Resume Q&A and Videos

I have been part of an MNC for last three years. During this time I have been part of four different projects. I have added following points in my resume for those three projects. Data Scientist (Apr 2022 - Mar 2023) Analyzed data from various sources to identify issues impacting growth and profitability across product and service offerings. Utilized a variety of tools and technologies to conduct data analysis and visualization. Recommended solutions to address complex business problems based on findings from data analysis. Tech Stack: Python, Pandas, PySpark, Databricks, NumPy, SQL, Excel SAP BW Analyst (July 2021 - Apr 2022) Created custom reports and flowcharts to present the raw data to clients in an easily digestible format. Utilized innovative methods to increase efficiency and decrease run times for all reports by over 15%. Network Associate (Nov 2020 - June 2021) Monitored network capacity and performance to diagnose and resolve complex network problems. Successfully resolved over 500 complex network issues, resulting in a 95% customer satisfaction rating. For the last six months, I have been part of a Django development project as a backend developer, in which I could not get any work because the use case we are supposed to work on has not been finalized yet. I am actively looking for a job switch, looking for an entry level SWE or Data role and could not think about what should I write in the experience for the last 6 months.

Hello everyone, Excited to be a part of the community. I have been out of the work force for a while and have worked on different projects for my own consulting company for a while. I was wondering if I could get my resume critiqued by someone with experience and get some feedback? All the best, Rob

age: 55 experience: 30 year of on/off programming. 7 years of managing SWEs After joining Taro, I am motivated to reset my career and not live in depression any more. Also, I think, due to side effects of Taro, my sleep has improved a lot and I am not consuming cheap dopamine any more. My next tasks are fix my resume and get it to near-perfect. apply at Microsoft while I wait for interview from MS, start programming in Angular / Typescript, .net services c# etc. This will at least help in healthy dopamine and mind set. and help me for future non-FAANG-interviews. if I get interview call from MS, start studying DSA, else continue to do side project in Angular / C# / .net But I was thinking, at this stage, given AI popularity, should I pivot and start learning AI because even if I get real good at side projects and programming, is it a better career move to be good at programming at this stage of my life? AI is going to get better and better and just being a good programmer is not going to cut it even in near-future? Thanks for reading.

After more than 20 years of IT experience across different areas (analysis, development, operations, architecture, management, ...) in various industries (e-government, healthcare, manufacturing, consulting, ...), how would you organize your CV well? Would you list all the companies you worked in since your graduation from college and what you did in each (and therefore make a relatively long CV)? Or would you detail only the most recent 3 or 4 companies/projects where you worked along the last 10 years and add a summary of what you did in the older years without listing company names and what you did in each one by one (and therefore limit the CV to round 3 pages)? Any other approaches?

I have 3 years of experience (YOE) working as a Python developer. I've noticed a significant decrease in job postings for Python recently. I'm unsure whether I should consider switching to Java for better future opportunities. In my research, I've found that Java is predominantly used in many large companies which is good for my career. What do you think?

How do you people, as a Senior engineer, put things such as: Team development and engineering excellence on your resume, or should I not mention them at all? I lead these activities daily at work, and my manager and team members appreciate it, but I have never thought to put those things on my resume before. I guess this should give me leverage in interviews for being considered for senior positions, but I am not sure. Annual awards given? Again, should I even mention that? Below are the elaborated points On the team development part, I regularly mentor 2-3 engineers almost daily. Reviewing their design and code, unblock them. I introduced a document-first culture in our team as before; everything was a bit chaotic as it is a startup where everyone knew their modules but not others. No on-call process or SOPs. I led this initiative by creating 20+ documents myself related to high-level design, SOPs for engineers and others, etc.

On the engineering excellence part, I reviewed close to 150+ PRs last year, making unit tests mandatory, introducing db migration tools to the team, etc.

For the award, I got your point. Annual award: out of 18 SWE-3s in my company, three got it, including me. The reason was a bunch of high-impact projects + above points.

