A recruiter's first look at a resume is often less than a minute. Many companies also use applicant tracking systems that scan for relevant skills. A good tech resume works for both: easy for a person to skim and easy for software to read.
Keep a simple structure
- Header: name, city, phone, email, LinkedIn and GitHub or portfolio links.
- Summary (2–3 lines): your role, years of experience and main skills.
- Skills: grouped — languages, frameworks, databases, cloud and tools.
- Experience or projects: most recent first.
- Education and certifications.
Use one page if you have under about eight years of experience. Avoid tables, columns, images and unusual fonts — screening tools often read them badly.
Write impact, not duties
Weak: "Responsible for backend development." Strong: "Built a REST API in Node.js serving 20,000 daily requests and cut average response time from 800 ms to 250 ms."
A useful formula: action verb + what you did + measurable result. If you do not have exact numbers, use honest estimates or describe the scale.
Match the job description
Read the posting and make sure the skills it asks for — and that you genuinely have — appear in your resume using the same words. Tailor the summary and the order of your skills for each important application.
No experience? Lead with projects
For freshers and career switchers, projects are your experience. For each one, include:
- What it does and who it is for
- The technologies used
- A link to the code or live demo
- One result or interesting challenge you solved
Internships, hackathons, open-source contributions and freelance work all count.
Final checks before you send
- PDF format, file named
FirstName-LastName-Resume.pdf - No spelling mistakes (read it aloud)
- All links work
- Dates and job titles are consistent
- Everything is true — interviews will test it
Key takeaways
Keep the layout simple, describe results rather than duties, mirror the job's keywords honestly, and use projects to prove your skills when experience is limited.