With three exceptions, the Google recruiters’ advice matches up with Leet Resumes’ advice, and I’ll explain why their advice is so very accurate, and also where we differ and why (the Google way is not everybody’s way). Further, we explain our design choices in detail in our documentation.

First off, Jeremy and Lizi advise, “Make sure the format is simple and consistent in design, font, sizing, and spacing throughout so that the person reviewing your resume can easily scan and find information quickly.”

This sounds like obvious advice, but many engineers complicate their resumes with colors, columns, graphics, multiple fonts, font colors, and font sizes, that they put a tremendous burden on the people reading their resumes. Simple is better.

They continue, “Include your contact information and email at the top. You don’t have to include objective statements [or] references. Use bullet points with consistent formatting and structure throughout the resume rather than long paragraphs.

“Keep your resume to… no longer than two pages for engineering roles. And perhaps the most important tip we have overall is to always check for typos.”

We agree with all of this advice at Leet. Bullet points and quick, scannable text are far superior to long paragraphs. It’s how readers ingest resumes in 2021.

On resume length, in our documentation, we advise 1 page for those with 10 years’ or fewer experience, and 2 pages for those with 10 or more years of experience.

Typos might seem like a small matter, but many engineering managers have learned that engineers who aren’t careful with their resumes, also aren’t careful with their code. Be smart about it and check very carefully.

Lizi and Jeremy continue, “It’s also critical you list your GitHub profile or other prominent open source work that shows us you’re contributing to the open source community, passionate about the work you’re doing, and looking to improve your skills.”

We agree that your Github link should be in your contact information, and that your LinkedIn (which is a subset of your resume info, and therefore extraneous) should not be.

Jeremy and Lizi further comment that, “Experience should take up the bulk of your resume.”

Another obvious point, perhaps, but the most popular formats online, including those at the top of Google search results for software engineering resume template, break this good advice. These complex formats often push the experience section into as little as 25% of the available surface area of a resume. Again, simple is better.

The Google duo share: “List everything in reverse chronological order with your most recent experience first. Include your employer, position, and dates employed for all jobs… in the month-year format. Keep your bullet point descriptions concise and clear, and make the most of your space by streamlining bullet points that spill over onto the next line by only one or two words.”

Again, we agree and the resumes we write for experienced engineers follow these same guidelines. Concise and clear is usually a problem for engineers writing their own resumes, and that’s where Leet can be a big help in cutting out words, phrases, and even whole bullets that don’t advance your story.

“For each bullet, use action words like created, designed, debugged, negotiated, developed, managed, and so on, so the person reading your resume can easily and quickly understand your skills and experience.”

At Leet, we go further and suggest that you use success verbs — verbs that show how your work created successes — rather than simply using verbs such as managed or developed, which are more focused on duties and responsibilities instead of outcomes.

“It’s important to focus on the results and impact of your work, so list metrics and examples concisely rather than writing long descriptions. We value data at Google and want to see you know how to apply it when speaking to your accomplishments. Use data and comparisons or averages to provide context.

“To ensure you focus on results and impact in this section, we recommend using this helpful framework — accomplished X as measured by Y by doing Z.”

Google is exactly right on this advice — use data, numbers, and metrics, to explain your results. Instead of writing that you reduced page load time, write that you reduced page load time from 700 ms to 322 ms. Numbers make your accomplishments seem more real, and are more persuasive.

Lizi continues, “Let’s walk through a few examples for different types of experience.”

“If you’re applying for technical or engineering roles, this example should be particularly helpful… ‘Increased server query response time by 15% by restructuring API.’

“This concisely conveys the impact backed up by data and communicates a skill. In this case, it’s restructuring an API, but it could be an experience like adding new hardware, algorithmic improvements, caching answers, or implementing machine learning.”

Three cheers for Google on making this point so effectively. Your technical resume should include numbers.

A few more good points from the Google folks before we get into our disagreements.

“Include any relevant leadership positions, awards, university honors, scholarships, or other types of recognition.”

Remember, recognition indicates that someone else thought you were good, worthy, and successful. Including these external validations help show that your career progress is already endorsed by others — a good sign for a future boss.

And they also mention, “If you’re applying for technical or engineering roles, be sure to include the programming language you used in bold for each project you include.”

This is advice unique to Google, and I feel more targeted towards junior engineers, for whom the particular language experience is important in hiring. The further you rise in your engineering career, the more the specifics of language choice and deployment fall away, and the bigger architectural issues come to predominate in any assessment of your capabilities.

Ok, so we’ve agreed with everything Google has to say, right? They’re flawless, right? Well, not quite. There are a few bits of advice that aren’t effective for candidates who are not applying to Google. Specifically:

“PDF formatting is preferred.”

