Your Resume Sucks III: Fixing the Work Experience and Education

In part 1 we discussed how to fix the first 1/3rd of your resume so the hiring manager will want to read the rest. 

Then in part 2, we discussed how to write a highlight or skills portion that highlights the skills you have learned from either school or on the job. 

This is part 3, where we rewrite the experiences and education to make them more... suitable for a webdev position. While the advice is for a webdev position, the advice works for all resumes.

If you are just starting out (just got out of bootcamp, just graduated) and you have mainly customer service jobs (fast food, delivery, cashier, store clerk, etc.) then you need to put your best face forward. 

You Have Some Volunteer or Paid Experience

If you have done websites for other people before, great! Show their URL, even if it's a blog! (However, if you just used a default theme, don't bother. That is just lame. I mean something you put some effort in, tweaked layout added extra menus, that sort of thing). URL to the demo, short explanation on what you did and what's so special about it, and the tech stack it used

Remember, pick good ones. If you did several, pick the best three. Your Portfolio URL would contain all of them. If you did a redesign, add before and after screenshots, get some from Internet Archives if you didn't keep any. Example: 

  • JohnDoePizza.com: redesigned front-end and customized UI to fit modern accessibility standard, including semantic web to improve SEO and indexing from existing Wix template site utilizing modern HTML5 and CSS3  

No Volunteer or Paid Experience, but Mad Skillz

If you have mad skills, show them off here. URL to the demo, URL to the repo, then a list of technologies used. The real details should belong in the project README.md. Just need a couple sentences here for each project or URL. 

And I do mean projects. Hiring managers want to see nice clean complete websites. Fonts, Layouts. Responsive Design, all the stuff you say you know? Show them off. Even some CSS tricks

Don't list more than 3. Pick the best. Again, your portfolio URL would contain all of them, but just for the resume, put the best three. The most impressive ones. 

  • Project XYZ: a full-stack vocabulary builder with node.js and express.js backend with ORM linking to MySQL RDBMS, and a frontend featuring handlebars, bootstrap, jQuery. 
    Demo URL        Repo URL     

Soft Skills Galore

That takes care of the hard skills. But what about the soft skills? Here's where it gets tricky. 

List all the soft skills you used at each of the projects. All those skills you listed in part 2. Do you remember your soft skills list? Yep, we'll need them here. Try to give yourself a grade (1 to 5, with 5 being excellent) for each skill, as this will help you figure out what to keep when you start to trim the list down. 

Remember, only the skills you actually have. Don't invent something. If the interviewer asks you, you better have an explanation. Did you lead a team? Did you collaborate in a team environment? Were you the team builder? Mentor? Referee? What were you good at?  

You have to word each job description where you accomplished certain tasks while using the soft skills you listed. 

EX:  
  • Flexible and resourceful under pressure, solved operations problems, improved existing process

That is just a list of skills, not a job experience.

Instead, you need to write something like:

  • Responsible to keep assembly line running and deal promptly with any malfunction in a fast-paced environment; flexible and resourceful with both quick and long-term fixes, recommend and implement improvements to existing process to increase reliability
Now that is a job description. See the difference? The first is just a list of skills. The second shows what you actually *do* with those skills. 

Now the Branding Statement, or Executive Summary

There are two schools of thought on executive summary

a) state the executive summary toward the job you want, then revise the rest of the resume to support the summary; i.e. write summary first 

b) write the resume first, then figure write an exec summary that fits all you do / know; write summary last

Both works for certain types of people, but not others. 

Type A is good  for people who concentrated on one career and never looked back. They generally do the same thing, so their exec summary tend to look about the same, with no major changes except for the depth of experience and skillset they picked up. 

Type B is better for people who tend to change roles, on a career change and so on. Those just graduated is here too, as they either have retail jobs or only academic experience. 

There's not much to say about Type A. Your exec summary should be obvious. You're a (insert skill) professional with X years of experience doing (Y) (optional related career) with skills in (insert list) with a proven record of (insert accomplishment).

But for those who are... flexible, Type B is a bit harder to write, as you end up cutting most of it out leaving not much to fill the page with, if you are customizing it to the job that you do not have much practical experience on. 

For example, if you are a hybrid tech support / coder, and can do both efficiently, there really isn't much overlap between the two, unless you are doing web product support. So you will probably need at least three resumes: one for coding, one for tech support, and a third for web product support. 

And you will have to customize EACH resume to suit the job you're applying for. Cut out the irrelevant skills, emphasize the ones they did mention in the ad. 

And you'll need different executive summaries for each type of job. 

AND revise the resume to support the exec summary. And keep revising until you come up with something that works. 

What about Education?

I see Education as a "type" of experience, so they should be formatted about the same. Explain what you did in school, what you studied, then under bullet points, list some projects that are relevant to the job you are applying for. 

If you just have a generic degree, then just list degree, major (minor if any), school. Unless the GPA is quite impressive, don't bother listing it. Do list honors program if available. 

And for those of you doing career transition, don't list the year of graduation. It dates you (i.e. reveals how old you are). 

Which Goes First? 

Check which sounds more impressive... Your education, or your work experience. If you don't really have much relevant work experience, put education first. 


Next would be the final part... the small details, like fonts, size, bullet points, and so on. 



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