Written by: Brian Jenney | Career Development, Software Development, Resume Tips

In the last 2 years alone, I’ve read through at least 100 resumes for open positions at my current company for junior developers. In addition, I’ve done around 300 calls with developers from around the world and seen hundreds more resumes and LinkedIn profiles.

As an engineering manager, when I get sent a stack of resumes to look through, I will divide them into 3 categories:

• NO!
• Maybe…
• Yes!

Your goal as a junior developer is to avoid the NO pile.

Unfortunately, I’ve seen most of your resumes and the majority end up in the “maybe” pile which eventually turns into the “NO” pile once enough strong candidates have been identified.

You probably look like a lot of other candidates.

The maybe pile is where most resumes end up. Most resumes look the same and it’s hard to differentiate between bootcamp grads who basically wrote the same resume. The maybe pile tends to have these features.

• Fluffy summary which doesn’t tell me much about your contributions
• Passive language
• Lists of tasks rather than impact
• Counter-intuitive information organization

Honestly, because so many resumes look the same, it’s not that difficult to stand out.

Here’s how, step by step:

Step 1: Impact over implementation

❌ “Built a full-stack app to track personal expenses using ReactJS and Ruby”

✅ “Led development for complex UI features for an expense tracking app, using ReactJS, leading to increased user satisfaction and more intuitive UX.”

Here’s a decent framework for speaking about projects you’ve done:

[Thing you did] + [impact/metric] + [technology]

You want the person reading this to imagine you as part of their team and the kind of impact you’ll have there. Which sentence makes you feel more confident about inviting the candidate for an interview?

Step 2: Brag more

❌ “Worked with a team of 5 to create a series of unit tests for a React App using Jest”

✅ “Organized and led front end unit testing strategy to achieve 75% overall test coverage and 100% coverage of mission critical user flows.”

You’re selling yourself here, not your team. Talk about what you did and highlight areas where YOU took the lead.

Step 3: Don’t get too cute with your layout

I know that template looks really cool on your computer and honestly, that shade of green you used is pretty goddamn impressive.

Here’s the thing, once it landed on my desk, it had been auto-formatted and looks god-awful. I am not going to even try to make sense of it. There are 25 more resumes to comb through before my next meeting. NO pile.

Step 4: Decrease surface area for bias

Humans are gonna human.

We have known and unknown biases.

Fair? No.

Reality? Yes.

Do you really need to tell them that you were a former french fry chef, prisoner or even went to a bootcamp?

Of course not. The choice is ultimately yours.

If your goal is to be hired, then decrease the chances for bias by removing information that others might perceive as a red flag. You don’t want someone to take a chance on you. You want to be a safe bet.

Conclusion (DON’T SKIP)

Ask 10 people for their opinion on your resume and you will get 10 different answers.

I wrote what I firmly believe will help you stand out.

Ultimately, you need to decide what you are comfortable with and perhaps A/B test your resume. Use 2 different versions and see which one performs better.

I sincerely hope this helps you get past that first hurdle while on the job hunt.

See ya’.