A lot of people have problems with writing their resume and they are not doing their best one. This is why in this post I want to do a resume review of Software Engineer.

Bad CV

Here I have for you a real resume of junior developer. And I must say that it can be improved a lot. Realistically not a lot of companies would look on such CV and ask for the interview. Let's have a look.

On the top we have name and surname and a personal profile section. From it we can understand that we are talking here about a student. He doesn't have any production experience at all.

In order to understand if this CV is good or not you must put yourself on the place of the guy who will read this CV. We are talking here about a technical guy and not about HR. Just imagine that you are a tech lead or a senior developer with more than 5 years of experience.

You might look for a junior developer in your team which can handle some simple tasks so senior developers have more time for their tasks. Typically it doesn't work like this but it is another story.

The main question here is "Will this junior get any interviews at all with such CV?". Realistically I would say no. Why is that?

The whole CV doesn't tell anything about his experience, doesn't show if he can code or not and doesn't show what projects he did.

Let's look on the CV one more time realistically.

He writes on the top that he finished university. Nobody cares about it. He used some technologies during his courses which is fine but there are zero links on some repositories to see his code.

If he really used React, Redux, MongoDB, GraphQL and Typescript then where is the code? Why there are no links here? I want to see what he did with it.

"I gained experience writing backend with Node and Express" - where is the code? I want to see a link to Github here.

There are zero links and zero screenshots of what you did. How I can believe that you have any knowledge?

Nobody will spent time on the interview with a junior with such CV.

He write that he received some prize in Oriented programming. At least here must be a screenshot, a link to university website at least to validate this point.

Same goes for relevant experience. He created a website in Ruby on Rails - where I can see it?

Additionally there is another problem. There are zero lines of code about the position where he is applying. He is saying "I hope to continue my career in Web Development" but it's a really broad term. What do you want to do? Is it backend or frontend? Do you want to do some Dev Ops stuff? It is not clear from such CV.

He wrote here lots of different technologies which don't have anything in common. Frontend and Backend technologies are fine but also C++, Prolog, Haskell - nobody is using that in web development.

Technologies are all over the place without any focus and CV doesn't have anything interesting to focus on.

Good CV

Now let's look on a good CV so you can compare and understand how you can improve your CV. Realistically this guy is not bad. He has at least some experience and knowledge. It might still be on junior level and he didn't dig in the technologies really far but he certainly did that. He just didn't show that in his CV.

It all start with your name and position. It must be clear from the start for what position you are applying.

Next is summary. You need to sum up what you are doing in a single line.

I have 5 years of working experience in frontend development with focus on Javascript and Typescript

Here you for sure what to say that you don't have any experience. Then you must write something interesting that people continue reading your CV.

I have 5 finished real projects with links

After this goes location, date of birth and most importantly contact data. In Bad CV there were no contact data. It doesn't make sense. This is what is important for HRs so they can call you about next steps.

If you forgot your contact data then you are already screwed.

The next one is objective. Realistically it doesn't make any sense and doesn't bring anything to your CV. A lot of people write it in the CV but I would say it is optional.

Now we get to working history. This is what you typically have when you get some experience. Each job consists of: title, company names, dates, description of that you did and which technologies you used. The description should look like this.

I created a frontend part of the E-commerce shop using React and Redux.

After this you write your Skill set. If we are talking about web development it might be frontend, backend, databases, testing or devops. You can write several lines of description for every set.

For building SPA I use Angular or React. I have a heavy focus on client business logic, states like Redux, NgRx and typing with Typescript.

After this goes a section with your achievements. If you did something additional which is related to coding you might write it here. For example all your projects that you did yourself with links to the code or website. If you got some prizes on hackathon or you was in some meetups with some presentations it makes a lot of sense to write it here.

Then you have an education blog. It goes at the end because nobody cares which university you had.

At the end you might write additional information like language level or marriage status.

If you have no working experience

Here is the most popular question. What should I do if I don't have any working experience? Instead of working history you must write your finished projects with links to the code and including screenshots of the project in your github repository.

I created a full markup of responsive Twitter page with HTML and CSS.

Most importantly every single project MUST have a link. If you just write text and have no link it doesn't bring any value. People want to see your code. People want to check your Github repository, see your commits and understand what you did there.

Order

The order in your CV is also important. First section is a summary which includes contact information. Second section is either working history or finished projects. After this your skill set so people can understand what you can do. Achievements section is nice to have next. Education and other information is least important.

And actually if you want to improve your Javascript knowledge and prepare for the interview I highly recommend you to check my course Javascript Interview Questions.

📚 Source code of what we've done