Kim Arnett 

Posted on Dec 12, 2018

Resume Review

#discuss #career #beginners

Let's help get some fresh talent in the industry. Help out another person by checking for spelling, grammar, making sure their resume is easy to read and any other tips you have come across your journey you think will benefit someone else.

The rules are simple:

Juniors:

Post a link to your resume / cv below for others to review, or get extra eyes on.

Seniors:

Please give feedback and reply so we don't all pile on the same one (but you can absolutely provide additional feedback).

*if you don’t want your personal info out there please replace with placeholders so the layout isn’t messed up. *

This thread was started on Twitter. Feel free to follow along in any or both places!

Oldest comments (349)

Molly Struve (she/her) • Dec 12 '18

Wow, this is impressive and you just graduated! NICE WORK!

One suggestion I have would be to get a little more detailed on some points to help you really stand out. It will also help people get a firm grasp on what you can do the more detailed you are. For example:

"Manage project to ensure timely completion" -> What exactly did you do that helped the team stay on task?
"Integrate multiple complex enterprise systems to provide services that optimize and support business processes" -> What processes were supported? What systems were you working with?

I am personally a big fan of tailoring my Resume. You have A TON of awesome skills, but sometimes that makes it a little overwhelming to read. When you are applying, look at the job description and maybe try to whittle down your Skills list to those that you think would be most important for the job. That way if someone is reading your resume they can easily see you have the skills they are looking for.

When I first graduated I also put some of the relevant classes I took under my education section. Something to think about if you want. I also added notes about any organizations I was involved in or led that I thought might convey I had skills the employer was looking for.

Did I mention I LOVE your font?! :D Keep crushing it!!!

Juan F Gonzalez • Dec 12 '18

+1 to what Molly said, I wish I would had such experience to show when I graduated haha.
Definitely trimming down the skills to the most relevant for the job you're looking for is important.

Ben Halpern • Dec 12 '18

I agree with all of this. That’s all I have to add. 😂

Ahmed Abdelsalam • Dec 12 '18

Great idea but Can I post my portfolio?
BTW Here's my portfolio

Ben Halpern • Dec 12 '18

I don’t think anyone will mind. 😄

I’m looking at your portfolio on mobile. The look is clean, I’d say my biggest concern is that there is a lot of stuff there. I felt like I was scrolling and scrolling and scrolling.

It may be possible to consolidate some of the info and/or shrink some graphic and text to make the whole thing a bit more skimmable.

David J Eddy • Dec 12 '18

Love the "FBI-SURVEILLANCE" WiFi network on the Linux Desktop Demo :D.

rhymes • Dec 12 '18 • Edited

Why on earth have you spoken at TEDx and I can't find a single link to the talk on your website :P ?

I would have it at font 72 with yellow background and tags around it.

Renan Lourençoni Nobile • Dec 20 '18

It looks great! The only thing I would change is the blur effect on hover in your work examples.

Leonard Morrison • Dec 12 '18

Here's my resume! Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Evan • Dec 12 '18

Pick a different font for the body text, it's particularly difficult to read. In particular, a good serif'd font is helpful for something that may be printed. Try Georgia, it's a websafe font that renders well and reads well.

Enzo Lizama Paredes • Dec 12 '18

That's nice!! Here I leave my resume and I go slowly ...

I would appreciate your feedback!

Kabir Hossain • Dec 12 '18

Your resume looks fine. But there is some mistakes like as CERTICATES.

Howie Lynch • Dec 12 '18

thegrinch1985.github.io/Portfolio/

Molly Struve (she/her) • Dec 15 '18

Hi!!!

+1 for being from Ireland, half my husbands family lives over there :) As for your resume I have a few thoughts.

It is pretty long. I would suggest shortening it up to 1 page. I would do this by eliminating the first summary and saving that for a cover letter or email that you would send with the resume. I would also avoid writing paragraphs. I think it is a lot easier for those reading your resume if you use bullet points. It will also force you to make every word count and ensure you are not using a lot of fillers.
I would move your job experience up to the very top and follow that with skills or education.
I would pare down your skills. It is AWESOME that you have so many, but when you are applying for a job make sure to only include the ones that are relevant for that job.
I would remove your references, no need to waste space with other people's contact info. Instead I would suggestion writing "References available upon request" at the bottom

If you have time I would suggest reading this Resume Writing Tips blog I wrote. Might have you ideas to tighten this up a bit.

Hope those suggestions help :)

Jonathan Nicholas • Dec 12 '18

Here's mine.

Any feedback is highly appreciated!

rhymes • Dec 12 '18

Old school, nice!

Just put the work experience at the top.