I'm a Data Engineer. Within the data engineering realm, there are a lot of tools, just like in the software engineering realm. The modern data stack is pretty popular these days. It includes things like Spark for ETL at scale, Docker for virtualized environments, Airflow for orchestration, dbt (data build tool) for transformations in SQL, Fivetran for automated data connectors, Snowflake for data warehousing, and more. I'm far from knowing all of these tools well, primarily because I use very few of them in my day job. The main reason I want to change jobs is because of this. I'm worried I'm caught in a catch-22 situation where I don't know the tools so I can't get jobs that have them, which I guess is similar to the new-grad cold start problem. My question is, how should I think about learning new tools for job interviews? My current instinct is to learn via failure. That is, I have almost all of the above tools on my resume. If someone asks me about them and I'm not able to give a good answer, I will learn that part about the tool so if I'm in the same situation I can answer properly. Another approach I can think of is to do Udemy courses of them so I have a deeper understanding of how they work. I've learned to be wary of course not tied to projects, though, so I'm hesitant. I guess I could do projects to learn more about them, but those take time and right now I'm focused on applying to jobs. I imagine some answers might focus on what my current problem is: can I get interviews or am I failing interviews? I don't think my issue is with failing interviews right now, and certainly not because of specific knowledge people have called me out for for not knowing these tools. I think my issue is more with sourcing interviews currently. If there's general advice regarding how to think about prepping for an interview when you only have some of the requirements on the Job Description, would love to hear that too. Thanks!

I am confident about cracking interviews, but the issue is that I'm not receiving any interview invitations. I successfully interviewed for a Data Science role in Supply Chain and was converted to full-time. However, since then, I haven't secured any interviews. I've attempted to apply with referrals Links, but no luck. Could you please review my resume and provide suggestions for improvement? Additionally, do you have any tips on how to secure more interviews? My usual process involves going to LinkedIn, identifying a suitable job, connecting with many people in similar roles at that company, and requesting a referral before applying for the role. This is my resume -

I unfortunately reached a year gap in my resume. But I recently finished up an accelerator called iga in which develop a game and realise on itch io or steam do you think this will be a solid experience to list in my experience section or go in my project section

I have a question about Alex's course, "Get More Interviews: Write a Stellar Resume as a SWE." Alex mentioned that labeling oneself as a "full-stack" engineer can be a trap for junior engineers, and it's better to focus a resume on either backend or frontend stacks. I unfortunately fall into this category - I have about 1.5 YOE and take on a role of a full-stack SWE. Though I prefer backend development and feel stronger in it (I'll say its about a 65-35 for backend vs frontend), I feel my backend skills alone are not enough to secure a strong backend role. Given this, I’ve primarily been applying to full-stack positions. Does anyone have advice on what I should do? I know this question is primarily for Alex but feel free to share your experiences on how I should navigate this! Thank you!

I just got laid off from the startup I was working at with zero notice. I'm back on the job hunt. I've been working for about seven years now. I was a full-stack developer in my recent position. In the first five years of my career, I've worked in roles where I've had to carry out SRE work. I'm looking at a job posting for an SRE position at a place I'd like to work. What are the things that I should consider when before taking the call to apply for SRE roles?

How would you fill this gap of 3 years on my resume? (I had personal problems during Jan 2020 to Jan 2023) Before this gap I had my own Startup where I made Innovative Web Games and now I am working at a University as Full Stack Dev since 8 Months.

Okay I know people mostly say they work on side projects or contribute to open source, but I enjoy self-study & have always done a cert after using a certain technology extensively at work. For example, I was a Java engineer/consultant for years so it appeared only natural to do the OCP cert and keep it updated. In my current job I've used K8s a lot, so after a few training courses from my company, I took the CKAD. I also enjoy filling in the gaps at work (where there's no training or docs from the company) through Coursera courses/specializations, especially ones. Does all this reflect badly on my resume? I plan to apply to more senior roles, would someone looking at the list of certs/courses tend to underlevel me or dismiss me? Can't contribute to open source because of my company, also can't publish any apps for now. I've also never seen Senior/Staff engineers with courses/specializations displayed on their LinkedIn profile... am I missing something ?

Hello, few questions which the resume video didn't answer for me (for context i'm a senior engineer with almost a decade of experience including some years working at FAANG): Should I put months for each year for all my experiences or is it okay to just put the years? For example if this hides a 6 month gap? I've heard very conflicting opinions on this! If I'm in a city in California that's not super close to San Francisco, is it okay to just put California and leave my city out so I'm not auto rejected for positions that are in San Francisco, since I'm open to relocation? Also should I say somewhere on resume that I'm open to relocation? Pretty sure the answer to this is no but figured I'd ask! Is it worth going from 1 to 2 pages to list a few side projects that are over a few years old now and didn't really get a lot of users?

I’m a junior eng trying to break into big tech. I’ve done 1800 LC problems and am highly ranked. I’m looking for senior+ engs at big companies who can help me with resume reviews, referrals, and general other advice. I’ll happily help you train at Leetcode and answer any questions. (Based in US)

I've been really enjoying the all Interview Courses here on Taro. I'm currently putting together my resume to apply for Senior Engineer positions and I'm struggling to frame some of my experiences so that the level of my contribution/impact is clear. For context: I've been working on a major backend system migration that's core to the company's flagship product. This migration has been happening for the last 2 years and is being handled by my team (6 people), of which we have a Tech Lead leading the project, and a mix of Senior and Mid-level Engineers. Throughout the last 2 years, I've been working closely with the Tech Lead to co-design the migration plan, which we've then been executing on over the last 2 years. I wouldn't say I'm leading the project but I've made significant contributions (almost like a co-lead) to designing the new replacement system, coming up with the migration plan, leading multiple smaller scoped initiatives (within the the bigger migration plan, each initiative spanning 1-3 months), up-skilling and mentoring more junior Engineers on the team. I've played a more significant role than simply contributing but I'm not exactly leading the project here. What's a good way to think about framing my experiences here?

In the resume course, Alex mentioned doing great work is a prerequisite to having a great resume. I would like to see some examples of great work. Let's say my domain is frontend web development. What would be considered "great" work -

a) in side projects
b) in my internship/job

One obvious one is a high number of users using the product. What are some other examples?

Would also appreciate if you could include some low effort, high ROI examples as well (if they exist).

Thanks!

I feel like we are saying in interviews, resume, and performance review the best practice is to include business impact numbers. However, for lower levels (junior and mid), if impact doesn't matter, and execution is 100% of your value, shouldn't I just be focusing my resume and behavioral interview on how effective of an engineer I am and include metrics to track how good I am? For example: I have this story that has a lot of great execution wins: I reduced testing thrash by 90% by creating a data mapping document, scheduling and leading a sync meeting of the data mapping document with my PM, and using it to craft my unit tests. For context there are 5 message types that can come from at least 6 different places that need to be translated, correlated, and routed properly. This was measured by the results of the first test in staging that went through for my project.

If you're at faang but gaining no useful skills because you're in some niche not SWE, but semi coding production sales role does it still have that faang value? and if you do get into FAANG SWE, how does it change career trajectory?

I worked in a tech company as an SWE intern summer last year, and have returned to the same workplace in the capacity of a full-time engineer now. My intern-time project was on a completely different line (included ML based libraries and skills such as time-series forecasting that I picked up) while my present work is totally Python-based tooling development. Should I list these two experiences separately in my resume, given the time-periods are different as well?

This is a follow up to I decided to keep both roles open for as long as possible, so both are open right now. Meta postponed once and will now start in 3 weeks. Amazon postponed multiple times but it seems that they will finally send the laptop this week. I am expected to start at Amazon on Monday. There is a 2 weeks gap between Amazon's start date and Meta's start date. I don't want to burn the bridge too much with Amazon but I have a large resume gap and I can't afford to lose both roles. So far, I don't see any reason that Meta would rescind the offer, but in this environment anything can happen. When should I tell Amazon that I am taking a different role? I am leaning towards doing it this week, but I am scared to do it before Meta is 100% secure. Honestly, I can't afford anymore resume gap.

Hi everyone, I am looking for someone to help me prepare for quant interviews, especially with practicing math/stats questions. I am neurodivergent 🥲 and interviewing is hard for me in ways that are not easily addressed by online courses or self-study. You don't have to be highly qualified/trained to help because I mostly need practice and feedback to gain confidence that I'm not doing something "wrong".

How I can help you: resume/cover letter/linkedin review, being an accountability partner, etc. If there is a single typesetting inconsistency on your resume, I can find it. 😊

I did a postmortem on my job search for a new grad 2025 role. As part of this effort, I compiled statistics on my job search. Specifically, how many resume screens I passed (call it the pass rate). More details can be found in the comment section. My pass rate is around 7%, but a large part of it is from quant, and I think the fact that I interned at a small quant firm this summer skewed it. Putting all quant interviews, my rate is more like 5.8% on average. I ended up with 2 offers from high-growth unicorns. My first question is: Is a 5.8% pass rate good for a new grad? I’m wary of posting my resume online, but I’m happy to share it with Alex and Rahul and a few others privately if it makes things easier. The only things really noteworthy are T5 MS and T10 BS. Rahul and Alex both mention that jobs aren’t one-way doors, but I feel that these stats reveal how difficult mobility is, thus jobs are becoming more like one-way doors with little to no exits, especially if you don’t have brands. From this experience, I worry that in the future, it’ll take months of prep and applying to only get a minuscule chance at moving to a better opportunity. I’m excited to be working at a unicorn, but I’m also worried about when I leave, it’ll be hard for me to find something better down the line. It’s unfortunate that I graduated in a tough market, but I’m grateful that I got a decent job. How do position myself to have as many options as possible when I inevitably leave my first job?

Hey everyone, I am going to apply to jobs soon and I'd really appreciate any feedback on my resume. Any suggestions would be helpful!