Resume questions

1. Should I put months for each year for all my experiences or is it okay to just put the years? For example if this hides a 6 month gap? I've heard very conflicting opinions on this!

I would not remove months. That's too shady and you're better off with a 6 month gap. I feel like HMs would feel like you're trying to hide something and immediately discard

2. If I'm in a city in California that's not super close to San Francisco, is it okay to just put California and leave my city out so I'm not auto rejected for positions that are in San Francisco, since I'm open to relocation?

Yes that's fine. As long as you tell them that you're open to jobs in that location. In my resume since I live in a random non tech city in the midwest I said "Open to any US location" and got a bunch of interviews as a new grad. Of course it doesnt mean that I got interviews because of it, but i did put that in my resume and it didnt hurt me. YMMV

Also should I say somewhere on resume that I'm open to relocation?

Yeah you can probably put both, city and open to relocation

3. Pretty sure the answer to this is no but figured I'd ask! Is it worth going from 1 to 2 pages to list a few side projects that are over a few years old now and didn't really get a lot of users?

I would not recommend going over 1 page. Only put the most impressive side projects.

The bar for side projects is higher than work experience so be very selective with side projects. Side projects are seen as less valuable than work experience. So for a side project to be worth of the real estate on the resume it has to be very strong. In other words the work experience in work is more valuable than work done building a side project unless the side project is very impressive (has 1000s of users)

Also I'm fairly certain most recruiters/HMs wont read the actual bullets of the projects unless its very impressive i.e. has users

Should I put months for each year for all my experiences or is it okay to just put the years?

Yeah, I would keep the months. In general, treat LinkedIn as the standard-bearer. People have the months on there 99% of the time, so your resume should too.

If I'm in a city in California that's not super close to San Francisco, is it okay to just put California and leave my city out so I'm not auto rejected for positions that are in San Francisco, since I'm open to relocation?

California is HUGE - You should put your city or at least the metro region (e.g. "Los Angeles Metropolitan Area"). You can generally say that you're open to relocation in the application flow.

Is it worth going from 1 to 2 pages to list a few side projects that are over a few years old now and didn't really get a lot of users?

Nope. Think about it from the perspective of the recruiter: If the first page of your resume isn't enough to convince them to give you an interview, do you think a crusty 5-year side project that got 10 users will finally tip the scales in your favor?

Overall, you have good experience and live in California (and are open to relocation). You don't need to play any tricks to get interviews. Just optimize what you have honestly and hope for the best. After that, it's a matter of following the advice in the job searching course (applying more, networking, etc): [Course] Ace Your Tech Interview And Get A Job As A Software Engineer