You may not have the flashiest résumé around, but that may not be important when looking for your next job. In a new report, HackerRank queried both hiring managers and recruiters about, well, tech recruiting – and got some interesting results. While much of the report is what you might expect (hiring managers want the right candidates, and recruiters want to get you hired so they can be paid, etc.), there’s an interesting tidbit in there about résumés and skills-based assessments. Above all else, both recruiters and hiring managers want a candidate with previous experience. Second to having that experience is how long you’ve been working in a particular discipline. Third is personal projects. These all rank ahead of having a computer science degree, believe it or not. It seems a résumé that highlights a deeper history of personal projects and direct understanding of a language or framework is far more attractive to recruiters and managers. But what about the candidate whose résumé or CV just doesn’t seem to match that of their peers? Not to fear; HackerRank’s survey shows 75 percent of hiring managers say they’ve offered jobs to candidates with less-than-stellar résumés; this specifically correlates with self-taught developers. Again, skills matter more than anything else. A separate study from Montage notes that skills-based hiring is on the rise, and exceedingly popular. It says 77 percent of enterprise companies use skills assessments when considering candidates; some 60 percent of firms have begun looking into predictive analytics to decipher who is best suited for jobs. There are plenty of hacks and crafting you can do to make your résumé amazing, but that’s just the first step. For roles in tech, companies want to understand how much you really know before investing time (and money) into hiring you. Luckily, a good set of side projects and some actual proof you’re worth consideration might be enough to get you through a résumé critique and hiring process.