#Resume for Entry Level SWE with experience

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

south spade
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My amazon offer got delayed so I'm applying to jobs again 😦

dicord_resume.png
waxen notch
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Any tips for getting mlh fellow ?

south spade
waxen notch
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Just to clarify, So for the why MLH fellowship question , I should talk about their hackathons ?

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Ty

south spade
# waxen notch Ty

No haha, it could be anything but it would help to reference that you went to their hackathon

waxen notch
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Ooh ok thanks

south spade
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@waxen notch can you give me feedback on my resume ?

waxen notch
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You can improve your bullet points for your projects

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By coming up with metrics for them

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Also they seem to be mostly ML related, so you can try making Backend related projects

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Maybe You have too many brackets in the Amazon bullet points, also you can bold the metrics if you want

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Django isn’t a language, so instead of the languages section you can have a section for languages and one for frameworks /libraries

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U can also add locations on the right if you want, or use a different resume template

elfin magnet
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If it's any comfort, the word I've been getting from management and senior+ engineers at Amazon is that return offers are generally safe (rescinding like meta/google/etc is "extremely unlikely"). Totally understand looking for other opportunities though (it's what I've been having my amazon friends do), but just be ready to take a major comp cut

I recommend you separate out your skills into a separate section - it's very atypical to have it grouped in education (and yes, Django isn't a language). I like that you're fluent in Arabic and French, so I'd wanna keep languages and probably format it like:

Programming: Python, Java....
Libraries/Frameworks/Tools (this is up to you, but choose one): Django, React, ...
Languages: Arabic, ...

On a similar note, I wouldn't bold "Summa Cum Laude", "Girls Who Code", or "CodePath" - doesn't add anything for me

The formatting in the personal projects can be improved significantly - I'd recommend moving links (presentation/paper/etc) to be within the heading line. I'm personally very mixed on how to include tech, but I'm not the biggest fan of the way it is atm - if this was less data-science-y, I would've considered including a Technologies line, but given that this technologies type of project typically would go into the skills part of the resume for students going into data science/ML/analytics roles, I'd probably go with that (the only tricky thing here is the React app, but that's tech you can integrate into the bullet e.g., "a React-based web app" or "a web app using React and JavaScript"

Another thing is the focus on tech. I think your resume can be perceived weak by many companies due to the overall lack of focus - it's better for new grad roles with firms that prioritize generalists for training (so mega-corps that'll place you like faang or banking) or academics. This will be a hurdle for you, and if you're searching for more specific roles, it's something you'll need to rethink

elfin magnet
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Formatting overall is otherwise ok, would consider standardizing your date formatting (in education) though bc it struck me as odd. Your use of periods is also inconsistent, though the general recommendation is to leave them off (bullet 1 and 4 on role 2, bullet 1 on project 3).

Now going through your experiences:

Role 1

  • Avoid personal pronouns (us, my) - strongly advised against, and you can communicate the same thing without it

allowing us to retire two legacy testing tools -> allowing **retirement of **two legacy testing tools

  • I generally recommend making sure your highest impact work is highlighted at the top - is testing migration really the biggest part of your work there? This will end up pigeonholing you if you're not careful
  • second bullet can be reworded to communicate the impact to be more straightforward, "waiting period to see code changes in the cloud" sounds off to me, and there's 100% better way to improve this.
    • For the web dev space, an equivalent would be hot module replacement (HMR).
    • For prod/stage deployments, it's just build time - say you're using a CI/CD workflow via GH Actions, Buildkite, or maybe something like Codepipeline (not 100% certain about the AWS ecosystem here)
    • Basically, I don't understand what you're saying with bullet 2 - maybe offer context
  • Bullet 3 is fine as a responsibility bullet
  • I'm personally not a fan of bullet 4 - it especially doesn't tell me your role in solving the sev. Resolving sevs is also something interns have very little jurisdiction over (just because of how much of the system you need to be familiar with, and on on-call rotation isn't part of an intern's contract), and if I were a hiring manager/engineer, I'd dismiss this - plus, it's only one sev, and it's a reflection of your team and system more than your competencies
elfin magnet
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  • Also not a big fan of bullet 5 - performance reviews mean little in the long term, and this would be otherwise be a classic case of "show, not tell". Now, if you were offered L5 immediately after your internship, that would say more than just being a normal intern

Role 2

  • Not going to comment on the MLH & Meta thing, as it's not my domain
  • Same comment here about communicating your highest impact in this role as your highlight, just saying "Integrated Network Socket with LabGraph" doesn't tell perspective employers much about you or how you'd fit in into an open role. It's fine as is just for the bullet
  • If you have any metrics, please find them
  • "Setup logic" is very passive, would recommend rethinking this bullet
  • Bullet 3 and 4 could use more context/clarity - you created ML models to facilitate uploading ML models on some platform? What is Dynalab, and what is the significance?

Role 3

  • "Implemented" is a weak verb to kickstart the highlight of this entry, and the first bullet is verbose overall while missing context (what's the problem? why was it necessary? just saying to reduce paper costs isn't clear). Would recommend revisiting
  • Bullet 2 can use more context - what/how are you querying, and how is it relevant to the new ID card system?
  • Bullet 3 is good, though the verbiage is a little weak at the end. It's ok

Role 4

  • Be specific about what you taught, how you created an exciting, engaging, and accessible classroom. There are a lot of people with Girls Who Code, I'd recommend just finding them on linkedin and sorta just borrowing from their points there. I'd generally also recommend against using self-qualifiers ("exciting, engaging, and accessible") without anything to back them up. Overall, I'd say these two bullets are rather passive, and you can 100% improve them just through restructuring and supplying context
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Project 1

