Ask HN: Could I get a resume review? Manager level

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25052141

by brandedMan • 6 years ago

5 11 6 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Hey all, I've been with this company for quite awhile and it's time to move on, but I'm having a hard time getting traction in my job search. I'm aiming for software engineering manager positions and it feels like my resume could use improvement.

I started at an insurance startup and eventually built a software engineering team from the ground up. After we got acquired, I moved to a data team to acquire a larger breadth of experience. I've gotten good feedback regarding my technical and people skills, but I'm not sure if my resume reflects that.

Any advice or criticism is welcome.

https://imgur.com/a/vZ6ObXd

EDIT: I have a second page of my resume that details side projects and my education. I didn't include it here as it would be hard to anonymize.

commonturtle• 6 years ago

Took a look. I think your resume as probably as good as you can make it. It's easy to read with a few achievements nailed down for each role.

Anyway in my experience people will likely spend < 1 minute on your resume, so you begin to get diminishing returns to improving it very quickly.

brandedMan3• 6 years ago

True. It definitely feels like I need to hit the right keywords to have a chance.

JoshTriplett• 6 years ago

Be very, very clear about what you did, versus what your team or the organization around you did. What does it mean that you "scaled engineering processes while organization grew from 400 people to 1200", for instance? Most of that sentence talks about what the organization did; what people reading it want to know is what you did, and at what scope. For instance, does that mean that you helped the organization's engineering processes scale up, or does that mean you helped your own team cope with the organization scaling up?

Likewise, "developed a roadmap to achieve goals" sounds so empty as a statement. What kinds of goals, were they actually achieved, what effect did the roadmap have, what was the follow-through? (Perhaps this is just an issue with anonymization. It's not that you need the minute details, but do provide enough information that your resume sounds different from a thousand other resumes in ways other than just changing the proper nouns.)

By contrast, something like "Developed engineering evaluation guidelines and career paths within the org" sounds much better; it's clear what scope you had, and it's a substantial scope. You helped fill a void within the broader organization, likely to the benefit of both your team and the organization. Put that together with your mentions of leveling up engineers at various levels, and you're telling a consistent story that shows you raising your team up and raising the tide for everyone in the process.

The bullet points on your first role sound much clearer as well.

In general, when reading any given item, I'd like to know how you saw a problem, figured out the right solution, worked to get that solution implemented, and followed through to make sure it solved the problem. Not all of those things need to be explicitly stated (and for the most part they won't all need to be), but I think all of them need to be evident in some way. If you also tell a consistent story in the process, people start to get a picture of who you are and what you can do for them.

brandedMan3• 6 years ago

This is great feedback. Thanks!

giantg22• 6 years ago

Wow, you're a manger and have less experience than me. That's depressing, but I guess some of us have to fill out the left tail of the bell curve.

brandedMan3• 6 years ago

Well, it's an edited resume and isn't the whole picture. I have a masters and unrelated quantitative experience.

At the same time, I got incredibly lucky. I feel the same way when FAANG developers talk about their salaries. I put in a ton of effort and my initiative was rewarded, but that wouldn't have happened if the company didn't grow as quickly as it did.

Best of luck.

giantg22• 6 years ago

Yeah, I probably shouldn't have said what I did. I'm just jaded at my current job. I'm happy someone is making it.

BTW I have a MSIS, not that it's relevant. I guess I have nobody else to tell.

diskevich• 6 years ago

Your resume is actually fairly good, compared to many other resumes. However, it could still be stronger.

Most importantly, you could make your resume more accomplishment-oriented. You should take each job and ask yourself, "What are my 3-5 biggest accomplishments?” These should form the bullets of your resume.

As much as possible, quantify your accomplishments. How much money did you make for your company? How much time did you save your team? By how much did you improve customer retention? An estimation is okay here.

DoreenMichele• 6 years ago

I would shorten the experience section and make room at the top for a brief entry about your skills with an emphasis on your biggest strengths. (Obviously, tweak it to customize the resume for each position.)

idoh• 6 years ago

Some formatting issues:

- the right alignment of the dates is too far to the left

- the phone number / email header is not aligned correctly

- if you have a date range, then it should look like 2010-2012 and not 2010 - 2012

BTW I’ve literally never seen a resume that didn’t have at least one formatting error. Closest was one that had a comma that was accidentally italic.

thorin• 6 years ago

I have worked in a similar area e.g. I was technical manager for BI and data/database on a biggish product. First thing that jumps out is that people are interested in volumes of data and throughput. The other is that you should mention how your work impacted the business/product owner. What savings where they able to make for instance, what did your work replace, where is it going in the future?

Ask HN: Could I get a resume review? Manager level

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