Effective Resume Writing for Engineers
Leveraging LinkedIn for the uninitiated
LinkedIn’s user base is equivalent to 5.4% of the earth’s population. That is, some 400 million people think it’s a good idea to create a profile and connect with others in a professional social network. I reviewed more than 1000 professional profiles over the past year as a hiring manager at Localytics (across Angellist, StackOverflow Careers, LinkedIn, et al.).
I’m calling out LinkedIn, because it the most commonly used among these. It’s also the best place to get your story straight and to build your social graph (until you have a strong presence in meatspace).
So, why I’m writing this: Engineers who have only been in the business for a year or two aren’t experienced advocates for themselves. Their tendency is to write for themselves (engineers).
The problem is, engineers don’t hire engineers. Managers do.
The following is my advice (as a hiring manager) for writing a deliberate, targeted profile of your work. We’ll start with the writing and then break into some LinkedIn specifics.
Your story must be about productive, high-quality work.
Your work generates cultural and economic value for a company. Your past accomplishments are the simplest indicators of how you will be valuable in the future. How will you connect the dots between your experience and your audience?
The folks reading your story will be recruiters, hiring managers, and peers. For the sake of this post, let’s focus on hiring managers as the key beneficiary of your story.
You have to understand hiring managers and share their feelings. I think this Andrew Grove quote sums up their perspective nicely:
“The output of a manager is the output of the organizational units under his or her supervision or influence.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management
You are one of those organizational units. You connect with other units. You contribute to the output of your manager and your company.
In other words, who are you, how do you interact with others, and how do you bring value?
These ideas can act as a template for your LinkedIn job descriptions. Here’s an example, written as a Front End Engineer:
- I was a Senior Engineer responsible for shipping UI components written in React
- I worked within a multidisciplinary team of 8 and reviewed all pull requests containing JavaScript
- I worked with my Technical Director to design and advance an ambitious user experience roadmap, which increased customer satisfaction, and reduced churn by about N%
The engineer has (#1) identified who they are, (#2) how they interacted with others within their team, and (#3) how they delivered value.
This is a fantastic foundation for your story. This will tell hiring managers a lot about you in an easily consumable way.
Before we get to the LinkedIn profile bit, there’s one more concept I’d like to introduce.
Model the growth you want
You can further intensify your appeal to hiring managers by speaking in terms of your “growth path.” Good hiring managers care about the engineer you’ll be in six months as much as the engineer you are today. Use your job descriptions to communicate interest in a problem area.
Here’s an example that extends our Front End Engineer example (above):
- I created and documented a React/Redux boilerplate to increase adoption and understanding of views and state containers in our UI code
…alternatively, if you want to express interest without on-the-job experience:
- During our upgrade of Angular 1.2 to 1.5, I learned how writing our UI in React could have helped our team. Until then, I ported a hobby project to React/Redux.
Demonstrate that you’re the master of your own growth path and give hiring managers the information they need to identify you as valuable.
Now, that’s all I have for writing advice. It’s not a ton, but it’ll take some time to integrate into a LinkedIn profile. What follows is my take on actually getting the work done.
A million tiny pieces (of a LinkedIn Profile)
This is time-consuming stuff. To help maximize your time, here’s a list of content I recommend including (sorted in order of value):
- Your work history (places, dates, titles) — if you’re just getting started on your profile, this is a necessary step.
- A story for your three most recent roles. This is what I discussed above. Remember, you’re a valuable unit in an organization.
- A profile photo of your face. If you have none, this is really important. Find a photo that gives the impression of trustworthiness and competence.
- A one-liner for older roles. The old will dilute the new. Minimize the noise from your 8-year-old programming gig.
- A summary. Your summary is a great place to show ambition and personality, but not too much.
If you can plow through these, you will be in AWESOME shape. So get to it! Grab a coffee and spend 20 minutes working through this list every so often. Before you know it, you’ll have a very tight engineering story.
Advanced LinkedIn Stuff
Let me just say I never saw the day where I’d be typing out the words “Advanced LinkedIn…”, but here we are.
Here are a few more things you can do to optimize your situation:
- Create a “headline”. Like a house, if the decor is too personal, no one will want it. Show some flavor here, but be cool. Can you just be cool for a second?
- Support stories with more detail. Outline your accomplishments with context and metrics-based impact*. Ask yourself, what indicated success and how did I work toward that?
- Recommendations. Be thoughtful, and super deliberate here. If you’re going to ask for a rec, be specific about why, and be understanding if they decline.
- Other LinkedIn accoutrement. There are countless other pieces of content you can add to your profile* (patents, publications, projects, blog posts, causes you care about, etc). If you have the initiative, go for it.
*As with all things, moderation goes a long way. You’ll come off as desperate if you have every nook & cranny brimming with content.
Insights from Recruiters
I asked the Localytics Talent Acquisition team, Greg Spaulding, Michael Hebert, and Kelsey Lundstrom, for some advice they’d give to engineers getting their profiles in order. Here’s what they had to add:
- Being well-connected is a basic need. They look for that 500+ tag on your profile.
- Your summary has got to be short & sweet. 2–3 sentences at most.
- Endorsements tell a good story, too. You’ll really get your foot in the door with plenty of endorsements for the work you’d like to do.
- Your group memberships tell them where you play. Whether you follow the pulse of LinkedIn news or not, find a few groups that match your interests.
- Be deliberate with what’s public and what’s shown to connections only. If you hide too much, it’s tough to decide if there’s a fit.
That’s all I’ve got! I hope this helps you along in your career. Happy storytelling!
If you like what you’ve read, connect with me on LinkedIn!
