Resume Mistakes You Need To Fix Now!

In this réé review, we're going to be looking at a .NET developer resume who has a business on the side as well. So, let's jump right into it and see what things we can call that they're doing well and areas that they can improve upon. To kick things off, I wanted to say if we look at the structure of this, if we look at the very first page, there is basically almost the entire thing is filled with other stuff aside from work experience that we have at the bottom. I always recommend to people that you want your work experience to take up a majority of the first page because this is going to be the most important part. And if we have work experience spilling over to, you know, already almost being on the second page, we have like one bullet on the first page, probably just an indication that the layout of your resume or how you're drawing focus to the parts that you think are important maybe needs to be tuned up a little bit. Okay, just want to keep scrolling through. We have uh so work experience, there's education, there's some technical skills. If we look at the technical skills, again, I'm just doing a broad like sort of organization or layout. This is how much space is that for technical skills, right? If we look from here and then on to the next page, that's almost a page in itself, right? I would say if you're going to list out technical skills separately, try to make it really succinct. It doesn't need to take up much space at all. And if you're going to list them like this, then I would list them uh not uh mix them with sentences and stuff like that. It's just a weird combination of things. And this ends up taking up a lot of screen real estate. So something that I would tune if we keep going, it might not be obvious, but something I'm going to try to zoom out on. There's some weird formatting stuff going on here. This is a PDF they sent me, so I'm assuming this is the PDF they're going to be sending around. But like it might not be obvious, but there's like different fonts and spacing and like indentation. Like these are all little details, right? But it starts to like as I'm scrolling through this, it starts to feel like it's a little bit inconsistent and just feels a little off. I'm going to keep scrolling though cuz we're just talking about the layout to start with. We can see more of like this. Again, it might be kind of challenging, but there's like funky indentation here. And then there's like a comma on the next line. Why does this section have not uppercase like this one or not have an underline? Like just interesting inconsistencies. So, I would focus on, you know, trying to fix that. Now, let's maybe go through some of the work experience. And something that I want you to pay attention to, cuz I mentioned at the beginning of this video, this person does have a business on the side. And that's great. I think that they've done an awesome job being able to take their skills and go apply that and have a business that's not easy. Truly awesome work on that. I read this resume and it feels to me like an advertisement for their business, which is interesting cuz you want to be able to advertise your skills and why you are valuable. But a lot of it to me almost feels like I have a business. Like here's the business. Here's what the business does. Check out the business. I kind of get it because it's like, you know, that's where you're showing your work. But I read this and I'm like, I think this person just wants to run their business. And I don't know, like that's how it comes across as I went through this. One thing that is awesome and I feel like it's kind of unfortunate that it only shows up mostly up at the top here. Proven track record of reducing page load times by 40%. Like awesome. Like that's an impactful statement, right? Quantified impact. Built and scaled three enterprisegrade SAS platforms over a 100 daily active users. we get to have an understanding of sort of the scope of some applications they're working on. But like in the professional summary part, I might keep a very small blurb. Like I probably would recommend like sort of like the length of this one would be the whole professional summary or maybe like these two together. So that means like there's a lot of extra here. I would just find a way to collapse that. Okay. For example, programming's best practice leveraging code readability, deployment ease, server resources, mindful, some of the language is a little odd. Uh, advocate for keep it simple and collaborative focus. Like I would just get rid of that to be honest. We already see like collaborating with cross functional teams. I don't need to see collaborative focus again. Collapse it, right? Just make it succinct, small detail. If you're going to include a picture, I would put it up here. You know, we just got even more real estate back. Personally, I don't really see a point in including a picture. I don't know. Personal preference, I guess, for folks, but don't really see the need. Work experience. Freelance software developer. Okay, cool. This is where we should start to see some of the I would like to see the impact come together for the things that they've done professionally, but I feel like we don't get to see that. Designed and developed web and desktop applications using C, WPF, ASP.NET. Again, inconsistencies like WPF this small details like this over the entire thing add up. I've already gone through this, so a lot of these I'm like, "Ah, yeah, I've seen this." Like, it's almost like it's getting on my nerves. You haven't maybe read through this as much as I have, but if you read through with me, you'll start to see like these little inconsistencies and they just add up, like I said, right? So, if someone had a typo on their resume, I'm not going to be like, "Oh, it's the end of the world." But when we start seeing like formatting inconsistencies, uppercasing, we have weird spacing like then you have typos littered through it's kind of like you know starts to it just the death by a thousand cuts kind of thing. This is where they start talking about their business. Started their business. Start up as a software as a service platform like capital software. I don't know. Deployed and optimized web-based e-commerce platforms. Cool. Okay. Tell me more about that. Right? Like that's what you do. Cool. Like tell me more about how you optimize them. What kind of savings? Like how did you do that? I want to know. That's what I want to see here. Provide a consultation on server side performance optimization and user management strategies. Awesome. What are those? Like, put them here. This is one of the like it's almost frustrating for me because I saw some of like this kind of thing up at the top and I'm like, I just I want to see that in here. Just put it in here. So, it's it's it feels like a missed opportunity for me when I read through