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INTRODUCTION

As part of this and some upcoming blogs, I intend to help the fresh college grads or new joiners from any industry, gain some perspective of how the real world works.

This is part 4 of resume building ( how to write ). Having understood ‘how’ to write the resume, I will update my own resume and hopefully, the process will give readers an understanding of how to proceed.

Disclaimer

Neither do I claim to be an expert in the field of resume building ( if there is indeed such a field ), nor have I consulted many HRs or recruiters.

I have appeared in and have conducted multiple interviews. The following information is based on my own experiences, knowledge gained from the experiences of my juniors, peers and mentors, and some brainstorming sessions with friends.

Objective

First Draft

Software engineer with almost a decade of experience as a developer, lead, and architect. Worked on open system technologies like : Java, Android, DB servers, Unix scripting etc.

Managed multiple projects as a lead and few as an architect. Have worked as an individual contributor and have lead teams of size 3-10, to deliver projects of size upto 500 k $.

Have always been appraised among the best performers of the organization.

Few things to note in the objective above.

–The section is brief and quantifies some aspects of the work experience.

–Explains both tech ( Java, Android …) and management experience ( team size 3-10 ), project budget of 500k etc.

My overall assessment of this section is Fair ( 6 /10 ), but we’d like our description to be awesome ! meaning close to 9/ 10.

How about doing the following?

–Adding more relevant information. i.e. info that would be more valuable to a business owner.

This is important – given equal input, if we have two results:

●A business of 50k $

●A performance improvement of 50%.

A business owner will mostly gravitate towards the sound of 50k $. ( I said MOSTLY and not ALWAYS )

–Add more numbers clarifying the scope, depth, and quality of my work.

–While I am at it, I should add some numbers that will help sell my performance.

Final Draft

Software engineer lead with several years’ experience implementing large back-end systems in Java and its family of technologies, including more than a dozen as a lead/architect; led re-architecture of a critical system that processes and reports up to 10 million records/ day, improving performance by 100 %. Process time reduction saved the organization approx. 10k $ a day.

Re-designed the second biggest business process for the client, to improve the performance by 500%. The improvement enabled the client to look for a major revamp of the business process, subsequent business helped our company get business to the tune of 500k $.

Awarded performers’ trophy by the client VP, given to top 2%, for bringing in visible impact to the firm with technology changes.

Note that I added project details .. but NOT in an abstract manner

–System processing 10 million records/ day

–Second biggest business process for the client

–Performance improvement by 500%

–Savings of 500k $

Also, I admit that the object could’ve been shorter. But, I will live with this version for now, and make changes as I go ahead.

Remember : Improvement will always be required … feel enough comfort to move ahead, and enough discomfort to keep correcting !

Education

My resume does NOT have an education section. Why ?

At my current experience level, the section does not add much value to my recruiter anymore.

If you were to add such a section, a simple tabular format should do:

College	Intermediate	Highschool
2003 – 2007	2000 – 2002	2000
70%	75%	82%

–If your college/ university holds a special value. You might want to add the details. e.g. IIT, IIM etc.

–If your degree is with honors or with some special achievement. You might want to add the details.

There isn’t a golden rule, just verify that the section promotes you and has value to the recruiter.

Skills

Skills could be categorized in various groups.

Technology basis ( choice for my resume ) :

–Programming languages – Java, HTML, Python …

–Frameworks and Libraries - Spring, Struts, EJB …

–Tools – Jenkins, Git, Maven …

–Business domain – Banking, Hospitality, Automobile …

–Databases – DB2, Oracle, Mongo …

Timeline basis:

–2008 – Eclipse, Java, Unix, Scripting, Oracle

–2010 – Java ( EJBs ), DB2, Banking & Insurance, Scripting,

–2012 – Java ( Spring ), Performance engineering, Reporting ( SSRS and Power BI )

–2015 – Mongo, Android, System redesign and any useful libraries, CICD ( Continuous integration and Continuous deployment), TDD ( test driven development)

Proficiency basis:

–Most proficient skills – Java, Spring, Oracle …

–Next level skills - Spring, Hibernate …

–Next level skills - Mongo, Android …

The most relevant skills can be highlighted. ( bold/ underline or marking … whatever suits )

NOTE : Relevance of a skill depends on 2 factors:

●My competence level on the skill.

●Industry/ Company requirement for the skill.

So, I might customize my resume, to highlight skill A for company 1 and skill B for company 2. As an example, proficient in a few skills, I am able to apply to profiles for both Java backend and Android profiles, but …

–While applying for an Android position, I keep my Android techstack highlighted ( keeping my Android projects high on the list of projects )

–While applying for a Java backend position, I keep my Java stack highlighted ( keeping my Java projects showcased )

Essentially, I keep 2 flavors of my resume ( Java and Android ) and use the one at the apt place. As needed, you could do that too !

Work Details

Let’s edit the draft version of my project to improve on it.

