Explaining Your Experience In A Meaningful Way On A Resume

Is this a good resume snippet: Worked on the SIVAD system, using Room, AndroidX, Activities, and Java

How do you make the experience portions of your resume stand out?

Is this a good resume snippet: Champion for unit test coverage for Cool Company's iOS app, increasing it by 20% and reducing the amount of new iOS user issues by 10%

What is the main way people struggle with their resumes?

Is this a good resume snippet: Led the JavaScript migration effort with strong communication, architectural, and code quality skills

- The most common way resumes struggle is that they tell instead of show
- Here's an example:
  - **Telling:** Added unit tests to the Android app with JUnit and Java
  - **Showing:** Increased test coverage of the Android app by 80%, which reduced bug tickets from users by 50%
- In a nutshell, don't just say what you did - Adding an adjective like "great" doesn't automatically make your feat impressive. Prove that you did something great by talking about how you did it and the actual result (which is ideally business impact).
- This method of communication is especially important for resumes as their audience is mainly non-technical: Recruiters. They aren't going to understand the more specific tech buzzwords. You need to write things in more "plain English", so that your accomplishments can be understood as impressive by almost anyone.

Related resources:

- [\[Course\] Get More Interviews: Write A Stellar Resume As A Software Engineer](https://www.jointaro.com/course/get-more-interviews-write-a-stellar-resume-as-a-software-engineer/) - By taking the course, you get access to Alex's most recent resume!
- [Your Tech Resume Should Look Boring](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/WFJYebwJW2rhviTrQrB3/your-tech-resume-should-look-boring/)
- ["What high-impact achievements should a full-stack engineering intern target for a stronger resume?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/cnEgJuQMKI3G4rqhEkp4/what-high-impact-achievements-should-a-full-stack-engineering-intern-target-for-a-stronger-resume/)

The most common way resumes struggle is that they tell instead of show
Here's an example:
  Telling: Added unit tests to

Alex worked at PayPal and then as a tech lead across Course Hero, Meta, and Robinhood. He's now building Taro, empowering software engineers to be happier and more effective.

This collection represents the best of what Taro has to offer, personally curated by Alex and Rahul. If you're short on time, go through the content here.

Tech has one of the highest rates of job switching, making this skill incredibly high-leverage and vital to master. Understand what it takes to convince companies you are strongly competent.

Not able to get the job opportunities you want? It's extremely likely that your resume is lacking. With this core professional document, you must make a stellar impression within seconds.

[Masterclass] How To Write A Stellar Tech Resume That Gets You More Job Opportunities

Writing an effective resume is crucial for succeeding within the tech industry, especially for software engineers. It's the primary step you need to clear before getting a chance with an interview opportunity. Unfortunately, there is a lot of misinformation around how to write a good resume: For 80%+ of junior software engineers struggling to break into tech, a poorly written resume is one of the main causes.

All that being said, here are our Top 5 points from the sessions (in no particular order):
1. *Remember that a recruiter is reading your resume and will, on average, only spend ~10 seconds on it*
    - They are almost certainly non-technical. Make things very accessible and easy to understand: Avoid jargon!
    - Be ruthlessly concise. For the vast majority of cases, your resume should only be 1 page.
2. Having a spelling or grammar mistake is the easiest way to get your resume thrown out
    - You have an effectively infinite amount of time to polish your resume. If you can't even catch basic mistakes like these, it shows that you have poor attention to detail or bad prioritization.
3. Show, don't tell
    - Don't just say that you're great, prove it
    - Example: Talking about the Android apps you've built with 100k+ users is much more effective than just saying you're a great Android engineer
4. Traps to avoid:
    - Having a summary section at the top
    - Self-rating yourself across skills
5. In the end, your resume needs to be approved by a human, not just an ATS
    - Making your resume very weird to "optimize" for the ATS is the epitome of winning a battle to lose the war. It's pointless

For an effective example + template you can use, [check out Alex's latest resume here.](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/tech-career-growth.appspot.com/o/articles%2FAlex%20Chiou%20Resume%20-%20FINAL%20FOR%20SHARING.docx?alt=media&token=3a75b8b2-09e8-4b68-b80d-22761055c3b2) You can import it into Microsoft Word online and swap out all of his content with yours.

Related resources:
- [[Masterclass] How To Ace Your Big Tech Interview - Data Structures And Algorithms](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/V4sTACzfOh22nMVcUV3w/masterclass-how-to-ace-your-big-tech-interview-data-structures-and-algorithms/)
- [[Masterclass] How To Ace Your Big Tech Interview - System Design](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/J3I9fTW9ulr6T9KjxpqY/masterclass-how-to-ace-your-big-tech-interview-system-design/)
- [Presentation Slides](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/15eLqE_WmePLA--lYTG0ZJVcHhpEld2qNTck_w0t_E9k/edit?usp=sharing)