The Minimalist's Resume Guide

An extensive guide on how to structure a killer resume with the least amount of distraction.

Who Wrote This?

I’ve spent 8+ years in the recruitment space, most of it with VC-backed startups. I’ve recruited or led recruitment at places like Miro, Redwood Materials, Apto Payments (YC S14), Reserve Protocol, Bill.com, and Unlearn.ai. I’ve hired everyone from fresh college grads to Engineering VPs. When I’m not recruiting, I help leaders in tech land new roles and negotiate higher pay packages. Lease year’s record was 400k.

You Usually Get 7.4 Seconds

I’m writing this guide in 2024 (it’s been updated a few times since). A few years ago, the typical tech recruiter would beam with joy if they received a handful of qualified applicants per week. Now, we’re drowning in them. There’s more pressure than ever to to get through applications as quickly as possible. Any recruiter worth their salt will be flow-stating their way through applications at a pace of 7.4 seconds each, only stopping for a full read if you can grab their attention in that tiny window.

What People Are Looking For “At A Glance”

•Where you’ve worked.

•How long you worked there.

•Your titles at those companies.

The number one issue I see on resumes, by far, is making sure these three simple things are the highlight. They’re often buried under generic “About Me” sections that are rarely read, or the resume is so bloated that people have to scroll through various pages digging for titles and dates. The other details are important, but if a recruiter can’t ascertain these three things at a glance, there’s a good chance they’ll head onto the next resume.

The Top Of Your Resume

Your name and contact info should be at the top.

You need to hyperlink any websites included.

You don’t want to include a photo of yourself. It’s a needless distraction and can create bias.

You don’t need to include your full address. There’s a lot of weirdos out there, and it’s just not necessary. Your city/state/zip code is more than enough. The zip code may seem unnecessary, but it can help recruiters ensure they quote you the right salary range for your geographical zone.

If you’re a creative, make sure to link your portfolio.

If you’re an engineer, make sure to link your GitHub, if you’re active.

Here’s an example from my resume. I like doing it this way because it only takes up two lines. Font wise, use whatever you like. I’m a 90’s kid, so Times New Roman is compulsory.

You Can Skip The “About Me” Section

These just get in the way of information that will actually get you hired. Few, if any, people will read about how you’re a “high performer”, “dedicated”, “organized”, etc. These are all subjective statements you’re directing at folks who are looking for objective, tangible information on your achievements. Examples abound of, “Seasoned professional in the _______ space seeking a role in…”. Why would you summarize your work history that is literally one centimeter below this paragraph?

The only exception to this advice is if you’re pursuing a career switch, in which case this section is critical. This is your opportunity to briefly explain why they should hire you despite your experience not being a traditional fit.

Work History

Share your work history in your own voice.

I’m going to share general guidelines below, but one thing I will not do is try to tell you how to format it. It’s up to you. Bullet points are the industry standard, but some people like doing it in paragraph form. Recruiters + hiring managers generally do not care how you do it as long as it’s easy to ascertain what you did.

Stick to sharing your last 5 roles, or 15 years, whatever makes your resume shorter.

This is more than enough to give some one an idea of what your career has looked like. The only exception here is if you worked somewhere really cool during an influential time in their history. Like Apple in 1982, PayPal in 1999, or Theranos in 2014. I you really want to include older roles, just share the company name, your title, and the dates you worked there without including additional info

Try not to over-share.

I promise no one is actually going to read your resume in it’s entirety. You need to share just enough to pique interest. Interviews are the time and place go into painstaking detail if needed. One well-crafted paragraph, or no more than 7 detailed bullet points per role is ideal.

Be Concise, and get specific.

"Led large initiatives with an extremely dynamic team that led to increased revenue growth” is an example of a sentence that tells the reader nothing. A proper alternative (if this were coming from an engineering manager) would sound like, “Migrated our monolithic codebase to a microservice architecture, improving deployment frequency by 5x and reducing operating costs by 27%.“

Include data.

The biggest change in the example above is the inclusion of data. “5x” and “27%”. Few people are immune from this requirement. It’s most important in sales, where it’s commonplace to share your quotas, percent of quota achieved, etc. In recruiting, you can share similar quotas with number of hires, people sourced weekly, etc. In engineering and product, it’s not quite as straightforward. You’re typically part of a larger team working towards goals that lead to numbers. Sharing your team’s numbers in this case is acceptable, as long as you make it clear how you contributed.

One more tip on data - it’s always better to share percentages, rather than actual numbers. Your 27% gets their imagination going, but if your 27% is $15,000 dollars, that might get you punted into the rejection pile by an enterprise org where the role you’re vying for impacts tens of millions in budget. If your interviewer finds out it’s only $15,000 during an interview, but you are a stellar fit for the company, they’re moving you forward regardless, whereas you may have been rejected had you included the actual number on your resume.

Don’t assume people know the companies you’re listing.

If in doubt, assume your company doesn’t have name recognition. There are two ways to solve this: Hyperlink the company name to their website, or include a brief blurb about who they are before sharing what you did there. I like to do both.

