Mistakes H-1B candidates make on their software engineering resumes for U.S. companies

How to tailor your software engineering resume for the U.S. market

When scanning through applicants’ resumes, it’s pretty easy to spot H-1B candidates just by reading the top third of the resume’s first page. This could pose a problem for many of these candidates as hiring managers and recruiters may find these resumes difficult to understand. Here are some tips on making your resume look more like U.S.-based candidates’ as well as have a better resume overall, even if you aren’t an H-1B candidate.

Reverse Chronological Order

The first thing a hiring manager wants to see on your resume is your current or latest position. Don’t make this difficult to find—it should be on the top third of your resume. Continue to list your experience in reverse chronological order with the most recent experience first since the more recent experience is more relevant. The only exception to this is to have a separate “Education” section below your professional experience which would otherwise be interlaced with your professional experience.

Education Doesn’t Matter

Unless you are a new graduate, your education does not matter. Your last professional experience is a much better signal than the university you attended. For the most part, all software engineering bachelor’s and master’s degrees from accredited universities in the U.S. are treated equivalently.

Internships > Education

Again, education does not matter, especially if you have internship experience, which counts as professional experience. An internship at a well-known company is a better signal than the university you attended. The best signal is if you have two back-to-back summer internships at the same company — clearly you are great employee!

1–2 Pages

In the U.S. tech industries, we want a resume, not a curriculum vitae. CVs tend to be long and descriptive; they are more suited for other industries like academia, not the tech industry. A resume should be at most two pages with a reasonably sized font (between 10–12px).

A Summary is a Few Sentences, Max

Keep your summary, blurb, or cover letter short. Only provide necessary details such as dealbreakers (e.g. remote work only) and what you want to work on (e.g. React and GraphQL). List character references you may have at the company as well as people you’ve met through recruiting.

Conciseness is a Skill

A short resume demonstrates a very valuable skill in engineering: conciseness. Are you able to describe a problem in a few words? Are you able to solve a problem with minimal code? Do you value the audience’s time by making your communication brief? It may be difficult to write a concise resume, but avoid a long one—a long resume demonstrates a lack of both conciseness and empathy for the reader.

Minimal Personal Details

Don’t add information about your marital status, family, personal hobbies, or passions unless they are relevant to your career. For one, it elongates your resume by adding irrelevant information. However, the biggest reason is that, in the U.S., employers’ asking about certain personal information opens up the employer to discrimination lawsuits, so it’s best for both parties to avoid this by not adding personal details to your resume at all.

No Headshots

Don’t put your headshots in your resume as your looks is not an indicator of your performance as a software engineer. Many cultures tend to put headshots in their resume, but they usually aren’t as diverse and sensitive to diversity as the U.S. Adding your headshot to your resume may make hiring managers discriminate for or against your looks, both of which could be a liability for the company.

Details to Exclude

Personal information should remain personal; only put enough personal information for potential employers to know that you are hire-able. Some don’ts are:

• Your religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, and date of birth are generally not relevant
• Just put your current city; employers don’t need your full address until you’re being hired
• If you think your name may be open to discrimination by hiring managers, abbreviate your first or last name and make sure your LinkedIn profile matches!

Formatting

PDFs, not Microsoft Word

Many software engineers and engineering hiring managers do not have Microsoft Word as many use Google Apps instead. Word documents will be incorrectly reformatted by Google Apps or Apple Pages, messing them up entirely. Send your resume as a PDF, which is a standardized file format, so that the recipient can read your resume as intended.

Avoid Large Skill Word-Clouds

These tend to be useless, especially if they are large. Think about what you want to convey to the hiring manager and recruiter and just summarize those such as, “Full-stack React and Express.js Engineer”. As a hiring manager, I primarily care about what you’ve worked on and what you want to work on and I look into your recent experience for this, not the word cloud.

Additionally, many candidates tend to list skills that they haven’t used in years in the word cloud and thus are no longer relevant. It’s better to embed your skills into your experience so that your skills are described within context—when you used and developed these skills and what role and position you were in.

List Your Work Authorization

At the bottom of your resume, list your work authorization status such as “requires H-1B sponsorship”. Even I list “U.S. Citizen” at the bottom of my resume because recruiters often ask whether I need visa sponsorship. This will help weed out companies who would not sponsor your visa at all. Of course, this depends on the type of companies you apply to. Many companies either do (e.g. large tech companies) or don’t (e.g. defense companies) sponsor visas, but some companies (e.g. early stage start-ups) may sponsor your visa if you stand out or if they have sufficient VC backing.

Summary

Hopefully this helps you understand the U.S. tech industry better, which strives to be a progressive meritocracy, but sometimes falls short. Have any questions? Feel free to ask me questions on LinkedIn.