Hey all, I thought I would post some of my resume advice that worked for me for getting interview offers from good companies. This advice may not work for everyone, so please take it with a grain of salt.

1. Quantify your bullet points on your resume.
For each of your projects or positions, try to include a quantitative figure for each description. For example, instead of something plain like:

Instead of "Built a web app using python."

Say something like:

"3,000+ users using a python web app I built for curating tech-related jobs."

Quantifying your resume adds more weight to each of your achievements.

2. Brand Yourself as a Specific Type of Developer
If you take a look at most college students' resumes, you're probably going to see the same generic keywords such as python, java, c++, etc.

This doesn’t help you stand out in any way. To the best of my knowledge, a lot of recruiters often hire for teams, e.g, a backend team, or a web front end team, or an android team.

Thus, I recommend instead of branding yourself as a Software Engineer, brand yourself as something niche such as a Node.js expert, or React Native expert.

When a recruiter is looking for a person who has specific skills, if you've branded yourself as an expert for that position, they’ll likely choose you over someone who has a generic Software Engineer resume.

So, I recommend you only put projects, terms, & keywords relevant to your “brand” you’ve decided on.

3. Add Niche Related Keywords
Companies may post a general job listing such as “Software Engineer 2021 New Grad”, however, they’re really looking for candidates with specific skill sets such as iOS, Android, Node.js, React, etc.

Therefore, adding in keywords from the job description is not enough. After branding yourself as someone specific, e.g, an iOS developer, add a lot of super-specific keywords related to your brand/niche.

Below is an example of my previous iOS developer resume skills section:

Skills

iOS   UIKit   Core Data  Networking
Swift   Autolayout  Cocoapods  User Authentication
Objective-C  Core Graphics. Asynchronous UI
Core Animation  Push Notifications

Notice I included specific keywords such as Core Data, Autolayout, and UIKit, which are specific to my brand as an iOS developer? This will help you succeed when recruiters do specific keyword searches to filter & sift through resumes.

4. Have More Than One Resume
Branding yourself with a specific skill set means you can only apply to jobs that have a need for someone with your skills.

So, if you happen to possess more than one skillset, such as React.js and Android, create two separate resumes that each focus on one skill set, then when you apply for a job, choose the resume that makes the most sense for that job description + company.

I found when I did this, I had better success rates rather than having a single, general resume.

5. Keep Your Resumes Lean
This one may be a bit of a personal preference, but I always strive for quality and impact over quantity.

I recommend having as much white space on your resume as possible, so it is incredibly easy to read.

Some resumes when you look at them give you a headache, and when there's too much going on it subtracts from the overall impact of your resume.

So, keep each description for your projects and positions between three to five bullet points that succinctly describe the impact your project/position had.

Last But Not Least: Apply to Over 100 Positions

Apply to over 100 positions before starting to consider if you need to change your approach/strategy.

If you’ve applied to 100 positions and only gotten one interview, you’re probably doing something wrong in your job search, so you can then spend time and try to debug what’s wrong.

If you’ve applied to 100 positions and received 10 - 25 interviews, then you know you’re doing great on your success rates!

Conclusion

Good luck and don’t give up your internship/job search! Remember, you only need to get one, singlular, success!