how to write a resume

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Hello, hello. Thanks for listening to guidance counselor 2.0. Listen, I want to give you a quick rundown of what this podcast is and what you're about to get into as you listen to these episodes. We had guidance counselors in middle school. We had guidance counselors in high school, but we didn't really have guidance counselors in college. And now as professionals, we don't really have anybody to turn to to ask a quick question to learn something about the job search or to navigate your career. So that is what I want this podcast to be for you. I want it to be a tool for you to navigate the job search and your career.

So that being said, I hope you enjoy this episode. And if you need to reach me, tailor at vacovac.com is how to get and touch me old-fashioned email social media at TDS&T-D-E-S-S-E-Y-N. And finally, please rate and review this in the app store because I want this to be discoverable for others so they can navigate their careers. Hope you enjoy the episode. Go ahead and dive in. So I'll resume. We're just going to a good morning from Austin Brandon. It was hot in Austin man. Holy cow is hot, but I love Austin so much. It's great. Ryan Cunningham, it's great to see you man. We have the crew out today.

I love it. All right. So I'm going to share my screen. And we're going to walk through what makes a good resume. Let me do this real quick. Hold on. My sharing screen is always dicey on here. Microsoft Word. Let me see if this works. Are you serious? It's still. Oh my gosh. Streamy art is so weird when it comes to this stuff. Go home. If I already checked, I'll check this or restart. So literally, I can't share my screen again. I don't know why Streamy art is so weird. I thought I clicked this off. So we're going to walk through it this morning. And it kind of stinks.

But I'm not going to log out. Log back in. So let's dive into how to make a good resume. So first and foremost, it's consistent, bolding and spacing. That is incredibly important. The first thing is your name at the top. Name at the top. I really wish I could share my screen. Dad, gum it. I hate this. Why is this so difficult? Why is this so difficult? I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I have to restart Chrome. I thought I already fixed this. All right. So we're trying to get it. I'm sorry, y'all. You can't see it. If you are streaming on TikTok, you will be able to see it.

But I'm going to try to walk through this the best I can with people who obviously can't see it. So first off, if you want this resume template, it's on my website, Vaco.com backslashtaylor. So you can go and download it. Actually, go to Vaco.com backslashtaylor. We can walk through it together. That's Vaco.com backslashtaylor. Go to free guides. And it's on there. So first and foremost, very top of the resume is your name. And I know this seems kind of trivial, but I would literally just put your name in your email. I would not put your phone number. And I would not put your address. There's no reason to put your address in this virtual world.

And also, too, I would not put your personal cell phone number because I've talked to so many. I've talked to so many people who have had to change phone numbers because it just gets too much. So just put your name, just put, and I would also have a work specific email. Again, work specific email is really, really big. You don't need to be responding back to your mom about your beach weekend trip with your family. And then you accidentally email the hiring manager back. Right. So have a separate email. Also, that allows you to keep track of everything better. And you can use almost your emails or workflow.

All right. So first off, this is the very first section that I would have. And again, I really wish I could share my screen. I hate this. Again, I do apologize. Is this summary section? A lot of you all put a career objective. And again, there's so many ways to write a resume. And I understand that I'm just giving you what works for me and what I've seen work for the last six years of recruiting engineers. So the first thing is summary. Right. So this is more applicable to more people with a dev experience if you're just coming out of code school. It's a little different.

But the big thing is, is the summary portion is I need quick hits of your main technical skill sets or your main accomplishments. Right. Your summary almost in a way could be your cover letter in a way. We're not going to talk about cover letters today. But basically your summary. I want like four or five bullet points outlining general skill sets. Right. So for example, what I would do is I would put like, you know, let's say you've been developing software for the last 10 years. So what I would do is the first bullet point is 10 plus years of overall software engineer and experience.

The next bullet point is specific surround. And again, sorry for the sniffles. Y'all, I got a cold in Austin. I can't keep up anymore. So the next bullet point is like your next most prominent language that you want to get a job in. So let's say you're a JavaScript developer. Right. So 10 plus years of overall engineering experience. The next thing is is like eight plus years of JavaScript development. Then I would go kind of a little bit more specific. Right. Then five plus years of react experience. Three years of view. Yes. And then obviously include any technical degrees. Or certifications. Or certifications. The last bullet point.

Right. The reason why this summary is so important. Again, I know I'm just one recruiter. But for me, the reason why this summary portion is so important is because if you have a really good summary section, I'm probably not even reading the rest of your resume. So for me, like if I can open up your resume and again, I really wish I could share my screen. It's really frustrating. So I do apologize. But if you open up, if I can open up your resume and I can literally see, okay, this person has 10 years of software engineer experience, six years of JavaScript, three years of react.

And I am searching for a like mid to senior level react. I'm calling this person based off the summary of their resume. I'm not even going to move on. Like I'm just going to call what it is. Right. I'm not even going to move on and look at the summary. That's why this summary is so freaking important. Even for junior devs, even for like one to two year devs, even putting like one year Python, one year AWS. One year AWS is incredibly important because I can literally open up your resume and see specifically what it looks like. Steve comes in right here. Where about was your resume on your site?

