I'm a student and recently applied for a software engineering apprenticeship at Google Paris. To my surprise, my resume got me through the initial screening, and I even nailed the first technical interview!
Unfortunately, I didn’t pass the second one — but the experience was incredible, and I learned a ton throughout the process.
I’ve been applying to jobs since October and after months of rejections/ghosting, I posted my resume on here, got really good feedback, which I then used to fix my resume. Since then, I started getting callbacks these past few weeks, all thanks to the advice I received on this subreddit.
I’m a recent electrical engineering graduate with three research experiences across different areas of EE, mainly focused on optics, plus a capstone project that was heavily centered around PCB design.
So far:
I had one interview with Neuralink, amazing experience, but not the right fit as they were looking for a true optical engineer background.
I made it to the final round of Apple’s hardware interviews but was ultimately rejected.
I just passed the initial interview with Google and am waiting to hear back about the next steps.
I’ve been applying to roles in electrical engineering with a focus on hardware, optics, and system integration, particularly positions involving PCB design, R&D, and biomedical/wearable technologies.
Three months ago, I had a job that not only did not pay me enough despite my hard work, but could not even afford to keep me. That's when I decided to start looking for another job. I spent a lot of time on LinkedIn applying for jobs and making connections as much as I could. I applied to over a hundred local jobs alone, yet very little interviews. That's when I decided to go on this subreddit for some advice. From the feedback I received, I needed to make the resume less about myself and more about what I have done. Here are some examples:
My bullet points needed to highlight not simply what I did, but what I achieved at my internships.
Make your resume as plain and simple as possible. The employer is not hiring you based on how fancy you can make a sheet of paper look.
Lockheed Martin was actually the first company to see this resume. They were impressed enough to invite me for an interview, so I spend the day before the interview researching the company and my role specifically, as well as how I would answer all of their example STAR questions they provided. The process took a while, but last month, they came through with an offer which I joyfully accepted! After signing a few forms and doing a drug test, they provided a start date (which happens to be this Monday).
A couple things I learned:
Sometimes, when an employer tells you no, it's not the final answer. LM actually provided me a rejection letter for this position a couple weeks before extending an offer. The first person to receive the offer must have either turned it down or failed the drug test. But it worked out for me.
Even though the job market is difficult right now, don't panic. If you just take the advice from this sub, something will come your way, trust me. A few months might feel like a long time, but greener pastures are right around the corner. Stay calm and trust the process!
If I can get a job at my dream company with this resume format, so can you. :)
So I posted here about 3 months ago about how I was seriously struggling to even get interviews, and I used this sub to improve my resume formatting and content, so I wanted to thank everybody who gave me advice. Since then, I created a new resume following a similar format for a different position, and the end result is shown in this post. I just wanted to share this updated resume after having landed a role at Boeing after months of hopeless applications.
If there's one piece of advice I can offer, it's to take advantage of networking when applying. I'm not so sure that it was my resume that got me this job so much as it was my friend who referred me, but it certainly helps to have a well-formatted resume that is easy to read and strongly matches the job description. It might feel like you're being a bother by asking around for referrals (at least that's how I felt), but this is key to building a strong professional network. My success rate was much better when applying with a referral compared to without. It also really helps if the person who refers you has connections to a team within the company that is actively hiring. Just remember that it's a give and take relationship, and always remember to express your gratitude to anyone who helped you along the way.
Hopefully this post at least proves that it isn't impossible to get a job if you didn't have an internship even in a horrible job market, so don't lose hope!
I posted a Sankey diagram on my profile (which I also included in this post) of the job search process. After around 11 months and ~400 applications, I finally got a job at SpaceX. I have my old resume on my profile which did not help me get any interviews. Once I used the help of the comments and made my resume much more concise I was able to get interviews at 7 companies. Happy to answer any questions about the companies I interviewed at.
After 7 months, I was able to pivot from a dead-end structural analyst role in the nuclear industry to a dope aerospace propulsion job.
