️Student Resume Guide
Overview
Writing a resume might seem pretty straightforward, but there are lots of nuances. After all, it’s the first thing recruiters will read about you. It’s crucial to make a good first impression.
And you need to make that impression fast. Recruiters spend an average of six seconds reviewing a resume. You heard that right. Six seconds!
Almost all that time is spent on your name, companies, job titles, start/end dates, school, major, and project titles. Everything on your resume should be tailored towards helping recruiters find these key pieces of info as fast as possible.
👉 Use our resume template or online resume builders if you’re short on time.
ℹ️ If you don’t already have a resume, you can copy our standard student resume template here
You can check out examples of real student resumes that we’ve collected for you to review for inspiration as well.
Alternatively, you could use a low-cost service like TopCV / Zety or a free service such as CakeResume which make it a breeze to generate a nice looking resume. If you prefer more photoshop template CV, use Canva
If you prefer a more software oriented approach to creating a resume, leveraging version control and scripts, try out building a resume with Latex or even in Markdown!
If you don’t have a LinkedIn profile, create one now!
LinkedIn enables recruiters to find you and helps you maintain your professional network. Plus, you need it for cold-emailing recruiters later. First, search LinkedIn profiles of software engineers for good examples of how a profile should look.
Create your profile, and add as much of the information to the profile as you can. Check out our LinkedIn creation guide here for more information. Treat it as a digital extended resume, and often the LinkedIn profile can be even more detailed than a resume. Include all your work experience, projects, and a summary at the top. Search other LinkedIn profiles of software engineers for good examples.
Key Resume Guidelines
Here are some important guidelines for your resume:
What to include:
Professional Skills
Technical skills: languages, frameworks, platforms and tools that you are most familiar with
Softskills that you are most confident about: Logical thinking, problem solving skills, teamwork, flexibility, time management, project management,..
Projects that showcase things you’re passionate about and your technical experience. Include a link for each project if you can.
Include links to your GitHub, LinkedIn and a website (if applicable)
Look at the job description and make sure to include relevant skills/experiences. E.g. if you’re applying for a web developer role and you’ve used languages they’re asking for, make sure to list them in the work/project descriptions!
Easy to scan:
Stick to one page (maximum 2).
Keep it black and white if you’re not skilled at design. Colors are noisy.
Stick to a standard format (chronological, no weird fonts, 10.5 to 12 pt font size, 0.5 to 1 inch margins). Standard formats are more readable by resume-parsing programs and easier to skim by recruiters.
Keep it concise. Text walls discourage readers.
Highlight the key points:
Make your name big.
Highlight company names, job titles, start/end dates, school name, major and project titles.
Important content should be higher up. For your special case, the order of importance is usually Skills Projects > Skills.
Cut the fluff:
Objective and Summary are generally unnecessary. Just nice to have!
Descriptions should say something tangible. “Exceptional team player” doesn’t work. “Increased user conversion rates by 20%” does. This should describe the project specifically and quantify impact if possible.
People without a technical background will be reading your resume, so get rid of convoluted details.
Don’t neglect the details:
Include the higher of your cumulative GPA and your major GPA. If they’re both less than 3.5, leave it off.
Don’t include anything you wouldn’t be comfortable answering questions about. Most people make this mistake when listing their skills.
After finishing your resume, have your peers review it. Ask them to be honest and harsh. If you then want even more tips, check out this article.
Include CoderSchool classes and projects
If you built projects in our courses that are on your github, be sure to include those in a “Projects” section alongside other portfolio pieces. Be sure to describe the project (“Built and published a functional Instagram-like Android app which allows users to share photos with friends and family”) and include a link to the Github repo.
CoderSchool is listed as a school in LinkedIn, so you can also add us in your Education section and it should autocomplete with the icon and info. You could include images or even video demo of your app at the end of the course. There’s also a section in LinkedIn for projects.
How is a resume actually used?
Once you’ve prepared your resume, you might find it is helpful to think about how the resume is actually used in practice by recruiters. Here are a few examples:
Submitting Online. Searching for your ideal job position on recruitment platforms such as Vietnamworks; ITviec; Career Builder... A technical recruiter receives a lot of resumes in most cases, and they are the one processing incoming applications. Usually they will spend about 6 seconds reviewing each one, and then quickly sort applicants based on past internship/work experience, school/major, projects, cover letter, and other things that stand out. This will often result in tagging with a 👍🏽 and 👎🏽 or a similar scoring mechanic in their tracking system.
Career Fairs. You will hand out your resume at career fairs. The company representative (usually an engineer or recruiter) will spend the cursory 6 seconds looking it over, and then ask the “tell me about yourself” question. It’s really important to be able to provide a concise and enthusiastic pitch about why you are interested in the company-- essentially your cover letter in verbal form. At career fairs, many companies actually assign a number to each student about their likelihood to be a good fit.
How CoderSchool will refer you to Hiring Partners?
After having the final version of your CV, our Student Outcome Team will
Start referring your profile to our 400+ partner companies, with a specific introduction of your background, strengths, weaknesses, and your projects. Then employers will approach you directly for recruitment purposes if your profile is a good fit to their team.
Share your profile on Linkedin where recruiters who are not yet in our database can also reach you for their selection process.
ℹ️ Remember that connecting with people and working through referrals can often make all the difference in getting access to a career opportunity. If you can chat with a recruiter on your Linkedin network, at a career fair or at a meetup, you are significantly more likely to be given a longer look by them. If you are proactively sending out your resume and actually applying for jobs, interview invitations and offers will come to you much faster than the rest of others just staying still and wish for luck.
Attribution
Adapted from these posts:
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