5 Tips That’ll Improve Your Software Developer Resume

One of the most nerve wrecking things about job hunting is the impending doom of creating and/or updating your resume. How can you possibly pitch your professional self in a PDF file?

Although it’s not ideal, resumes are still very much needed, even in a technical field, and everyone should be able to easily work on their own and efficiently.

Here are 5 tips that will improve your resume and make hiring managers job much easier:

C’mon, Make It Look Good

Looks aren’t everything even when it comes to your resume, but it makes sense you put a little bit of effort on it since it’s the first thing a company will see from you.
Any design ‘n00b’ can easily get a resume template in no time, for free or for a very acceptable price – browse solutions that don’t require design software, such as Canva, or take a look at Etsy to spend a couple of bucks on an easy-to-scan template.

Structure It

Your resume should be fairly easy to read and go straight to the point. If you’re an experienced developer, make sure you list your professional experience first, namely your current company and title, followed by the languages and technologies you’re proficient with.
If you’re straight out of college and looking for your first professional experience, include any real-world experience you have, such as internships, or even a summer job you even might think has nothing to do with the job hire your applying to. It might not be interesting technically, but experiences such as part time jobs, can be very telling about your soft skills, team work or even management abilities. Follow this by your contributions to real-world projects, such as open-source projects, your education and of course, projects you developed as a student or just for fun – sum them up and list the technologies.

This Is Technical

Software Development positions are technical, so recruiters will want to know which technologies you worked with, which ones you mastered and what type of meaningful work you developed with their help.
You can list the technologies and languages you’re experienced with, sure, but we also recommend you provide context. E.g. If you’re describing your last professional role, weave in the language and technologies into the description.

Show and Tell

It kinda sucks to say this, but you need to prove yourself. That means showcasing your competency on your resume in a way that stands out and is as specific as possible. If you can, please use numbers – numbers are flashy! Anything followed by a ‘%’ is even flashier! Quantify your work, either we’re talking about clients, users, tickets or others.

Tailor It

If you’re just starting your career and looking for a full stack position, it makes sense that you have a resume that covers most of your skills and interests, but if you’re applying to specific positions, you might want to tailor your resume for a strategical application. E.g. let’s say video games have always been a passion of yours and you decided to play around with game engines like Unity and even became pretty comfortable with C# despite being self taught. You then decide to take a risk and apply to a position related to video games development. What do you do? Make sure you mention you’re self taught and showcase your experiments and personal projects. Easy! Just link that sweet GitHub of yours in the PDF file!

Found these tips helpful? Wanna put them to practice? Great! We’re hiring!
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