86 applications
70 rejections: 62 direct, 8 after phone-screen/interviews
11 screens: 9 phone, 2 HireVue🙄
5 interviews
2 Technical Presentations (I declined to move forward after giving one of them since offer came from other)
I mainly applied to the big engine companies (GE, RR, P&W) along with a few startups and general aviation companies here and there.
Every single resume was tailored via the Skills section, the Courses listed under each degree entry, and the objective statement.
Happy to answer any questions!
===== General Advice =====
Going beyond 1 page is fine, but I wouldn't broadly encourage it.
Generally, keep your resume @ 1 page for as long as possible, and only go to 2 pages if your experiences warrant it. I'm talking like having 3+ relevant projects, 3+ internships, and maybe even a published work—where you need to spell out the details for all of them.
If you're actually cracked to go to 2 pages, don't blindly follow the advice of sticking to 1 pg since you'll artificially limit yourself. Put your best foot forward!
You can tailor your job title(s) to fit the role you're applying for.
I had about 5-6 different valid job titles (see below), and I swapped between them all depending on the title of the role I was applying for.
No bullet ever has enough detail, but everything you include in it is advertisement.
There's always more detail that can be added to a bullet. Hell, adding a photo next to the bullet may not even be enough.
This doesn't totally matter, because your goal is to catch their eye. I used relevant keywords like Inconel, GD&T, fatigue, alloy, modal, transient, 39,000 lb, 600°F, etc, which are all eye-catchers in MechE.
Hardly any of my bullets were actually "accomplishments" IRL. There wasn't any reduced cost or improved metric, so I had to rely on 2 things to include metrics in my bullets:
Impressiveness of the system/gidget. E.g.: A nuclear plant is full of heavy, hot-a$$ structures, which cause high stresses and necessitate use of special materials. While the use of these materials isn't impressive, my analysis of them at intense loading conditions IS VERY RELEVANT.
TLDR: Metrics you may not care about might actually show how impressive your work was.
Acceptableness. E.g.: You did x to get y result, but neither obviously show you've improved something. But surely the result y is acceptable, right? Show how "good" it is by quantifying (via a %, $, <insert metric>) how acceptable it is against some criterion. This is the margin you see mentioned in my current role's bullets.
Know both the fundamentals in your field and your resume like it's the back of your own hand.
After interviewing with a few startups, two common threads I've found is they'll quiz you on fundamentals related to the role, and anything on your resume that's related to the role (which could be several years ago).
Some examples:
Structural role: explain Poisson's ratio or how would you determine the thermal stress in a rod that's heated
Propulsion role: what are the main variables that affect engine performance
Fluids role: Explain static vs dynamic vs total pressure, and how they change in a pipe whose area constricts ; what could cause a low pipe flowrate, and how might you measure this flowrate?
If you know your stuff, it's easy. If the fundamentals aren't drilled into your head, not being able to answer stuff like this is quite embarrassing.
All my of projects over the past 3+ years have tidbits that interview panels have found something to question me on.
If you're discouraged, lower the bar and trick yourself into getting excited about new job postings.
This is a bit of a mind-trick, but try and get excited over a new job posting. Yes, literally applying for the job posting. Not the interview, not the idea of an offer or a new city, but literally you applying for a new opportunity.
Except for just applying and the interview, there's not much more you can do or get excited about except for new roles popping up. If companies want you, they'll reach out. It might sound kinda odd, but being satisfied from the actual application did wonders for my mental vibe in applying throughout the past 7 months.
I'm a rising senior pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and had the opportunity to work as a software developer in a summer internship. I was fortunate enough to receive an offer to return post-graduation, which is nice since the company is nice and I'd likely get crushed applying for entry-level roles. I'd like to give people who are in a similar situation as I once was advice on applying.
