If you’re a Computer Science student, or perhaps any student majoring in a more “technical” field, you certainly know how crucial it is to secure those internships in order to land THAT one post grad full-time offer. We’ve all been through the hectic job hunt process - well, at least some of us! That’s right, it’s a whole process that requires energy, consistency , and most importantly, lots time! Submitting your resume is the first step, what will either make or break your application, so you really need to be smart about it.
We hosted a resume event with Beste Karli as our guest/recruiter, McGill Alumn and HR Professional at Tempo, where we got to know the nitty gritty details on your resume that could make you stand out among other candidates! Here’s what she had to say.
Proof read, proof read, proof read!!!
We can’t stress this enough. Make sure your resume doesn’t contain ANY spelling mistakes, that it’s written in clear, correct English. The last thing recruiters want to see are spelling mistakes or typos on a candidate’s application, so make sure you get rid of those.
2. Keep it short and simple
Look, we all want to highlight our best achievements, but sometimes that would make a resume pages long, which we don’t want. Recruiters will most probably not care about the awards you’ve won at MUN 4 years ago in high school, so make sure you declutter your resume and only state what’s relevant, and this brings us to our third point.
3. Tailor your resume for the role you’re applying for
What role is it that you’re applying for? Have you done more projects? Or do you have more work experience? You really have to think about the type of job that you’re applying for and highlight only the skills relevant to that position. Don’t include things you’ve achieved that you know for sure won’t be of use for the role, unless it’s clear that they’re valuable (i.e interpersonal skills and important leadership positions.
4. Formatting is key
First of all, there’s a bunch of things we have to take into account when formatting your resume:
The chronological order of your achievements
Your strongest suit and your ‘meh’ suit (i.e what to highlight first/last)
The keywords used in the job descriptions
Your use of bold, italic and caps
Lastly, the “mise en page”
OK, starting from the last one, which is the probably the easiest, format your resume in the simplest way possible, don’t use any fancy templates, fancy fonts, or colors. If you’re after a strictly technical job, it’s best to use a good old plain Harvard format. There are also a lot of good templates that you can look at here. Note: submit it in PDF, so you don’t run into issues with formatting
Now onto the good stuff!
How to order your achievements?
“What should I put first ?”, you might be thinking.
For students, it’s best to keep the education section at the very top. Don’t focus too much on this section. If you’re a recipient of any big scholarships or awards, include them. Also include your relevant coursework if you’re looking at internships as a first or second year, but don’t make it take more than a fifth of the page.
Once you’re done with that, take a moment and think: do I have more relevant work experience or does my experience just mostly projects (whether personal, group, hackathon or competition projects). Whichever option that comes to your mind first, that’s what gets highlighted first.
Once you’ve got that one figured out, list the achievements starting from most recent. You have to keep in mind that the resume world is all about grabbing attention and making the readers ‘hooked’ to your resume. First impressions not only matter in this case, they're GAME CHANGERS. And this brings us to our next point.
“Know thyself”
Ah yes, the classic quote from Socrates, pretty sure you’ve heard or read this somewhere. It is crucial to know your strongest link when creating your resume, as you want to put the most important things first when describing the jobs you’ve done previously, or are still doing.
Since you’ll be using bullet points for the job descriptions, it’s easy to partition the work you’ve done into 1-2 liners, from most important (as ‘hooks’) to least important. Here again, don’t make long and wordy sentences, keep them straightforward.
Use your keywords wisely
Recruiters love seeing candidates who know the true value of their contribution. Use the “buzz words”, i.e action verbs that actually fit the job description (and this is where tailoring your resume come into play). Try to use more specific words than “helped”, “planned”, “planned”, etc.
Bold, italic, caps, none?
Be smart about the way you format your text.
Use all caps for the subheadings, italic for the roles you’ve worked, and bold for, well, a bunch of stuff!
There’s more than one way of making a shiny resume that grabs the attention of recruiters at the right places. You could perhaps bold the years of experience you have in a programming language, or you could highlight an action verb that you deem as very crucial to the description. It’s really up to you. The point is to market yourself the right way
5. Believe in yourself
Yes, yes, I know, this might sound a bit cliché. You’ve probably heard this millions of times, but it’s really important to stay confident throughout the process, to be able to face the challenges without giving up. Going into the tech industry surely isn’t a linear path, but if you trust yourself enough and you put in the work, you will make it.
Believing in yourself also means taking leaps of faith, and quite often, actually. I’m talking about applying to jobs even when you feel like you don’t meet all of the qualifications.
Most of the time recruiters put all of those points, but end up hiring someone who probably has half of the requirements, because let’s face it, they can be pretty unrealistic sometimes. So why not give it a try and take a small leap of faith? you’ve done all the tedious work at this point, you might as well take the chance and click that “Submit” button!