Selena has more than 10 years of experience in recruiting. She's the Head of Fellowship Recruitment at Formation, a virtual fellowship for software engineers looking to take the next step in their career.

I’ve lost track of how many software engineer resumes I’ve sifted through, but it’s probably somewhere in the tens of thousands range. During my 10 years as an engineering recruiter at both Meta (Facebook then) and Google, I hired recent graduates, experienced software engineers, and everyone in between. I know exactly what a recruiter is looking for when they skim your resume.

While the current state of the job market is not as bad as the headlines suggest, submitting a polished resume is still incredibly important. And with the number of software engineers looking for roles, you'll want your resume to stand out. If you're thinking about your next role or are in the process of doing so, now is the time to make your software engineering resume stand out. Along with some examples of what a good resume looks like, here are some guidelines and tips to help you create a software engineer resume that’ll catch any recruiter’s eye.

What should be included in a software engineer resume?

Recruiters have seen it all, which means they can sniff out a bad resume in just a few seconds. Broken down by category, here is what should be included in any software engineer resume:

1. Basic info
2. Education
3. Experience
4. Skills
5. Affiliations/Organizations

1. Basic info

In general, your basic info should be somewhere at the top of the page, either right at the top or at the top of the sidebar. Here's an example:

• Your name should be the largest text on your resume and positioned in a prominent way (e.g., top, centered)
• Desired position (e.g., “software engineer") is clearly stated in the header unless you have 2+ years of experience
• Your physical address is optional, but it’s a good idea to have some identifier that you’re in the US and have visa status. You can use your region (e.g., “Bay Area”) or city and state.
• Email address is professional
• LinkedIn and Github are optional, but if you include them, ensure each URL is hyperlinked and do not have the “https://” prepended
• If including a summary, all parts are factual, relevant, specific and it is a maximum of 1-2 sentences long, geared toward type of desired role if necessary

2. Education

Each educational institution you've attended should be listed with its name, campus location, year of degree completion, and degree completed (with minor, if applicable).

• If you’re a recent grad, list upper-level coursework ie.: operating systems, machine learning, etc.
• If you’re a recent grad, include your GPA if it’s 3.5+. If it’s lower than 3.5, do not include it.
• If you attended a bootcamp, list it in this section, with your most recent one at the top.
• If you took individual courses (e.g. Udemy, Coursera) or certifications, do not list them

3. Experience

A recruiter wants to see the larger scopes of what you did, not just that you did X project. When you’re writing about your experience, talk about it at a higher level and pull out the impact of your work. Each bullet point should address a different impact you had on the company, eg. if you led a team, managed a project, or designed something. Here are some tips to remember when creating the experience section of your software engineer resume:

• Order bullets either from most impactful to least, or in reverse-chronological (most recent first)
• List your experience section as the first section unless you’re a recent grad or still in college (in this case, your education section should come first)
• Include company name, title, dates employed, and location if applicable
• Limit each experience block to 2-3 bullet points
• Your most recent experience should be the most thorough; older experience can be a bit vaguer
• If you have access to any impressive metrics from projects you did, list them (”leading to...”, “resulting in...”)
• Vary your power verb sentence starters
• Only list experience that is relevant; if it’s not SWE-adjacent, leave it out (eg. server, lifeguard, etc.)

4. Skills

Your skills section is one of the most important sections you'll include. It will tell the recruiter and, eventually, the hiring manager if you have the skills required for the position you're applying for. Use these pointers to list your skills correctly:

• Your skill section should be listed at the bottom of the resume or in the sidebar. You can also list them next to your relevant coursework if you’re a recent grad.
• List skills in order of fluency. The first skill listed should be what you’re interviewing in.
• Don’t include languages you don’t know.
• Skills should all be capitalized correctly.
• Each skill listed is relevant to the role you’re seeking.
• Skills are correctly categorized (e.g. React is not listed as a language).

In the two examples below, notice how skills are listed in different areas based on the experience level of each candidate. For the recent grad resume, skills are at the top and combined with relevant coursework; for the senior engineer resume, the skills are listed in the left sidebar.

Senior Software Engineer Resume (Left), Recent Graduate Resume (Right)

5. Affiliations and Organizations

This section is optional, but if you have organization affiliations, leadership positions, or interesting extracurriculars, this is the place to include them.

• If you come from a diverse background, you may indicate it by listing any affiliations, like NSBE, SHPE, WICS, Grace Hopper, Anita Borg, Vets Who Code, etc.
• Interests are not necessary, but you may include them if they’re unique or interesting. For example, if you were an Olympic ping pong player or competed on Chopped, that’s something interesting that would pique a recruiter's interest. If you’re including interests, choose no more than 3.

