How I Review Resumes

As you work on your resume, it is essential to consider how recruiters, hiring managers or HR personnel will read it. Your goal is to make your resume stand out and increase your chances of moving forward in the hiring process.

As a hiring manager, I have reviewed countless resumes. Over time, I have established my selection criteria, what I was looking for and what I assumed to be red flags. In this article, I share my way of reviewing logic. There may be points where you agree with me and others where you disagree, and that’s okay. Ultimately, these are just my thoughts.

You might have heard that many reviewers only read partially through the candidates’ CVs. They usually just read bits and pieces here and there. It is also the case for me. Adhoc CV reviewing requests from the recruiters interrupt my daily work, so I’m looking for quick wins. Also, when I get a big pile of CVs in one go, I limit the time I spend on a single one again. Therefore, the very first thing to mention is a good design. It is essential. The overall CV should optically attract attention by how the different parts are aligned, the used fonts and colours, decorations, or other visual elements. A bad design is not yet a reason for dropping a CV, but it calibrates my excitement for the following points.

The first actual check on the CV is a search for keywords. It includes technologies relevant to the organization I’m hiring or methodologies I believe in. For the latter one, a few examples to mention are TDD, craftsmanship, mentoring, XP practices, etc. This keyword check is very dependent on the design. With a good design, my eyes are led to them straight away. With a bad one, I might skip many.

At this point, I have only spent seconds on the CV so far, but I already know enough for a possible instant drop. If the keywords found do not match the basic requirements required for the position, the candidate will be rejected, at least for the current job. I know this sounds basic, but it happens too often, and even the recruiters fail to prefilter all the irrelevant candidates.

Next, if the resume contains a profile summary and it is only a few lines of text, I read it through. I want the candidate’s profile summary to convey their professionalism and passion for our industry. Also, the overall experience, including the total number of years and in which business domains the candidate gained that experience. Finally, I’m also keen to learn about personal interests and extra-mile activities, such as private projects and open-source contributions.

What I’m looking for next might be the biggest surprise to many — the ordering in general. For example, education preceding the project experience or previous employment is a typical sign of juniors not having much real experience. Another great example is the ordering of similar skills. Let’s say the candidate lists their programming language skills in the following order: C++, .NET, Java. This order suggests that the candidate likely has the most significant knowledge of C++ or is the most favoured one, while Java is the least known or favoured. Again another critical ordering factor is the relevance of skills. For example, listing operating system knowledge before programming skills is not a good sign for developers. I remember for a CV where the number one skill was Windows and Linux as known operating systems, and only somewhere in the middle did I know that some programming skills were also there.

At this point, I am looking for red flags in the rest. Many are obvious, such as job-hoppers who change employers every 1-2 years. In the contracting segment of our industry, it might be acceptable or even desired, but I consider it a red flag in the rest.

Some companies try to attract talents by fancy ranks, such as Vice President or Director. Please do not get confused with real VPs or Directors. I am referring to companies where such ranks are distributed to a large percentage of the workforce, almost like handing out candies to children. It is not something I suggest highlighting in the CV. As a hiring manager, I’m interested in real experience and knowledge. Focusing on such ranks indicates the candidate is more career-driven than a reliable and stable performing software engineer. The situation can worsen if the candidate proudly mentions CEO and CTO roles in private, family or garage companies.

The following might be shocking. Doctoral degrees, publications, and experience gained in the education system or being a teacher assistant are all undesired by me. There is nothing wrong with them, they are not red flags the same way as the others, but I’m simply interested in software engineers and not in software scientists. An engineer is goal-oriented, aware of the required and relevant details for the current application, and ignores the rest.

I have observed that certain nations, Italy and Romania more specifically, are using the Europass format extensively. Using this standard format is less desirable in creative professions like software engineering. If someone has no creativity in creating a personalized CV, what could I expect in real work? But I also need to acknowledge that the extensive usage in certain countries might be culturally backgrounded.

There are other red flags or common mistakes, such as typos, irrelevant information or too lengthy CVs. While we could continue this list, they are mostly common sense (at least for us).

This article might have provided valuable information on how a hiring manager, recruiter, or HR personnel review your CV. However, just as no two CVs are identical, no two reviewers are the same. Therefore, incorporate only as much from this article into your CV as you like, and drop what you disagree with.