Placement season is a strange sprint. Companies arrive back to back, shortlists drop overnight, and one PDF has to clear screening software, a 10-second recruiter skim, and then an interviewer who reads every line while you sit opposite them.
You can't control the cutoffs or the interview panel. You can control that PDF. Here's how I'd put one together as a fresher today.
Rule zero: one page, one column
No fresher needs two pages. Recruiters screening an entire batch won't reach page two anyway.
Stick to a single column. Fancy two-column templates often confuse applicant tracking systems (ATS), which read top to bottom; your skills sidebar can end up stitched into your education line. Skip photos, tables, text boxes, icon-only labels and skill bars. "Java ★★★★☆" tells a recruiter nothing.
The order of sections
- Header
- Two-line summary (optional)
- Education
- Technical skills
- Projects
- Internships and training
- Achievements and positions of responsibility
- Relevant certifications
Experienced engineers lead with work history. You lead with what you actually have: your education and what you've built.
Header: get the boring bits right
- Use a professional email, ideally firstname.lastname@.
- Write links as plain text so they survive parsing:
github.com/yourname,linkedin.com/in/yourname. - Leave out date of birth, full address, father's name, religion and marital status. They eat space and add nothing for most private-sector roles. (Government and PSU forms have their own formats; follow those exactly.)
Summary: delete the "objective"
"Seeking a challenging position in a reputed organisation…" appears on thousands of resumes. If you want a summary, write two lines: target role, strongest area, one proof point. For example:
Final-year B.Tech (CSE) student aiming for backend roles. Built and deployed two full-stack projects using Node.js and PostgreSQL; completed a two-month internship on an internal reporting tool.
Swap in your real details.
Education: exact, not rounded
Spell out degree, branch, college, university and batch, because recruiters often filter on branch and passing year. Write your CGPA exactly as your university reports it. A 7.86 stays 7.86; mismatches with placement-cell records cost you trust. Class XII and Class X (board plus percentage) are usually expected on Indian campus resumes, one line each.
Skills: grouped, and only what you can defend
Languages : Java, Python, C++
Web : React, Node.js, Express
Databases : MySQL, MongoDB
Tools : Git, Docker, Postman
Treat every item as a possible interview question. One tutorial on Kubernetes doesn't earn it a spot.
Projects: your real work experience
For most freshers this is the section that wins the interview. For each project, give it a name, the stack, a link, and two or three bullets that say what you built and what it does. Start bullets with a verb ("Built", "Designed", "Reduced") and be specific about your part, especially for team projects. Two solid projects you can explain end to end beat five copied ones.
Internships, achievements, certifications
List internships with organisation, role, dates and one or two concrete bullets. Under achievements, hackathon results, coding-contest ranks and club leadership roles all count; keep each to one line. Include certifications only when they relate to the role.
Before you hit submit
- Export as PDF, then select all, copy and paste it into a text editor. If the text comes out jumbled, an ATS will struggle too.
- Read the job description and make sure skills you genuinely have are named the way the company names them.
- Name the file sensibly:
Firstname_Lastname_Resume.pdf.
If you want a head start on layout, Imperfectors is a free resume builder with one-column, ATS-safe templates and a watermark-free PDF download after email verification. If you'd like to see which keywords from a specific job description your resume is missing, that's the Pro plan.
Good luck this season. What tripped you up on your first placement resume? Tell me in the comments.
Akshay Arora is a full-stack developer in New Delhi building Imperfectors, a free ATS-friendly resume builder.
Top comments (1)
The 'only what you can defend' rule is a good final edit. For each project bullet, I'd try explaining what I personally changed, why I chose that approach, and one thing that broke. If I can't answer those, the bullet probably needs narrowing. Also worth keeping the PDF copy/paste check as a quick smoke test, rather than proof that every ATS will parse it correctly.