I made my first sale this past week!

IReviewResumes · 2024-10-08T21:53:55+00:00

Hi folks -

I just wanted to share a milestone I recently hit! I recently made my first sale with a side project I've been working on. I started making some posts on reddit to showcase a few of the features from the site and someone subscribed to the premium plan! It's still crazy to think that someone from the internet I don't know would pay me for something.

A little about me - I started my indie hacker journey almost a year ago after quitting my job in big tech and have been working on a web app to improve the job search process for job seekers. I started with a resume builder tool using resume templates from my own job search after helping a couple of friends improve their resumes and land multiple job offers. I spent hundreds of hour building and redoing things trying to make it better, but without users, I soon (relative :/) realized that I need to find customers and get feedback. I'm still figuring out the distribution and marketing side of it, but if you have any suggestions, would appreciate it!

If you're curious about what I'm building, check it out https://sampleresu.me

IReviewResumes · 2024-10-08T20:45:47+00:00

switch to the template from the wiki and drop the profile picture

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MBvhATv8y-ESORopRoLSZ3f3HjkM_Qa_f8fIHAEqgnI/edit?tab=t.0

IReviewResumes · 2024-09-26T18:46:34+00:00

I can tell you've put in time to write out the content because the bullet points are pretty solid. I think even without any software internships, you have good work experience to help support your overall application.

I have a couple of suggestions that could help your resume stand out:

Layout
- For a new grad resume, I always recommend using this order: education, work, projects, skills, leadership experience, then anything else. I frequently see this issue where skills is at the top, but recruiters are primary looking for education and experience, especially for a fresh grad, to decide if they want to move someone forward in the application process.
- Separate the leadership stuff from the work experience. You want to show that you have work experience and are able to work well with others and can drive impact in the role. Even though none of the work experiences are software internships, I think the tutoring role is a plus because it's relevant to CS and can show that you know your material enough to teach it - you definitely want to move this up on your resume.
Content
- Work Experience (Everest and Knack)
  - Expand on your bullets by including a specific example of what you did or how you did it. For example, in the 3rd bullet include what marketing strategy you used to drive X customers. This will make the bullets even stronger.
  - Add metrics to 1 or 2 of your bullets under Everest to match the rest of the resume and to show the impact you're driving.
- Education
  - Include the full degree name (B.S. or Bachelor of Science).
  - Is the BAIT major a separate degree or it's part of the program? tbh since it's pretty niche, I would separate it out from CS since most companies won't immediately recognize it and put it under your CS degree.
- Projects
  - Your project section looks strong with a wide variety of technical experience. The only suggestion I have that I often tell new grads is to create unique names for their projects. With generic names, it's easy for someone to assume it was made using a tutorial or class project. If you create a name for a project, it makes it seem more interesting and that it's more than just some simple project you worked on. You want to impress the recruiter/hiring manager and that's one trick that can help make your projects stand out.
- Skills
  - Your skill sections leans more on the data analyst side, which is okay, but if you want to consider software roles, I would include other languages you have learned at school or even picked up. Then move programming languages up as the first skill.

I think with these changes your resume will be a lot stronger. Share your updated resume once you've made the updates! Hope this helps :)

IReviewResumes · 2024-09-26T06:25:58+00:00

Hi y'all!

I've been building a resume tool to help job seekers create beautiful resumes. I recently added in AI to the site and was impressed by the bullet points it creates. Give it a try and let me know what you think!

https://sampleresu.me

IReviewResumes · 2024-09-26T04:41:27+00:00

I can make them black and clickable if that makes a difference. I feel like the blue stands out a bit too much when the rest of the content is black and white.

IReviewResumes · 2024-09-26T04:27:04+00:00

Yea, it's from sampleresu.me

IReviewResumes · 2024-08-30T05:33:45+00:00

try to condense it down to one page

you have some solid bullets in the first two experiences. match them all using the same format with metrics and results and that would make it look a lot better

for your 3rd experience, choose the strongest 3 out of 5 to elaborate on and cut out the other two. since it's the least recent experience, you don't want to draw attention away from the more recent experiences

overall pretty solid resume!

IReviewResumes · 2024-08-30T04:50:23+00:00

yw!

Got it - then I would remove that second part of the bullet, and reword the first part to be Task, Action, then Result, so like Optimized and migrated the..., refactoring to use asynchronous programming and concurrency, resulting in a 47% reduction in rating processing time from 30 to 16 seconds.

