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Resume writing tips for tech professionals

Have all the skills require to be a great software engineer?

Here are nine tips to make your resume look just like how the tech companies want them to be.

After all, your resume is the most powerful ship to a perfect job, suitable for your skills.

Illustration: Courtesy TopTalent.in

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1. The opening

If your resume starts with "Objective: To utilise my knowledge, skills and abilities as a software engineer" then you can definitely bid the job a farewell.

Illustration: Uttam Ghosh

2. Long = boring

Unless you have 10+ years of experience, your resume's length cannot exceed one page.

When the HR professional has only get 15 seconds to read someone's resume, paragraphs would simply get overlooked.

Use bullets which are short (one to two lines) and ideally, no more than half of the bullets should be two lines.

Illustration: Dominic Xavier

3. Focus on accomplishments not responsibilities

You can speak about all the positions you held and companies you worked for, but it may all go in vain.

Most HR professionals don't have time to interview you just to bring those specifics out.

Focus on specific accomplishments, not responsibilities.

Just that one point, arguably, can give you an edge over most people in the pile of resume.

Illustration: Uttam Ghosh

4. Grammar woes

I know we have endlessly told this, but it deserves repetition.

Grievous spelling errors = trash can. As simple as that.

In today's world, poor mastery of the English language is not acceptable -- even if your job is related to coding and developing software.

Illustration: Uttam Ghosh

5. Avoid the obvious

You have experience with Windows and MS Office?

Please tell the person more, because that definitely is uninteresting.

Furthermore, use no acronyms on the resume unless the word is very popular in the industry.

Illustration: Dominic Xavier

6. Right keywords

Unless the company you're applying for is huge, where you are sure that only keyword matching systems can get your resume from the mail box to the HR official's table please avoid listing every single programming language that you've worked with on your resume.

Here's a good example of a format which provides the key words that Applicant Tracking Systems search for, at the same time giving any recruiter a better idea of how you used each technology at each of your jobs.

What it should be like

Software Engineer, Company X 2007- present

- Coded a web application using JavaScript, HTML5, and CSS3

- Designed and implemented a JSON/REST API to allow access to the Company database

What it shouldn't be like

Programming languages known: C, C++, Java, C#, Python, JavaScript, Visual Basic, Visual C#, Visual Basic .NET, and so on.

A dozen languages listed together don't make much sense.

How can you make it worse? By listing all the versions of a language you've used.

Illustration: Uttam Ghosh

7. More content, less space

Use a good resume template, with columns.

This will allow you to fit more content on your resume while making it easier to scan for key information like company names and titles.

Three line-format

Microsoft Corporation
Software Engineer
2008 to 2011   

One line-format

Software Engineer                 Microsoft Corporation                2008 – 2011

8. Team vs You

The HR guy knows that most of your work in companies must be team work. But, he is hiring you.

So, tell them what you specifically built, created, implemented, designed and programmed.

But showing that you are team focussed and good with adapting to team work is also a good thing to do.

Illustration: Uttam Ghosh

9. Highlight transferable skills

To conclude, we advise you to stop thinking about what does and doesn't belong on a resume and start thinking about whether something makes you look more or less awesome.

For example, a large number of people decide not to include meaty projects because they were for a class assignment/independent projects/unfinished/unsuccessful.

But coding is coding, and your exposure to real work rather than courses at college can put you in a really good position.

Links to code (having a GitHub link is a great thing), portfolio work, or publicly visible projects can also act as positive things on your resume.

Illustration: Uttam Ghosh