Developer Resumes — How Managers Actually Read Them
About a week ago I had to review over 200+ resumes for a web developer position I was trying to fill at my company. This wasn’t the first time I had to do this and it certainly won’t be the last.
In this brutal process of reading resume after resume for hours, I started noticing a pattern in how I reviewed each resume and the things that would make me decide on if I should put a resume in the “pin it for later” file or “pass”.
I start by saying this now, there is no one way to create a resume and not everyone is like me, but there are common patterns I’ve noticed amongst several hiring managers that noted the same process as mine. Many hiring managers are put into the same position as me and would rather be doing something else besides staring at hundreds of resumes, so make our life easier and you just may catch our attention.
To those that have been rejected
I looked at 200+ resumes, put about 40 in the “pin it for later” and only interviewed about 7 candidates.
I saved 40 resumes to review later but does that mean the other 160+ were no good? No. I’d say about a total of 170 were viable candidates. So if you have been submitting resumes and haven’t received a call back or got a no, don’t stress it, this is most likely NOT a reflection on you.
I saw countless resumes with qualified candidates but I was looking for a VERY specific set of skills and had to rule out anyone that didn’t meet the criteria. So you never know what someone is looking for, just keep applying.
The 10 second rule
I read somewhere that the average resume gets looked at for an average of 6–10 seconds before a decision is made one way or the other. For me I’d say that was more like 5 seconds. Does this seem harsh? maybe. But I have little time and a lot of resumes to look over. No way I can spend all day on this stuff, so you have to impress me and you have to do it quick.
How I scanned each resume
So let’s take a quick look at my thought process as I looked through each resume.
Skills & Tech Stack
First thing I looked at after skimming over someone’s bio/intro was their skill set. In my particular case I needed someone with a solid JavaScript and Next JS background. If I didn’t see anything resembling this skill set I moved on.
Granted I am hiring for a role where we need to meet a deadline ASAP so with less time constraints I could have been ok with a solid JavaScript & React background and could have been ok with giving them some time to learn on the job.
Work History & Experiences
Once I determine that a candidate has the skillset I require, I want to know about their work history and projects. I want to know what they have done with their skills and the details.
So if you list a job or a past project, don’t just tell me your role and what you built, tell me what part of the project you built and the successes you had with it. For example on my resume I have “Onboarded and trained customers via webinars and in person conferences” and for another job I have, “Doubled Agora’s Web SDK’s monthly usage minutes from 15 million to 30 million minutes within my first 4 months”.
These are all very specific things I accomplished that tell a hiring manager what I am capable of.
GitHub, LinkedIn and Portfolio Website
If you watched my live stream where I review a lot of these resumes you’ll notice that after I briefly skimmed through each resume I would look for a GitHub profile. This is VERY important for me to see and I’m sure many other hiring managers look for this also.
With that, I would look for a portfolio website and a LinkedIn account to skim over briefly. I’ll say, I care less about the portfolio and really just look for projects. However there is still a chance to leave an impression here, I found myself wowed by a few portfolio websites.
What if you don’t have work history
I’ll just come out and say it. Getting hired without a work history is hard, especially when the candidates you are competing with have job or internship experience. There are a few things you can do about this.
Intern or Freelance
I love considering people that have interned. It shows initiative. If you can’t get a paid internship anywhere it may be worth forgoing the pay just to get a few months experience so you can add it to your resume. Not a popular opinion but I’m sticking with it.
When it comes to freelancing I have a whole other level of respect, its no easy task. If you cant find somewhere to get experience try to land a few small clients to build something for. If you can’t find a paying client then try building something for free to put on your resume.
This is a topic for another day but the ultimate point is that not many companies want to take a risk on someone who has no experience, so as Danny Thompson says, “You have to de-risk yourself!”
What you should have on your resume
Basic Information about you
- Name
- Short intro — Keep it less than 3–4 sentences, I don’t like to read.
- Picture? — Nah, I put this on my digital resume but it’s completely unnecessary
- Contact — Provide an email at least. Phone number is also good but I just leave an email
GitHub & Social Accounts
Make sure to link out to any professional accounts like LinkedIn and keep them up. I guess I can put GitHub under “Social accounts” also.
Skills & qualifications
Give me some bullet points about yourself. What are you good at? Make these tangible skills like “2 years experience in database design” and not “Honest hard worker”. Don’t put cheesy soft skills on here that anybody can say about themselves.
If you can’t find at least 2–3 things to put here just leave out the section all together.
Tech Stack
Tell me what you know. My eyes will skim over this section fast so make it readable.
Work History
One of the most important parts of a resume in my opinion. Order your history by most recent experiences and tell me what you did.
Education
I’m more interested in your work history and or internships than anything else but if you have a formal education, add it. This helps provide context. If you lack in work history I can use your educational background to better understand you.
My advice
The best thing I can say is to have a clean resume where it’s easy for me to learn about what you know and what you have done. I don’t care about a fancy resume, just make it accessible. The rest is sorta up in the air based on how someone reads it and what they are looking for. I’ll provide a link to my resume and a digital version of that resume to use as a reference:
