This content originally appeared on Go Make Things and was authored by Go Make Things
Yesterday, we looked at why applying for jobs sucks so bad, and how computers prevent your resume from ever being seen by an actual human being.
Today, we’re going to learn how to hack our way around that. Let’s dig in!
It starts at the top
There’s a good chance that you have an “Objective” section up at the top of your resume. It probably says something like this:
Seeking a role as a front-end developer where I can utilize my talents and skills to fulfill the goals of the organization.
What you’re really saying it, “I’m looking for whatever job you have available.”
It’s the same thing that everyone else puts on their resume, it’s the first thing that the recruiter sees, and it tells them nothing about why they should keep reading.
Replace your objective with a “Summary of Qualifications.”
A Summary of Qualifications is a short blurb that summarizes why you’re such a kick-ass developer. Ideally, it’s one or two sentences followed by a short bulleted list of skills.
Here’s an example:
A front-end developer specializing in responsive web design. Skills and experience include:
- Mobile-First RWD
- HTML and CSS
- Native JavaScript and jQuery
- QUnit and Jasmine
- Sass & SCSS
- Gulp, Git, and Travis CI
- Web Performance
- WordPress and PHP
A Summary of Qualifications shows recruiters why they should keep reading past the six second mark. Each skill or area of expertise you point out should be supported later in the resume.
Move your education to the end.
Most resume templates have this right up at the top. The thing is, no one cares. Seriously.
(Unless you have a PhD in Computer Science. Then they probably do. But you should still put your education at the end.)
What you know is important, but what you’ve done with what you know matters so much more. You want to get to your experience as quickly as possible.
Focus on outcomes, not responsibilities.
It’s pretty common to see things like this under job experience on a resume:
- Know HTML5, CSS3, and mobile-first, RWD.
- Experience in accessibility and progressive enhancement.
- Responsible for unit testing and QA.
- Created responsive websites for clients.
So what? Everyone else who applied for this role has done those things, too.
Tasks make you an expense. Outcomes make you an asset that adds value to the organization.
You want to show the recruiter why those things matter by talking about the value you created for the client or the organization that you were working for. Here are some examples:
- Redesigned Animal Rescue Organization’s website to be mobile-friendly, resulting in a 100% increase in online donations.
- Made performance optimizations to Big University website, decreasing page load time by 500%.
One easy way to remember this: every time you add an experience to your resume, imagine a little bird sitting on your shoulder asking, “So what?”
What if you don’t have numbers or data for your experience? You can still show impact without numbers.
For example:
Integrated the MailChimp API into Acme Corp’s CMS, reducing the amount of time they spend cross publishing content on their site each week.
Summarize the work you did above your list of specific experiences and outcomes.
For each project or role on your resume, you’ll end up with a bulleted list of experiences and their outcomes.
Above the list, add a short one or two sentence summary of your work. Here’s an example (slightly outdated):
Save the Pets rescues abandoned dogs and places them in safe, loving homes. I redesigned their entire website to be mobile-friendly.
- Built on a responsive, mobile-first grid, the site scales beautifully from small screens to big ones. Since the redesign, mobile-traffic grew from just 9% of all traffic to 52%.
- Wrote progressively-enhanced JavaScript for modals, expand-and-collapse widgets and drop-down menus, ensuring access to content on devices without JS support.
- Focused on performance as a design criteria, resulting in average page load times of just 1.5 seconds and minimal HTTP requests.
- Used SVG icons instead of raster images, resulting in lightweight, scalable icons that look great on high-density displays and can be easily styled using CSS.
Customize your resume for every role you apply to.
Remember, recruiters use an ATS that screens your resume against a list of keywords.
Often times, the recruiter sourcing candidates isn’t technical themself.
As a result, they’ll often just pull the keywords they use directly out of the job description. Many times they won’t use synonyms or alternative words with similar meaning, simply because they don’t know any better.
Now that you know this, you can hack the process.
