogether, and highlight your technical skills within the context of your work experiences, that gives a lot more context to your actual experience with that tech.
You can highlight the tech skills in bold so they pop out too, or just list them as a single line for each job you worked.
Real estate is important on a resume, like I mentioned you have about 30 seconds and the resume reviewer is going to be judging you compared to many other resumes and have to make a quick judgement of your experience. It’s very easy as someone quickly reviewing resumes, to see a skills section like that and the first thought that pops into your head is it’s an attempt to overcompensate.
So focus on your strengths. If “learning new tech” is a strength of yours, how can you tell that story through your past experience, versus just listing “C++”.