This is where it all began.
Our ancestors needed some way — a document, really — to verify a candidate’s abilities and determine whether they were eligible for a job.
So they came up with what we now know as a CV or Resume.

Now, having a good or bad resume doesn’t necessarily define a candidate’s worth — but it does help assess whether they might be capable of doing the job.
In essence, a resume is just a filtering tool — used to weed out most candidates in what’s known as the initial screening stage.

Once that filter does its job, the remaining candidates are contacted via email by HR, usually to schedule interviews and evaluate their skills more directly.

After a few interviews, you might get the offer…
Or you might get rejected in the final round…
Or the company might cancel the entire hiring process altogether.
We never know.

But what can we do?

Well — we shut up, and just keep applying. Keep interviewing. Keep showing up.

It’s a long, tiring process. Sometimes it takes a month or two, depending on the company.
Big companies, especially, receive thousands of applications for a single role.

And for senior positions?
Yeah… we don’t talk about that.

Let’s focus on Intern/Fresher roles:
Here are some resume tips I personally vouch for.
(Some people might have different opinions — and that’s okay. The goal is to read, think, and decide what works for you.)

That said…

Welcome to RESUME 101

Think of this as your no-fluff crash course on crafting a resume that actually gets noticed

gg

Let’s break it down.

1 Ask yourself these questions and think.

  • What kind of job do you want to get? Front-end Web? Back-end Web? Enterprise applications? a job in C++ building databases? games industry?
    Each job roles requires different set of skills or a overalp can occur most likely in tech.
    So it’s important to know what someone’s hoping for and to tailor accordingly.

  • What sort of position are you hoping to get?
    Intern, Junior, Senior, Director?

  • Find what you are passionate about.
    Like to do Youtube? Finance? Tech? or perhaps you just love money?

2 Some to do’s & not to do’s:

  • Try to reduce the verbosity of the resume, even if it makes it look more sparse – people will skim this only. Words you don’t need mean the words you want them to read are less likely to be what they see.

    • For example:
      • Developed a full-stack web application using React and Node.js that allowed users to manage their daily tasks efficiently and stay organized. (original verbose line)
      • What we can write it as: Developed a task manager app utilizing React and Node.js and enabled daily task tracking
      • What we did was just putting the action first–which is manage

  • Fewer but better projects beats greater in number but lesser in variety, If you have 8 projects, don’t list them all on a resume –makes it too busy.

    • Have at least 3-4 projects if you don’t have any experience.
    • And anything beats nothing remember. If you think your project is shit but you don’t have anything else then put the shit project.

  • Trimming out certain things that the audience(HR) knows

    • your target audience knows what these things are and doesn’t need to be told:

      For example:

      • Conducted rigorous testing by creating and validating custom test cases, and integrated an external assembler to support assembly-to-machine code conversion

  • Try to quantify if you can but don’t put uneccessary numbers;

    • Example: Delivered real-time tech news via a serverless RESTful API, handling 100+ daily requests on a free-tier server.

  • Use STAR methodology if possible –Link

  • Be bold. Don’t be afraid to have blank space

    • If you don’t have anything to put up then leave it as it is dont bs through it.

  • Order of sections matter:

    • For Interns / no experience : education > projects > skills > extracurriculars
    • For experienced folks : experience > projects > skills > education

  • Include any kind of experience –better than having not at all.

  • Don’t explain well known terms as filler words.

    • Obvious filler can be worse though –because now you risk someone skimming your resume and they only see the filler, which creates bad impression.

  • Keep boldiing consistent or rather not have any bolding at all.

  • A lot of people will tell you to do that sort of thing, and to add numbers everywhere “improved by X%!” (as I did but keep it realistic), any human seeing your resume will immediately be exasperated by it.
    Sure it looks good though.

    • So what’s the way?
      • Basically the people who you want to be reading your resumes know what it is like to be very junior –they’ve been there. And they have good bullshit detectors –do everything you can not to set them off.

3 Expectations from Interviewer

  • As an intern or graduate, we look for coachability / willingness to learn, and we try to gauge the applicant’s enthusiasm for CS as well as just how intelligent they are (basically the gradient we expect them to be on / how fast we think they will learn).

  • If we give you a problem in an interview, and you blitz through it but don’t listen to the interviewer trying to prod you, you did worse than someone who was less confident but that was engaging in discussion well.

  • In an interview, take time to understand the problem clearly.
    If it’s unfamiliar, don’t panic — explain what you do understand, try to reason through it, and don’t hesitate to ask the interviewer for hints.
    (It’s okay to not know everything — it’s not a stupidity contest 😊)

4 Referrals

  • Honestly the easiest way is to take courses above your year level, make friends, and then when those people graduate 1 year ahead of you use them when they’ve been at their companies 12 months
    • if your school/college allows you to take such courses, as mine doesn’t…
    • Alumni can also help.
    • Friends, family, siblings…

This list will be continuously updated. Feel free to suggest anything.

Acknowledgments:
@deadly_pineapple
@boxoftruth
@rsmah