I would put stuff in this order: work experience, skills, education, awards and scholarship and then volounteering experience

Michelle Epps • Dec 13 '18

I have a bit of a different perspective but that’s the beautiful thing about these exercises! Also, remember it’s improtant to tailor your resume to the opportunity you are pursuing...

I like the old school vibe! I give advice to put your most impactful “experience” at the top - for you at this moment, it’s your eduction. That will shift! Also, I would remove the line in the middle of each experience regarding positive feedback prior to departure and much like you’ve seen in other feedbacks on here - add the “so what” instead. What business or technology outcomes resulted. That will be more impactful.

Great job representing yourself overall!

rhymes • Dec 13 '18

Great feedback! :-)

Jonathan Nicholas • Dec 13 '18

Great feedback from both of you! I really appreciate it.

Jack Harner 🚀 • Dec 12 '18

Would love some feedback on mine.

I have a website version that uses Print CSS to adjust down to a printer friendly version.

My thought was that since I'm trying to get a web design/development job having a resume website would be kinda cool and nifty that I can just print off a copy, wherever I am.

Gareth Bradley • Dec 12 '18

I love the interactive Website Jack.

Jack Harner 🚀 • Dec 12 '18

Thanks Gareth!

Ben Sinclair • Dec 12 '18

Hi Jack.

I like the look of this immediately, but there are a couple of things I would change:

The headings have underlines on them which make them look like links (they're not)
The employment timeline and skills sections are very large compared to the rest of the page, and they take up a lot of vertical space, which feels unbalanced.
The accordion effect for the previous roles is nice, but I don't know why it's there. Why do I need to click to read the text? It's not to save vertical space (see previous point) and there's not a lot of text in them, so why not leave them open?
I don't know why the roles on the timeline have a hover effect, because it makes me think I can interact with them and I'm left clicking to no effect.
In general it feels like things get more claustrophobic the further down the page I scroll, with less padding and ending up with one giant image. Perhaps this could be made into a thumbnail link?
From the two projects, one has an image associated with it and one doesn't. It'd be nice to add an image to the first one (the desktop recreation) provided that's not using copyrighted assets or anything.

I really like the way you talk about "Professional Highlights" and "Projects I'm Proud Of". This gives me the impression that you're selecting things you think will interest me as a prospective employer, rather than turfing out every project you've ever done. Saying you're proud of something and showing it off is also a great way to impress people.

David J Eddy • Dec 12 '18

I am loving the printed version. Really stands out compared to the 'wall of text' most resumes are these days. My only concern is the non-tech centric roles; but I have no suggestion on how to deal with that given your experience and how tightly coupled they are to the next step in career path.

OVerall, I am digging the design Jack. Well done.

Jack Harner 🚀 • Dec 12 '18

Thanks for your feedback David. I was definitely trying to stand out with the design.

I've had a couple people mention having my time at Target on there. The only reason I included it was to prevent the "Why'd you take a year off?" question. I've read that having employment gaps isn't the end of the world, but if there's a gap and the answer is "Oh, I just worked at Target" that seems worse than not having the gap.

Benny Leung • Dec 13 '18

I love it, it's simple and beautiful

But in Hong Kong, the job hunter only Ctrl+F the exact word, didn't know what is that

They will ask do you know .net if you know C#

Finally, CV will become "Word Wall" :(

Sophie The Lionhart • Dec 13 '18

Might just be me, but I always notice when a site doesn't have a favicon or has the wrong one such as the drupal one when they don't give their own. So I would say get a favicon. Looks nice otherwise.

Darius • Dec 23 '18

Perfect resume because its form itself speaks to your area of expertise. It paints you as having very specific skills, and that's usually a good thing. While a narrow focus can mean some people will not respond, it means that you will hook the ones who ought to respond.

Jack Harner 🚀 • Dec 31 '18

Thank you for the kind words. That's definitely what I was going for. I'm trying to get a job making websites, so why not have my resume be a website? Most places only have an upload field for the resume, but then I can just go there, print off a fresh copy as a PDF and upload it.

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SofianeG • Dec 12 '18

You should precise which type of API you can work with: REST ? GraphQL ?

Doğukan Öztürkan • Dec 13 '18

Thank you for advice Im using both but I need to rewrite :)

Comment deleted

Michelle Epps • Dec 13 '18

Hi Samundra,
I am going to give you macro level comments as...
-it doesn’t render well on iOS

My overall advice is simplify. The font in the intro is a bit difficult to read - I would suggest shifting it. In these situations, you want to think of your personal brand. How can you find a more streamlined version that still represents you?

Find ways to streamline and highlight the items you really want to standout - that will be the key.

Keep up the energy and talent!

Fen Slattery • Dec 13 '18

I agree, that font is pretty difficult to read, and will be very difficult for anyone reviewing your resume with conditions like low vision or dyslexia.