Yeah, vaco.com backslash Taylor. Vaco.com backslash Taylor, go to free resources, download it. And I'm literally walking through that right now. Yeah. Again, this is just my point of view. I'm not saying I'm always right. But again, this is just what's worked for me. So summary portion again, summary portion can go. It's not even tech specific, right? It can be anything. It can be 10 plus years of the restaurant business, three years of experience working on small kind of, you know, restaurants, 10, you know, five years of working for large box restaurants. It can be the same, but basically your summary of your resume is so freaking important.

All right. The next thing. So summary is the first thing. The next and the, the reason why I'm talking about this is so many people, so many people have problems when it comes to even how to structure your resume. Right. So the categories that I put is is summary at the very top professional experience, technical skills, certifications and education. Right. So we're going to walk through those again real quick and then bear it. Thank you so much for throwing the link up on my, on the chat. So professional experience here, right. This is where a lot of people don't know how to, they really don't know how to structure this, right.

So what I would do is I would do company. So the only things that need to be bolted in the professional experience section is the top part, which is company, start date end date, position held and location. Right. So that's the only thing that needs to be bolted. Again, in my opinion, right. So company, put the company tab over, start an end date. Do you do month and year to month and year? Don't just put years, right. A lot of people do that. Do not put years. Position held right now. One of the reasons why I wish I could share my screen is if you've, if you've held multiple positions with an organization, there's a specific way to write it again, download, download my template.

And we can go over it or you can go over it. So then what I would do is position held location, city and state. And then the first thing I would do is put a summary of the company you're working at. Right. The reason why this is so important is like, like let's say you're working for e-commerce company, but it's like super startup or stealth mode. And I've never heard of the company. Now, if you just put the company and what you did, you're still probably going to get hit up because you're probably going to have to work e-commerce somewhere in there. But if you did it and you put the summary of the company and says, hey, this is a small startup doing a million in revenue this year.

That tells me like, all right, this person is comfortable working in startups. And this person is in the e-commerce space, right? If you don't put the summary of the company, you could miss out on the opportunity to be able to sell what you're doing more. Right. So that's incredibly important. The next thing again, I really wish I could share my screen. I do apologize is I broke this down by project specifics. Right. So what I did is I did, okay. So company, month and year, position held location, city state. Right. Then you tap down, enter, and then you do the summary of the company working for it.

Then you enter again, right. Press enter again. And then what the way I set up is project number one. And then so for project number one, I would list that as super high level, what the project or application or software that you are working on. Right. Then what I would do is I would list three or four bullet points under that outlining specifically what you did. And then the last bullet point is specifically around the technologies used. Right. That is how you write a well written resume. And again, I wish Twitter spaces I'm trying to articulate this as best I can. TikTok is the only person that can actually see the template right now.

But the reason why I break it down to the projects is because that way a recruiter or a hiring manager manager can specifically see the things you have done. Right. And specifically see the projects that you've done and accomplished and been a part of instead of just seeing 15 free can bullet points. Right. So again, one more time. Top of the resume company start date end date, position held location, city state, tab down summary of the company. Right. What do they do? Super high level, revenue, size, industry, tab down project number one. All right. List right next to the project number one list out what the project is.

Right. So project number one, semi colon, give me give me a give me a overview. Tab down bullet point bullet point bullet point bullet point. Listen, your main tasks and then the entire technology is used portion. Any questions on from that side of things. Just I'm just waiting for the questions to come in. Any questions, Twitter, space, if you have a question, please raise your hand and we can talk about if not, no worries. All right. So I want to continue to go down. The resume right. So technical skills, right. So dev comes up here and says, oh, I had technical skills before experience. I'm fine with that dev.

I'm fine with that. This is an end all be all resume template. I think that works fine as well. So the technical skills on your resume need to be broken down in in some way shape or form like this platform tools, languages, technologies, frameworks, whatever. Right. So for me, from a technical skills perspective, this is doing everything you've ever worked on in your entire career. Now there is some argument here to not put technical skills because you could get called for PHP role or cold fusion role that you never want to work on. I get it. And that's just something that you're going to have to decide whether to put in or not.

But for me, technical skills is just a again, another place for your resume to get caught up kind of in the search features of recruiters because again, all we do is search on keywords.net. Angular react view. Azure. The more you have that in your resume without just being overly ridiculous, the better you're going to be and be able to find. So Steve comes in on LinkedIn live and goes any insight for junior devs seeking their first gig that can't fill out this section. Steve, what what section were you referring to? For me, I think professional experience can still be any volunteer experience if you have deployed code outside of a code school or boot camp.

And honestly, even then code school boot camp still counts put in professional experience. But the biggest problem is is with junior devs. They can't they can't communicate what they've done technically in previous projects. Companies work for it. Yeah. So again, if you have not done any volunteer. So all right. So if you've done no volunteer projects. If you've done no coding boot camps with any capstone and you have done nothing on your own. My advice to you Steve is go ahead and get on those three things ASAP. If you need a resume right now, just put your previous positions in there that are not tech.

