{"title":"Anatomy of a Resume","description":null,"content":"Your resume has one job: help the right person decide that you are worth an interview.\n\nIt is not a biography, a diary, or a storage place for every class, tool, and certificate you have collected. A good engineering resume is a short, organized summary of the evidence that you can do the work.\n\nWhen a recruiter or hiring manager opens your resume, they usually scan before they read. They look for your contact details, skills, recent work, projects, and education. If your strongest evidence is easy to find, you make their decision easier. If it is buried under filler, they may miss it.\n\n---\n\n# Why Section Order Matters\n\nMost engineering resumes use the same basic sections: contact information, skills, experience, projects, education, and sometimes a few extras. The order matters because readers expect to find certain information in familiar places. A clear layout lets them judge your background instead of trying to decode the document.\n\nThe top third matters most. On a first pass, that is where the reader decides whether to keep reading carefully. Put your name and contact information first. After that, lead with the strongest signals for your level: technical skills, recent experience, strong projects, or education.\n\nThe best order depends on what proves you can do the job. A new grad may need projects near the top because projects are the clearest proof of hands-on ability. An engineer with eight years of production experience should not lead with coursework or a college project. The same section can be useful for one person and distracting for another.\n\nAs you decide what stays, ask one simple question: does this help someone believe I can do the job I am applying for? If the answer is no, it probably belongs lower on the page or off the resume entirely.\n\nThe same test decides both whether a section stays and where it goes.\n\n\n```mermaid\nflowchart TD\n A[A section or line
on the resume]:::start --> B{Does it prove
I can do the job?}:::q\n B -->|No| C[Cut it]:::reject\n B -->|Yes| D{Is it strong
evidence for
my level?}:::q\n D -->|Yes| E[Place it
near the top]:::yes\n D -->|Somewhat| F[Keep it,
lower down]:::keep\n classDef start fill:#00ceff,stroke:#000,color:#000\n classDef q fill:#ffd43b,stroke:#000,color:#000\n classDef reject fill:#ff8787,stroke:#000,color:#000\n classDef yes fill:#69db7c,stroke:#000,color:#000\n classDef keep fill:#ffa94d,stroke:#000,color:#000\n```\n\n\nA line that proves nothing for the role gets cut. The rest is a question of placement: strong evidence rises to the top, weaker but still useful evidence moves lower.\n\n---\n\n# Building the Sections in Order\n\n### Start with a clear contact header\n\nPut your name at the top, followed by email, phone, city or metro area, LinkedIn, and GitHub or portfolio if they are relevant. You do not need a full street address. You also do not need to title the document \"Resume.\" The reader already knows what it is.\n\nKeep links professional and easy to open. Two strong links are better than five links that do not add anything. If you include GitHub, make sure the repositories you want people to see are easy to find.\n\n### Skip the objective\n\nMost objectives say some version of \"seeking a challenging role where I can grow.\" That tells the reader what you want. It does not explain why they should interview you.\n\nA short summary can help if you are senior, changing careers, returning after a gap, or moving into a different domain. Even then, keep it specific. If you are early in your career, that space is usually better spent on skills, projects, internships, or education.\n\n### Put skills near the top\n\nFor engineering roles, skills should be easy to find. Group them into a few clear categories, such as languages, frameworks, databases, cloud, testing, and tools.\n\nThis helps a recruiter confirm the basics quickly. It also helps search tools and resume parsers pick up the right keywords. Keep it honest and focused. Do not list every tool you have touched once. A skills section works best when the rest of the resume proves you have used those skills in a meaningful way.\n\n### Make experience the center when you have it\n\nList roles in reverse chronological order, with your most recent role first. For each role, include your title, company, dates, and a few bullets about the work that matters most. Give the most space to your most recent and relevant work. Older roles usually need fewer bullets unless they are especially important for the job you want.\n\nFor an experienced engineer, this section usually carries the resume. A hiring manager reads it to understand what you have built, shipped, improved, fixed, led, or maintained in real environments. Plain, specific bullets are stronger than big claims.\n\n### Add projects when they strengthen the case\n\nProjects matter most when you do not yet have much professional experience. For new grads, interns, and career switchers, strong projects can sit right after skills because they show what you can actually build.\n\nFor each project, include the name, the tech stack, what it does, and what you personally built. A link helps if the project is clean enough to share. Avoid vague project descriptions like \"built a web app using React\" without saying what problem it solved or what part you owned.