Project 1 – First draft:

Name : Embark

Tech stack : Android, Couchbase, Tools and libraries (LeakCanary, Barcode and OCR readers etc)

Description :

–Integrated a magnetic swipe hardware into the application.

–Resolved memory leaks from the android application, resolving listeners, singleton classes, callback registrations. Etc.

–Implement an Android based project with following:

–Code refactoring to fix design issues and improve performance

–Worked on UI refactoring to improve GPU rendering, thus UI performance.

Role :

–Individual contributor/ programmer

–Tech Lead – team of size 2-3 members.

Points to note about the section:

–Does not have much quantification.

–The value added by my work to the organization/ marketplace is not clear, even after reading the complete section.

–Items are not listed in the most appropriate order. Most value add items are not first.

Let’s fix these.

Project 1 – Final draft:

Name : Embark

Tech stack : Android, Couchbase, Tools, and libraries (LeakCanary, Barcode and OCR readers etc)

Task: Refactor code and improve app performance

–Resolved memory leak of 18 Mb from the app.

–Reduced method call duplications, method chaining, and eager loading to improve app performance by 10%.

–Un-nested the UI view hierarchy and reduced UI overdraws. The result was a 70% performance improvement and an appreciation from the organization CEO.

–Reduced unwanted object creations like “new Gson()”, reducing method time from 44 ms to 3 ms. 93% performance improvement.

–Rewrote AsyncTasks to use executeOnExecutor, allowing for better performance with hardware.

–Reconfigured data-structures to appropriately use, to reduce memory and CPU utilization.

–Integrated magnetic swipe hardware into our application

Role :

–Individual contributor/ programmer

–Tech Lead – team of size 2-3 members.

Note the following:

–The contribution has been quantified and highlighted

–Items have been shuffled. Most impressive and valuable items have been shifted to the top.

–Added relevant vocabulary – overdraw, CPU utilization, AsyncTasks

Feel free to mention the relevant tools/ technologies. At the same time … notice my vocabulary. The vocabulary has been designed to impress.

You might want to use words like:

–Agile

–TDD

–CICD

So, it’s okay to NOT have a big tech stack … but make an attempt to have a healthy vocabulary. Based on my experience, you will be more likely to miss out on the vocab, instead of missing on the technologies.

Having a poor resume vocabulary myself, I ended up paying attention, to the purchase of the vocabulary. Yes! purchase of the vocabulary only takes the payment of attention, and then gives a manifold return from the resume.

Project 3 – First draft:

Name : New Web App

Tech stack : Spring MVC, Java, MySQL, Web Technologies, SSRS, Tomcat, SMTP

Description :

–An integrated application to collate an otherwise scattered business induction process.

–Implemented SSRS reporting to help reduce the build time by 90%. Reports that needed 90 hours took 8 hours to completion

–Tomcat use for cost reduction from other web servers

–Task : Code, data structures and algorithm reviews

–Responsible for stack choice : Spring JPA, spring validations, SMTP ( for mailing ), HTML and Javascript

–Ensured TDD with integrated Spring MVCs

–CICD pipeline

Git -> Maven -> SonarQube -> Cobertura -> Junits -> Artifactory -> Jenkins

Role :

–Tech lead, worked with 3 developers

Points to note about the section:

–Has limited quantification.

–Vague details : data structures and algorithm reviews

What data structures did I use? Which algorithms did I implement? How did these help ?

–And again, the value added by my work to the organization/ marketplace is not clear, even after reading the complete section.

Let’s fix these.

Project 3 – Final draft:

Name : New Web App

Tech stack : Spring MVC, Java, MySQL, Web Technologies, SSRS, Tomcat, SMTP

Description :

–150k $ budget project. The application was to provide a single interface to otherwise scattered business processes.

–Implemented SSRS reporting to help reduce the build time by 90%. Reports that needed 90 hours took 8 hours to completion

–Responsible for stack choice : Spring JPA, spring validations, SMTP ( for mailing ), HTML and Javascript

–Ensured – Test-driven development via integrated MVC Junits i.e. Junits were written before the Controller or Views were implemented.

Role :

–Tech lead, worked with 3 developers

Note the following:

–The first line explains the size of the project (150k $) putting the scope into perspective.

–The contribution which was already quantified has been highlighted.

–Unwanted verbosity has been removed e.g. Tomcat server choice, code and review, and CICD details.

Also, note that,

–I have listed my projects with a timeline ( latest first and older ones later )

Should everyone do it ? Not really ! … one could use:

–Projects listed by technologies. Preferred technologies first and the others later.

–Projects listed by skill proficiency. High proficiency skill projects listed first and low proficiency skills listed later.

–Projects listed by previous employers …

–Or something else that seems convenient.

It’s YOUR playground, so make YOUR rules !

Onto the Cosmetics …

In the first step, we got our profile data, and now we have the data edited the right way.

The only thing we now have to do is put some bells and whistles on the resume i.e. add a bit of look. We will talk about this in the next section …. till then happy resuming !

Write back, in case you have an opinion. Like what you read – do like, comment and share.