A few days ago I wrote an article to show you the ways to deal with rejection. This rejection might happen after an interview, or it might be just after applying for the position. You can click here to get an overview. However, today I’m going to talk about the previous stage of rejection, the application stage.
When you are at the job searching stage, one of the hardest parts is to create a resume for yourself that actually fits your profession. You saw the advertisement for your truly amazing line of work as a developer and you realise you have what it takes to land the position. Yet, is your tech resume sufficient to secure your opportunity for that underlying new employee screening? A lot of times your job hunt is failing because your CV is letting you down. A good resume is a resume that gets you invited for an interview, not one that looks pretty or or covers your entire life in detail.
A study shows recruiters give only 39 seconds on each resume. So apparently, you, as an applicant, have only a little over half a minute to impress the recruiter and bag the opportunity to get a call from the company for your first interview. Your CV is all an employer has to build the initial impression of you, so only one slip-up can genuinely harm your possibilities of getting prospective job interviews.
As matched.io has been working with developers for years, we know the struggle of the applicants to create a perfect resume which actually attracts the attention of a HR or Team lead. Though on our platform you don’t need to use a traditional resume, but companies still sometimes require CVs, we felt the urge to point out 10 flaws in your resume that can fail you in the job hunting battle.
Let’s have a tour of the steps, shall we?
1) Not customising the resume as per job requirements
As an applicant, your resume ought to be customised to the position for which you are applying. You should emphasise anything on your resume that applies or remove anything that does not apply to the position.
2) Less tech stack explanation:
Explain your hard skill which is relevant to the job you are applying to. A technical resume has much stronger emphasis on hard skills aka your tech stack. HR will spend less time looking at the resume, and when they only give it a short glance, they’re looking to see if you have clearly mentioned the technical skills needed for the role. If you don’t make your technical skills easy to find, your resume could be set aside before you even got an opportunity.
3) Github account with course projects only:
Please use your Github account which has some of your own projects apart from the guided projects. It might be a small fun project but try to implement some of your own versions to it. As tech companies check Github as well, they will get an overview of your capabilities.
4) A ridiculous email address
I get your points, you want to look cool, right? Instead of using a funny email id to make you cool, use some other tricks which I have mentioned earlier or later to make your resume remarkable. Using magicjackie or wolfrita is not going to help you to grab the attention. Use your normal mail id like jackietim@xyz or rita.rickmaann@abc. Trust me, it is much more sober and useful instead of using the previously mentioned ids.
5) Big chunks of text
You have lots of experiences, certifications etc and you are very much interested to show them all. Yes, I understand your excitement but hold your horses for a second. No one is interested in reading a lot of text. Just use small, relevant paragraphs to introduce yourself aka your experiences.
6) Outdated/Unreadable/Fancy Fonts
Just like web development, you need to create the best user experience for your resume as well. Try to use simple fonts and maximum 2 different fonts to write your resume.
7) Not Getting into Project Details
Max time, employers get confused when they get a competitive resume but lack explanations of the responsibilities of the previous project. While summing up your previous work, don’t forget to cross check the following points:
- What the role/project is
- Your contribution to the role
- The tools you have used for the project
- What you learned
8) CV Skills graphs
It was a time when it became a trend to show the list of skills and competencies as a skill graph, but you are the one who is rating the skills and your self-rating might seem unnecessary to a lot of employers. As an alternative for that, you might use simple but specific text to give the reader a clear idea.
9) Unexplained Gaps in your resume
Sometimes there will be gaps in your employment; it’s a fairly common issue for people to have time out of work. Make it a point to expound on break voyaging or finishing individual undertakings while composing your resume. It’s smarter to show that you’ve been accomplishing something useful than nothing by any means.
10) Social media profiles that are not related to the specific job
You are applying for software development. Companies are more interested in your Github or LinkedIn or Xing or Stack overflow profile rather than your Facebook or Instagram profile. The last two social platforms are not connected to your job field and if you don’t have a professional profile in the first mentioned platform, time to make one and use that for applying.
If you’re just starting out with technology, it may feel like you can’t keep up because other people have a lot of experience you might not have. The truth is that the experiences you have are valuable and now all you need to do is highlight them in the best possible way for the position you are applying for. I agree that getting noticed by employers is the hardest part of the job searching journey but now at least you have the idea to make your resume perfect and increase your chances. Do you know we have provided 5 tips to make your resume perfect in another article? Click here to find it out.
Don’t be stressed while creating a tech resume.
With everything taken into account, your specialised resume ought to be straightforward, meaningful, reasonable, everyday practice, significant, and effective. That is the very thing we anticipate from Clean Code, and what you anticipate from your resume.
We are going to talk more on developer jobs, resume, salaries and other perspectives on our upcoming articles. So, stay in touch with us for the latest news and useful tricks to smooth your journey as a developer.
