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Resume Guide
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Some words of wisdom to improve your resume. Compiled from our own experiences, CS Career Questions on Reddit, and other sources…

General Advice

  • Lose the objectives. These rarely make sense on any resume because they should be fairly obvious.

  • Summaries are not always necessary. Summaries are better for people who need to condense a long career into a concise blurb. If you have a one-page resume, it's probably not necessary to include a summary.

  • If you are a citizen of the country you are applying for a job in but your name or background could imply you aren't, it might be best to list "[X] Citizen" on your resume.

  • Aim for a single page. Every recruiter I’ve spoken to hates resumes from new grads that are full of fluff. Put down the important things and it should only take a page. Try to focus on content that is CS related.

  • Order sections by relevance and strength of your information. Generally, a resume will include your name and contact information at the top, followed by a skills section and an experience section. Some people include a projects section or a publications section as well, if they have strong projects or publications. If you are a current student or a new/recent graduate, an education section should be at the top of the resume; otherwise, it should be at the bottom of the resume.

  • When in doubt, your resume should be simple. Unless you are a graphic designer or UX student, skip the crazy fonts and illustrations. It takes up useful space when you should be presenting the information clearly.

  • Make sure to expand upon the details and accomplishments of your work and projects! "Fixed bugs for team's primary application" is meaningless. Tell us more about how your work helped your team/company, what interesting technical problems you solved, what frameworks/technologies you used, etc. Being able to point to specific numbers is good ("Wrote application which saved 10 hours per week in manual QA time", etc.).

    • When Google visited campus, they mentioned that they like to see the following formula when listing accomplishments and skills:

    Accomplished [X] as measured by [Y] by doing [Z].

  • Cut out the fluff. You generally don't need to include hobbies, school activities, or the like. Sometimes they can be relevant (like volunteer work in CS or winning a CS-related competition), but they should be first on the chopping block. Non-relevant stuff should definitely be left out.

  • Make sure to send your resume in a text parseable format, such as a .doc file. Most companies of size use Applicant Tracking Software (ATS) to manage and filter resumes. If your resume is in an image, or rasterized pdf format, it is much less likely to appear in searches. I have both a .doc file and a PDF version of my current resume.

  • Name your document : NAME RESUME DATE

    • As you make more edits and versions of your resume, it’s useful to be able to go back and see previous iterations.

  • Keep your resume on Dropbox - it makes it really easy to apply from several computers or your phone.

Name, Contact Information, and Links

  • Your name should be prominently shown at the top of your resume (e.g., using a large bold font). The word "Resume" is unnecessary.

    • A Facebook recruiter stressed that every resume should have the title of the job they do (or are looking to do) under the name. Recruiters can be hiring for many roles and it can be easy to be accidentally put in the wrong pile (ie Systems Engineer instead of Software Engineer).

    • Also lots of recruiters have advised putting what you’re looking for (internship and date, full-time employment) near the top.

  • Some people choose to list just their name, phone number, and email address (omitting physical address). Some people like to have a phone number (Google voice is perfect for this) and email address that they use solely for job hunting. These are all fine choices, just make sure your name and a contact method are clearly shown.

  • Feel free to include a GitHub and/or LinkedIn link at the top, near your contact information. Probably skip the GitHub if you don’t have anything on there though! Recruiters rarely read your GitHub because they likely wouldn’t understand it but engineers who have interviewed me have pulled mine up on the spot.

Skills

  • Include a list of languages/tools/software you're comfortable with. You can order them based on proficiency (beginner, intermediate, expert) or just list them.

  • Break down your skills list if you have a lot of languages/tools/software.

  • Remember that anything you list in your skills section is fair game in an interview. Don't lie and put things on there that you aren't comfortable talking about or working in.

Experience and Projects

  • Include a good description of what is it that you worked on or created, what you did specifically/what you contributed technically, the languages used to create the program/app/software. In my resume, I have the languages or tools I used highlighted in bold. I’ve seen some people do the same thing but put the language / software listed on the far right margin.

  • Include the start and end dates for each job (e.g., Jan 2017 -- Dec 2018).

  • Use bullets! Paragraphs are a lot harder to skim than resumes and that's very important when a recruiter has 20 seconds to read your resume and decide if you're cool or not.

