The Elements of a Tech Resume
And how to build one
I recently signed a new job offer after using my resume to apply for the open position online. There were no referrals, connections, cold calls, or emails on the side. In fact, this is how I’ve landed most of my roles both as an engineer and a manager — just a resume.
I’ve screened thousands of resumes after being involved in resume coaching, hiring employees, and recruiting at events, fairs, and conferences. This post is a compilation of elements that I believe should be part of any resume for any technical — specifically software engineering or tech-adjacent role. Let’s try to take your resume from “It’s just alright” to “wow.”
The Skills Section
This is an important one to get right. Imagine you’re at a career fair and talking to a recruiter. Of course, you introduce yourself and start the conversation on the types of roles you’re looking for. You give them your resume, and they look at it. That recruiter looks at your resume and starts scanning the page for the skills and technologies you have. They’ve been tasked to search for specific terms and they’re spending a long time trying to find those terms. You know you have some relevant exposure to the tools and technologies related to the role you’re looking for, but the recruiter doesn’t see that.
Make it quick and easy for a recruiter to find the skills that are most relevant to the role.
There are many ways to organize the skills section of your resume, I’ve shared a few examples in the screenshots.
I prefer to have 2–3 categories listed in the skills sections of resumes, and then I’ll have the related terms, technologies, and tools listed in a comma-separated format. This is a friendly way for any applicant tracking system to quickly parse the data into their system as you apply for roles. It’s also really easy to continue adding to the list as you gain new skills or remove skills as they become less relevant.
I like having the skills section of my resume at the top, it’s handy and neat and serves as a summary of my strengths.
If you don’t have any exposure to a tool or technology listed as a requirement in a job description, you can spend some time figuring out a project or work experience that involves that skill, the tool, or something similar enough to be transferable.
In a tech resume, leave out any subjective descriptions of the skills, like “beginner,” “proficent,” or “advanced.”
Those terms mean different things to different people, which means it won’t add anything to your resume/profile. The rest of the resume should use the skills section to describe how those skills led to work accomplishments, contributions to projects, or an education experience.
The Work Section
This section of the resume can feel like the wild wild west if you don’t have a framework. I try to make sure every bullet point describes:
- what I did — the work accomplishment and
- how I did it — the skills and technologies used.
Build consistency in how you talk about your work using a framework.
This is my framework that you can use:
- Strong verb (implemented, accelerated, reduced, launched, etc)
- Accomplishment (what happened, the outcome, the proudest moments, this is also when you start adding in the quantifiable results aka the numbers/percentages)
- By using X, Y, Z skills and technologies.
This will carry you through your interviews. It makes your accomplishments repeatable.
I’m sharing a few examples to showcase how you can start creating bullet points that clearly describe your accomplishments and how you achieved said outcome.
For readability, keep each bullet point no more than 3 lines max.
In most cases you’ll have 2–4 bullet points for each work position depending on the length of your work experience and how long ago the experience was.
If you don’t have great bullet points, work up to this. If you only use a portion of the framework, that’s okay.
I’m also sharing a few examples of work experiences that are not tech-related.
If you’re truly stuck on how to make a non-technical work experience translate well in a tech role job search, try using the framework I shared along with any:
- projects you’ve worked on,
- new processes you’ve adapted to,
- reports or presentations you’ve made,
- times you taught or trained another employee.
If you don’t have any (or enough) work or volunteer experience to fully showcase your strengths and skills and how they will be a good fit for the positions you’re applying for, you should proceed to the next section of this post.
Projects and Other work
There’s a chicken and egg situation, which usually sounds like, “how do I gain experience if I don’t have any experience?” And this is where we can get pretty creative.
If you’ve participated in any courses, training, projects, competitions, events, or literally anything that wasn’t a work experience, you’ll want to have a section dedicated to it.
My favorite is the project section. I like resumes that have a project title, a one-sentence description of the project, and 2–3 bullet points of specific contributions to the project that include the technologies used.
If you don’t fancy the project experience, you can also have a second experience section, which will mimic the work experience section of your resume. This will help highlight relevant technical expertise that might not stand out in a resume if it were in one single section with your work experience.
If you don’t have any extra space in your resume, you can also list your experiences on LinkedIn.
Other tips and tricks
Space, formatting, consistency, and the order of things are all great to remember when building a resume. Use narrow margins if you need more room for a single-page resume.
Please also ensure that everything on your resume serves you in your job search. Many people will have things on their resume that don’t mean anything to them or those reading them. Some of the best resumes are intentionally thoughtful, creative, and practical.
I hope this post shares some additional insight into building great resumes. Use online resources like this one. I’ll also recommend using https://www.onetonline.org/ to view job profiles and glean additional insights into using impact language in your resume. If you’re struggling to leverage the tips and tricks here, you can also mimic any language from the job descriptions you’re reading. If you can’t run, walk. If you can’t walk, crawl.
In closing
I’ve seen many people come to resume reviews and coaching sessions very discouraged about their job search because they don’t have a resume that fully articulates their skills and accomplishments and why those skills and accomplishments would be a good fit for the roles they’re applying for.
It’s really sad because that disappointment turns into resentment, often leading to giving up.
Everyone deserves a proper resume while searching for a role. Build one using what I’ve shared here today, and keep applying even if it means you’re applying to multiple positions daily.
Best of luck.