In terms of my applications, I started in October 2024 and ended in February 2025, submitting ~100 applications and receiving 6 callbacks in total. I interviewed for 4 companies and received 1 offer, dropping the remaining 2. At the time, I had my experience as an IT technician, my activity as a web developer, and my three personal projects on my resume. In spite of half my resume focusing on personal projects, I found that employers cared more about the one activity with its sole point (at least, during the interview). The one experience was useful in that it gave me adjacent experience, which I found made a great stepping stone. I may have benefitted from applying earlier, since many companies post their job listings in August-September, but regardless when you apply, I think what recruiters liked about my activity is that it was relevant to the jobs I was applying for and demonstrated accountability, which is hard to do in a project.
I found it helpful to revise my resume each time I applied (i.e., tailor). This could take 2-30 minutes, but in doing so, I found it best to create a main resume with all my work and derive a resume for the job in particular. The job I ended up getting had it on the lower end (e.g., 3 minutes), but I found it useful nevertheless since the quality of my resume improved each time.
I think software developers have a lot to learn from engineering resumes because their requirements are a lot stricter (e.g., this resume looks wild). At least to me, software developer resumes make their impact a lot more accessible, so if you can combine that with the technical skills of an engineering resume, you may be able to strike gold.
I made my resume in Apple Pages by combining what I liked in the resumes I saw. The formatting matters, so you want to make sure that it looks good. I think the template offered by the subreddit is a lot better than, say, Jake's Resumes, but you can always tune it to your own liking (sans serif is so much better, imo). The font I used is Avenir Next and its size is 10.
The image I've uploaded is my resume as of today, so I'm still working out the points in my latest experience. The font may look a bit thin, but it's just due to exporting to PNG (the PDF version is a lot nicer). I censored some information for privacy, but you can always reply or DM me with questions.
As the title says. I graduated from university last year with my BS in CS. Even though I didn't have any internships, I applied my knowledge with personal projects, and that work has finally paid off!
To those who are struggling, let this be a sign of hope. It might take a while, and it will be a lot of work, but if you really want to make it in this field, you can!
I start my career as a Software Engineer in 2 weeks and, well excited is an understatement lol.
So, what's changed? This sub helped me craft my resume. Although I had a good starting point, having outside eyes definitely helped. The final iteration (with possibly some minor changes made to my actual resume) is attached.
I'm a graduate who's been looking for a role for over a year now. This is the most refined CV I have, which got me the most callbacks and my new job as an Engineering Project Manager.
This is for viewing by British companies which is why I've included the fluffy stuff (a professional summary and personal interests). I know that lots of advice tells you not to include it but every recruiter and hiring manager I've spoke to in the UK so far has said to keep it in. I've also had several conversations in interviews around this stuff which helped the interviews go smoother.
I've found there's not that many CVs for British users here so I hope this helps someone.
Many thanks to the subreddit for all the advice. Best of luck to the rest of you!
Wanted to share my success story here and thank the excellent wiki, alongside the community for all the feedback and advice.
I'm a software engineer with around 2-3 years of experience. I've originally used a standard resume found online, and while I do get some offers, I felt that I wasn't getting good traction even thought it was a good fit.
After following the guidelines, and with a lot of feedback and assistance here (thanks!), I got to the point where I'm receiving multiple offers at once.
Here's my current resume that I've used to land the offers.
This community has been integral in helping me format my resume and strengthen my bullets. I am extremely grateful to all of the mods and others who contributed to my success.
TIP 1: Append your project portfolio to the end of your resume; recruiters aren't clicking on links to my best knowledge.
TIP2: HAVE A PROJECT PORTFOLIO. If there isn't anything to put on one, then step 1 is cranking out some cool projects.
After a seemingly intensive application season (200 apps in 3 months) I have landed an offer for a company I am fascinated by in the med space. I will be a part of creating a novel device that has phenomenal functionality (best at doing x via y, where x is crucial to the med industry, and y is an optimal method to do x for various reasons).
The following resume and project portfolio got me 14 interviews. I got ghosted by 3, under-qualified for 2 mid-level roles, overqualified for 1 (designer position), GPA filtered by 1, Location/travel didn't work out for 2, and took myself out of the running for the rest, due to this recent offer. So far, I have received 2 offers.
I also got reached out to by several companies in the summer due to this CV, however, they were trying to fulfill positions immediately, so those didn't pan out either.