  • Don't include just a list of languages; find a way to incorporate them into your descriptions.

  • Don't write generic and vague sentences like "created an app" -- find a way to make them personal and technically interesting.

  • When listing a job/internship, the company name should be emphasized more than the position/role because it is typically a stronger "signal" to the prospective employer. When comparing applicants, the company name is likely to speak more to your capabilities than the position (which is probably some variation of "software engineer"). For example, "Acme Corporation, San Francisco, CA -- Software Engineering Intern" is better than "Software Engineering Intern -- Acme Corporation, San Francisco, CA".

Education

  • The education section should be listed first on your resume if you are a current student or a new/recent graduate.

  • Include the university name and location, degree name, and conferment/graduation date. Use the official degree name and conferment date as stated in your transcript/diploma, to avoid misrepresenting your qualification. If needed, additional information can be included parenthetically to clarify your specialization (e.g., "B.S. in Computer Science (specializing in cybersecurity)", not some made-up "Bachelor of Computing in Cybersecurity"). The start date can be helpful but is optional (e.g., "Jan 2015 -- Dec 2018" or "Dec 2018" are fine).

  • If you have not graduated yet, use the expected conferment/graduation date or leave it open (e.g., "Dec 2018 (expected)" or "Jan 2015 -- Present").

  • List all bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees (or equivalent), not just the highest or most recent one.

  • For a bachelor's or master's degree, include your GPA unless it's conspicuously low (e.g., below 3.0). I’ve seen people also include their CS or major GPA (particularly if it’s a lot higher). Also include any honors or distinctions received (e.g., summa cum laude, Dean's List for X out of Y semesters). A list of courses taken is not necessary because this would likely be similar across applicants.

  • The university name should be emphasized more than the degree name because it is typically a stronger "signal" to the prospective employer. When comparing applicants, the university name is likely to speak more to your capabilities than the degree name (which is probably some variation of "B.S. in Computer Science"). For example, "New York College, Albany, NY -- B.S. in Computer Science" is better than "B.S. in Computer Science -- New York College, Albany, NY".

Others

  • Include publications (e.g., conference papers) if you have any! List them using a standard citation format (e.g., IEEE, ACM).

  • Include any CS-related clubs you’ve been part of! That means that all of you can put CSIP on there ;)

  • Include any Hackathons you’ve participated in or placed in. Everybody seems to love these right now and I can safely say that my experience in last year’s UGA Hacks got me my internship last summer. Also makes for an easy topic to talk about!

Formatting Tips

Fonts

  • Use a professional typeface suitable for prose (boring is good). Please, no Comic Sans, Papyrus, or even Courier, unless you are trying to make a statement. Don't use more than two typefaces.

  • It’s easy to go too small with your font (trying to cram everything into one page). Make sure to print a physical copy to check that it’s not too small for a person to actually read in hand.

Layout and Alignment

  • Use consistent vertical and horizontal spacing in your layout. Check that text at the same indentation level are aligned uniformly.

  • Avoid crammed walls of text. Use white space in your layout to reinforce the structure of your resume; you should be able to make out key sections and headings even from a distance.

  • Check for badly hyp-henated words.

Bullet Points

  • Decide whether to end every bullet point with a period.

  • Use the same bullet point symbol of the same size within each indentation level. Don't switch from • to ◦ to ■ within the same level; pick one and stick with it.

Dates

  • Decide whether to spell all months in full (e.g., July, September), or use their common 3-letter abbreviations (e.g., Jul, Sep). The abbreviations can help to save space.

  • For consistency, use calendar months (e.g., Sep, Jan) instead of school semester/term names (e.g., Fall, Winter).

  • Use an en dash (--), instead of a hyphen (-) or em dash (---), for all date ranges, with a single space before and after the en dash (e.g., Jan 2017 -- Dec 2018).

  • Use "Present" as the end date if the activity is ongoing (e.g., "Jan 2015 -- Present").

Spelling and Grammar

  • Check spelling, capitalization, and punctuation. For best results, check at least twice with a gap of a few days, and read aloud backwards starting from the last line in the resume.

  • Spell out obscure abbreviations in full the first time you use them. The first letter of each word is typically not capitalized (e.g., use "scanning tunneling microscope (STM)" instead of "Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM)").

Resources