What the heck is a good software engineer resume?
You can keep ping-ponging back and forth. The more you ask about your resume, the more confused you will be, and the more you update your resume, the worse it will get.
First: know everything
While browsing the cscareerquestions subreddit, I came across a post from a Redditor struggling to find a job. They shared an anonymized resume in their post, which boasted four internships and a computer science teaching fellow role. Additionally, they included some relevant and interesting technologies such as ZeroMQ, Python, Docker, and React.
I was shocked when I saw a comment that said the poster had an “average” resume.
Most of my college friends, including myself, did not have this many internships when we graduated. Most of the resumes I see from new grads do not include this many internships and such a variety of technologies. I tried to look up data to see how many students would have this many internships on their resumes and found a statistic that said “4 in 10 college students have had internship experience.” I highly doubt that having five internships is “average.”
Other Redditors pushed back against this idea as well, and the commenter’s defense was even more shocking to me: because the candidate used ZeroMQ to offload around 50 logs per minute, and because that is less than a message a second, this does not count as practical experience. “The resume gives weird vibes.”
What?
The fact that a new grad touched a messaging queue alone is a win if you ask me. Apparently, not only do you need 5+ internships, but you also need to be an expert as a new grad. Cool.
As I was thinking about this post, I remembered how an engineer I respect once told me he was hired with almost no coding experience 20 years ago as a physics graduate. Even five years ago, I think the resume in question would have been very successful. What the heck happened?
Obviously, the elephant in the room is the current state of the job market. However, even if the job market is tough, that should not change the meaning of average. Language like this makes new graduates feel like something is wrong with their resume or experience, even if they did a lot more compared to the average student.
Second: Change everything 10 times
Even if you have the “perfect” experience, you would still need to present it in the “correct” way. The only problem is that no one seems to agree on the details of what that means.
“Write a 2-page resume to convey more information!”
“Anything more than 1 page is a crime.”
“Write an objective statement to summarize your career journey and stand out.”
“Only write an objective statement when something needs explaining, like a career switch.”
“No one should write an objective statement.”
“Put the education at the very top.”
“Put it at the very bottom.”
“Put it at the bottom if you have 5+ years of experience.”
“Put soft skills on your resume so that it will help you pass the ATS check.”
“Putting soft skills on the resume is a waste of space and looks bad.”
“Create unique formatting and coloring to stand out.”
“Your formatting is overwhelming; make it black and white.”
You can keep ping-ponging back and forth. The more you ask about your resume, the more confused you will be, and the more you update your resume, the worse it will get.
Maybe we should just accept that most of the resume advice out there is the personal preference of someone, and most of the time, we don’t know what percentage of people share that view.
Recently, I saw a recruiter with a sizable following say that he immediately rejects candidates whose location is different from the location of the company. Did you hear about something called relocation?! People do it all the time, especially new graduates. Maybe we need to accept that we are just trying to find a way to weed people out at this point.
It is not the resume, it is the market
Your resume can increase your chances of getting a job or an internship, but it cannot change the realities of the market.
There are probably candidates out there who can improve their resumes dramatically. However, if you’ve been working on your resume for months, had over 10 people review it, and others are still suggesting changes or offering to ‘fix it’ for a fee, it might be time to step back. Chances are, your resume isn’t the issue.
If this article spoke to you, let me know in the comments 👇
