Curriculum Vitae

• The goal of the CV is to sell you enough to get a recruiter phone call and continue the process

• You should choose a CV format that helps highlight the key information the recruiter looks for in the first scan. A good CV template follows these principles:

  • Single column

  • Dates, position name, and company name are all separated

  • Your location and languages/technologies are easy to find

• When you have experience, here is what will be most relevant:

  • Work experience

  • Languages and technologies you're proficient with

  • Education details

  • Extracurricular things - patents, talks, open source contributions

  • Certifications

  • Personal projects

• To make it clear what languages and technologies you're proficient with:

  • have a separate section in the first page of the CV

  • call out languages and technologies used as part of work experience

• To stand out, be specific. To be specific, follow this approach:

  • Use numbers and quantify whenever you can - number of users, service load numbers, customer support tickets you proactively resolved

  • Use active language that shows what you have done and how you have been proactive

  • Mention specific languages and technologies where they make sense

• A few things that can greatly help your job search are:

  • employee referrals: the best way to increase your chances of hearing back from a company. Ask around in your network or public forums where tech professionals gather (Twitter/LinkedIn/Blind)

  • cover letters: a coin toss - larger companies usually don't ask for one or don't pay much attention to it; at smaller firms and startups, it's a better investment to spend time on

  • LinkedIn, GitHub, StackOverflow: having an up-to-date profile will greatly help your job search. Refresh the LinkedIn profile as you write your resume. On GitHub, create a README to present yourself and your key projects more effectively. On Stack Overflow, tailor your Developer Story to make it easy for recruiters to find you with relevant opportunities

Articles

• A Better Resume for Developers - Ben Northrop

• Guida Galattica per il CV (English version) - Guido Penta

• How to write an effective developer resume: Advice from an hiring manager - Gergely Orosz

• I Rewrote my CV in Typst and I'll Never Look Back - Mattia Righetti

• My Personal Formula for a Winning Resume - Laszlo Bock

• The Biggest Mistakes I See on Resumes, and How to Correct Them - Laszlo Bock

• The Biggest Mistakes I See on Resumes, Part 2: Your top 8 questions - Laszlo Bock

Books

• The tech resume inside out - Gergely Orosz

Hacker News threads

• How does a great resume look like? What are the best tools to make one?

• Resumes that look good but professional too

Templates

• Awesome CV

• Europass CV

• Modern CV

Tools

• RenderCV (GitHub)

• Typst

Websites

• Jobscan - Check CV against job description

• OpenResume

• Resgen - Custom resumes for every job