This is the short version of the resume guide. It will not get you a job by itself. It will keep the common formatting and wording mistakes from quietly killing applications before a human reads them.
File and layout
- One page for students and new grads. Two pages only if you already have multiple internships with real ownership.
- PDF only. No Word docs, no Google Docs links, no Canva exports with weird fonts.
- Plain single-column template. Jake's Resume on Overleaf is fine. No sidebars, icons, skill bars, or colored headers.
- Standard fonts, black text on white, normal margins. Fancy layout does not help and often hurts ATS parsing.
- Select text in the PDF and confirm it copies cleanly. If you can't select it, neither can the ATS.
Structure
- Header has name, email, phone, LinkedIn, GitHub or portfolio. No photo. No full street address.
- No summary or "passionate engineer" blurb. That space is better spent on experience.
- Order is: Education → Experience → Projects → Skills → Awards / Certifications.
- GPA only if it is 3.0/4.0 or higher. Otherwise leave it off.
- No soft-skills section. Communication belongs in interview stories, not as a bullet list.
Bullets
- Every bullet follows the Google XYZ idea: what you did, what you built, and what changed because of it.
- At least one concrete number per strong bullet: users, latency, coverage, tickets, dollars, time saved, or scale.
- Start with a strong verb. Cut "helped with", "worked on", and "responsible for".
- Name the real tools only where they matter. Stack soup in every line is hard to read and easy to ignore.
- No confidential company metrics or internal codenames you are not allowed to share.
Skills section
- Skills are for ATS keyword matching first, humans second. Group them cleanly.
- Default groups: Languages, Frameworks, Tools, Databases.
- If you have internship experience, also consider Cloud / Infrastructure, CI/CD, Testing, Observability.
- Only list skills you can talk about for five minutes without a crash course.
- Mirror the language in the job postings you actually want. Do not invent synonyms the ATS will miss.
Projects and proof
- Projects have a one-line purpose, your role, the stack, and a result. No "to-do app".
- Live demos, GitHub links, or writeups are linked when they exist and still work.
- Hackathons, awards, publications, and competition placements are listed if you have them.
- Anything on the resume is fair game in an interview. Remove what you cannot defend.
Before you keep applying
- Track callback rate: interviews ÷ applications. Aim for roughly 3–5% outside a strong network.
- If you already have 3–5 interviews this season, stop micro-tweaking the resume and prepare for those rounds.
- If the rate is near zero after a real volume of applications, fix the resume or the targeting before adding another hundred apps.
- Reach out to recruiters and hiring managers on LinkedIn for the roles you care about most. Force a human read.
Want more than a checklist?
Read the full resume guide, look at a redacted sample review, or book a paid resume review. The first five async reviews are free in exchange for an honest written testimonial.