DEV Community: northloopworks

Your resume isn't getting rejected by ATS. It's getting rejected by a bored human in 6 seconds.

northloopworks — Sat, 10 Oct 2026 01:32:12 +0000

Junior devs spend weeks obsessing over whether their resume is "ATS-friendly." Keywords. Fonts. Parsing. Most of that energy is aimed at the wrong gatekeeper.

The real gatekeeper is a recruiter with 200 applications in their queue, skimming each resume in about 6 seconds before it goes in the yes pile or the trash pile. Your resume doesn't get read. It gets scanned. And the scan decides everything.

What actually survives the 6-second skim

In 6 seconds, a human eye can take in roughly three things:

Your title line. "Junior Backend Developer" or "CS Student, graduating 2027." This is the single most important line on the page. It tells the scanner which pile you belong in. Vague titles ("Software Engineer | Problem Solver | Tech Enthusiast") waste it.
The first bullet under each entry. Nobody reads your fourth bullet. The first bullet under Projects and under Experience gets read; the rest get skimmed for numbers. Put your strongest result first, always.
The skills block. Scanners check this against the job posting in about a second. If your skills are buried at the bottom of page two, you lose.

That's it. If those three things match the role, you get the full 30-second read. If they don't, nothing else on the page matters.

One bullet formula that works

Steal this structure for every project and job bullet:

[Strong verb] + [what you built] + [stack] + [measurable result]

Example: "Built a CI pipeline in GitHub Actions that cut deploy time from 20 minutes to 4."

Compare that to what most junior resumes say: "Worked on CI/CD pipeline for a team project." Same experience, completely different scan result. The first one gives the scanner a verb, a tool, and a number in one line. The second one gives them nothing to hold onto.

Three more rules for bullets:

One number per bullet is enough. Two is great. Zero is a wasted line.
Lead with the outcome, not the task. "Cut API response time 40% by adding Redis caching" beats "Responsible for backend performance improvements."
Kill filler verbs. "Helped," "assisted," "worked on," "participated in." If you wrote the code, say what the code did.

The formatting rules that cost nothing

Single column. One page. 10-11pt type. Standard fonts. No tables, no columns, no graphics, no text boxes. Margins 0.7 inch or wider. This is the entire ATS playbook for juniors: the weirder the layout, the more likely a parser (or a tired human) misses something.

Put the sections in this order: contact line, title line, 2-line summary, skills, projects, experience, education last. Education goes last because for junior roles, what you built matters more than where you studied.

The uncomfortable part

None of this guarantees an interview. Hiring is a market with more applicants than roles, and luck matters. But a huge share of junior applications die from avoidable mistakes: no title line, skills buried, bullets with no numbers, two pages for six months of experience. Fixing those is free, and it moves you from the instant-trash pile to the maybe pile. The maybe pile is where interviews come from.

I turned the full system into a $29 kit called FirstOffer: six resume templates with this exact section order, an application tracker, 20 cold-outreach scripts, a STAR story bank for behavioral interviews, and an offer evaluation worksheet. No account, no app, just files by email within 24 hours. Details here: https://firstoffer-nw.netlify.app.

The most common pricing mistake I see in freelance dev proposals: a single number at the bottom.

northloopworks — Sat, 10 Oct 2026 01:30:46 +0000

The most common pricing mistake in freelance developer proposals, and the one that costs freelancers the most money, is this:

A single number, buried at the bottom.

The typical proposal reads like a resume with a price tag stapled on. Three paragraphs about skills, a list of technologies, and then, at the very end: "My rate is $45/hr" or "Total: $2,000." One number. Take it or leave it.

Here's why that loses you money:

A single number invites a single response: "can you do it cheaper?" There's nothing to negotiate toward, only down.
Burying the price signals you're uncomfortable with it. Clients read that discomfort and price you accordingly.
One number gives the client no way to say yes to more. You never find out they would have paid double for a faster timeline or extra scope.

The fix I kept recommending is the 3-tier proposal. You present three options instead of one:

Essential: the minimum viable version of the work.
Standard: the version most clients actually need. This is the one you want them to pick.
Complete: the everything version, with extras like priority support or a maintenance window.

This changes the client's internal question from "is this worth it?" to "which one do I pick?" That's a completely different conversation, and it's the one where you stop getting haggled down.

Here's a skeleton you can steal. Fill in your own scope lines:

SUBJECT: Proposal: [Project Name] - 3 options

Hi [Name],

Based on what we discussed, here are three ways we can work together.

OPTION A - ESSENTIAL ............ $[X]
[2-3 sentence scope summary]
Delivered in [N] weeks.

OPTION B - STANDARD .............. $[Y]
Everything in Essential, plus:
[scope addition 1]
[scope addition 2]

OPTION C - COMPLETE ............... $[Z]
Everything in Standard, plus:
[scope addition 3]
[priority support / maintenance window]

Payment: 50% to start, 50% on delivery. Valid for 14 days.

Setting X, Y, and Z is its own skill. A rule of thumb: Standard should be the price you'd quote as a single number today, Essential about 70% of that with real scope cut, and Complete about 140% with genuine additions. Never invent a tier by just changing the price. Each tier needs real scope differences or clients see through it.

The bigger problem underneath all of this is that most freelancers don't actually know their numbers. They pick a rate that "sounds right" and hope. If you want to fix that part, I put the math into a free calculator here: https://rateup-nw.netlify.app/#calculator.

And if you want the whole system, 15 proposal templates, 5 contract starting points, 8 rate-raise scripts for existing clients, and the pricing psychology guide, it's $49 as a one-time purchase: https://rateup-nw.netlify.app. No subscription.

What's the worst pricing mistake you've seen, either yours or someone else's? Curious how common the single-number quote really is.

I productized landing page teardowns. Launching today with 0 customers — here is a sample teardown, and 5 free ones for commenters.

northloopworks — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 17:26:19 +0000

Hi devs. I run Teardown Shop, and today is launch day. Honest numbers: 0 customers, 0 revenue, the site went live last night.

What it is: a productized landing page critique. You send your URL and your one goal (signups, sales, demos). A panel of four specialists (copy, UX, conversion, trust) scores the page section by section, ranks every issue by impact, and rewrites your entire above-the-fold. $49 tripwire teardown (24h delivery), $199 deep teardown (48h, the core offer), $499/mo retainer for teams shipping constantly.

Sample teardown (fictional SaaS "Flowboard" — the real format, shortened):

Scores: Copy clarity 6/10, CTA 5/10, Trust 4/10, Friction 6/10.

Top issues:

The headline "Work, organized" says nothing. A first-time visitor cannot tell this is project software, let alone who it is for.
The "Get started" CTA sits next to a pricing link that leads to a page with no prices. That contradiction costs trust at the exact moment someone is deciding whether to believe you.
No proof above the fold: no customer count, no testimonial, no product screenshot. The skeptic's first question goes unanswered for three scrolls.

The rewrite we would test: "Project boards that freelance designers actually finish." Sub: briefs, revisions, and approvals in one place, with reminders that chase your clients so you do not have to. CTA: "Try it free for 14 days."

The launch offer: 5 free full teardowns for the first 5 commenters who drop a URL and one goal. I will post each scored teardown publicly in this thread so everyone can judge the quality. Paid reports are always private; these five are public so nobody has to take my word for anything.

What I am nervous about, honestly: the $499 retainer is unproven (nobody buys a retainer from a brand they have never heard of), and whether founders will pay $199 for criticism. I am tracking both from day one and will kill or reprice what the numbers reject.

Site: https://teardown-shop.netlify.app

Tear it apart in the comments. First 5 URLs get the free teardown.