RezScore occasionally features members from our talented community. If you are interested in improving your resume please visit https://rezscore.com/resume-writing.
Aditya Pratap is a talented software intern at Chegg, a publicly traded education technology company. He has a very marketable skill set, but his resume was only scoring in the “C” range, which we consider to be merely average.
Below we share his resume before RezScore experts put work into it. Can you identify what was holding him back?
Fortunately for Aditya, he has a strong set of accomplishments and a highly marketable skill set. Our experts can always do the most when the job seeker has a strong talent base.
Unfortunately, a few key errors were holding him back. Our experts performed a RezScore makeover to fix some key problems. Here is what we produced:
You’ll notice several changes which improved the grade of this resume. We place a lot of emphasis on the improving the top third of the resume. Generally, hiring managers will make a snap judgement about the candidate immediately, and they have likely already decided if they will hire you before they finish reading your resume. To maximize your chances, you need to frontload every relevant detail into the opening of your resume.
Here you’ll notice we open with a professional headline of “Entry Level Software Developer”, to immediately position this resume towards a target job opening. The beauty of the headline is that it can be easily swapped out depending on the position.
We next list the most recent experience, since hirers want to have a sense of what you are presently doing. We then highlight specific projects and achievements, which we felt were the strongest ways to help Aditya stand out. You’ll notice in the original copy Aditya’s achievements didn’t even make it above the fold, but it is very notable that Aditya regularly achieves awards in programming competitions and built an app with 10,000+ users. View our post on responsibilities vs. achievements for further insight.
Finally, note how we take any opportunity to quantify achievements. Tossing specific numbers into your resume has many advantages, not only does it visually enhance boring lines of text, but the specificity provides immediate credibility.
Also of note, the original version did not parse well in some Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS). About of half of all resumes will be reformatted by an ATS before a human sees it, so it is important to make sure the formatting remains pleasant after it is ripped apart.
Altogether, the new resume got results. The resume improved its grade at RezScore and received higher marks in double-blinded experiments.
If you would like a RezScore expert to improve your resume, you may want to check out our professional rewrite packages. We offer services to suit everybody, from students who are short on cash to executives who are short on time.
What do you think? Do you like Aditya’s new resume? Can we make it even better? Please send us your thoughts at hey@rezscore.com
