Erez Zadok's Resume Writing Tips
Many of you are working on your resumes, whether graduating soon or looking
for internships. Here are a few tips for the most common mistakes I see.
Use these resume templates (in
MS Word or
or PDF) formats, developed in
conjuction with the Stony Brook U. Career Center.
- An MS students, esp. one that worked in industry before, should have a 2
page resume.
- The 2nd page should at least 80% full, else it looks bad.
- Add page numbers to every page.
- Use 1" margins on all 4 sides, not shorter.
- Use normal fonts (TimesRoman or Helvetica), no smaller than 10pt (people
who often read resumes are older than you, whose eye-sight isn't as
good).
- List your skills in different categories: operating systems,
programming/scripting languages, architectures, major software packages
you worked with (e.g., GIT), major technologies (e.g., PHP).
- CRITICAL: list the number of months/years experience with each item of
skill, and sort them from most skill to least skill within each
category. This is a must, else employers don't know how to evaluate your
level of expertise for what they need: for example, some employers might
consider 2 years of C++ to be beginner, while others might consider it to
be an expert.
- Give some details about work and school projects. Nice to have is what
technologies were used, how much code you worked on, what size team you
were a part of, what was YOUR contribution, etc. This is where you can
add text to fill in 2 pages.
- List your association with FSL, list your adviser's name, your funding
status (if any, eg., MS-RA, MS-TA, etc.).
- List courses you've taken that are relevant to the jobs you're applying
to.
- Recall many companies care a lot about the theory/algorithmic skills of
systems programmers.
- List any honors/award you've had
- List any talks you've given, posters or work-in-progress presentations,
guest lectures, TA experience
- List which spoken languages you are proficient with (many companies want
to ensure that foreign students know English well)
- List your visa/citizenship status (some jobs are only open to
U.S. citizens)
- List any research experience you've had, if any.
- Companies also want to know that you're not just a good programmer, but
that you have experience in documenting your work, writing and running
regression tests, QA, etc.
- List any papers you've published, or papers submitted for review (don't
say where they were submitted).
- If you're doing/planning an MS-Thesis, mention that too.
(Last updated: 2024-12-02)