Why don't I like your resume?
You hit all the points on the job description. Why aren’t you getting a call? It’s not the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) filtering you out. It is not the Talent Acquisition (TA) team. It is one of the hiring managers, maybe myself. How do you “get by” me?
I know creating a resume is stressful, you get conflicting advice, and you might be doing it when you are out of work and all that stress and contradiction will try to overwhelm you. In this article, I hope to help a little by taking a swing at explaining what I think when I review resumes. As always: Warning- Opinions Ahead!
This post picks up the theme of a post I dropped in October last year about dev lead resumes. It is still true: most - almost all - resumes I am seeing lately are nothing more than a summary of job descriptions. Throw in a key performance indicator or two and you have… a resume that looks like every other resume. That is bad!
Presume I have only one position open for a role. Your resume is in a pile with hundreds of other resumes. I need to pick one good one out of hundreds. You need to be the one I pick out of hundreds. If I have 200 applicants for one position, there are probably at least 20 that will be ok for the role. We agree that my task is easier than yours, right?
You need to stand out. Gimmicks such as formatting your resume like a brochure only run the risk of obscuring key detail. The best way to stand out, at least to me, is provide good information.
That is easy, you think. Yet, resumes like this simplified but not far off example are the norm for what I see:
Pat Lee
[email protected]
I am a results driven test professional who uses state of the art tools to
achieve my OKRs and KPIs. With my leadership in QA, we were able to test
our widgets.
Acme Corp
2020-2025
Senior Software Engineer in Test
- Wrote test cases for BXD NextGen
- Wrote test automation
- Tested apps
- Reported bugs
- Led a team of three
Goals met:
- Achieved 80% test coverage
- Enabled revenue growth of 1 million.
Tools used: Widget Test Studio, VS Code, WTSE, Jira
Ajax Corp
2018-2020
Manual Software Tester
- Wrote test cases
- Tested apps
- Reported bugs
Goals met:
- Achieved 50% of my annual goal in 6 months
Tools used: SQL Server, Jira, BrowserStack, BSDS
My reactions to fake Pat’s fake resume
It technically hits all the points it needs to match our job description (ok, it needs a little more, but you get the point). The level of terseness above is extreme compared to what I normally see, but terseness seems to be the norm. While a wall of text gets hard to read, nothing but terse bullets makes you sound like a video game character. “Short” resumes should not be dull resumes. No hiring manager I know is currently disqualifying candidates because they have a long resume - they may move on to the next in the pile if it is verbose word spam. Say what you need to say - not more and not less. You want a succinct resume, not terse resume. I hope to help you find the balance.
Pronouns help me understand
I do not care one whit about the first-person or third-person debate (“I did x” vs “Pat did x”). It’s worse than arguing tabs vs. spaces. I do not care if you choose gendered or non-gendered pronouns. I know some people care and will hold it against you, but they are jerks so you should not care about them. Reasonable people know you are getting conflicting advice, so will cut you some slack. You want to work for and with reasonable people, right?
But please clue me in that you’re a person! Most resumes now are written in the “no-person” voice. Please pick first- or third-person and stick with it. Why do I, as the person reading it care? It forces you to say whether something was a team accomplishment (That’s good. You are applying to join our team after all.) or your own accomplishment. It also makes the resume flow and forces you into a more natural voice. If you are concerned about being too wordy, you can do a little combo magic:
In this role, I:
- Wrote test cases
- Tested applications
- Reported bugs
What the heck are BXD, WTSE, and BSDS?
Are these niche tools you bought/open sourced somewhere? Are they internal applications? Are they internal test processes? I have no idea. Both of our brains shrink when you use unexplained jargon. Expand your acronyms! If they are internal systems, give me a few words on what they do. I’m not your former employer. If you want me to be your future employer, give me a clue.
While I’m at it, “apps”? Applications please. Yes, we all probably know what you meant, but it runs the risk of sounding lazy to someone. Do not sound lazy, ‘k?
The KPIs don’t add up
Every list of resume tips and tricks that’s worth the read will tell you include some actual measurements. I agree. Please make sure they make sense for the role.
You led a team of three… what? Other testers? Were you the leader of an entire development pod and had devs reporting to you too? I do not know. Help me out here.
You got 80% test coverage? What does that mean? Why did it matter? I do not even know how you define coverage. Covered all the branches in code? Covered all the methods? Wrote one test each for 80% of user stories? Covered 80% of regression test cases? Was it even valuable? Once I know your environment, I can crank out coverage pretty darn fast. It will be junk that doesn’t actually validate anything, but it will be coverage.
How, as a senior automated test developer, did you enable 1 million in revenue growth? There’s a connection missing here. Missing that connection means you take the risk I will to conclude you either have no idea what you did to help the company, are taking credit for someone else’s victory, or both. That’s all lose for you.
“Achieved 50% of my annual goal in 6 months” is a paraphrase of one I’ve seen recently and they highlighted it as a major accomplishment. Without any context, it sounds like they are bragging that they hit the minimum. Need I say more?
Who was that?
Acme and Ajax - there’s probably dozens of companies with those names. I can’t tell which one you worked for. If I need more people with experience in my industry (or consider it a nice bonus), you are missing an opportunity to distinguish yourself. That’s a symptom of a bigger problem here: you said nothing about what you were working on. Cloud application? Traditional web application? Embedded software? I do not know. What was the business goal? How did it help users? If it does not matter, you lost nothing saying it. If it does matter, I am picking a candidate that states it.
Do you know why it matters?
Please, for the love of chocolate, show you cared about your job and understand why it mattered to your employer. If you show that you understand how to make a positive impact, it will positively impact your chances of getting the job, not just an interview.
Bare statements like “Tested apps” make me wonder if you know why it matters. If you don’t know why it matters, then I do not know if you will be able to adapt what you know how to do to a new environment. I also do not know if you cared about the outcome. You were there, that is all I know. Were you a rockstar? Were you a steady, reliable teammate? Or were you the person who was just trying to game that job as long as you could before getting called out? I do not know. Other candidates are making it clear that knew why it mattered and that they cared. Who should I pick?
For some of the points you make on your resume, answer these questions:
- What did you do?
- Why did it matter?
- How did you do it?
You do not need to answer them in the same order and do not need to expand every point on your resume this way. Focus on the things that carried a demonstrable impact for the organization or that helped you grow. You can cover it in the introduction paragraph for the resume if it was really a point you want to highlight, in an introduction paragraph for the role, or somewhere else that looks good to you. Just make sure it’s there.
Let’s just take this accomplishment: “Achieved 80% test coverage”.
Every leader in QA automation includes that line. It needs more “so what” added to it.
Try this:
“I shortened our regression test window from days to minutes by automating 80% of our test cases. This increased development capacity by 15% per month by reducing our code freeze window.” (Code freeze windows are topic we’re not talking about right now. I will not be baited.)
When I see that, I know you get it and know you care.
Conclusion
Read a hundred internet pundits’ opinions on resumes and you will get a hundred internet pundits’ opinions on resumes. The stakes are always higher for you than for the hiring manager and you have difficult choices to make. I understand that and hope this helps even if you take a different path with your own rez. Good luck!