How to make a 10x resume for a software engineering role

Photo by Bram Naus on Unsplash

Over the last 10 years, I have coached and worked directly with over 1,000 students, whom I have taught directly or indirectly through Coding Dojo. Coding Dojo now has a great team of career advisors who help with students and their resume preparation, but I wanted to take some time to reflect on what lessons I’ve learned as I’ve helped my own students find jobs.

Why you need a 10x resume

You may already be familiar with a 10x concept where in the software space, great developers are known to be 10 times more efficient/productive than an average developer. A resume is similar. A mediocre resume may get you 1–3 interview requests a week. A 10x resume would get you 1–3 interview requests a day.

Imagine what your life would look like if you were to get 1–3 interview requests a day! You would have a lot more options to choose from, not be so worried about whether you will find a new job soon, and be more confident as you go through each interview (as you know, if you don’t do well on this interview, you can always do better on the next interviews).

Now, how do you make a 10x resume? The answers are surprisingly simple.

Tip #1 — it’s all about the keywords

Put yourself as a hiring manager who has to screen through hundreds of resumes in an hour. You already learned that almost everyone who’s applying for your role knows certain technologies such as HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Even someone who took a few hours of tutorials on any of the free sites would also put this list of technologies in the resume.

So imagine that as you sort through hundreds of resume (and imagine that you only have 60 minutes to sort through 500 resumes), most of the resumes you see list technologies such as this:

• Technologies: HTML, CSS, Javascript

Now, imagine that you now see a resume that has this:

• Technologies: HTML, HAML, CSS, LESS, SASS, Bootstrap, Foundation, Responsive Design, Javascript ES5/ES6, Jasmine, Typescript, CoffeeScript, React

Which one do you think your eyes will gravitate toward? Even if someone who had just put down HTML, CSS, Javascript may really be a better developer, the fact that someone listed a lot more keywords automatically gives the latter a far more advantage. Even if HAML, LESS, SASS, Bootstrap, Foundation, Jasmine, TypeScript, CoffeeScript could be learned in an hour or less (per technology), the fact that someone knew about these and took the time to learn these, puts them at an advantage.

Similarly, take a look at these two examples. The first one is a bad example of what your resume shouldn’t look like. The bottom one is a better example.

Now, let me take this a step further and explain what myself and other hiring managers probably won’t share so openly about. I will intentionally make this blunt so that the points are clear.

1. If the resume has less than 10–20 relevant keywords (relevant, meaning relevant to the job that you’ve applied for), then you’re a rookie. I will probably not look at your resume. 80–90% of resumes I receive fall into this category.
2. If the resume has 20–35 relevant keywords, I may look at your resume a bit more, but I would still consider you a rookie.
3. If the resume has 35–50+ relevant keywords, I would then think you may be a great fit and that you may be experienced enough. I would still need to qualify you to see if you really know the technologies you’ve claimed, but you’re off to a good start.

Now, don’t fall into the trap where you listed so many technologies that only 20–30% of technologies in your resume are relevant to the specific job you’re applying for. These resume are thrown away as they seem irrelevant to the role, and I would think you didn’t even take the time to customize your resume for the job you’ve applied for. I would expect you to customize your resume to fit with my needs and that you didn’t do this, means that you’re not really interested in the job.

Now, the relevant keywords doesn’t have to show up just in the skill set section or the technologies section. In fact, it’s better to see these relevant keywords appear through the resume. For example, do these keywords appear under work experiences or under projects? As a hiring manager, I like to see relevant keywords appear throughout the resume and ideally not just in a job you had 10 years ago. If the relevant keywords are not in the most recent work experiences, I would like to see them in the projects section to really see if you know how to use these tools.

Also, the relevant keywords mean keywords that are relevant to the hiring manager and not relevant keywords to you. There is a subtle difference. For example, if the hiring manager is reviewing for the Java back-end role, for them, they won’t really care that you know 3–4 other programming languages and know 5 other frameworks that are not related to Java. An easy way to identify relevant keywords for the hiring manager is to review their job ad and see which keywords they’ve used. Then, make sure these keywords appear in your resume (or a version of your resume you’ve created for the specific job that you’ve applied for). If you don’t have the exact keywords they are looking for, include other keywords that are related.

Tip #2 — Make your resume dense

Most inexperienced developers have a resume that looks like the left. Most experienced developers have a hard time putting all their key accomplishments into a single page resume and therefore their resume tends to look like the right.

Looking at hundreds of resume (every hour), you get to build a bias that any resume that looks like the left is a bad resume, where the candidate is just not experienced enough, did not take the time to learn new skills, or did not take the time to really polish their resume to include projects, etc. Any resume that looks like the right, the hiring managers will pay more attention to.

Remember that hiring managers usually take no more than 5–10 seconds to review the resume. This means, how your resume visually looks and how dense it looks is CRITICAL.

Even if you’re new, take the time to learn new technologies, build projects that are relevant, and take time to add more content into your resume (more about this coming up next).

Tip #3 — Include accomplishments, not job descriptions

Please look at these two examples:

For each of the bullet point you listed under Work Experience or Education, ask yourself whether someone with the same title at the same company can say the same thing as you did. For example, can the worst developer in the entire history of the company still say the same thing that you’ve stated in your first bullet point under that work experience? If the answer is a Yes, change that bullet point immediately!

Highlight the accomplishments you’ve made while still highlighting relevant keywords. Hiring managers are looking for A players. Try to come up with accomplishment statements that highlight you as an A player. If you can’t honestly say something that highlights you as an A player, on your next job, try hard to accomplish something significant that could give you an advantage the next time you’re applying for the job. Never settle to be mediocre in your job and remember that A players usually continue accomplishing great things in whatever role they are in and that hiring managers are looking for this track record.

