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The Importance of the Resume: Your First Impression to the Recruiter
- 6 Second Glance: Recruiter can ‘swipe’ right or left, next steps or rejection
- They only look at your resume for ~6 seconds
  - Google gets 2M resumes per/year

How to Pad a Resume when you are early in college before Industry experience (sample):
- List your Courses
- Include Projects from Courses
- Personal Projects
  - Plenty of online tutorials, follow and make your own (and push project code to Github)
- Hackathons: Attend them, pick up new languages, have a project to demo
- Put in any TA experience

Refer to Guides and Tips for Industry Specific Resumes (Esp. from current recruiters at companies)
- Panel With SWE Recruiters at Atlassian, VMware, Honey, Intuit

Takeaways:

Recruiters decide to move you forward in the interview process or not based on a quick scan of your resume (6-10 seconds).

1 Page Resume for Internships/Entry level.

Colors are ok to help you stand out, but nothing overbearing or crazy design choices.

Work experience should be relevant to the role you are applying for (don’t include restaurants, etc). TA’ing is great though!

If you don’t yet have internship or related work experience, change the section to “Relevant Experience” and highlight your personal projects, etc.

Include your graduation date (Example: Spring 2024)

Do not include soft skills. Skills section should be hard skills (Java, Python, MS Excel, SQL, Adobe Photoshop).

Only include GPA on Resume if 3.5 or above

Successful Resume Sample from Clark Sophomore with no prior internships

LinkedIn:

Should be your “Full” Resume.
- Take advantage of every section, have a strong bio as well
- Professional Profile Picture

Reaching out to Recruiters:
- Recruiters encourage you to reach out via LinkedIn, and prefer it to cold emails.
- Send it as a message as part of a connection request or thru InMail if you have Linkedin Premium
- Search LinkedIn for “Tech Recruiter at [Company]”
- Short, sweet, and personalized messages over long-winded and templated:
  - Example:

Connect with other clark students, alumni, etc., to build to 500+ connections

Keep the skills section up-to-date, endorse classmates and back

Cover Letter:

TECH INDUSTRY SPECIFIC:
- Prepare a cover letter template. However, do not make it generic. Make one of the paragraphs specific to the company you are applying to.
- Do not be repetitive of the things that are already mentioned on your resume.
- For samples, refer to this resource.

Internship Openings:

For summer 2022, they have begun opening now (April 2021) until early spring 2022. The peak is late summer: August - October.
They are all over the internet
- LinkedIn, Glassdoor, Jumpstart, Wayup, Company Career Sites, Compilations

Interview Prep:

Ongoing Prep:

Behavioral Interview Prep Guide

Once you get an interview at company X:

Before you even take a hirevue screener, you need to do basic research on the company, figure out why you want to work there, and prepare to answer the common behavioral questions.
- Answer Behavioral questions using the STAR method

Pro Tip: Prepare a document like this, with sections on the company, the positions, potential questions of all categories, a fleshed out explanation on why you want to work there, general behavioral questions AND ones you find have been asked in intern interviews before through glassdoor’s interviews section of a company.
- Example Document

Referral:

A referral is good to have.
- BUT applying early is even better. Thus, either have a referral ready beforehand or just apply without one (as soon as it opens).
  - It is not worth waiting to get a referral after the opportunity has opened.
  - Being one of the first resumes submitted is your strongest competitive advantage, time and time again.

If you have your eyes set on a company and their applications haven’t opened yet, look up the company on LinkedIn, and see if you can connect with an alum who works there, or even connect and introduce yourself to a recruiter at that company.

Follow-Up:

Reach out to Recruiters & Keep in Touch:

After you apply to an opportunity, it is a good idea to connect with a recruiter at that company on LinkedIn.
- Attach a note to the connection request.
- Example Note:

“Hey, I just applied to this ____. It is an opportunity I am very excited about and I think I would be a great fit. If you get around to reviewing my application, could you let me know how it is, or how I can improve my candidacy?”

Interview:

Once you get an interview at company X:

Before you even take a hirevue screener, you need to do basic research on the company, figure out why you want to work there, and prepare to answer the common behavioral questions.
- Answer Behavioral questions using the STAR method

Pro Tip: Prepare a document like this, with sections on the company, the positions, potential questions of all categories, a fleshed out explanation on why you want to work there, general behavioral questions AND ones you find have been asked in intern interviews before through glassdoor’s interviews section of a company.
- Example Document

Offers:

You usually receive a phone call before you get any written confirmation (offer letter).

WHILE APPLYING TO JOBS, ANSWER EVERY PHONE CALL, WHILE IT MAY BE SPAM IT ALSO MAY BE AN INTERVIEW SET-UP CALL OR THE OFFER!

People have missed out on opportunities by ignoring unknown numbers

If you receive an offer from a company, it will come with a deadline to accept.
- If it is your first offer, and you are not expecting any other offers within the timeframe (even though you are still interviewing/applying elsewhere), we recommend accepting it just so you have it in the bag.
- If something better comes along later, you can always ‘reneg’ the offer.
  - May burn bridges at the company that you originally accepted the offer at, but if it is for something better, usually they really don’t blame you.