this. This is like I think one of the common themes when I get resumes to review. It's like I'm like some of the the things that people are working I'm like that's pretty cool. Like that's probably you know like you were probably doing challenging work. you're probably having a solid impact. Like I'm not seeing that come through on here and that's the whole point of your resume. So next part, self-employment. So both like freelance and I'm assuming the freelance part was self-employment as well, but this is their their other business that they have. So they have an electronics repair shop. Uh employed three people. Cool. So kind of interesting. Employed three people, hence the leadership skills. Okay. But uh hence the leadership skills. I don't know. Um it's just it's a little weird. Offered repair services. Okay. Capital repair where I built softwares, capital softwares to enable me service devices more. Um so there's there's some language and grammar stuff that's got to be cleaned up. It's not consistent. USB case interfaces is upper like title case. I don't know like inconsistencies, right? This is eight years of someone's experience. And I realize that they're talking about doing software jobs. I totally get it. That's the focus of what they want. That's 8 years. And I I'm repeating this and focusing on this because I think this is critical and people make this mistake a lot. With 8 years of running a business, all that I know all that I know from this, they did repairs. They built some software. I have no idea what it is, how much software they built over eight years and they employed three people. They say, hence the leadership skills. I have no idea about their leadership skills. They employed three people. That doesn't necessarily mean that they did a good job leading three people, but I bet they did. And they have 8 years of experience here. Tell me more. Tell me the details. Tell me the the interesting accomplishments. It's just it's just not here. I feel like there's so much opportunity with something like this when it's something that you have done. You've built this. This is self-employment for eight years. I am sure this person did awesome stuff. It's not on the page in front of me. I just think that there's a missed opportunity to call out some of the success stories from this. Like what kind of volume are we talking about? Like what tell me more about the software? Like what problems were you solving for yourself with the software you're building? All sorts of stuff that I think could be cool. They said currently winding up bachelor's in computer science. This is like very informal just usually not a common thing on resumes. I would just say like you know continuing studies uh for bachelors in computer science. Just leave it at that. I don't know if this is different in other parts of the world. Um so I'm being very transparent right we see diploma of science and technology. I'm assuming this is a post-secary even though this is like a bachelor's. It's kind of like in I know in in the US I feel like everything is they just call it college. In Canada, college or university are very different entities. They're both post-secary education. It's not like one is better or worse. They're just different and you get different things when you when you graduate from them. And I wonder like bachelors in computer science. Is that kind of like what I would have experienced where that's your degree versus your diploma from college? Again, that's one of the differences in Canada, perhaps other parts of the world. But then I see like these two are high school. I would just take him out personally, but I don't know if this is different in other parts of the world. So, try to be very transparent about that. I just don't think that it's adding value to me at least, right? But if that's different other parts of the world, then that's fine. This is the technical skills part. We kind of saw some of this at the beginning. I have no idea when I see a page of of just stuff like this. I have no idea where you applied it. Zero. Just to give you an example, Azure cloud. Was this on one hobby project? Is this what you were doing constantly in your business that you had when you were building software? You needed somewhere to host it. So, you were always like you're you're very familiar with Azure Cloud. I have absolutely no idea when I read this, right? And that's not for me to say like I'm suggesting this person doesn't have experience. It's it's almost the opposite. I am sure this person has plenty of experience across all of these things based on their resume. I have no way to tell that. I am not the kind of person who is just going to assume things. It's not a good it's not a good strategy to hope like oh I'm going to hire this person. they listed Azure Cloud. I sure hope that that was like their eight years of experience that was in Azure Cloud. It's not it's not good. I need some evidence of that. Um or if I'm trying to make a decision about even going to interview, like that's something I could clarify there. But if you're competing against other people, if someone else has made it very clear like how much time they've spent on these technologies along with their work experience, then I might not even consider this. There's nothing wrong with a skills section. I just think that this is too kind of dispersed. I would make it far more succinct and even better is probably like this kind of thing. I'm just going to go out on a limb here and guess PLC programming USB serial interfaces. I wonder if that's maybe what they were doing up here, right? like just include it here and tell me more cuz now I'm kind of going through this and I have to kind of like pull it together and guess. We don't want to do that. Um you you as the resume writer have the ability to sort of guide the reader through and tell them about all of the awesome things you've done, not have them kind of guess at it. Okay, this is where again I start to feel like some of this feels a little bit like I don't know like it starts to get it just feels kind of like salesy to me. Like here I've I've obviously have redacted the some of the links and stuff but it's like go check out my stuff uh read about my stuff over here. Um this is all like linking to their their business, right? So key projects, this is like if this is your professional work experience. I I I've said this in other resume review videos. I think about a project section as these are things on the side that I'm doing for learning or building up experience. This I think is work experience. Put this up with your work experience, right? Are you selling and delivering this to customers, supporting it? Right? Whether you're building it on behalf of or you are the one hosting it and like you are onboarding customers or something like that that's your work experience, right? Not like what feels like a side project