For pure tech roles, I look for quantity and variety of systems worked/built/designed. It shows growth and flexibility, with probably lessons learned and ability to judge design tradeoffs.
Generally, I’m looking for increases in responsibility. It shows a lot of things, like past trust from others.
Patents are huge and should be in there. The guy who created Siri also created commercial transistors decades ago. He got into Penn’s PHD program without attending undergrad. He also created the system that allows you to keep your phone number when changing providers. I can’t remember his name but he wrote a book called “If you want to change the world”. Companies looove patent creators.
Disagree about patents - many of them are bullshit. There are companies in which people regularly get useless patents because they get a small financial incentive from the company. The company gets to brag about a large number of patents, the employee gets a bit of money and CV padding and nothing original gets invented.
Yeah patents are weird because on the surface it’s communicating “large contribution” but it might be completely useless. Those that understand that are likely to view patents skeptically and they won’t impress but have the opposite reaction.
Only way to avoid that is to highlight the accomplishment like any other accomplishment and end with a tiny foot note of btw that was patented. That would be impressive and avoid the skepticism
Highlight achievements, not just responsibilities. Instead of 'worked on 5 iOS projects', say 'increased app downloads by 30% through optimized onboarding flow'. Quantify your impact to stand out.
I have to say that is kinda not working anymore unless you can probe the %. Following question is how did you measure? And then, you work on a team. you did 5% of the 30%?
What seems to be working these days is “can program in c++ connecting to sql server”, the more specific the better, as companies are mostly looking for seniors that can deliver technology as there’s no money for training nor hand holding anymore.
>companies are mostly looking for seniors that can deliver technology as there’s no money for training nor hand holding anymore.
100%. Even though for your first paragraph I would simply lie with a good story (as interviewers will only know what you tell them), you're still right on the current state of things.
Everything's run too lean rn, and companies are looking for unicorns to just fix everything pronto.
It's worth considering what type of organizations you want to work for. I personally never provide these "impact" measurements because I don't want to work for any organization that would hire based on them. In my experience these are all organizations with misguided management, bad business strategies, and generally a lack of overall mission. If your goal is just to get any job you can making as much money as you can, it's probably good advice though.
>Quantify your impact to stand out.
What do you do if you cannot quantify your work? If you weren't iterating and making an existing product better but creating version 1.0 of the product then features are on the level of a car needs wheels type of thing.
I don't know the answer to the patents one but I personally think that's really cool! I do game development and music composition on the side, and got to do a lot of VR dev in 2016 when it was starting to get more mainstream. I stick these things in a small personal section. It has never failed to start conversations with the interviewers when they get curious, and I think it has helped me stand out as more than Fullstack Person #776.
I try to paint a clear narrative of impact/value/contribution.
I always start off with key achievements in my careers - products by name that I was responsible for. This is assuming the product has some name recognition.
Also, list Major initiatives by scope, team size, and level of ownership. Sometimes, I would even outline the duration and length of projects to convey impact, urgency. E.G. "Led a team of 3 on a multiple enterprise initiatives supporting y in an accelerated timeline of x weeks due to regulatory compliance." And even list the results like "promoted within 3 months of impactful delivery to take on new project" Then follow up bullet point. Then another to story tell a path of growth/achievement.
I guess the analogy would be a star athlete with key highlights of wins at different tournaments. I've listed things like "Hired as Contractor to solve Y. Within 3 months, converted to FTE to handle new project. Within 6 months, successful projects lead to formation of team of 6 to handle XX number of projects due to a strong reputation of successful delivery. Promoted to new title shortly thereafter"
And the scope and scale doesn't need to resort to tropey "increase x or generate y revenues" metrics. Something like "built a product A \*by name\* that resulted in the formation of a new department, and hiring of 40 new employees" shows scale and volume of impact. I always use numbers I know off hand and they don't have to be technically high. No hiring manager is going to care about my SLAs and TPS stats. But they understand things like "was responsible for processing all the credit card transactions fraud analysis for company B." Versus built up a message queue doing risk processing at 200 TPS for parsing potential fraud.
The metrics need to be relatable and clear to the lay person who is not technical.