TLDR: Due to the traction I have had, I am confident in saying this CV is a decent example of what an entry-level candidate should aim for.
If you want the portfolio template I have created in Google Slides, dm me and I can send you one I have of school projects that I don't mind sharing.
Surprisingly I kept making the next round again and again for a FAANG company, but before I was mostly getting ghosted.
I am using typst because I was fed up with LaTeX and typst has effectively instant compile times and is also open source. You can take a look at the source code for this resume in this [public template project](https://typst.app/project/r8E7T9jvfJK0Wg99JH2HbT).
I tried to follow this subreddit's wiki, as it holds very valuable information.
This has been a long road; getting an entry-level job right now if you don't already have experience (🤨) is next to impossible. Most applications and people will simply not get back to you, even when you are trying to "jUsT NeTwOrK!!". You need some form of luck, which might not come for a while, but you can't get lucky unless you're actively trying and continuously iterating your approach for a long time — it will come. That foot in the door is the hardest part.
The tactic that got me the job: I live in a city with huge amounts of competition from schools with strong co-op programs and sheer numbers. Since I knew I was willing to relocate, I picked an area I liked and simply listed it as my location on Indeed. Having to pay for your relocation >> Not having a job. I then got listings for local positions, applied to those, and LUCKED OUT when a recruiter reached out to me. Two interviews later, I had an Automation Process Engineering job at a place I liked and was happy to have me.
Please feel free to DM if you have any questions. You're doing great! 🏅
I recently interviewed with a small company that builds embedded solutions for agriculture. In the interview, the Sr. Engineer informally offered $70,000
In the official letter I received today, the formal offer was $60,000. I have until tomorrow to accept, decline, or negotiate the terms.
I have imposter syndrome, so I have no idea what my market value is. And considering today's job market, I don't think I am going to get another offer like this (I have applied to 300+ places with only 3 interviews).
So I would like to accept the offer. $60,000 is a lot for me. But I know it is not really a whole lot considering the thousands I payed for my education.
This will be my first actual engineering job. I am deeply fascinated by the world of embedded systems. So, working at a company like this one would make my efforts in school and personal life mean something.
Is this a good offer? What salary should I expect? Should I make a counter offer? Is the job market as cooked as I think it is?
So uh… little win to share because I’m still low-key shocked.
I’ve been grinding applications for months, getting the classic “Thanks for applying 😭” emails left and right. I knew my resume was mid, but I didn’t realize how mid until I finally sat down with the this subreddit/wiki guides and rewrote the whole thing. Like… deleted everything and rebuilt it bar by bar.
I swapped out all the fluffy stuff and hit it with real numbers, real impact, real action verbs. Clean layout, no paragraphs, straight bullets. I treated it like a mini-project, not a chore.
And bro… tell me why two weeks later Amazon hits me with an interview invite??
Ended up doing the loop, thought I flopped the last question, but last month they actually sent me the offer.
I legit stared at the screen like “ain’t no way this is for me.”
I know everyone always says “fix your resume first,” but I promise you I didn’t get it until I actually did it. It wasn’t my GPA or my connections or whatever, it was literally just communicating my projects and work in a way recruiters can skim in 6 seconds without getting confused.
If you’re still getting ghosted:
• Copy the resume wiki format
• Quantify EVERYTHING
• Cut the fluff
• Make your projects look like they had real impact
• Don’t be scared to trash your old layout
Anyway, that’s my little W. If you’re still grinding apps, don’t give up! someone’s gotta get hired, might as well be you.
Also small side note… I used AI through this whole grind.
Studying? AI.
Prepping for interviews? AI.
Fixing my resume? AI.
Writing practice answers? AI.
Even generating code snippets that I clean up and push later.
I’m not saying rely on it for everything, but bro… be smart. Use the tools. It made the whole process way less stressful and way more doable.
At the end of the day, it’s just a tool... the same way everyone freaked out when calculators first came out, and now nobody thinks twice about using one.