  • What's the part you want to highlight here? That you built a web app that solves some prediction problem or you performed regression on home prices in NJ?
    • as a side note - just say "in New Jersey" instead of "in the US with a focus on NJ state"
    • another side note: don't say Zillow database - their data is notoriously inaccessible and there's no way you'd have direct access to a database. Be specific - either used their public API or just their data
    • third side note: offer some metrics i.e., users, test/cv accuracy , etc

Project 2

  • What's the problem space? What's the technique? What's the end result? These things aren't necessarily clear, and while this might be ok in an academic CV, I recommend against it in a SWE resume

Project 3

  • This description is more or less ok

Overall, I would try to communicate impact more actively, and think more carefully about the kind of work you want to be doing in the future - these are the two biggest takeaways I get from your resume, but it's otherwise strong. Good job

south spade
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Omg thank you so much 🔥 , I'm going to go bit by bit on the feedback you gave me, and show you how I implemented them

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Role 1

  • Done
  • Actually Migrating the test packages for the pipeline and building new ones was my entire project lol
  • Yes it's prod/stage deplyments so I reworded it to smth like this
    • Reduced CI/CD build times from 3 hours to 5 min using Hydra CLI
  • Thank you
  • I was able to help with the SEV-2 because it actually was on the package/pipeline I was working on, so I was very familiar with the ins and outs, so in short when they got the SEV-2 bc the pipeline is sensitive senior engineers ended up reaching out to me bc it would save them time, rather than trying understand the package from scratch (It's a huuge package), I ended up pinpointing them to the root cause ... Voila. I agree, now that I look at it, it doesn't show how I actually helped so I rewrote it to this:
    • Helped senior engineers resolve a SEV-2 (major incident) by quickly identifying its root cause, based on prior experience with the defected package and the blocked pipeline — allowing 5 teams to continue their CI/CD deployments.
  • I added it because not everyone gets a full time offer from Amazon, but I would ask you the question based on the 4 previous bullets do I "show" how good I am
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Role 2

  • I need to refresh my memory on this role and gather some metrics (if any)
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Role 3

  • The problem is the university basically mailed security passcodes etc to incoming students. I finished on it before the pandemic, turns out it helped them even more to not mail those "getting started letters", and obviously they saved money on paper/mail
  • The new ID system needed the same data from the old one but reformatted, the university had to options to hire a technician from the new company to do the formatting or I will do it, and that saved them 6k, I don't know how to save this story in the bullet.
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Role 4

  • Thank you will do
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Project 1

  • I want to highlight both of them, because I want to target general Software Engineer positions, but sometimes I want to target Data Science/ Research positions
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Again thank you so much for taking the time to give this constructive feedback, It's mind blowing, and it's very tech related the usual feedback I used to get is formatting and font, not that it is not useful but the content matters too.
Yes you are right my resume was/is mostly tailed to generalist SWE positions like big firms that have structured New Grad positions, but with everything going on I should focus more on my niche

steel patio
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😯😯 Surprising seeing a fellow recurser in the wild. What batch were you part of?

south spade
elfin magnet
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Glad it was helpful! Just to respond to some comments/questions:

Role 1

Actually Migrating the test packages for the pipeline and building new ones was my entire project lol

Got it, I guess a better way to say it might be to use a more leadership-y action verb like "Led/Spearheaded migration of..." instead of just "Migrated", or even restructuring it such that the "testing" stuff can be less upfront, and your ownership clearer. Something like:

  • "Led adoption of a new internal testing tool (Hydra) to migrate [Name] Console UI and canary tests to 100% native AWS, enabling retirement of two legacy testing tools {then add some metric here, there should be some cost justification for sunsetting the tools - consider adding that CI/CD build improvement here if there's nothing else, something like 'and reducing team-wide CI/CD build times from 3 hours to 5 minutes'}"

Helped senior engineers resolve a SEV-2 (major incident) by quickly identifying its root cause, based on prior experience with the defected package and the blocked pipeline — allowing 5 teams to continue their CI/CD deployments

This is also a rather weakly structured bullet - I'm leaning towards removing it or stretching (by making the number of sevs vague) and simplifying it. I rarely see anyone make resolving sevs as a bullet unless you're going for SRE, and even then, the frequency and severity of sevs is very team dependent.

I added it because not everyone gets a full time offer from Amazon, but I would ask you the question based on the 4 previous bullets do I "show" how good I am

If that's the justification, yea, I'd remove it. Remember, you're appealing to people who've worked in these orgs for years and have received dozens of performance reviews (and some skewed due to internal office politics) - your interview performance will reveal whether you'd be a high achiever in the team you're applying to

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Role 3

The problem is the university basically mailed security passcodes etc to incoming students. I finished on it before the pandemic, turns out it helped them even more to not mail those "getting started letters", and obviously they saved money on paper/mail

Now that's a story! If you can communicate part of that as the problem space in your bullet, it would improve it significantly. Maybe something like:

  • "Designed an email automation program using Python, HTML, and CSS to secure and modernize mailing systems for new student onboarding during the pandemic, reducing paper costs by $1000+ per year"

The new ID system needed the same data from the old one but reformatted, the university had to options to hire a technician from the new company to do the formatting or I will do it, and that saved them 6k, I don't know how to save this story in the bullet.

Sounds like data transformation, though it's still not clear to me what you did - try to think on it more

I want to highlight both of them, because I want to target general Software Engineer positions, but sometimes I want to target Data Science/ Research positions

I'd recommend having at least two versions of your resume, one where you highlight the DS stuff first, and the other the more technical stuff. Data science stuff tends to be not as relevant for people hiring for SWE (I did econ/stats, learned this the hard way), so I'd take that into consideration when deciding on projects

south spade
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Thank you so much for the follow-up recommendations, this was very helpful I'm sure my resume will be 10x stronger after I incorperate all your advice