Ideal Job Resumes
Last time we talked about building your Ideal Job Profile (IJP) to help you understand what you’re looking for in your next role and to keep you accountable to staying on track in that search. But, it doesn’t stop there. Once you have an IJP you need to build resumes to sell yourself as that profile of job.
Some folks suggest tweaking resumes for each individual job you are applying for, but that seems like A LOT of work with minimal increasingly positive outcomes. Applying for jobs is a time intensive process, so we need to focus on spending time on efforts that give us the most ROI.
A resume is a hook.
Our #1 goal of resume writing is to catch the attention of the person reading it. You don’t have to convince them you’re the perfect person for the job, you just need to convince them that they should want to learn more. We want them to see your resume and think, ‘this person has relevant experience.’ That’s all we need! Recruiters are inundated with resumes, so since you only get a few seconds, you have to hand the information right to them, don’t make them search for it.
In the post about IJP’s we talked through a scenario where, as a candidate, you were primarily open to Backend roles, but for the right company, you would consider a Full Stack position. Since these are two different profiles, you need two different resumes to sell yourself for each job. Each resume should highlight specifics about your work that are aligned to each profile of job. If you are building your resume for a backend specific engineering role, you’ll want to highlight backend specific tasks you’ve done. For full stack, the same.
Something to note - If you have been a Full Stack engineer and are wanting to move to a Backend role but aren’t making distinct resumes, a recruiter might see your resume mentioning a bit of frontend work, normal for a FS engineer, and assume you wouldn’t be a fit for Backend. Remember, recruiters are looking for reasons you aren’t qualified.
A few random resume tips:
Skills Section - Every resume should have a skills section (it’s basically doing the keyword search for them). Don’t assume you have to put proficiency levels on skills. If you are listing them out, they’ll get read left to right with the assumption that the first noted skills are your most proficient. If you do a bulleted list, they'll assume the first listed are your top.
Length of Resume - Honestly, it doesn’t really matter how long your resume is (within reason). 2-3 pages is fine as long as it’s well written and that the most important/most relevant information is on the first page.
Projects - With the rise of coding bootcamps over the last decade, in tandem is the rise of having projects listed on your resume. Be careful with these. If you are not a new grad and you list projects, recruiters will often make the assumption that you do not have relevant job experience. I always recommend dropping projects once you have work experience, with the caveat of ongoing/cool projects, but I would title those ‘Open Source Work’ instead of ‘projects’ (it’s a trigger word for recruiters).
Next time we’ll talk pitching yourself once you get the recruiter call!