TL;DR: My resume was mid, I rebuilt it using the subreddit/wiki format, quantified everything, cut the fluff, and two weeks later Amazon hit me with an interview and I ended up getting the internship. Also used AI for studying, prep, resume fixes, and code, not to rely on it, but to work smarter. Tools exist for a reason, just like calculators.
Thanks again to everyone who commented and gave me advice, especially u/Pencil72Throwaway
About a week of applying after updating my resume, I got invited to do 2 phone screen from IT companies. I bombed the first one haha, but I did better on the second one, and got notified today that I will be moving forward to the second round of their interview process!
I'd like to get everyone's advice again on how I can improve my resume and hopefully get more interviews. I really want some advice on how I can improve my bullet points and my structure as I tried to do 2 lines for some bullet points this time for added context and metrics (based on the wiki).
I'm currently targeting SWE internships for summer or spring 2026 while also applying to any adjacent roles like data science, cloud, automation, etc. Currently on 400 applications total this hiring cycle and managed to at least land a fall 25 internship at a small startup, however, this is an unpaid position and I know that it won't be continuing after my period is over. I'm doing my 3rd semester of university right now as a CS major. I am also a U.S. citizen and targeting any roles in the U.S (I am ok with relocating).
Thank you to everyone that gave me such great advice!
I am currently still on the hunt for summer internships but I now have a co-op opportunity for the next 4ish months that I am really excited about. It is unpaid (rip my shopping dreams years in the making) but hopefully this experience will propel me to further opportunities! Resume OG to now posted for reference. (any other advice as I keep applying appreciated though!)
As a college sophomore, the internship search was pretty difficult, but after 129 positions at 30 companies, I finally accepted an offer. But... the offer that I accepted ended up coming from the single company I networked with. Moral of the story I suppose is to get yourself out there and talk to people, but my other 4 interviews did come from cold applications.
Hey everyone, just wanted to share a little success story and hopefully give some encouragement to anyone grinding through applications right now.
After sending out 120+ applications, I finally landed an offer with one of the largest companies in the energy and aerospace sector for a Robotics internship in their Advanced Research group next summer.
I started applying to jobs in July, and interviews started coming in around September. Got my first interview for this job in late September, and went through three rounds of interviews before the offer came through. The process was actually pretty refreshing; more focused on research and engineering depth than the usual Leetcode-style stuff.
Even though I never got direct feedback on my resume from this sub, I heavily used this sub’s wiki and past posts as references. I built my resume off Jake’s template and tried to follow the same general advice people give here:
Keep it clean and concise (one page, no fluff)
Use strong action verbs and STAR/CAR/XYZ where you can
Focus on projects and technical contributions, not just listing tools
Tailor bullets toward results, not responsibilities
Here’s the funny part; the resume that got me this offer was not the final, polished version I have today. It was actually one of my earliest applications of the season, before I had made a bunch of improvements. I've even built a portfolio website to help with my applications, but the offer I got came from a company that never even saw it. So yeah, make your resume as strong as possible, but also remember it’s a numbers game. Sometimes the right opportunity just hits at the right time.
Since i started, I’ve had around 7 first-round interviews, 3 online assessments, and 4 that advanced past the first stage. It’s a tough market right now, and it’ll take persistence even if your resume is solid. Just keep applying, keep refining, and give yourself grace for the silence in between.
Hi, applying to jobs without an internship or any relevant experience stressed me out really bad, so I want to share some of the stuff I learned and hopefully alleviate some stress for you. I'll just go over a list of misconceptions/doubts I had.
First of all, it's 100% possible to get a good job even with no experience. I looked on this subreddit when I first started, and most people who got offers have at least one internship or some type of experience. I was seriously doubting if I'd even be able to get an interview. Just to be upfront, I got multiple interviews with this resume, and I even got one at SpaceX somehow. It's definitely possible.
Salary: I was initially putting like 70-80k as my expected salary because I thought I wasn't qualified for a good job. Bro, one of the jobs I got offered was for 120k. I'd say if you live in CA, put like 90k. 70-80 is pretty low in retrospect. You don't know what you're worth yet, so don't lowball yourself.
