Junior Engineer’s Resume Review

I have been extremely lucky to get hired as a junior engineer at the age of 17, and I try to pay it forward as much as I can. Taking on a new hire, and especially someone who is new to software development requires work on behalf of your team. A new person needs to be set up for success with the right amount of mentorship, starter projects and a learning plan. Junior engineers generally require more mentorship, but the right hires bring enthusiasm and willingness to adopt the team’s best practices.

Recently I have been asked for advice on writing the resume the right way to get a foot in the door at a good tech company. The answer can be disappointing to some: there is no way a well-crafted resume can make up for the lack of readiness for the job. There is a way that people who do have the right experience don’t showcase it on their resume, and that is something I am always happy to help with.

An experienced hiring manager is going to be looking for signals that identify a person who knows the basics well and is passionate about the field. Assuming you have done the work required to be hired as a software engineer what types of things should you showcase in your resume? We will break them down into three different categories: writing code, learning capabilities and teamwork.

Writing code

The primary expectation for a junior engineer is writing and debugging code. The tasks can range from writing tests to implementing features of the system. There is no getting away from being able to write solid algorithms, creating data structures and debugging.

When I was interviewing for my first programming job in the 90s the only way to prove that you can write code was to solve algorithms on a whiteboard. Writing out a solution to a small coding problem is still a core part of a tech interview.

In the age of github.com there is also another way to share the code you wrote. A lot of college students use github.com for their coursework. The source code you post can say a lot about where you are in your development as a programmer. Create a github.com account and share some of your work to show a hiring manager more of your skills. If you do have some code posted, pay attention to what your code says about your skill level. Nicely organized projects with documentation, tests, continuous integration, and good comments shows that you have grown beyond individual algorithms.

Learning

There are many ways to learn Computer Science and the most conventional one is to go to a good college. Even though I got a programming job before college my family insisted that I go to University of Washington, and I am thankful they did!

I learned a lot about OS architecture and algorithms. The computer languages I was exposed to that expanded my horizons. I did projects with some remarkable professors. One of them, Gary Kimura, before becoming a professor at UW was in charge of Windows NT file system architecture for over a decade at Microsoft.

Citing your marquee course work on the resume can tell a lot about your interests. If you are interested in games and graphics, likely you did some 400 level courses in those fields. A hiring manager sees those as signals that you might already know some theory in those fields but also that you might have had some practice.

You can’t teach people curiosity and enthusiasm. Someone who took relevant courses, enrolled in additional education, got some certifications are all clear signals that this person is eager and capable of learning.

Teamwork

It’s hard to convey how well you get along with other engineers on a software team, but there are still positive signals that someone can cite on their resume. When I see people get a repeat internship at a particular company or get a job after an internship it’s usually a positive sign that they left a good impression that the teams are eager to get them back.

For engineers who have been in the field for a few years it’s good to see that they have been at a particular company for longer than a couple of years. That generally speaks about their ability to work well with the rest of the organization and deliver some impact.

In the world of open-source projects on github.com someone can get involved and contribute to an OSS project. That requires knowing how to take and give feedback on pull requests, it might involve bug triage, coordination, and general ability to get along with several other engineers.

Contribution to an open-source project often achieves many goals: it shows the interest in learning, teamwork, and ability to write code in a complex system. Most of the commercial systems have many contributors and a fair amount existing code. Having a skill to navigate that type of system only comes from experience, so if someone can show that early in their career it’s a huge boost.

Conclusion

As you can see a well-crafted resume is a culmination of a lot of work that happened before you applied for a particular job. Having that work highlighted and easily accessible to the hiring manager is going to help you stand out in a long list of candidates.