Software Engineer Resume — Best Practices

Recommendations for Creating a Software Engineering Resume

6 min readDec 18, 2015

The hiring process for software engineering positions can be very competitive, especially when applying to very selective Silicon Valley tech giants such as Google, Facebook, and Apple. Here are tips to help your resume get you that interview:

What to Include

Modify Resume For the Position You Apply To

Read through the job position posting and modify your resume to target what their looking for. If you’re applying to a web development position make sure you emphasize your web development skills. Put those languages at the top of your list.

Projects

Prove that you can actually code! Unlike most professions, in software engineering a GPA cannot accurately reflect your dev skills. Getting good grades doesn’t necessarily mean you can develop software.

Languages / Technologies

Many resume reviewers will go straight to this section to see if you have experience with the technologies/languages their company uses. Be careful: if you list a programming language on your resume, you should be confident that you can answer a coding question about it.

GitHub

If you are applying for a software engineering position you should have a GitHub account. If you are very active on GitHub that is a huge plus. At minimum have an account with at least a couple repositories. This shows you can actually write code, and demonstrates you can use Git. Many companies use Git and expect you to be proficient with it.

Show Your Passion

What have you done outside of school or your job? Demonstrate you’re passionate enough about your field to do work outside of the classroom or the office. Include stuff you’ve done in your free time such as projects, open source code you’ve contributed to, a link to your tech blog, organizations you’re a member of, etc.

Format

Short Bullets

If you have text that is more than a handful of words long, reviewers are much less likely to read it. Separate your descriptions into bullets and then further trim down those bullets to use the least amount of words possible.

Length

Most employers will spend a very brief amount of time looking at your resume, especially if there are many applicants for the position you’re applying to. Make sure the most important parts of your resume stand out.

If you are applying to an entry level or internship position you should likely have no longer than a one page resume. There are of course exceptions to this such as having a previous professional, academic, or military career. Or having many research publications. What’s important is to include any experience that employers will appreciate.

Condensing your resume will force you to only include the most important pieces. It will also encourage you to cut down parts to be more concise which means reviewers will be able to consume the content quicker.

Accomplishments

Don’t talk about your responsibilities at a company, rather what you accomplished. Show how you impacted that company.

Quantify Accomplishments

Using numbers to quantify your accomplishments makes them more understandable and impressive. Example “Managed software engineers to build mobile app” → “Managed team of 12 software engineers to build an iOS app downloaded by 24,000 users”

Quality

Have Someone Review Your Resume

This will help eliminate any spelling or related errors you missed. Having mistakes like this in your resume may give the employer the impression that you are careless and didn’t put the effort into proofreading your resume. If you have someone review your resume they may also be able to identify parts that are confusing or unclear to them.

Make Your Resume Easily Accessible

Host Your Resume Online

If you have a portfolio website consider hosting your resume on it. This way employers can easily download it. Another option is to include your resume in a public GitHub repository.

Many employers are having applicants submit a link to your resume rather than an attachment. Having a PDF of your resume online allows you to link to it using a URL such as yourdomain.com/resume.pdf.

Disclaimer: If you have your resume posted online MAKE SURE IT’S UP TO DATE. Having an employer find an outdated resume may give them a bad impression. If you can’t keep it updated consider not including it. To help make sure the resume on your site is your most up to date version consider configuring the folder your containing your resume is automatically pushed to your GitHub site whenever it is edited. Check out this GitWatch repo for a way to enable this.

If you’re interested in creating a portfolio website to where you can host your resume, check out my guide to create a portfolio website.

Resume Resources

View Other Software Engineering Resumes

Check out what other software engineers resumes look like. Use them as inspiration and examples for what you might want to include. Check out the resume resources section below for examples.

I welcome you to check out my resume: http://stevejones.io/SteveJones-Resume.pdf

Hackathon Hackers Groups

The best resume resource I have discovered is the Hackathon Hackers “HH Websites and Resumes” Facebook group. I highly recommend joining this group if you are interested in improving your resume.

Demographically, the group consists of mostly software engineers and other computer science related professionals and students. There is also a solid presence of design and UX members.

Members often post resumes to receive constructive feedback. The group is a very positive and helpful community and if you have a question or want feedback on a resume you will likely be very please with the response you get.

This also means the group is a great resource for looking at example resumes. Looking at these resumes can give you inspiration and ideas for how to improve your own resume.

In general, Hackathon Hackers is an incredible resource for anyone in a software engineering, product design, product management, or any related field. There is a main Hackathon Hackers group, but there are also nearly 100 Hackathon Hackers (HH) subgroups focused on a more specific topic such as the HH Websites and Resumes subgroup. Check out the links below:

Hackathon Hackers Facebook Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/1487708811477672/

List of HH Subgroups — https://github.com/HackathonHackers/groups

Relevant HH Subgroups:

Portfolio Website Guide Directory

This article is part of a guide to building a portfolio website to help land a software engineering position. It includes a link to my portfolio website’s public GitHub repository that I welcome you to clone and use as a template.

Check out other resources in the guide below:

GitHub Repository — Portfolio Website

My Portfolio Website: http://stevejones.io

Questions?

Shoot me an email, I’m happy to help: steve@stevejones.io