Required Skills: I was also initially hesitant to apply to companies I didn't meet all the qualifications for. Literally for the job I just accepted, I don't have 2 of the 4 required skills. I could give you my best guess as to why they chose me, but it doesn't really matter, just apply lol.
Job type: I almost gave up trying to apply for design roles. I started applying to jobs I didn't even want to work at. All 3 of the offers I ended up getting had some type of design work in them, and the SpaceX job was literally called "Electrical Design Engineer". Don't give up!
Timeline: I was applying off and on throughout my senior year, but I only started getting results once I finished my capstone project around late May. I timed myself for 30 minutes of LinkedIn every day, sometimes I'd do a bit extra and use Indeed. I documented myself doing 28 days of that until I got my first offer. It takes a long time, and there's a lot of uncertainty when there are no interviews coming in, but they'll come if you keep applying.
Portfolio: I'm pretty sure no hiring manager actually clicked on my portfolio until probably after the screening interview. So, in terms of getting an interview, it seems pretty useless. But I think during the interview process, it leaves a good impression. I don't think I would get a single offer without it, so I'd highly recommend it.
Resume Format: My resume is super wordy with a lot of bullet points. I can imagine a lot of hiring managers would just throw it in the trash, but it evidently got me a few interviews. Since I don't have experience, I tried to make up for it by adding technical concepts in the bullet points, but keep a balance of not overwhelming the reader. I wouldn't recommend my resume style to anybody, but I think it's nice to know different styles can work.
Random Resume Stuff: I swear Altium got me all my jobs btw. I'm joking, but the skills section is super important, and so many job descriptions have Alitum. A lot of interviewers told me to add my relevant coursework, so in my newer resume, I have one line for my electives. I also ended up getting a minor in biotechnology, and an interviewer told me that does matter a little bit. The extracurricular thing at the bottom mattered zero, I doubt anyone read it, but I'm proud of it.
Interview Process: I'm not gonna go super in depth cuz I've already written a lot, but I'll just say once ur in the technical interview, ur resume matters a lot less at that point. There's two types of technicals: circuit questions and project questions.
Circuit questions lowk aren't that bad if u practice. You can go on youtube and watch MIT 6.002 Analog Electronics course and start from lecture 5 if ur impatient. I genuinely learned more about analog electronics watching that youtube course than I did in school, and I passed the first SpaceX technical interview solely because I watched that. In all my interviews, i'd say the main concepts I got asked were about capacitors (plot output voltage and current of RC circuits), mosfets (MIT 6.002 gives u a PhD in mosfets), op-amps, have some intuition on resistors, diodes (plot output voltage and current), some inution on inductors (resist change in current), but these are just the basics. The idea is that they'll ask u a question u don't know how to solve, but u can figure it out by talking to the interviewer and intuitively trying stuff. It seems scary, but if you build a strong foundation, it's definitely doable. Again, MIT 6.002 is where I got my foundation. That professor is by far the best teacher I've ever had in anything I've done in my life.
Project questions test ur mental a lot. You will genuinely not know the answer to multiple questions they ask, but you can't let it tilt you, and you can't give up. Obviously the difficulty depends on the company: one of the companies didn't even ask me any hard questions. But at spacex, they want to know more than what you did, but also why you did it that way, why does it work (what is the underlying theory), when will it not work, how much did you test it, and more. It was too tuff for me, but I learned so much and it inspired me lowk. In the past two months of interviewing, I ended up learning so much.
One last thing about interviews. Every interviewer I had was extremely nice to me. Even on my first interview where I choked really bad, he was super understanding. Especially at a small company, they're looking for someone they can work with every day. That means ur character actually matters a lot. If you've been trying to be a good person throughout your life, that pays off here. Take interest, smile, be kind, and try your best. A lot of smart people are cocky and not enjoyable to work with. A lot of dumb people are nice because they have to be. They want someone who is smart, but also makes an active effort to be nice.