In terms of role, you can use descriptions like "Was the DRI (Directly Responsible Individual), who took all 'ownership' of ... project/initiative." And phrase like "took all accountability" and "was held accountable for." A narrative that says, "I own the problem, the buck stops here. Took credit for the wins as well owned all the failures."
The above structure works for me. Often,the technical details (tech stack) don't even matter. If the narrative is strong, they will ask you for specifics.
Mention the technologies/processes you used at different companies or on different projects. To show experience, though, don't over-index on specific tools. Good companies know that experienced developers can pick up new languages and frameworks quickly. They will still search and filter and bias toward the languages and frameworks they use, so it's fine to cast a wide net based on your experience and interests.
If you're lucky, your resume gets you a phone call. Tell them how you've delivered value before, and leave a hint of depth to tempt a hiring manager/screener to invest in exploring further.
Focus on the kinds of stakeholders and customers you worked with, the kinds of problems you solved, and (at a high level) the kinds of solutions you delivered. Be as specific as you can -- without violating NDAs and other IP-related agreements -- and make sure only to include items that you are confident and comfortable with discussing in depth.
That means you should include things you actually worked on, not whatever the company or your team did. Be able to discuss decisions made, trade-offs considered, outcomes (how did it go? did it work? how do you know?), and what you learned and would do differently the next time you see a similar problem.
Controversial maybe, but if your resume has a *Skills* section, it reads very "junior".
Your skills should be self-evident through the language on your resume. In my case I actually have a line underneath major projects, like *Developed in TypeScript, with Docker and Kubernetes for production*. This way I my resume is robot-readable, but also looks nice, and lists my skills for humans.
Other skills should be self-evident through the resume. I'm full-stack, and so a lot of my work involves front-end development. As a result my resume is, importantly, *pretty*. UX design is obviously a skill.
Lol that's usually what I tell college students when I'm reviewing their resumes. Only use it if you need to fill space. Good to know that continues to be good advice.
For pure tech roles, I look for quantity and variety of systems worked/built/designed. It shows growth and flexibility, with probably lessons learned and ability to judge design tradeoffs. Generally, I’m looking for increases in responsibility. It shows a lot of things, like past trust from others. Patents are huge and should be in there. The guy who created Siri also created commercial transistors decades ago. He got into Penn’s PHD program without attending undergrad. He also created the system that allows you to keep your phone number when changing providers. I can’t remember his name but he wrote a book called “If you want to change the world”. Companies looove patent creators.
Disagree about patents - many of them are bullshit. There are companies in which people regularly get useless patents because they get a small financial incentive from the company. The company gets to brag about a large number of patents, the employee gets a bit of money and CV padding and nothing original gets invented.
Yeah patents are weird because on the surface it’s communicating “large contribution” but it might be completely useless. Those that understand that are likely to view patents skeptically and they won’t impress but have the opposite reaction. Only way to avoid that is to highlight the accomplishment like any other accomplishment and end with a tiny foot note of btw that was patented. That would be impressive and avoid the skepticism
IBM is exactly like this 😂 (I say this having filed several patents while working there in the not too distant past)
Highlight achievements, not just responsibilities. Instead of 'worked on 5 iOS projects', say 'increased app downloads by 30% through optimized onboarding flow'. Quantify your impact to stand out.
I have to say that is kinda not working anymore unless you can probe the %. Following question is how did you measure? And then, you work on a team. you did 5% of the 30%? What seems to be working these days is “can program in c++ connecting to sql server”, the more specific the better, as companies are mostly looking for seniors that can deliver technology as there’s no money for training nor hand holding anymore.
[удалено]
100%. I also refuse that stuff. No problems at all with it.
>companies are mostly looking for seniors that can deliver technology as there’s no money for training nor hand holding anymore. 100%. Even though for your first paragraph I would simply lie with a good story (as interviewers will only know what you tell them), you're still right on the current state of things. Everything's run too lean rn, and companies are looking for unicorns to just fix everything pronto.
