Job Search Skills in Software Development: Resume Writing

“Emphasize your strengths on your resume, in your cover letters and in your interviews. It may sound obvious, but you would be surprised how many people simply list everything they have ever done, convey your passion and link your strengths to measurable results. Employers and interviewers love concrete data. “– Marcus Buckingham.  It doesn’t matter how smart we are until it is properly indicated in our resume, our skill will go unnoticed because the interviewer will always first see our resume, not us. Thus, the probability of being selected in an interview largely depends on our resumes.   

So, what is resume writing? Resume writing refers to writing about our personal and professional achievements clearly and effectively in chronological order on a piece of paper. Since, this is the most basic and important aspect of job search, our professionalism and skills must need to be reflected in our resumes. The language we use for communication medium on our resume should be clear, simple and brief. 

There are certain essential elements of resume writing that we must keep in mind before drafting our resumes.  The first section contains our Personal Data. It includes our name, address, contact details (Email address and contact number).  Next we must have a career objective, mention it in such a way that explains how we will meet the demands of the job that we are applying for. 

Our resume must have an Employment history if we have worked previously, irrespective of how versatile our work experience is write only the relevant work experience, which is in the interest of the company where we are applying. For instant suppose, if we are applying for software development job profile, we write only programming related work experience. Though we have also worked on marketing profile, don’t mention this because our marketing experience is not at all relevant for software development job. It might create a negative impact.

We must include our academic record in the resume. Mention all our educational qualifications including the name of the programs/diploma, passing year, subjects, grade, and schools/institutions name. Along with education, we can also add some optional information which includes our other skill sets such as technical skills, projects relevant to the job and some other achievements including awards and recognitions. For example, Ben is a Mathematics Olympiad Topper. 

We must also include our personal information such as sex, marital status, religion etc. which is not mandatory to mention. So, we can skip it. We could mention our hobbies, not imperative, but worth mentioning on resumes, most of the companies across the world consider it positively.

It is a good habit to mention references in resumes, put at least two person name, designation, address, contact details, and your relationship with them. Always mention those people who know us very well and can speak positively about us, preferably, our professor or our boss from a previous company or one from each category.
Our work experience and academic details should be arranged in chronological order. We need to start with the current job and the last study program and then previous and then so on.

In software development, we are equipped with attractive skill sets and effective work experience and we mention this in a very relevant manner, but there may be a chance of bottlenecks that can put us in an awkward situation at some points. These points may refer to employment gaps or short stints during your career span. We have to be very careful while mentioning these in our resume. It is better suggested to acknowledge the gap in such a manner so as to not create a negative impression. This can be done by being honest and mentioning the reason for the gap. 

Once we are done with resume, we need to review it, Check it twice and organize it (Order, font, color, spacing, headings, boulders, watermarks etc.)