Witty Writeups

Resume Advice

Spotlights and Solutions

I’m not a professional resumé writing expert. But I’ve been getting practice updating mine for about 4 years now, since the senior year of high school (when applying to colleges) to now when I’m about to look for a real full time job on my way out of college (one more year left).

For reference, my resume collection my resume templates, or my current resume.

Here is my advice for how to present a summer experience, a project you did on a resume so that all the important information is communicated.

What you did

It’s pretty obvious but you need to write about what you actually do. This is a description of the job that was performed, the piece of software developed or created. For example,

• - Developed educational iPad game for middle school students
• - Wrote a client library for XYZ API

How you did it

Recruiters, in my experience like seeing what sort of technology was used. It lends legitimacy to your project (are you using the right tool for the job? hopefully!) and backs up your skills section (where did you use your python skills? Oh, this project!). This is about the programming languages used, the tools, technologies, APIs and libraries that your project relies on.

• - utilizing Java and JMonkey Game Engine
• - with Python and Pandas and Numpy
• - using Google BigQuery and gcs Command Line tools

Why it matters

Cool project, but why? Cool work at your summer job, but why? Why were you necessary? Why were you a worthwhile intern or why was your project interesting? For a job, it’s always nice to have something about what your work did to help the company’s bottom line? If you have specific numbers, use them.

• - implemented xyz that saved 2 hours / week of employee time
• - presented research to save company time and resources from unviable path
• - improved latency from 200ms to 2ms

For a project, motivate what you did by showing why the thing you built was useful or explain who could use it. This can also help you think about the usability of your tool.

• - educational game for middle school students to help them with their math skills
• - created xyz with a user interface that reduced complexity of the front end view presented to customers
• - connected X and Y to simplify using tool Z

Note

If you are writing about a summer job for a tech company, be sure to check with your manager or your HR team about what you can and cannot say about what you did. Especially if you worked for a national lab or signed a really long NDA. Getting a new job is good! Getting sued for breach of contract and leaking trade secrets is not.

3 Aug 2015