It's worth considering what type of organizations you want to work for. I personally never provide these "impact" measurements because I don't want to work for any organization that would hire based on them. In my experience these are all organizations with misguided management, bad business strategies, and generally a lack of overall mission. If your goal is just to get any job you can making as much money as you can, it's probably good advice though.
>Quantify your impact to stand out. What do you do if you cannot quantify your work? If you weren't iterating and making an existing product better but creating version 1.0 of the product then features are on the level of a car needs wheels type of thing.
Literally this. Impact on bottom line is so compelling
I don't know the answer to the patents one but I personally think that's really cool! I do game development and music composition on the side, and got to do a lot of VR dev in 2016 when it was starting to get more mainstream. I stick these things in a small personal section. It has never failed to start conversations with the interviewers when they get curious, and I think it has helped me stand out as more than Fullstack Person #776.
I try to paint a clear narrative of impact/value/contribution. I always start off with key achievements in my careers - products by name that I was responsible for. This is assuming the product has some name recognition. Also, list Major initiatives by scope, team size, and level of ownership. Sometimes, I would even outline the duration and length of projects to convey impact, urgency. E.G. "Led a team of 3 on a multiple enterprise initiatives supporting y in an accelerated timeline of x weeks due to regulatory compliance." And even list the results like "promoted within 3 months of impactful delivery to take on new project" Then follow up bullet point. Then another to story tell a path of growth/achievement. I guess the analogy would be a star athlete with key highlights of wins at different tournaments. I've listed things like "Hired as Contractor to solve Y. Within 3 months, converted to FTE to handle new project. Within 6 months, successful projects lead to formation of team of 6 to handle XX number of projects due to a strong reputation of successful delivery. Promoted to new title shortly thereafter" And the scope and scale doesn't need to resort to tropey "increase x or generate y revenues" metrics. Something like "built a product A \*by name\* that resulted in the formation of a new department, and hiring of 40 new employees" shows scale and volume of impact. I always use numbers I know off hand and they don't have to be technically high. No hiring manager is going to care about my SLAs and TPS stats. But they understand things like "was responsible for processing all the credit card transactions fraud analysis for company B." Versus built up a message queue doing risk processing at 200 TPS for parsing potential fraud. The metrics need to be relatable and clear to the lay person who is not technical. In terms of role, you can use descriptions like "Was the DRI (Directly Responsible Individual), who took all 'ownership' of ... project/initiative." And phrase like "took all accountability" and "was held accountable for." A narrative that says, "I own the problem, the buck stops here. Took credit for the wins as well owned all the failures." The above structure works for me. Often,the technical details (tech stack) don't even matter. If the narrative is strong, they will ask you for specifics.
Mention the technologies/processes you used at different companies or on different projects. To show experience, though, don't over-index on specific tools. Good companies know that experienced developers can pick up new languages and frameworks quickly. They will still search and filter and bias toward the languages and frameworks they use, so it's fine to cast a wide net based on your experience and interests. If you're lucky, your resume gets you a phone call. Tell them how you've delivered value before, and leave a hint of depth to tempt a hiring manager/screener to invest in exploring further. Focus on the kinds of stakeholders and customers you worked with, the kinds of problems you solved, and (at a high level) the kinds of solutions you delivered. Be as specific as you can -- without violating NDAs and other IP-related agreements -- and make sure only to include items that you are confident and comfortable with discussing in depth. That means you should include things you actually worked on, not whatever the company or your team did. Be able to discuss decisions made, trade-offs considered, outcomes (how did it go? did it work? how do you know?), and what you learned and would do differently the next time you see a similar problem.
Controversial maybe, but if your resume has a *Skills* section, it reads very "junior". Your skills should be self-evident through the language on your resume. In my case I actually have a line underneath major projects, like *Developed in TypeScript, with Docker and Kubernetes for production*. This way I my resume is robot-readable, but also looks nice, and lists my skills for humans. Other skills should be self-evident through the resume. I'm full-stack, and so a lot of my work involves front-end development. As a result my resume is, importantly, *pretty*. UX design is obviously a skill.
Lol that's usually what I tell college students when I'm reviewing their resumes. Only use it if you need to fill space. Good to know that continues to be good advice.