section. Built and maintained a SAS project with payment integrations. Cool. Changed the stack from PHP to uh PHP MySQL to ASP.NET. Obviously, you're going to get a a speed up. Just kidding. But um saved operational costs up to 45%. Great. That's that's a great statement. When we go ask the question like why should I care? Like if you just said I did a migration. Okay. Why should I care? Well, let me tell you why. Like because it had cost savings. Cool. That's why I should care. Or you could say like, you know, we migrated to modernize and that enabled us to do whatever. Like tell me why I should care about that statement. That's I think you want to challenge every line you have on your resume with that. Introduced new features and added the ability for drop shipping. But like hence increasing revenue and expanding business like I don't know what what features um what features like I I don't know this is a weird statement it it's not really coming through to me and I think the word hence is being misused a bunch on this resume but increasing revenue and expanding business those are great things I don't know anything about that from reading this introduce automation with background services cool okay without extra pay and smooth workflow with less pay. I think I understand kind again weird kind of grammar and structuring. I would just tune this a little bit. Introduce by and use TypeScript. I trimmed download packages and increase site speed. I'm just going to read this one out loud because I feel like as I've been going through this, I don't want to sound like I'm just harping on this person, okay? But I I want to demonstrate when I read one of these out loud. Introduced Vite and use TypeScript. I trim download packages and increase site speed with features like pageionation on lazy loading, this um this is just like it's it's not it's got to be tuned up. This is one part of a sentence. This is another part. And it's like we got to fix the comma at the end. Again, I'm not trying to just like hyperfocus on like little details like this too much, but it's the sum of all of them. I trim download packages and increase sight speed. Excellent. Tell me more about that, right? Like just because Vite and or just because TypeScript or you trim download packages like what how did you do that? Like I I don't know. Like I feel like there's more that could be be said here. Mobile repair tools. I would put this up with your business stuff, right? currently provides support for a tool I created for a debloating repairing firmware. Cool. Like put that up with your your work experience and tell me more about it. And then like this is the one of the things like I will not go click that and it's not because I don't think that this could be interesting but like this person has not given me reason to go beyond their resume. That's sort of like one of the hard sort of pieces of feedback here is like you can put links to stuff on your resume like here's my GitHub, here's my LinkedIn, here's my this, here's my that. It's great and you should. If you haven't sort of drawn me into your resume and excited me about the things you're doing already, I will not click off to go find more. That needs to be like the cherry on top kind of thing. And unfortunately so far this is making me think like I don't want to go click off and read more. I think there's a lot of things that need to be kind of addressed in here. School management system looking up to open sourcing a free prototype of it. I don't like we don't that's not uh we don't need to know that. Built on Blazer Microsoft SQL. Uh yeah typo. Um, okay. Like that's aside from sort of uh inconsistencies, that's fine. Features assessment for students, like we don't need a feature list. This is why I was saying when I was reading through this, it feels a little bit like kind of advertising some of their products and stuff. We don't need a feature list. We go back to the the age-old question. I read this line. Why should I care? Right? Assessments for students performances. Why should I care? Fees management, farewell management, all-in-one features for examination assessments. Why should I care? Not to be rude, right? Like tell like why should I care when I read this line? If those were things I wanted to buy in a school management system, I might care about that, but that's not the point of the resume. You're trying to explain the impact, the things that you've worked on, and that's not coming through on this. And then this part I would omit. Unfortunately, I can't stretch it further since it's already in use by some clients. Just remove it. Achievements and strengths. I would get rid of this because it's a duplication of just information we've already seen, right? So, sustained a business for more than eight years. Yep, we saw that in the section above. Started a SAS spelled wrong project. Again, we've seen that throughout here. Remove it. Built an e-commerce system. It will continue to give stunning features. We see it up here. Don't need it again. Started a school management system. We see it up here. Don't need it again. Built a mobile fixing tool which is license-based. that's up here, right? Like we don't need it. And then this I would just kind of get rid of that line. So I would get rid of this whole section. This is another example. I feel like this person has plenty of experience. They ran a business for 8 years and then all that we're seeing is really like this part. You can even, it might not be obvious, sorry, but when my PDF switches between how it's highlighting, there's just inconsistencies in in the document. I think that this person needs to focus less on everything else that's in here and focus on bringing all of that stuff into their work experience and quantifying it. If they're unable to quantify it, at least take those other things they were doing and relate them back to their professional experience. I think that would make a tremendous boost in how this resume is. And then I would say the inconsistencies death by a thousand cuts here. It was I read through this the first time like on my own and I knew that when I was going to record this and talk through it, I knew it was going to bother me because it's hard to ignore, right? One little thing here and there. It's like you don't want to have that. But if someone has a typo, fine. But on repeat, then I start to see like this is just you didn't take the time to read your resume. Overall, I think that there's a lot of opportunity, but I think this has got to be cleaned up a lot. And uh I would really hyperfocus on getting this work experience like beefed up from all the other stuff that's written on here. So really like to thank this person for sending it in. Of course, if you'd like the opportunity for your resume to be reviewed, you can submit it to résuméser.ca. Thank you so much. I will see you in the next video. Take care.