As I’ve shared in my mega-interview with the CEOs and technical experts at resume parsing companies, PDFs can sometimes render in a graphical format that evade the comprehension of companies’ HR systems. MS Word, Google Docs, or even .txt should be preferred over PDF.

“List your programming languages at the top of your resume and make sure you’re comfortable interviewing in them.”

In contrast to most other technical resume advice, Google suggests putting your programming languages at the top of your resume. I honestly don’t see how this advice can be realistic for most experienced programmers, and Leet Resumes places your technologies at the bottom of your resume.

To take just two examples, here are the technologies listed by two Leet Resumes users today:

Example 1

Languages: Javascript, Typescript, HTML, CSS, SQL, Python, Java

Frameworks/Libraries: Express, NestJS, React, Redux, Cypress, Jest, Selenium, ReactNative, Node.js

Database: PostgreSQL, MongoDB, TypeORM, Mongoose

Certification: Certified Scrum Master

Example 2

Languages: Python, Terraform, Java, JavaScript, SQL, HTML, Bash, CSS

Tools: AWS Services, Git, Jenkins, Docker, Postgres, Camunda (BPM Engine), Gradle, Maven

Libraries/Frameworks: SQLAlchemy, boto3, JUnit, Pytest, Spring/Spring Boot

Other: Node.js, SocketCluster, REST APIs, Dreamfactory

It does not seem possible or realistic that either of these technology professionals could fit their technologies at the top of their resume without breaking the important formatting conventions that both Leet and Google advocate regarding placement of work experience and professional summary.

And finally, their advice to customize your resume per job simply isn’t accurate, “A big tip here is to read the job description and look at the language it uses. Writing a resume for a specific job description takes a little bit of effort, but it can really help your application stand out. You can even bold and italicize keywords related to the job description to highlight your relevant skills and experience.”

As with all users, there is a difference between what technical recruiters believe they do, and what they actually do. Given the amount of time spent in reviewing a resume, only the absolutely most relevant keywords are considered — perhaps 2 or 3, sometimes as many as 6. But never, ever dozens.

Your Leet resume will list all of the technologies in which you are proficient, and all of your major accomplishments. So if your well-constructed, thorough, thought-through resume doesn’t already have those 2–6 keywords on it, are you really a fit for the job?

It’s simply unlikely that your primary resume is truly missing a critical keyword that can be added to a secondary resume to catch a recruiter’s eye, and there is therefore no need to customize multiple resumes with keywords.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this review of the advice Google recruiters have for your technical resume. If you’d like Leet to write your technical resume for free, please sign up. You can also read the stories of other engineers — there’s a reason we can say users love us!

What Google looks for in a technical resume was originally published in Rooting for you on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

#1 Bestseller in Job Hunting and Resumes.

#1 Hot New Release in Careers, Job Hunting, and Resumes.

Buy at Amazon today:
https://ldd.rs/ResumeGuide2020
https://ldd.rs/InterviewsGuide2020

Bestsellers lists for 2020 was originally published in Rooting for you on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Working on specific roles with a recruiter

Putting recruiters to work in your career

How much more money would you like to make next year?

Latest was originally published in Rooting for you on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

o. Ladders: https://www.theladders.com/expert/marc-cenedella
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In the strong economy of 2018, we’ve seen unemployment among college-educated professionals drop to as low as 2%. With this type of demand for talent, you’ll almost certainly be receiving outreach from recruiters on Ladders and elsewhere.

Now before you turn those interview requests down — perhaps you have no intention of leaving your current job — I’ll urge you to accept the opportunity to interview. Staying in good practice for the future, keeping your interview skills current, and making the connections that come with consistent interviewing, are all essential components to making your career recession-proof.

We won’t always have an economy as strong as this one, and there will be a recession again in coming years. When that happens — and should your employer, team, product, or job get disbanded — you’ll be much safer, more secure, and feel less anxious, if interviewing has remained a comfortable skill.

Pick up Ladders 2018 Interviews Guide and give it 90 minutes — it’s a quick read that gives you all the essentials you need to know about interviewing. And that provides you peace of mind and lifestyle insurance for you and your loved ones.

Interviewing is lifestyle insurance for you and your family was originally published in Rooting for you on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I share the 49 questions interviewers may ask of you, along with how great performers answers, such as:

• “Are your peers political? How have you managed office politics?”
• “Are you a hands-off or hands-on manager? How effective are your methods for delegating, following up, and assessing performance on assignments made to your team? “
• “How have you helped set realistic deadlines? How do you manage unrealistic deadlines imposed on you?”
• “Describe for me a policy you don’t agree with at your current role. How did you ensure compliance?”

