Resume

The most important part of an application is your resume. A recruiter only spends seven seconds on average looking at a resume, so it should provide them with your skills, accomplishments, and interests in the most efficient way possible. Because a resume is all a recruiter has to judge you by, spending time on it is the single most effective thing you can do to land an internship.

At this stage in your career, resumes should be strictly one page long. There are discussions as to what the “perfect” ordering is, but it is crucial to include your education, relevant experience, projects, leadership, and skills, with many resumes using this order. Depending on your year, major, and extent of experience, this looks different for everyone. But overall, the ordering should be a reflection of importance- what showcases your abilities and skills the most?

Many companies/recruiters use an Application Tracking System (ATS). We cover what this is on the main careers page, so read that if you haven’t already. These algorithms work really well with certain templates but not-so-great with others. Generally, you want your resume to be a simple black and white with no frills or weird formatting. Use the same font, and ensure consistent spacing between individual items and sections in your resume. Some good resume templates to use are Jake’s Resume Template or the UNC CS Templates.

When getting started with your resume, we recommend creating a copy that includes all of your relevant experiences, projects and leadership with polished bullets that highlight everything you accomplished at each experience. Your actual resume will likely not include everything on this “master” resume, but your goal is to have all that you have worked on and impacted in one place. The reason for doing this is that you’ll be able to pull relevant bullets, details and experiences quickly into your main resume document when tailoring your resume for specific job descriptions.

For instance, let’s say you’re applying to an internship at Amazon with the following job description:

This job description asks for a lot of things. But, it’s clear that they’re looking for candidates with strong object-oriented, database, cloud, and microservices experience. Let’s say you have multiple ML projects, such as creating a neural network in PyTorch to predict shipping delays using weather data, GPS data, and driver logs. Let's say that you also recently created a full stack app with resilient APIs that can handle hundreds of users. Because you already have a document with polished bullets for *everything *you worked on, you can easily tailor your resume by only submitting relevant experience, and tweaking the language to match the keywords in the job description.

In addition to tailoring your resume to job descriptions of internships you’d most like to attain, it is common practice to have multiple copies of your resume for different skill sets. For instance, you may have an AI/ML, Python, Backend, Frontend, Fullstack, etc. resume, and can submit relevant resumes for each job description without spending the time to uniquely tailor your resume. You may also have a ‘general’ resume that shows that you have a variety of experience in different domains for internship descriptions that ask for many different skillsets.

Another tip is to save old copies of your resume. Instead of editing your current version, make a new copy each time you add something. This helps when applying to opportunities outside of internships, where you may need a comprehensive record of past activities. Over time, older experiences often get removed, so keeping past versions ensures you don’t lose track of achievements and their details.

How to write your resume

Header

A resume header typically includes your name, LinkedIn link, GitHub link, personal email address and phone number. Once again, use a simple black and white template with no strange formatting. (Note: It is not necessary to include detailed sensitive personal information such as your home address.)

Education

A typical education section includes your university’s name and location on one line, the degree(s) you’re pursuing and your expected graduation date on the next, and your related coursework. We recommend including your cumulative GPA if it is above 3.5, otherwise, it is not necessary. Related coursework should only include coursework related to the job you are applying to. Also, it is acceptable to remove words such as “Intro to” from the beginning of course names.

Experiences & Leadership/Activities

There are a lot of opinions on resume bullet points and there is no “correct” way to form bullets for the experiences sections. However, the goal is for anyone with some technical knowledge to understand what you accomplished, how you accomplished it, and at some level, why what you did was important. Use action verbs such as “built”, “engineered”, “constructed”, etc. to start each bullet point. Then, include hard numbers and metrics to show your impact quantitatively. (The more numbers used the better!)

Because recruiters often skim rather than read line-by-line, consider bolding key technical tools, languages, or skills within your bullet points, especially those that match the job description. This helps important keywords stand out quickly.

Google recruiters encourage applicants to use something called the X,Y, Z format, where bullet points are formatted through the framework “accomplished X by doing Y as shown by Z”. This article has some good examples. Our only caution with this method is to make sure you don’t unnecessarily drag out bullet points. You don’t want to make your resume too wordy and difficult to digest - it should show technical depth and proficiency without sacrificing understandability and clarity. Once again, recruiters will only evaluate your resume for a short period of time, so it is imperative that you convey your experiences concisely. Still, this is a good format to follow and will yield solid resume bullet points to refine.

In terms of formatting, aim for each bullet point to end past the halfway point of the page. This not only looks nicer, but uses each line effectively.

As you gain experience, your experiences section will grow and you’ll likely have less space to fit your projects, leadership etc. When this happens, it is completely acceptable to have high impact, one-sentence-or-less summaries of your projects and leadership experience. Experiences are the most important, so ensure this section has the most detail.

Here is another helpful resource. In order to find strong example resumes, navigate to a company you’d like to work for on LinkedIn, and find engineers who have their resume posted on their page who work there. Youtube and Google are also good sources. However, ensure you take a holistic view when inspecting resumes online, as resumes will all be different, and as mentioned, there is no one-size-fits all formula. Inspect formatting, wording, structure and content.

Projects

After experiences, the projects section will highlight projects that you have built. Some templates include a space for the tech stack, while others do not. For each project, include the tech stack, what the project is (ie. “Built a full stack app”), why you built it (ie. “that allows musicians to generate looped song clips from their Spotify playlists to speed up transcription”), any technical problems/goals you accomplished/solved (ie. “Designed a NoSQL schema to efficiently map songs to clip”, and any impact the project has/had. For instance, if your project has a significant user base, include it. Open source contributions can also go here.

Skills
Typically, this is the place for you to showcase your technical skills. You can split up your skills by categories such as “AI/ML”, “Full Stack”, “Infra”, etc. Sometimes, people also include personal hobbies and interests to add a more personal touch.

Iterating your resume

There are several strategies to iterate your resume. Use AI tools to workshop bullet points for clarity, impact and length, and see this reddit post for prompts to improve your resume.

The best source for resume help is your alumni network. In order to build it, attend club meetings with alumni attendance and be involved in the community, create connections with alumni on LinkedIn or Rutgers’ career connect service by showing a genuine interest in their work, and create a digital presence.

Oftentimes the difference between attaining an interview and not isn’t a candidate's experience, but how those experiences are worded on their resume.

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