Having a strong resume that puts your skills and experience in the best possible light is essential for landing your dream job in tech. But knowing what to include and what to leave off any resume can be a tricky balancing act. With that in mind, here’s a quick guide to help you navigate through the key elements of a resume, highlighting what to showcase—and what to leave off.

Before we begin, keep in mind that you should always customize your resume to the individual position. Always re-read the original job posting and note the requested skills and experience; list any of those skills that you’ve mastered on your resume, and make sure your experience section is tailored to show how you can use your past projects to help the prospective employer succeed at its goals.

What to Put on Your Tech Resume

When you’re writing your job application and resume, here are some things you absolutely must include if you want to be seriously considered by any employers. Whatever choices you make, always put a premium on making your resume easy to read, in a consistent format, with no typos or spelling errors.

Basic Information and Contact Details:

• Full Name: This should be clearly visible at the top of your resume.
• Contact Information: Include your phone number, email address, and professional website or Github repo (optional, of course).

Location:

• At the top of the document, mention your city and state.

Professional Summary or Objective Statement:

• Briefly highlight your career aspirations and key skills.
• Tailor the statement to the specific job description.
• Quantify your achievements with metrics whenever possible.
• Did we mention the need to keep it brief?

Education:

• List your educational qualifications in reverse chronological order.
• Include the institution name, degree earned, major, graduation year, and any relevant coursework or projects.
• If you have certifications, list any and all relevant to the job (especially if those certifications were mentioned in the original job posting).

Work Experience:

• List your professional experience in reverse chronological order. If you’re a well-seasoned tech professional, you may opt only to mention the jobs from the past few years, and that’s totally fine.
• For each position, include the company name, location, job title, and dates of employment.
• Use bullet points to concisely describe your responsibilities and accomplishments. Here’s the “secret sauce” that will allow your resume to hopefully stand out in a crowded field of applicants: as you describe those responsibilities and accomplishments, make sure they’re relevant to the job you’re applying to. For example, if you’re applying for a mobile developer position, make sure this section highlights your previous success in building and iterating on mobile apps; remember to use specific results and metrics when possible.

Skills:

• List your technical and soft skills relevant to the job. As we mentioned before, consult the original job posting for an idea of the skills valued by the employer in this instance.
• In a similar vein, use keywords from the job description throughout this section.
• Quantify your skill level with proficiency ratings or certifications.

Also consider including:

• Volunteer work. Shows you’re engaged!
• Achievements and awards. Always helps!
• Publications that are relevant to the job; for example, if you’re applying for a machine learning position and you’ve published academic papers on machine learning, include those (with a link, ideally).
• Power verbs!

What Not to Include in Your Tech Resume

Of course, there are things to leave off your resume, for a variety of reasons. Often it’s simply not relevant to the job, and space on your resume is at an absolute premium. When in doubt, seriously consider leaving it out.

Personal Information:

• Marital status: Not relevant; could open up your application to bias.
• Religious beliefs: Not relevant; could open up your application to bias.
• Political affiliation: Not relevant; could open up your application to bias.
• Date of birth: Unnecessary and potentially counterproductive if you’re worried about ageism.

Irrelevant Job Experience:

• Only include work experience that is relevant to the position you are applying for. If a previous job had nothing to do with the role you’re applying for, especially in terms of skills, leave it off. You can also do your best to eliminate or minimize employment gaps.

Too Much Description:

• Avoid including unnecessary details in your experience section.
• Leave off unnecessary skills and certifications and programming languages.
• Always edit to ensure your descriptions are as concise as possible.

Unprofessional Formatting:

• Use a standard font, size, and layout.
• Avoid using excessive graphics, colors, or animations, even if applying for a design or creative role.

Outdated Information:

• Remove any outdated information or experiences that are no longer relevant. For example, if you’ve been in the tech industry for 15 years, you might want to leave your college internships off your resume. Same with junior positions if you’re applying for a senior role.

References:

• Do not include your references on your resume; you’ll provide those later in the interview process.

Negativity and Exaggerations:

• Don’t mention conflicts with past employers (or team members). Always be relentlessly positive in tone.
• Don’t puff up your skills on your resume; if you do, you’ll likely be discovered during the interview process, and things won’t go well from there.

Above all else, remember that customization is key: when they’re reading your resume, hiring managers and recruiters want to know above all else why you want this specific job. If you can tailor your skills and experience to show you’re the best possible fit for the position, you have a high likelihood of landing a job interview!