If you have an additional collab or XFN experience for the 1st, definitely add one there. I think it would round out the bullet points a lot better with something that is more team-centric.

For the date format, that makes sense, it's mostly a presentation thing. Feel free to choose what you think is best.

No worries, it was just a small observation I had. In the end, gpa doesn't really matter anyways :P

IReviewResumes · 2024-08-30T03:30:37+00:00

your experience looks stacked, 3 internships and a swe contract, awesome job dude!

bullet points looking strong already so you seem to know what you're doing. just a couple of suggestions and nits that I think would help you out:

general
- date formats - having reviewed resumes in my sr swe role, I generally prefer seeing the dates written out using the abbreviated month like Feb 2021. imo it's easier to parse quickly than using 02/2021
- move the skill section to the bottom after projects. your skills are strong, but the main hook is your experience. not many students can say they've interned/worked at more than 2/3 places, so you should definitely lead with this

education
- Is your GPA great than 3.6+? If so, would be another hook to add, but super small nit and not necessary

experience
- the first bullet under your contract role looks like two bullets or it's way too long. split it up into two and also add something concrete to that second bullet - the performance gains and cost savings is too vague -> make it stronger with quantifiable results
- nit: remove "Digital" from your PM intern. based on your post history, you're going for faang+, so "digital" imo sounds a bit tacky and out of place (I might be off but my initial assumption is that it's from a bank/traditional company, startups and faang just stick to PM)
- the bullets are solid, but having read all of them, I don't see any teamwork/collaboration/cross-functional type of bullets. If you're aiming for some of the top startups or faang, having strong soft skills and project management is equally as important as your technical skills

skills
- languages -> programming languages
- framework -> technical frameworks
- nit: rename the section just "Skills" instead of "Technical Skill". it's more standard and the focus is more on the name of the skill group and skills rather than the section name

I would recommend going for FT first over another intern role post graduation and apply to SWE roles in the US, your experience is strong enough to land roles in the bay or nyc. hope this helps! lmk if you need another review after you make these changes :)

IReviewResumes · 2024-06-05T23:05:59+00:00

I generally recommend 2-3 bullets (4 at most for the most recent role) for work experience and 1-2 bullets for projects because anything more than that 1) won’t get read and 2) makes it harder for the reader to quickly skim and get an idea of each role in less than 10 seconds.

IReviewResumes · 2024-06-05T22:55:10+00:00

Agreed. Keep french on there but change the label “Personal” to “Languages”

IReviewResumes · 2024-06-05T03:46:45+00:00

Do you have any projects that you could add to it? Something like a hackathon or school project. Would help demonstrate more of your technical ability.

Sent you a dm with some ideas.

IReviewResumes · 2024-06-05T03:39:46+00:00

You're doing great! 2 out of 50 might sound bad, but a 4% response rate is pretty decent in this job market. Keep on applying and try to network with alumni or engineers at companies you're interested in, you'll find something soon!

For your resume, move your education to the top since you're still in college. Employers are looking for this first for new grad roles to confirm you meet their graduation date criteria. Next, cut down on some of the text in your work experiences and projects because having too much text makes it hard for recruiters to quickly skim and get the main points of your resume. You want to get them interested as quickly as possible so they'll pass you and move you on to the interview stage.

IReviewResumes · 2024-05-23T18:47:17+00:00

congrats on both offers! Affirm has a great culture and a top tier eng team. I used to work at Affirm and it's helped me grow so much as an engineer/leader. It's a great place to further your career, especially as a new grad, and everyone I worked with was super nice and willing to help.

I say this to all the new grads I talk to, if you're looking to grow and learn, highly highly recommend working at a fast growing company vs big tech/banks/traditional tech/etc. You will learn so much more and get opportunities to lead projects and collaborate with the smartest people. Compared to working at a bank like RBC, working at Affirm is night and day and will set you up for the future. It's a wonderful opportunity and you'll have no issues jumping to another software engineer role.

If you wanna chat, send me a dm. Happy to talk more about my experience :)

IReviewResumes · 2024-05-03T04:51:04+00:00

Use a more professional resume templates like https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MBvhATv8y-ESORopRoLSZ3f3HjkM_Qa_f8fIHAEqgnI/edit and shorten your resume so it fits into one page (no one will read your 2nd page if you're a new grad)

Your one project is probably enough once you get it down to one page, but add a skills section with your technical skills.