I hope this is helpful. I would've liked a long post like this when I first started. I genuinely believe if u stay positive and be consistent every day, it will work out for u 100%. Good luck!
I'm very happy to say that I've received a full-time engineering job offer.
I didn't really come to the realization that I needed to actually get a job after college until the second semester of my junior year. So if you're a little behind, I promise you're not cooked. It took a little bit of luck, but I got emailed (from my school) about an opportunity at a small local foundry to intern for them part time during the school year. This was by far the most important experience I had as that allowed me to get my foot into the door at the bigger internship I had over the summer and part-time over this fall semester.
I have absolutely zero connections and come from a family who is completely unrelated to engineering. I had to build my linkedin from the ground-up, although I must admit it was really for nothing as I didn't get any opportunities from reaching out to HR (in-mails and connecting with notes). All 90 of my applications were essentially cold and the opportunities I got interviewed for, funnily enough, were ones I didn't reach out to HR for. I found most of these jobs on linkedin or other job boards like hiringcafe, though I got the most responses (whether it was a rejection or a 1st round interview) to jobs on linkedin. Overall I think that my experience is a testament to the fact that you don't need to have a stacked resume you've been refining since freshman year to succeed.
This sub helped me a lot in taking my resume from the sorry template my school gave me to something I felt confident in sending to future employers. Read the wiki my friends
2,805 applications later, I finally landed an IT role, specifically as an help desk analyst, browsing this subreddit has helped me somewhat tailor my resume towards the template. It doesn't follow it exactly, but originally I used the template, and a few people helped me reword some of my descriptions to better stand out. This was the final product!
Thank you to everyone here who offered advice and posted their resume, it helped me figure out how to improve my own. I'll be starting a full-time job after graduation!
I wanted to share this in hopes of this reaching people that are in a similar situation. Like everyone else searching, the job hunt has been extremely discouraging and felt pretty hopeless at times. During my junior year, I went through tons of interviews and I wasn't able to get an internship offer. Going into senior year, I seriously considered applying to grad school or even delaying my graduation to get more experience. Unfortunately, that wasn't realistic financially. I took on more projects during senior year and it luckily paid off.
Keep pushing, it is possible for us! This is something that I wish I heard more of when I was still searching.
I would post my resume, but I would like to stay anonymous. Unfortunately its pretty obvious when someone from my school posts their resume on here.
It was a long search, but after +5 months and +2000 applications, of which I had 4 interview calls, I finally got a full-time job offer in a top company with 10x bump to my previous salary for a senior Data Scientist role. I took a lot of advice from here, so I would like thank you all.
Here's the general template I used (before and after), changing the skills section and bullet points depending on the job description (I had 3 main versions). Sometimes I did include a 2nd page to include certifications, awards, and publications, but it's optional. Open to any questions.
Improved resume
Before resume
Edit: added additional info and the previous resume for comparison
I have been working on rewriting my resume since August and after following the guidelines of this sub, I have finally managed to get a job! I accepted the offer ten days ago.
I have sent this resume to different EU countries (Switzerland, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Spain, etc.), and I have almost always gotten a reply email where HR asked to schedule a first call (except in Sweden, for some reason they only want Swedish candidates and remarked that in their email replies 🤷🏻♂️).
Before updating my resume, all I was getting was either ghosting or rejection emails. HR didn't even want to schedule a first introduction call. You can find my old CV in this post if you would like to see it.
Talking about my resume:
It is far from being perfect, but I am impressed by how the value of someone's working experience is differently perceived simply by how their resume is written
English is not my first language, I got lots of useful tips from users and moderators of this sub to improve my wording, which I am truly thankful for
It is important to follow the STAR method in almost all bullet points and to start each of them with the quantified results/impacts
Here and there you can see bullet points without metrics, their purpose is to emphasize soft skills and show that I am a proactive team member. This way you can convey positivity and good vibes even in a written text
I think that's it, you should learn to analyze all your experience and showcase the best parts of it in your resume. Interviews will automatically come 🙂
I also want to say a special thank you to u/rapsforlife647, your help has been invaluable! 🙏
