Resume Resources

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If you haven’t yet, make sure to go through the technical resume lesson in order to have more context for these resources and when to use them.

General Advice

Create an ATS-ready Resume

An ATS, or applicant tracking system, is used by most companies to screen resumes. Each ATS system is different – when creating your resume, think about your audience, both in terms of content and the process of submitting the resume. It’s always important to follow the directions for that specific company, but here are a few key components to keep in mind when creating a resume that is optimized for ATS systems:

Use a Word doc or a Google Doc (which can be downloaded as a Word doc) to use as your main copy. Not all ATS systems can read PDFs.
Use a single column.
Compare your resume to the job description and pull out key words to highlight in your skills and experience. An ATS system will not assume you have a skill unless you list it. If it’s in the job description, add it to your skills. Learn more about how to approach ATS systems here.
Need some inspiration? Check out these free resume templates from JobScan or from Job Hunt

Resume Checklist

When creating your resume, check out this checklist to make sure you’ve included the right information:

Order of Content

Heading/Contact, Summary, Skills, Projects, Experience/Education

Heading & Contact Info

Name: stand outs, easy to read
Title: “software developer/front end engineer/back end engineer,” stand outs, easy to read, comparable in size to name
Email address
Phone number (optional)
GitHub link
LinkedIn link
Personal website (optional)

Summary/Profile (Optional)

We strongly recommend using a summary if you do not have a lot of previous work experience.

Provides a brief description of the student’s career change to software and how they will use their previous skillset with their new skillset
If for a specific position, the summary is tailored accordingly (instead of discussing general interest in software, summary addresses interest in specific job/company)
Clear and concise
No grammatical or spelling errors

Skills

Skills listed are technical. Do not include “soft skills” or professional skills here – add them to your experience descriptions
Skills are grouped logically by type
No grammatical or spelling errors
Section for skills learning/interested in (optional)
If for a specific position, skills are tailored accordingly
Skills do not include hobbies or other extraneous details

Projects

At least 3 projects are listed
All projects are presented in the same format
Title is included
Technologies, frameworks, testing suite, etc. are all listed as bullet points
1-2 sentences of a brief description of the project is provided as a high level overview of what the project is and how it works
Active link to project repository with a visual cue that it’s a link
Active link to deployed application with a visual cue that it’s a link
Links should go to student’s own version of repo and not their project partner’s, if applicable
No grammatical or spelling errors

Experience

Turing can be listed here and under experience but only if you have limited work experience or gaps in employment. Otherwise, use that space to highlight professional experience from prior roles. The technical experience section will provide a good amount of techncial work for the reader.
Amount of space “Experience” section takes up on the page is less than that of the “Projects” section
Formatted with job title followed by company name
Brief description of role and what value you brought to the company
Include any quantified or results-driven experience
No grammatical or spelling errors

Education

Turing is listed here as you can say you received a “Certificate of completion in [Back]/[Front]-End Engineering”
Brief description of area of study or skills that can relate to software development or specific job applying to
Add in any leadership or extracurricular activities you participated in (SLC, Student Circles, etc.)
No grammatical or spelling errors

Proofread

Clean, easy-to-follow
Fonts and text-sizing are consistent
If color is used, it is easy to read and distinguish all parts of the resume
Printable or ATS-ready version
No photo
No extraneous details/sections (no personal interests, “looking for” sections, etc.)
Resume is only one page
Remove any first person pronouns (I, me)

Submitting Your Resume

If submitting through an ATS system, submit a word doc. If submitting a resume through an email, attach a PDF. Again, every company is different. If you’re unsure of how to approach an application, reach out to your Career Specialist.