And I share 25 questions you can ask your interviews about the company and the role, such as:

• “What’s one thing that’s key to this company’s success that somebody from outside the company wouldn’t know about?”
• “What does success for this group / team / company look like in one year? In five years?”
• “What are your group’s best and worst working relationships with other groups in the company? What are the pain points you have to deal with day-to-day?”

I also cover:

• How to structure your interview around their three key needs for the role.
• Why are employers hiring in 2018?
• What is behavioral interviewing and why is it becoming the standard interview format for corporate employers?

We’ll get great results for you in about 90 minutes — your time is valuable so I’ve only made room for the most important stuff.

You can buy Ladders 2018 Interviews Guide here on Amazon.

Great interview questions was originally published in Rooting for you on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

​

Interviews joins its sister Ladders 2018 Resume Guide atop the bestsellers chart.

Ladders Guides are 100-page, five-dollar, 90-minute guides for busy professionals on topics important to their careers and professional development.

Stay tuned for more Ladders Guides this year!

My new book hits #1 on Amazon was originally published in Rooting for you on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Traffic stats for careers sites, 2017–8 was originally published in Rooting for you on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Grew, increased, augmented: The trick to writing the perfect resume is choosing the perfect resume words. That is, making good verb choices without a thesaurus.

The structure for each bullet point on your list of accomplishments is a success verb plus specific numerical data regarding an accomplishment in your field or role. Which means that you’re in the market for 25 or so verbs.

Finding the perfect resume words

Finding enough different verbs to say “I did it” in a clever way is often a struggle for professionals writing their resumes. Typical resume advice has focused on making sure that each verb is an active verb, but we’ve found two problems with this advice.

First, most Americans don’t work with active vs. passive verbs on a daily basis, so the concept is not entirely relevant to their lives. “Was shot out of a cannon,” for example, doesn’t count.

And, second, even the stable of active verbs includes some very bland duds that do nothing to help persuade a future employer.

The worst resume action verbs

My least favorite active verb is ‘managed,’ but there are others equally as tepid such as ‘established,’ ‘defined,’ and ‘performed.’

None of these are very good, even though they are active, because they don’t sell your future employer on what you are able to do, or what benefits you are able to bring to their team.

After all, white-collar employees by definition establish, manage, define and perform a wide variety of tasks. But were you any good at them? That’s the important fact a hiring manager or recruiter wants to know.

Use success verbs for your resume accomplishments

Which makes it important that every bullet point in your resume include a success verb, not just an active verb. Success verbs demonstrate success — something got better. Because you were there, something changed, something improved, something progressed.

Verbs such as increased, decreased, improved, reduced, are all success verbs. Explicitly forbidden are active verbs and phrases that are nonetheless static: “managed,” “my responsibilities included,” “hired to,” “was responsible for,” and so forth. Verbs that merely tell a fact rather than show you in a heroic light.

Look, we live in the United States of America in the 21st century. Of course you were hired for your current job. You obviously didn’t inherit it from grandpa or get appointed to the role by the King.

And given the nature of the modern organization, if you’re a manager, of course you’ve managed some number of fellow human beings. And of course you were given a budget with which to do something interesting with those human beings in the service of the organization’s greater goals.

So when you begin a bullet point with empty non-achievements such as “I was hired, I managed and I was responsible for,” you are squandering the opportunity to showcase the benefits you brought to your boss and your company in your prior role.

These are the exact words you should use on your resume

Rather than leave you wondering what success verbs might be, I’m providing you a list of 25 success verbs you can use for the 25 bullets on your resume. Simplest would be to use these, and only these, verbs. Unless you have a good reason to expand your variety, the below success verbs can cover most bullets you can think of. Limiting your choices will save plenty of time and headache while ensuring a higher quality resume.

This might seem boring, but unless you are applying to be a thesaurus writer, no one looking at your resume will care how clever your success verbs are. The millions of hours lost each year to professionals like you looking up synonyms for “improved” is a complete waste of time.

Here, then, are all the success verb you should ever need:

1. Accelerated
2. Achieved
3. Added
4. Awarded
5. Changed
6. Contributed
7. Decreased
8. Delivered
9. Eliminated
10. Exceeded
11. Expanded
12. Gained
13. Generated
14. Grew
15. Improved
16. Increased
17. Introduced
18. Maximized
19. Minimized
20. Optimized
21. Produced
22. Reduced
23. Saved
24. Sold
25. Streamlined

Of course, it’s not enough to just have the verb. You need a specific numerical accomplishment, too…

This article is adapted from Ladders 2018 Resume Guide: Best Practices & Advice from the Leaders in $100K — $500K jobs(Ladders, Inc. , 2018). Purchase the Kindle Single for immediate download here.

These are the 25 magic resume words that will land you the job was originally published in Rooting for you on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.