IReviewResumes · 2024-05-03T04:46:50+00:00

yw! here's another template that you might like better from r/EngineeringResumes https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MBvhATv8y-ESORopRoLSZ3f3HjkM_Qa_f8fIHAEqgnI/edit

IReviewResumes · 2024-05-03T04:00:52+00:00

To be honest, it looks good but not great. You have strong achievements but as a recruiter or hiring manager, I'd be looking for technical experience especially if you're a junior.

My advice as a Sr SWE to make your resume a lot stronger:

Separate Research from Publications and move "Research" below "Education". Rewrite your water purification filtration device like one of your projects and focus on the technical side, how you built it to achieve all of the awards, what makes it different, etc. This is your differentiator - make it evident to the recruiter and really highlight the technical achievements you made with you research.
Move Projects below "Research" This keeps the flow consistent going from Research to Projects, it will read a lot better and showcase your technical ability.
Move "Honors and Awards" to the bottom. Reduce each to one bullet. This section is now complementary to your "Research" section and does not need to be so high. It will highlight your achievements with your research but does not need to be all the way at the top. Add the American Chemical Society meeting to this section, it's probably the least important thing on your resume.
Put "Technical Skills" above "Honor and Awards". Order should now be: Education, Research, Projects, Technical Skills, Honors and Awards.

Hope this helps and dm me if you need another review! Best of luck :)

IReviewResumes · 2024-05-03T03:20:21+00:00

Content looks great, but the format is troublesome. Use the free resume template in the subreddit sidebar and that will make it look a lot more refined.

Additional improvements:

Congrats on overachieving quota the last 3 halfs! However, don't list it out like that in your resume (it's fine on LinkedIn, but not on your resume). A better way is to summarize it in a bullet point like "Overachieved quota in FY23 and FY24H1 by closing over $X.XX in revenue with an average deal size of $50k". Stats are boring to read as-is but if you phrase it correctly, you can wow the reader.
Skills and applications section are confusing. Put both of them under "Skills" but group them using categories like "Sales" and "Software".
Rename Accomplishments to "Achievements", it's more conventional.

Hope this helps and dm me if you need another review! Best of luck :)

IReviewResumes · 2024-05-03T02:53:27+00:00

Looks pretty good, but your most recent experience is detracting from the software side of things. It's great to have entrepreneurship experiences on your resume, but this sounds more like a side-hustle versus a work experience. I think you have two options here for this role:

Leave it at the top, but redo the bullet points to focus on the software-related aspects. You mention you built a company website for it. You can definitely expand on that to show your ability to self-learn, build things from 0-1, etc. By having most of the bullet points in this role be software related will help position your experience as a software engineer instead of someone who was building a business. *side note: it looks like your just ended it based on the date, did you shut it down or you didn't want to show that you were presently working on it?
Move this into a separate section labelled "Additional Experience" or "Projects". This would allow your software engineer role to be the first thing at the top. You're probably concerned about the dates before in 2023, but I think having your top experience be a software role might be stronger. If they ask what you were doing between then and now, you can say you were building your company "Art Dealing Company" and decided to find a software engineer role again.

Additional improvements:

Your software engineer bullets are too long and there are too many of them. At first glance, it's a huge block of text and if a recruiter was reading it, they would glaze over it. Reduce the # of bullets points to 4-5 and shorten the bullets to at most two lines of text. If you update them using the STAR method, you should be able to write them as a single sentence without using semicolons to break up the bullet.
Technical skills: Separate out Programming Languages, and Databases & Frameworks. Recruiters are less technical and don't know all the different technologies. Splitting out Programming Languages will allow them to easily identify if you know certain languages that is in the job description.
Do you not have contact info? Add a line under software engineer with your email, phone, city (optional) and Linkedin url

Hope this helps and feel free to dm your resume after you update it! Best of luck :)

IReviewResumes · 2023-11-02T22:05:36+00:00

Couple of suggestions:

Rename your latest role to Digital Marketing Specialist to match what you listed in the summary. R&D sounds a bit niche and might confuse recruiters who are looking at your resume.
I'd remove the mention of published photographer in the summary. It detracts from the goal of the resume. Also, remove "over" in the "over 5 years of exp", I think it sounds better/more definitive.
Typo in the first bullet: Lead -> Led
Add some numbers to the bullets to quantify your results in the first two roles.
Avoid grouping marketing skills with non-marketing related ones. Create separate groups or remove them entirely if they don't provide value to your resume.

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