How to get a Software Engineering Job in 2023. Part 1: Resume Writing

Here are my top tips on how to bring your best paper self to the table. Good luck!

First of all…

If you are stressing out about all the rejection letters you are getting and you can’t figure out why people don’t want to hire you… Go outside. Go for a walk. Pat a dog. Make a pizza. Go do anything except code and resume write until you get rid of that awful antsy feeling in the bottom of your stomach and wait until you are in a relaxed headspace to read my advice.

Ready? Okay! Lets go!

Write a readable resume.

Do not go colour or font crazy. There is a 99% chance that your resume will be read by a bot so keep the font size 12, and Times New Roman (the font all wonderful books are written in. aka. the more common font used to train AI). If you want to be a little different, maybe Garamond, Helvetica or Trebuchet.

Do not use comic sans. That font is for children. You are not a child. You are an adult looking for a job.

Keep the sections of your resume clear.

— — —

Name, Mobile, Email.

Education: Degree, University, Graduation Date.

Experience: Write job title, and how long you worked doing this job, and then write the impact you made to the company and how you did it.

Here is the magic formula every HR person and team lead wants to see:

“I did <this measurable impact> by <action> using <these tools>”

E.g. I removed manual email sending that saved 25 hours of weekly admin time by automating email sending using AWS Lambda and AWS SES.

If you have no software work experience, go on Fiverr or Airtasker and make someone a website using basic HTML or bootstrap , a database, AWS, and maybe some react/javascript. Worst case scenario, if you can’t get the website working you can just knock up a website in squarespace or wordpress. This will give you a good advantage for design/architecture questions. You could also contribute to an open source project, join a student project, or do some work for a non for profit. This will give you a competitive edge over others who fill this with their high school/uni job that was not software related.

Achievements: If you’ve done something relevant to software engineering put it here. AWS Accreditations, Personal Projects, Hackathons, Coding challenges, etc. You don’t need to place, just participating shows that you gave it a go.

Programming Languages: List all the programming languages you know.

Skills: Leadership, communication, data structures, problem solving etc. Choose skills that are written on the JD as well as skills you are proud of.

Learn how to read a JD.

Do not send a generic resume out willy nilly hoping something will land. Tech companies use software to search resumes for key words and forward them onto the recruiter. What are the key words you may ask? The key words are in the JD. Underline all the programming languages and skills that are on the JD and brainstorm any experience you have that is relevant. If you don’t have any experience, go on Youtube. Follow a tutorial. Now you have experience. Here is an example I got from GradConnection:

So, if you apply for this JD, you would write on your resume your Computer Science / Software Engineering Degree and when you graduated. Write in the programming languages section that you know Java, Python, C, C++, or any other OOP. Then write in your skills section that you know data structures and algorithms and collaboration.

Apply for the job ASAP.

Generally, first in best dressed. The earlier you apply for a job, the more likely a recruiter will call you because the candidate pool is smaller, and the faster they fill the role, the faster they get paid. Give yourself the advantage of being interviewed first. Keep on top of new jobs by job boards regularly.

No one is hiring for the programming languages I know!

My best advice for you is to learn a relevant programming language even though it takes more effort. It will give you a massive competitive edge because it shows that you’re on top of relevant technology and you will do better in coding interviews because you’re actually proficient in the language. Just look at 20 JDs and choose the most common language that people are hiring for.

10x your resume.

If you have no experience here are ways to make your resume stand out:

• AWS Accreditations.
• Doing online code bootcamps that give you a certificate. Google, Microsoft and AWS regularly host these. They’re great because they will teach you skills in relevant technology for free. You can then also name drop the company in your resume which makes it more likely to get picked up by the resume bot.
• Hackathons.
• Coding Competitions
• Personal Projects.
• Contributing to open source projects.
• Solving problems on stack overflow.

I hate talking about myself, so just write facts.

If you hate taking about yourself, just write facts. Keep a list of things you have done in your career journey, big or small, and then when you write a resume, go through the list and pick things that are relevant to the job description.