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Résumés

Just three months into my freshman year of college, I gave Microsoft my résumé—all three pages of it. Large blocks of text recounted in excruciating detail the features of the three C++ games I’d created. Under “Work Experience,” I reported every web page I had designed as though each shed some unique and fascinating light on my credentials. The recruiter tossed my résumé aside without a second glance.

With a bit of persistence but mostly dumb luck, I did in fact wind up at Microsoft that summer. My résumé drifted its way to the desk of perhaps the one person who would give me a chance, and he just so happened to need an intern. Jon had a penchant for the less traditional. My three-page faux pas didn’t faze him.

I am fairly sure that I exhausted all luck right then and there. Résumés are an art form, and what I submitted was the equivalent of a four-year-old’s crayon drawing: cute, perhaps, in an incredibly clueless way.

A good résumé clearly highlights a candidate’s relevant skills. It must present the candidate in the best possible light because, after all, it is one’s first chance to persuade the reader that she is the best candidate for the job.

Six Hallmarks of a Powerful Résumé

A powerful résumé should leap off the page saying, “Me! I’m the one you want to hire!” Each and every line should contribute to the employer’s wanting to hire you. Why, then, does a candidate list his vague and totally unprovable love for running? One has precious few lines on a résumé, so unless you’re applying to work in a health club, skip the fluff.

Before submitting your résumé, go through each line on it and ask yourself why it would help convince an employer to interview you. If you can’t give a reason, there’s a good chance it shouldn’t be there.

The six hallmarks of a powerful résumé is a checklist that your résumé should pass with flying colors. Does yours?

1. Accomplishment Oriented

If your résumé reads too much like a job description, then there’s a good chance you’re doing it wrong. Résumés should highlight what you did, not what you were
supposed
to do.

Example:

• Responsibility oriented: “Analyzed new markets and explored potential entrance strategies for China division.”
  
• Accomplishment oriented: “Led entrance strategy for Foobar product in China, and successfully persuaded CEO to refocus division on the enterprise market, resulting in a 7 percent increase in profits”
  

The accomplishment-oriented résumé packs a much stronger punch. Everyone wants an employee who “gets things done.”

Watch out for words like
contributed to, participated in,
or
helped out with.
These are good signs that you have focused more on responsibilities than accomplishments. After all, someone at Microsoft could say that they “contributed to the implementation of Microsoft Office.” But what does that really say?

2. Quantifiable Results

Ever seen an advertising campaign that says, “A portion of our profits is donated to charity”? The convenient thing about that statement is that it could be 0.0001% and it’s still technically true.

This is what I think about every time I see a résumé that says “reduced server latency” or “increased customer satisfaction.” If you really did this (and it had a remotely meaningful impact), why can’t you tell me how much?

Quantifying your results makes them meaningful by showing employers the impact that you had. If you’ve implemented a change that reduced company costs or increased profits, employers want to hire you.

For business roles, quantifying results with dollars will make the strongest impact. However, if this isn’t possible, you can instead quantify the results with change in employee turnover, reduction in customer support calls, or whatever metric is the most relevant. You may want to consider offering the percentage change in addition to (or sometimes instead of) the absolute change.

For technical positions, it may be more impactful to quantify some results in more technical terms: seconds of latency, number of bugs, or even an algorithmic improvement in big-O time. However, be careful to strike a balance here: while your accomplishments may be impressive to a fellow engineer, a less technical HR individual might be the one reviewing your résumé. You want to make sure that your résumé impresses everyone.

Example:

• Original: “Implemented crash reporter and used results to fix three biggest causes of crashes.”
  
• Newly quantified: “Implemented crash reporter and used results to fix three biggest causes of crashes, leading to a 45 percent reduction in customer support calls.”
  

Before, I understood that you did something reasonably important but I didn’t understand how important. The quantified revision, though, leaves me with a “wow!”

3. Well Targeted

Back in the days of typewriters, a generalized résumé could be forgiven. Editing a résumé was a laborious process, and candidates frequently made 200 photocopies and sent off the same résumé to every company. A well-targeted résumé undoubtedly performed better, but it wasn’t as strictly required.

Now, with résumés being easy to tweak and rarely even printed, tailoring your résumé to the position is a must. Competition has heated up, and this extra bit of work is necessary to put your résumé on the same playing field, let alone jump out.

Your résumé must be tailored to the position, and potentially the company as well. This is especially important for job switchers. For example, if you’re applying for a technical lead position after years of being a software engineer, you’ll want to mention the time that you led the design of a new feature. Or, if you’re applying to a start-up that you know is facing customer support issues, you’ll want to emphasize your prior experience in handling upset clients.

Luckily, figuring out how to target your résumé isn’t especially hard. Discovering information about the company or position is usually quite straightforward; you merely need to check their web site and/or the job description. Ask yourself, what are the company’s biggest issues? How would my role impact those? Even if you haven’t solved the exact problems the company faces, you hopefully have skills one would need to solve them.

4. Universally Meaningful

Some résumés are so littered in technical jargon that it’s hard to discern meaning from them. Technical jargon need not mean anything computer related; it could be fancy sales terms, marketing terminology, or even internal expressions. Candidates at big companies are often the worst at this! They spent so long in their own companies that they forget that terms like
S
+ aren’t actually widely known (yes, Microsofties, I’m looking at you).

Your résumé should be meaningful to recruiters as well as to your future managers and teammates. Avoid acronyms, and translate highly technical terminology to plain English. Explaining the impact or goals, particularly in a quantifiable way, can help laypeople understand your value. You still can’t please everyone, and that’s OK; just make sure that everyone will get the “gist” of your résumé.

That said, some terms are more understandable than one might think. Google recruiters in Seattle certainly knew what it meant for a Microsoft employee to have been promoted from a Level 60 to a Level 63 during her career.

5. Clean, Professional, Concise

Many recruiters will toss your résumé away for a single typo. They figure that they have so many résumés to go through; why waste time on someone with poor communication skills?

Tech companies tend to be a bit more forgiving, due to their less formal atmosphere and as well as their large international workforce. However, that’s no excuse for sloppiness, particularly in communication-heavy roles.

Make sure to check your résumé thoroughly for the following potential issues:

• Conciseness.
  Avoid large blocks of text on your résumé; people hate reading, and will generally skip right over paragraphs. Your résumé should be a collection of bullets of around one to two lines.
  
• Spelling.
  With all due credit to Mrs. O’Connor, my fifth-grade teacher, here’s a useful tip to check spelling. Our minds have a tendency to read through spelling mistakes if we know what word to expect. Try checking for spelling mistakes by reading your résumé
  backwards
  .
  
• Grammar.
  You can use Microsoft Word’s grammar checker, but don’t rely exclusively on this. If you are not a native English speaker, make sure to have a native English speaker—one who is strong in grammar and spelling—review your résumé.
  
• Margins.
  You’re not fooling anyone with the 0.5-inch margins. Your margins should ideally be one inch, but certainly no less than 0.75 inch.
  
• Normal fonts.
  Use a standard font, like Times New Roman or Arial, and don’t use fonts smaller than 10 pt. Comic Sans is never acceptable.
  
• Consistency.
  You can use either commas or semicolons to separate items in a list, but be consistent. End either every bullet with a period, or none. Make sure that your formatting is consistent in terms of bold, underline, italics, and the like. Your formatting decisions are often not as important as being consistent with them.
  
• White space.
  Using ample white space will make your résumé easy to read. Recruiters have to deal with enough in their day; don’t add to strain with a crowded résumé.
  
• No first person.
  Although it can be tough, avoid using
  I, me,
  or
  myself.
  Use the third person throughout your résumé, with the exception of the objective statement, where first person is more expected.
  

6. Well Structured and Clear

When a recruiter picks up your résumé, her eye jumps to certain things. She wants to know your education (school, degree, major, and graduation year) and your professional experience (companies, titles, length of employment). For software engineering jobs, she may also look for a set of technical skills.

Remember that the path of least resistance for the recruiter is always to toss the résumé. If she can’t find the information she’s looking for, there’s a good chance she’ll just toss your résumé so she can move on to the next candidate.

Beyond simply structuring your résumé in an intuitive way, you can make small formatting changes to make the best stuff jump out. Consider the following (very abbreviated) résumés for the same candidate:

While these résumés convey the exact same information, résumé 1 emphasizes that Bob held software engineering roles. That’s very relevant, of course, but it’s hardly a highlight of the résumé. Résumé 2, however, emphasizes the fantastic company names: Microsoft, Intel, and Cisco. Which one do you think will pack a strong punch?

When you are writing your résumé, ask yourself: what will differentiate me the most from other applicants? What will make the recruiter put my résumé in the “yes” pile? Ideally, this information will be so obvious that even with a mere glance, someone cannot miss it.

The Structure

Although we usually see résumés structured chronologically, there is an alternative structure: the functional structure. Under the functional structure, your résumé is grouped into categories such as “Leadership,” “Engineering,” and “Sales.” Each category lists your relevant accomplishments, often without dates or positions clearly labeled. Many résumé writers have recommended functional résumés for those whose job titles don’t match their true accomplishments, or for those with significant job gaps. Functional résumés tend to mask those issues.

However, recruiters tend to be wise to this strategy and will spend their time trying to figure out what you want to hide—or, more likely, just toss your résumé since it’s not worth the trouble. Functional résumés may be powerful in theory, but with so many people having such a strong distaste for this structure, it’s probably not worth the risk. If you must separate your accomplishments by skill set, I would recommend a cover letter instead.

We’ll focus on standard résumé format: the (reverse) chronological structure. Chronological résumés tend to almost always have at least an Employment (or Work Experience) section and an Education section, but may also include an Objective, Summary, Technical Skills, or Projects section. Which sections you choose to include depends on your skills, background, and desired position.

The Objective

I’ve probably gotten only one résumé with an objective that was interesting—and in this case, interesting isn’t necessarily good: “to dive at such depths into my subjects and work that I am no longer a prisoner to the confines of my mind and I am instead engaged in the rapture of understanding.” I’ll save you some time and tell you what she was trying to say: she wants to learn stuff. No one was impressed.

While this objective might be unusually philosophical, most objectives do little other than waste precious space. Objectives are not necessary and should be used only if it adds important information.

For example, if you were previously in product management but would like to focus your job search on marketing roles, an objective could be valuable to point recruiters in the right direction. If, however, you’re applying for a sales role and your prior position was also in sales, you probably don’t need to specify this. Most software engineers do not need objectives, as their experience is clearly indicative of such a role.