Simple Guidelines for Engineering Resumes

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A resume is an essential component of your application package. Having a resume that concisely highlights your experience, skills, and potential contribution is the door to your next dream job. In this post, I will cover several guidelines that would help you make your resume stand out. The target audiences include graduates and people who work in the software engineering industry with several years of experience.

Resume Guidelines

Your ultimate goal when writing a resume is to create a document that, if skimmed in 30 seconds, effectively hightlights:

  1. Your current technical skills
  2. Your potential for learning and growth
  3. Your unique professional value

Your resume should help any reader understand what you can contribute to a team, whether they're hiring managers or someone from HR. Without further ado, let's jump straight to key points when crafting your resume.

Formatting

  • Use 1 full page, no more and no less, with a minimum of 0.5" for all margins
  • Begin with a blank page -- only add in what's relevant for your next role
  • Start with a plain Google Docs as you iterate through the content (worry about aesthetics / styles / LaTeX later)
  • Use consistent font style and size, indent, space, bullets, date format, etc.
  • Because some audiences will receive hard copies of your resume, include URLs rather than embedding links if possible

Resume sections

Your resume should include personal information, skills, experience, and education. The order of three sections -- skills, experience, and education -- depends on your preference and their relevancies to the position you're applying for. Typically, I would put skills first, then experience and education at last. But in some cases where I want to highlight my experience, I put it at the top.

  • Focus on the content that is relevant for your next role. There is no need to list everything you've done.
  • You can also include a project section for things you've built within or outside of your school / work. This is particularly useful for fresh graduates as you might not have much experience. Also, if you're contributing to some open-sources projects, this is where you can showcase your contributions.

Your resume MUST include

  • Name
  • Phone number
  • Email address (professional, non-academic)
  • LinkedIn
  • GitHub URL

Optional contact information

  • Personal/academic project site
  • Social media profiles (focuses on professional content)

Your resume SHOULD NOT include

  • A picture of yourself

  • Your GPA

  • Objective/summary statement

  • List of publication/conference presentations

  • Citizenship, age, gender, maritual status, etc.

  • Irrelevant publications/conference presentations

  • Irrelevant awards or honors
    (Relevant = notable and impressive to your new boss!)

Experience

  • Include exact job titles and list roles in reverse chronological order
  • Getting paid to conduct research is experience!
  • Don't just summarize responsibilities -- include your achievements that will be relevant to your next job
  • Each entry should have at least 2 - 3 bullet points -- don't use paragraphs (they're skimmable)
  • For each entry, start with a high-level, accessible description of what you did and why you did it, so readers from a variety of backgrounds have context of your work. End by demonstrating the results of the action.
  • Begin each bullet point with a past-tense verb

Skills

  • Focus on the skills that are most relevant for your next job
  • Sort skills into meaningful clusters (e.g., databases, languages, etc.)
  • Use experience quantifiers (*some exposure, etc.) when neccesary
  • For any skill listed, include in your resume the situation where you use it
  • Remember: if you list a skill on your resume, be prepared for interviewers to ask about it!

Education

  • List each college/university awarded (including degree and school) in reverse chronological order
  • Your GPA shouldn't be included unless it's really high

LinkedIn

  • Get a customize URL!
  • Upload a professional photo and background photo
  • Create a summary section to emphasize where you want to go in your career
  • Replicate your resume but include additional details that couldn’t fit onto that single page document
  • LinkedIn shows what you’ve posted, shared, and liked -- so be active!

Personal branding

“Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.” (Jeff Bezos) A personal brand -- often represented by professional materials like resumes, Linkedin, and online presence -- are the ideas, values, emotions, etc. a person seeks to connect to their identity/work to differentiate themselves from others.

Your brand is the reputation conjured up when people see your face or read your name. It highlights the unique value created by your passions (what excites you), your strengths (what you do best), and your personality (who you are). Your skills are a huge part of your personal brand. As you revise your resume / LinkedIn to reflect this career transition, emphasize the most exciting parts of your jobs, and the highlight the skills most relevant to your current career goals:

  • What was the most successful project you ever tackled, and what skills made you successful? Define your most successful project in each role, and include a brief description of it in that job’s entry.
  • When faced with an overwhelming obstacle, what’s your “go-to” skill to overcome it?
  • What are the skills that others often acknowledge in you?
  • Which skills do you enjoy using as often as possible, regardless of the task?
  • What skills are the most helpful in your most recent role? These skills should appear throughout your resume. Emphasize what you want to do in your next job.
  • What skills have you mastered but would rather not use every day? Where feasible, omit these skills from your resume. Don’t emphasize the things you don’t want to do.
  • What skills would you like to build but have not yet had the opportunity to practice? Make sure to incorporate this into your project, so you can add it to your resume!

Above are some short guidelines to stucture, and form the content of your resume. Hope you'll find them helpful!