In this presentation, I talk about some of the best practices for software engineer to refine their resumes for getting better opportunities in the software industry.

1. Resume Building
Software Engineers
By Ravi Tandon

3. Outline
● Objective Of Writing A Resume
● Who Is The Resume For
● What Not To Put On Resume
● What To Put On Your Resume
● Building A Personal Brand
● Tips, Tricks, & Hacks
● Resources
● About Me

4. Objectives Of Writing A Resume
● Finding a job
● Applying for an internship
● Applying for a graduate school
● Growing your network
● Building your personal brand

5. The Three W’s Of A Resume
● Who
○ For the hiring team, not you :)
● What
○ Who you are?
■ Mission
○ Analyse your strengths
○ What makes you stand out
● Why
○ A five-minute pitch of your professional career
The Resume Is For The Hiring Team, Not You

6. What Not To Put On Resume
● Lies
● Age
● Negative comments
● Too much text (~ 1 Page)
● Low bar entry achievements
Put Signals, Not Noise

7. What To Put On Resume
● Your Mission Statement
● Highlight Achievements That Make You Unique
● Failures Which You Are Proud Of
Put What Your Are Proud Of, Good At, Can Be Valuable

8. Sections
● Mission Statement
● Academic Achievements
● Industry Experiences
● Personal Website (Github)
● Technologies
● References

9. What Is Your Mission?

10. ● Mission Statement
○ Talk about what you want to do in 10 years
○ Research on what interests you
○ More specific is better
Sections (Mission)
Know Yourself, Have A Mission

11. Sections (Mission)
Know Yourself, Have A Mission
● Bad Examples
○ “Use my skills to better contribute to an organization.”
○ “Become a leader and use my skills to be a great engineer.”
● Good Examples
○ “Want to grow in building large-scale systems.”
○ “Want to build and grow in Natural Language Processing.”
○ “Want to become a Data Scientist in E-Commerce.”

13. ● Academic Achievements
○ Good for people early in their careers <2 years of experience
○ Highlight projects where you contributed significantly, else skip
○ Highlight courses you loved, and are your strong areas
■ Courses from college, MOOCs (such as Coursera) are good
Sections (Academic Achievements)
Highlight What You Know & What Can Be Valuable

14. ● Bad Examples
○ Sharing a long list of projects, courses
○ Sharing projects with no link to
○ Sharing projects everyone does in your class
● Good Examples
○ “Worked on a ML model for face recognition. Report, Code”
○ “Designed an application with 100+ users”
Sections (Academic Achievements)
Highlight What You Know & What Can Be Valuable

16. ● Internships + Industry Experience
○ Talk about the project
○ Highlight your personal contribution
○ “Oversell, but not lie”
○ Link to project (on the web), publications
○ Add References to your manager
○ Talk about the business impact of your work
Sections (Industry Experience)
Talk Specifics + Impact

17. ● Bad Examples
○ “Helped build the backend for an e-commerce website
■ No intern can single handedly achieve this
○ “Helped work with the CEO”
■ Too generic
● Good Examples
○ “Helped build data-ingestion APIs”
○ “Helped generate 100 leads for the CEO’s office”
Sections (Industry Experience)
Talk Specifics

19. Sections (Github Projects)
● Critical for a good software developer
● Should have a Readme.md + Demo
● Should be easy to download & test
● If you have awards on Github, highlight + highlight + highlight!
● Github profiles I love
○ Feross Profile (Entrepreneur, Application Developer)
○ Sachin Neravath (Frontend)
Flex Your Muscles, Show On Github All You’ve Got

20. Sections (Technologies)
● Highlight only those you know well
● Share those relevant to current trends
○ Eg. Scala, Deep-Learning, Django, MERN etc.
● Don’t put those which are common
○ Eg. Google Docs, Visual Studio, etc.
Flex Your Muscles, Show On Github All You’ve Got

21. Sections (Technologies)
● Highlight only those you know well, avoid overselling
● Share those that are relevant to the target audience
○ Eg. Scala, Deep-Learning, Django, MERN etc.
● Don’t put those which are common
○ Eg. Google Docs, Visual Studio, etc.
Flex Your Muscles, Show On Github All You’ve Got

22. Sections (References)
● Sign of a great resume
○ Add title of the person providing the reference
● Good to have
● People you have worked with in past
○ Professors and managers
○ Who would recommend you highly
○ Otherwise, skip

23. Tips, Tricks & Hacks
● Link your Resume, Github Profile to your LinkedIn Profile
● Create an Online Profile on linktr.ee (My Profile)
● Use Grammarly (or another tool) to remove grammatical errors
● Write an eye-catching line in your mission statement. Eg.
○ I have built an application with over 1000+ downloads
○ I have led a team of 10+ interns
Flex Your Muscles, Show On Github All You’ve Got

25. Tips, Tricks & Hacks
● Hyperlinks in resume
○ For SEO
● Make apps easy to try
● Share resume through a GDrive link
○ No need to download
● Keywords in Bold, Italics
○ Catches attention early
Flex Your Muscles, Show On Github All You’ve Got

26. Next Session
● Building a brand for yourself
● Select 10 Resumes
○ Improvement (Before & After)
○ Do send your resumes and I will pick a few to help improvements
Let’s Be Connected, And Do A Few More Sessions Together

27. Next Session
● Optimizing your profile for Specific Roles
○ Graduate School
○ Frontend Engineer
○ Backend Engineer
○ Data Science Engineer
○ Machine Learning Engineer
● Keyword Search For Resumes
Let’s Be Connected, And Do A Few More Sessions Together

28. About Me
● Here to help out juniors + create an organization around it

29. About Me
● Academic Experience (IIT Guwahati + Princeton) ~9 Point GPA
● Industry Experience (Flipkart, ThoughtSpot - California, Spotnana)
● 5+ Research Papers
● 3 Patents (1 Approved, 2 Pending)
● Currently writing my first book
○ 100k+ followers on Instagram, Facebook

30. How To Reach Me
● LinkedIn
● Email: ravitandon2@gmail.com
● WhatsApp: +91-8840460021
● My calendar if you want a 1-1 session