When describing your experiences, pull your language directly from the job description. Don’t get creative.
For example, if the job description says:
Experience with responsive web design
Your resume should say:
Built a website using responsive web design
And not:
Built a website using mobile-first RWD
Don’t assume “mobile-first RWD” will match or that the recruiter will know that they’re the same.
A caveat: I’m sure this goes without saying, but only list experiences if you actually have them. You might trick the ATS, but eventually the recruiter or hiring manager will figure out that you don’t have the experiences you said you did. Recruiters talk. They’ll tell others about you.
Your Summary of Qualifications should get customized, too.
If I was applying to a role that talked about using JavaScript frameworks, I’d use something like this:
A front-end developer specializing in custom JavaScript development. Skills and experience include:
- Native JavaScript and jQuery
- QUnit and Jasmine
- Gulp, Git, and Travis CI
- Web Performance
- Mobile-First RWD
- HTML and CSS
- Sass & SCSS
If I was applying for a different role that was focused on building an internal design system, my Summary might look more like this:
A front-end developer specializing in internal design systems. Skills and experience include:
- CSS frameworks and styleguides
- HTML and CSS
- Sass & SCSS
- Native JavaScript and jQuery
- QUnit and Jasmine
- Gulp, Git, and Travis CI
- Mobile-First RWD
Remember, the goal of this section is to get the recruiter to read your resume for more than six seconds. You want to make as many direct links between your skills and the role they’re hiring for as possible.
Keep it short.
You may have heard that resumes should always be one page. That’s wrong.
For someone straight out of college, maybe, but if you have any amount of experience, it’s OK to go on to a second page. You don’t have to fill up the entire second page either. It’s far more important that you showcase your experiences and how they match the role.
I recommend the “One-to-Three Guideline:”
- Keep each experience and summary to one to three sentences.
- Keep your resume to one to three pages.
What if you have a lot of experience?
Back when I worked in Human Resources, I saw resumes that were, no lie, 12 pages long. These were very experienced engineers.
Recruiters aren’t going to read that. And most of the experiences in a resume that long aren’t relevant to the job you’re applying for, either.
If you’ve been in technology for a while, or if you’ve just switched careers from another field (like I did), I’d recommend only summarizing older or irrelevant experiences. You can do this by simply dropping the bullet points.
So this:
Save the Pets rescues abandoned dogs and places them in safe, loving homes. I redesigned their entire website to be mobile-friendly.
- Built on a responsive, mobile-first grid, the site scales beautifully from small screens to big ones. Since the redesign, mobile-traffic grew from just 9% of all traffic to 52%.
- Wrote progressively-enhanced JavaScript for modals, expand-and-collapse widgets and drop-down menus, ensuring access to content on devices without JS support.
- Focused on performance as a design criteria, resulting in average page load times of just 1.5 seconds and minimal HTTP requests.
- Used SVG icons instead of raster images, resulting in lightweight, scalable icons that look great on high-density displays and can be easily styled using CSS.
Becomes this:
Save the Pets rescues abandoned dogs and places them in safe, loving homes. I redesigned their entire website to be mobile-friendly.
Small details that make a big difference.
These may seem stupid or unimportant, but when a recruiter gets hundreds of resumes, anything they can use as a filter helps them reduce the number of candidates they have to evaluate.
- Run spell check on your resume. Always.
- Have someone proofread your resume. Don’t do it yourself. You’ll miss things, including grammar quirks and words that are real words but not the one you meant (your/you’re).
- Use past tense, even for current roles. It makes the resume read more consistently.
Have any specific questions? Feel free to reach out and ask. I’m always happy to chat about career stuff!
This content originally appeared on Go Make Things and was authored by Go Make Things
Go Make Things | Sciencx (2021-07-29T14:30:00+00:00) Hacking your resume to get it in front of an actual human. Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2021/07/29/hacking-your-resume-to-get-it-in-front-of-an-actual-human/
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