A quick word about formatting

Recruiters have seen it all, which means they can sniff out a bad resume in just a few seconds. Before we dive into the specifics of a well-done software engineer resume, let’s talk about formatting. Poor formatting is a red flag for a recruiter who is likely going through hundreds of qualified engineers’ resumes. To avoid getting your resume tossed out, follow these tips:

• Length: Keep it to 1 page. There is no reason it should be longer unless you have 10+ years of experience.
• Spacing: Even if you have a lot of experience to list, try not to squeeze too many words into one page. Remember, a human is reading your resume, so appropriate spacing is appreciated.
• Format: Choose a commonly-used program like PDF or Word. Whatever you use, just make sure your resume is readable and can be downloaded or opened on a variety of devices.
• Naming: Use the pattern “[First Name] [Last Name] - [title] [year] resume.pdf”, e.g. “Jackson Smith – Fullstack software engineer 2021 resume.pdf”
• Font size: No smaller than 8, no larger than 24.
• Design: Looks modern and is easy to read at first glance. Your resume is the first impression you'll make on a recruiter. They can tell a lot about you based on how modern your resume looks and reads.
• Page setup: Your resume should fit on a single 8.5” x 11” page with minimum .5” margins all around
• Bullet points: They don’t need to be full sentences, but they do need to be compete thoughts. Keep it to 3 bullet points or fewer per section.
• Past-tense power verb bullet points: This is the standard for all resume language, not just software engineer resumes. Diversify your verbs and make sure they are past-tense if you’re no longer at that company. Only use the present tense if you’re currently working at that company and in that role.
• Grammar and spelling errors: Triple-check that you don’t have any.

Below is a sample resume for an experienced software engineer. Notice how the margins are big enough and the spacing feels appropriate which gives it a clean, polished look.

5 Things to Include (and Exclude) in Your Software Engineer Resume

There are a number of things you should and should not include in your resume. In my experience, these are the top 5 things that candidates get hung up on the most:

1. Summary: A summary is not required, but you can include a sentence about who you are and what you’re looking for next. Just keep it short.
2. Skills: Include your skills in order of fluency, but don’t include languages that you don’t know. The first skill listed should be what you’re interviewing in. More on the specifics of skills later.
3. Contact info: Include your phone and email. If your email account is on an outdated provider (Hotmail, AOL, etc.), it’s a red flag to recruiters that you’re not up to date with the latest technology and trends. You don’t need to include your physical address, but if you’d like to list your city/state/region for work authorization purposes, that is completely fine.
4. Links: A clickable link to your LinkedIn/Github account is acceptable, but not necessary. For what it’s worth, a recruiter is not going to look at your Github, but they will definitely find you on LinkedIn.
5. Projects: If you have 2+ years of experience, projects are optional. That being said, if you don’t have a lot of real tech experience, then you should include any projects. It shows that you’re actively coding every day (or at least often), and that’s important if you’re transitioning into SWE from another career.

Project Guidelines (Expand)

• Mention if your projects are in an App Store or being used in open source
• Clearly name each project and its duration/end date
• Include a quick summary of each project's scope and the specific technologies used
• Include a link to the source code repository
• Ensure each project link is valid and directs to a page that is reasonably polished

Things to Avoid

To keep your resume at the top of the pile, avoid:

• Submitting a resume longer than 1 page (without 10+ years of relevant experience or significant publications/awards)
• Typos!
• Bullet points beginning with non-past-tense power verbs (excluding those in experience blocks that run to present)
• Use of pronouns (“You”, “I”, “Me”, “We”, “Our”, “Us”, “Their”, They”). The summary is the only area where a pronoun is acceptable.
• Uneven or misaligned margins or aligns
• References stated or offered (wait until they ask for them!)
• Missing contact information
• Submitting a resume that's not in a Word doc or PDF format, or is named improperly (see Formatting)
• Including photos

3 Quick Tips for Making Your Software Engineer Resume Stand Out

The most common mistake engineers (really, all job seekers) make on their resumes is being unable to talk about what they did. Use these final quick tips when writing your resume:

• Focus on impact: This is a subtle yet dramatic shift in the way you should think about writing about your work. It should be less about what you did and more about what your work resulted in.
• Get into your readers’ mindset: Recruiters and hiring managers typically care about different things, so it’s important that your resume hits on multiple angles. Recruiters will care more about your business impact and will get lost in the technical details. Hiring managers, on the other hand, care about business impact, but they also like to see technical challenges in your resume.
• Explain in exhaustive detail, but NOT in your resume: Be prepared to talk about your projects, both in terms of business impact as well as technical challenges, to recruiters and/or engineers in phone screenings. Anything you can’t talk about for a few minutes should not be included in your resume.

Your resume is your first impression on a recruiter. One look at a resume and I am either fast-tracking you through to an interview loop or tossing out your application. Take the time to really craft your narrative through your software engineer resume and remember to put thought into it—it could land you your next role!