Education History

Unless you’re a new grad or an academic, this should be below your work history. In most industries, your education becomes increasingly irrelevant the further you progress in your career.

If you have amazing grades, go ahead and flaunt your GPA. If not, there’s no reason to share. There are some companies that care, for example, “premier” consulting firms like McKinsey. That said, 99% of companies do not care and are more concerned with your experience, curiosity level, and soft skills.

Leave off your year of graduation. Age discrimination is rampant in both directions, and this is an easy way to make it difficult to ascertain your age.

Skills & Keywords

I’m not a huge fan of including a keyword dump of skills, unless you’re an engineer. Most people justify them because they want to have the right keywords for the “resume AI”. The truth is that your resume is going to get reviewed by a human regardless of what keywords are on your resume. This will likely change soon, but as of right now there is no mainstream applicant system that filters applications with AI based on keywords. It would actually be pretty easy to implement, but it hasn’t happened yet due to bias concerns. At most, some newer ATS systems will score a resume based on keyword relevancy, but a human is still going to review it.

If you’re writing your resume properly, everything that you’d typically include in a skills section should be intertwined into your work history, making a skills keyword bank unnecessary.

The post below details how I use key words to filter candidates:

Sharing Your Tech Stack (Engineers Only)

This should be at the top of your resume, below your name and basic info. Try to focus on listing languages/frameworks you’re proficient in. A giant list of languages/frameworks usually indicates some one is dumping any technology they’ve ever touched, and usually indicates a lack of proficiency. Truly experienced engineers (5+ years of progressive experience) are not bound by the languages they know, so listing dozens of technologies isn’t necessary.

Experienced engineers are confident in their ability to learn a new mainstream language within a month or so. Typical new hire ramp-up time is 3 months anyway, so the right company will just factor learning a new language into that period. I’ve hired Java engineers into Python roles, and vice versa. The candidates were initially recruited because the company and projects they worked on were relevant to my employer, not because their tech stack was a match.

With the above said, don’t be too shy about sharing. If you’re an industry veteran and have genuinely worked with dozens of languages/frameworks/tools, try to sort them from most experience to least experience. Below are the categories I’d recommend splitting things into if you have a lot to share.

Tech stack, in order of most to least exposure:

Languages: C#, Python, Java, HTML, etc.

Database: MySQL, NoSQL, etc.

Technologies: Matlab, Wireshark, Apache, JSON, Google Workspace, etc.

Web Frameworks: Django, Wordpress, Drupal, etc.

Licenses & Certifications

Not all licenses and certifications are created equally. Knowing what’s important enough to include is key to looking competent. You should know what’s important in your industry, and if you don’t, spend time researching this. Some examples of “real” licenses or certifications that are common and should be included: PE licensure for construction-related engineers, Six Sigma certification for business leaders, PMP certification for Project Managers, SHRM-CP certification for HR employees, etc.

I would not recommend including certifications from LinkedIn, Indeed, or some random E-learning site. This is usually an indication of a lack of competence. If you want to show your interest in continuous learning, volunteer for extra projects at work, outside of work, or go back to school. You’re going to learn 100x more doing the work than reading about it from some site that probably used an algorithm to write your curriculum.

Peer-Reviewed Publications & Patents

If you’ve reached this stage of your career - kudos to you! My only advice is to remember that your initial target audience (typically a recruiter) likely isn’t going to be familiar enough with the patent/peer-reviewed publication world to hunt down and verify what you’re sharing. I’d recommend listing each patent/publication with a simple title, and hyperlinking it to a publicly available page for verification. Then include a brief, 1-2 sentence summary below each patent/publication you’ve linked.

References

Why are fewer companies conducting references?

Conducting reference calls is no longer commonplace in tech, but is still common in other industries. Traditionally, references where used to verify employment - but that’s now easy to do with background check services. It’s also far too easy to fake references these days, and even if you do provide real ones, you’re going to cherry pick leaders who you know will speak highly of you, so it’s not really worth the time for a busy recruiting team or hiring manager.

Why are some companies still conducting references?

The above being said, a lot of companies still see value in getting to speak to your previous peers/leaders. The best hiring managers conduct the references themselves, and are increasingly looking to speak to folks outside of just your former leaders. If I’m tasked with conducting references for a leadership candidate, I always make sure to talk to a former direct report, so make sure to be nice to everyone at work, not just the folks who approve your paycheck.

It used to be commonplace to include your references’ contact info at the bottom of your resume, and some universities still push this practice. It’s not necessary, and can open up your references to unwanted contact prematurely. If you really want to mention having folks who’ll vouch for you, a simple “References available upon request” at the bottom will do. In my case, I include the below line to showcase I’m comfortable having you speak to everyone and anyone I’ve worked with. You’d be surprised how many folks burn bridges throughout their careers and can’t get a handful of people to speak kindly of them - this is my way of making it clear I’m not one of them!

Fin.

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