Tip #4 — Projects should be impressive

As a hiring manager, I usually scan the resume for 5–10 seconds and determine whether this resume deserves a click from me. If it passes my test, I click on one of the links (either the portfolio link or the first project link). If the resume had a lot of mistakes such as what was mentioned above, I usually don’t even click on any of the links.

So imagine that your resume was among the 500 resumes that I was reviewing in the last 60 minutes, and your resume passed my 5–10 seconds test! Imagine that your resume had relevant keywords, was dense, and had accomplishment statements! Your resume was better than 90% of the resumes that I have just screened so I am excited and I click on one of your project links.

Now, imagine my surprise when I clicked on the link, what I saw was something either I or someone in my team could probably replicate in a few hours! As I would have automatically assumed that no one in the right mind would ever put a project that they worked less than a week on, I would automatically assume you’ve probably spent a full week and only could create something that would take me a few hours…. This would automatically tell me that you’re not experienced enough and I would be happy that I was able to filter your resume out. If I didn’t, myself and the team would have spent hours un-necessarily only to find out that you’re not experienced enough.

Now, I know you may have been learning a new technology and to you, the project may seem good, but remember that hiring managers who are reviewing your projects are experienced developers who use these technologies every day! If your project does not seem to have enough features or complexities to warrant at least one week of their time, your project is simply not good enough! This may sound harsh but it’s really how a lot of hiring managers operate…

Now, some additional tips:

1. Don’t only put the Github link to your projects. In the initial screening, hiring managers don’t have time to review your codebase. Instead, send them to a live site or to your portfolio site where in 10–15 seconds, hiring managers can easily see key features for your projects.
2. Don’t use Heroku. Heroku is for amateurs and hiring managers don’t want to hire amateurs (unless they have to).
3. Don’t send them to a site that requires login/registration. Hiring managers don’t have the time to do these misc. tasks.
4. If you have more than 5 years of work experience as a developer, hiring managers may forgive you for putting links to your projects, especially if you’ve worked for big companies such as Google, Apple, Facebook, etc. Still, it’s better to have strong relevant projects that hiring managers can quickly see and assess than having no projects or no links to the projects.
5. If you have less than 5 years of work experience as a developer, make sure you have at least 2–3 strong projects. Depending on the area you live in, you may get enough interest with just 2 strong projects (where each project, it would take another experienced developer at least a week to replicate). If you live in Silicon Valley or another tech hub with lots of competitions, put 3 strong projects. My students who put 3 projects in their resume have repoted that they are getting 50–100% more phone calls than when they have applied with just 2 projects in their resume.

Tip #5 — Personalize the resume

If you really like the company you’re applying for, personalize the resume to include relevant projects or message customized for that company in your resume.

If your resume followed all the tips above AND your resume has something specific to the company you’ve applied for, hiring managers would react excitedly. They all want candidates who are excited to work with them.

Of course, doing this for each job you’re applying for, could be difficult and time-consuming. However, the more customized your resume becomes (for each job you’re applying for), the higher chance you’ll have of getting noticed.

For example, for each of the job you’re applying for, consider the following questions:

1. Which of my projects would be relevant for this role? What key things could I highlight in these projects that would be appealing to the hiring managers at this company?
2. Which accomplishments in what work experiences would be relevant that I should elaborate more on? What are work experiences or accomplishments that I could hide/remove to make it more targeted/personalized for this specific role I am applying for?
3. Any particular reasons why I am interested in this company? How could I convey this interest and passion through either the resume or in the cover letter, so that my resume gets noticed more than other generic resumes that hiring managers are reviewing?

90%+ of resumes hiring managers review are generic resumes and cover letters that candidates are using over and over again to apply to all the jobs. Less than 10% of resumes or job applications have customized/personalized for that particular job application and the company. Even if your resume is a bit weaker than other resumes, if you showed your passion/interest for that company by adding something specific to why you’re interested in the company, your resume has a significantly higher chance of getting reviewed more thoroughly.

Other Tips

1. Don’t use 2 column resume. A lot of companies use the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to filter out resumes automatically. Resume with 2 columns are often not parsed appropriately by ATS and may not even show up in the list of filtered resumes for the hiring managers to see. Even if it passes the filter by the ATS, when it’s reviewed by the hiring manager, the filtered version may look radically different than your original resume.
2. If your projects are not complex enough, strongly consider investing time to build a stronger project. A resume with weak projects is simply not powerful enough and you won’t get a lot of interests. Sometimes it’s much better to spend 2–3 weeks producing 2–3 strong projects and strengthen your resume before applying aggressively again.

Score Guide

If you want a more detailed guide on how your resume would score (on a scale of 0–10), take a look at this score guideline I’ve created for my students. Going through each item will give you a good idea on how I would rate your resume.

Based on tens of thousands of resumes I’ve reviewed, of which applicants were applying for the engineering roles in my company, 90%+ of resumes gets thrown away because it receives a low score (low score for me is any score below 6). Only about 5–10% of resumes would receive a score of 8 or above. Unfortunately, too many resumes receive a score of 3 or less (even if they have years of experience), but also on the same token, it does make it easier for the hiring managers as most of the bad resumes can be spotted in seconds and can be thrown away without the hiring managers feeling guilty (as they can claim valid reasons for throwing away those resumes).

Summary

These tips may seem simple, but they do have a profound effect. I have coached countless students who went from having 0–1 interview a week to then so many interview requests each day that they were so happy and excited! Many of these students have found jobs within weeks (after their resume was revised); some found awesome jobs within even just a few days!

If you’re struggling with getting enough interview requests, please take these tips seriously and apply them. You’ll be surprised at the number of sudden interest you would get, even if you have no prior work experiences that are relevant for the new role you’re applying for.