Here's my biggest suggestion to folks with that. You need to write your resume that are not in tech. Basically in a way that I can understand them. Right. So if you are forklift driver, I don't know if forklift drivers do. So you got to write your resume in a way that where I can understand what you did and what you achieved. That's where most people miss out when writing resumes is that they don't understand that like I don't need to know what you accomplished as a forklift driver, even though I don't know what that industry is. Yes, Steve. I'm going to seek out charities. Absolutely always ask for free development work.

My podcast unicorn finders. We need a new website. A guy reached out to me. He's developed our new website and he's got the experience now. He had no experience before now. So again, people always looking for that. Alum comes in. I have four years of part time experience. It's like two years of working. How can I show that in my resume? So. And maybe in a bullet point put part time. So, you know, if we go back to how we write a resume, write company tab over start date end date, tab down position tab down city state tab down company summary tab down again. I would put that in a bullet point like, you know, 10 hours a week, five hours a week.

Just just notated one of the bullet points. Dev comes in. Yeah, participate in some hackathons. Great way for some projects and visibility. 100% of the data on the internet never dies. Boy, isn't that the truth. And then also to certifications, listen certifications. I kind of need to take this off my resume template because certifications aren't really thing anymore. If you do have certs, I would say the only place where cert still matter is the cloud space. So if you have Azure AWS GCP cert, that still applies just because there's not enough saturation in the market right now from a cloud perspective. So that does help you stand out in an education.

Right. Here's the deal though. If you are new in your career, the education needs to go to the top of your resume. Right. And then basically, if you're more senior in your career education going to the bottom, if you do have. a technical degree and you are senior in your career, you need to put that on the summary portion at the very top, if that makes sense. So hopefully that helps you today. That's all. That's it. Does anyone have any other questions? It stinks. I can't share my screen again. Go to tailor. They code dot com backslash Taylor. Go to free resources, download my template.

I have it right now pretty pretty easily. Do want to give some shots to some people that have tuned in. I couldn't give a shot to Dan. It's great to see man. LinkedIn user. It's great to see you. I hope you do it well. John, it's great to see you as well. But, but, and then Leo, it's great to see you my man. And Jordan. So, so, so for those of you who just heard me talk about an individual who DMed me to get work experience, that's Jordan. Jordan DM me. And he's been working on our unicorn finder site by other podcasts and he's done a great job.

So again, all it takes is one DM and now Jordan has experience from it is on his LinkedIn. It's on his resume. Yeah, bear another great thing. No pictures, no colors on your resume. Listen, if you are in design, if you are in design, have a band, have a dribble, have your own portfolio site. Don't make your resume all design. Right. Like I'm telling you, bear, bear, bear. It's done hiring before. He can test this. We need it. We need your resume as simple and plain, Jane as possible to understand what you do immediately. And the colors, believe it or not, the colors can distract pictures, distract.

No double columns, keep everything in line from top to bottom. And yeah, so that's my advice there. Steve comes in. Do you think it's worth sharing projects from boot camp. I was told by a family friend who's a tech CEO. He said my stuff looks amateur, counting me out. Jeez. I mean, no, I disagree with him. Build in public, right. Talk about the things you've put on your resume. Even if it looks amateur, you're a junior dev. Like that, that was harsh. I would absolutely put on your resume. Even a definitely is a junior dev boot camp. Share your projects that you've done in boot camps.

Again, but again, right. You have to talk about what you've done like I've talked about, right. Project overview. Give me specific tasks. Don't just list a bunch of random things you've done. All right, y'all. That's it. I appreciate y'all. Tullen. Hopefully you enjoyed this. Got some out of it. If you feel like someone you're networking needs to hear this, please share this video with them on your LinkedIn or other social medias. I feel like a lot of people need to hear this because there's a lot of that in resumes out there. So hopefully you guys have a great rest your Tuesday. I will be live tomorrow.

I have Christina. Christina Alden tomorrow. For those of you who do not know Christina Christina and I met over Twitter. I've been on her podcast. She is fantastic. We'll get about content branding. And then how to create a little look. So yeah, Arthur again, I'm sorry. I couldn't get my screen shared. So again, go to vaco.com back slash Taylor download my resume template. And then just pull this episode back up. And I just walked through it. So thanks y'all. Appreciate it. See y'all tomorrow morning. Peace. Hey, you did it. You listened to an entire episode and I am very grateful because you know why there's a lot of podcasts out there.

There's a lot of episodes and I myself rarely finished an entire episode. So I appreciate you so so much for listening. Quick reminder, please rate and review this podcast in the app store. I want this to be discoverable to others and the only way that happens is if you take the time right now and rate and review it. Please like right now. Unless you're driving, then don't do it. So thank you again. If you need to reach out to me, Taylor at vaco.com or at t-test and on all social media handles. And I hope you have a fantastic day.