\n\nFor experienced engineers, projects are optional. Include them only if they show something your work experience does not, such as open source work, a serious side project, or hands-on experience with a stack you want to use professionally.\n\n### Put education where it fits your level\n\nNew grads often place education high because the degree, school, coursework, and academic projects may still be useful signals. Include the degree, school, expected or completed graduation date, and relevant coursework only when it helps.\n\nAfter a few years of experience, education usually moves lower and becomes shorter: degree, school, and graduation year if you want to include it. GPA and coursework become less important unless they are unusually strong or directly relevant.\n\n### Use optional sections carefully\n\nCertifications, awards, publications, patents, speaking, open source, and volunteer work can help when they are relevant. They should not appear just because you have them.\n\nA cloud certification can be useful on an infrastructure resume. A security certification can help for security roles. A long list of beginner course completions usually makes the resume look less convincing, not more.\n\nHere is a practical section order for two common cases. The difference is where the strongest proof usually sits.\n\n\n```mermaid\nflowchart TB\n subgraph NG[New Grad]\n direction TB\n A1[Contact]:::contact --> A2[Skills]:::skills\n A2 --> A3[Projects]:::main\n A3 --> A4[Education]:::edu\n A4 --> A5[Experience
internships]:::exp\n end\n subgraph EXP[Experienced]\n direction TB\n B1[Contact]:::contact --> B2[Skills]:::skills\n B2 --> B3[Experience]:::main\n B3 --> B4[Projects
optional]:::exp\n B4 --> B5[Education]:::edu\n end\n NG ~~~ EXP\n\n classDef contact fill:#00ceff,stroke:#000,color:#000\n classDef skills fill:#ffd43b,stroke:#000,color:#000\n classDef main fill:#69db7c,stroke:#000,color:#000\n classDef exp fill:#38d9a9,stroke:#000,color:#000\n classDef edu fill:#ffa94d,stroke:#000,color:#000\n```\n\n\nThe green section is the main evidence. For a new grad, that is often projects. For an experienced engineer, it is usually experience. The rest of the resume should support that evidence, not compete with it.\n\n---\n\n# Two Resumes, Reordered\n\nThe same background can look focused or scattered depending on the order. Here is a new grad resume where the useful evidence is buried too low.\n\n**Bad:**\n\n\n```javascript\nContact\nObjective: Seeking a challenging software engineering role to apply my skills\nEducation\nExperience (one summer internship)\nSkills\nProjects (two strong class projects)\nHobbies: reading, cricket, traveling\n```\n\n\n**Better:**\n\n\n```javascript\nContact (with GitHub and LinkedIn links)\nSkills\nProjects (two strong class projects, with impact and links)\nEducation (degree, college, graduation year, relevant coursework)\nExperience (one summer internship)\n```\n\n\n**Why the better version works:** Priya's strongest proof is her project work, so it appears near the top. The objective is gone because it does not add useful information. Skills move up where a recruiter can confirm fit quickly. The resume now answers the right questions in the right order: what she knows, what she has built, where she studied, and where she has worked.\n\nNow here is an experienced engineer whose resume still looks too much like a student resume.\n\n**Bad:**\n\n\n```javascript\nContact\nEducation (degree, college, GPA, coursework, two academic awards)\nSkills\nExperience (6 years across two companies)\nProjects (one class project from college)\n```\n\n\n**Better:**\n\n\n```javascript\nContact\nSkills\nExperience (6 years across two companies, most space on recent role)\nEducation (one line: degree, college, year)\n```\n\n\n**Why the better version works:** Wei's work experience is now the strongest evidence, so it belongs near the top and deserves the most space. The old coursework, GPA, and class project no longer add much for most engineering roles. Removing them gives more attention to the production work a hiring manager actually needs to evaluate.\n\n---\n\n# Where Resumes Go Wrong\n\nThese problems are about where information sits rather than what it says, which is why fixing them is fast: you are moving sections and cutting leftovers, not rewriting content.\n\n- **Opening with an objective.** It usually says what you want instead of what you offer. Cut it, or use a short summary only when your background needs context.\n- **Burying skills at the bottom.** Technical fit should be easy to confirm. Put skills near the top in clear groups.\n- **Keeping a student layout too long.** Once you have strong experience, do not lead with GPA, coursework, or old academic projects.\n- **Including sections that do not support the role.** Hobbies, \"references available on request,\" and generic course lists usually take space from stronger evidence.\n- **Putting projects too low as a new grad.** If projects are your strongest proof, they should be visible early.\n- **Listing tools without proof.** A long skills list is weak if the experience and projects do not show where those skills were used.\n- **Treating the order as permanent.** The best structure changes as your experience changes.","pageType":"job-search"}

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