📓 Writing Your Resume

Writing your resume is a very similar process to writing the cover letter — we want to use many of the same keywords from the job description, and tie them to our experience.

This time, though, we'll include a more complete work and education history, and write using bullet points instead of paragraphs. Use specific numbers and accomplishments, like "Consistently in the top 10% of representatives for customer satisfaction", rather than generic phrases, like "Achieved customer satisfaction". We'll keep the information on it concise, specific, and relevant to the position.

You may also find that some aspects of your experience aren't as relevant to some jobs; feel free to leave things out to keep the resume focused on what the company you're applying with wants. A great resume is tailored to each individual job posting.

Here's what the resume might look like:

(As with the cover letter, do not copy this example resume — it will be very obvious to Epicodus staff and to employers if you do, especially if your resume looks suspiciously like other students who ignore this warning and copy it.)

And here's our master list of experiences from before, crossed out as we included them in the resume:

Epicodus, C#/React Track, 2016

• About Epicodus
  • Completed full-time, 27-week program in web and open source development.
  • Weekly code reviews on independent projects.
• Hard Skills
  • Comfortable with the command line
  • Used git and github for development
  • SQL databases
  • Domain models
  • React.js, Redux
• Best practices
  • Test Driven Development
• Why Epicodus?
  • Passion for the web _discussed in cover letter_
  • Interest in open-source development _discussed in cover letter_
  • Desire for self-improvement.
• Community
  • Organized potlucks.
  • Helped students in newer cohorts with troubleshooting.
• Interpersonal and communication skills
  • Worked in pairs daily to design and problem solve coding projects.
  • Team Week

Oakland Community College, AA Criminal Justice, 2009-2010

• 3.5 GPA
• Honors Program

Web Development Intern, Digital Designs, 2016

• Site development
  • Styled widgets with responsive design
  • Learned PHP on the job and by studying at night
• Relevant experience on the job
  • Developed a dashboard site for project managers to see statuses and blockers.
  • Collaborated closely with project managers to ensure dashboard met their needs
  • Made pull requests

Technical Customer Support Representative, Healthcare.gov, 2012-2015

• Technical customer support
  • Responsible for solving challenging technical issues related to healthcare coverage
  • Assisted new customers in navigating their accounts
• Client engagement
  • Interviewed clients to spot pain points in navigating our website
  • Resolved issues thoroughly for a diverse customer base.
• Proactive
  • Proactively brought up problems the customer may not anticipated _discussed in cover letter_
• Customer satisfaction
  • Consistently in the top 10% of representatives for customer satisfaction
• Related Buzzwords:
  • Detailed-oriented _discussed in cover letter_
  • Deliverables
  • Excellence _discussed in cover letter_
  • Customer Satisfaction
  • Accountable for results
  • Building, configuring, and troubleshooting

Barista, Lil' Joe's Coffeehouse, 2010-2012

• Fun
  • Attentive to co-worker morale.
  • Contributed to fun energy while getting the job done
  • Decorated store for holidays and special events.
• Focused
  • Attentive to customers with unique requests
  • Made coffee and various coffee drinks in a fast-paced setting
• Determined
  • Improved inventory tracking system that eliminated shortages
• Related Buzzwords
  • Created order out of chaos

Missing for this Job Post

• Linux _discussed in cover letter_
• LAMP
• Network protocol layers
• Security layers
• Drupal _discussed in cover letter_

Make sure your resume is visually appealing — unless you're applying for a design-related job, don't spend too much time on the layout, but make sure that it's formatted cleanly and consistently. For example, don't use bullets in one place and letters in another.

Put your name, phone, and email at the top of the resume. Optionally, you can include your mailing address, Github profile, and LinkedIn profile.

Most people's resumes should be under a page. If you have extensive relevant career experience, it's okay to be a bit longer.

With that, we're done! This cover letter and resume will get us past any bots or even non-technical HR staff by using the terms and phrases from the job description. It will also make it easy for a hiring manager to see that we have the skills and attitudes they're looking for in this role.

One last tip: when applying for a job by email, put your cover letter in the body of your email, and attach it and your resume as a PDF (not as a Word document).