Years ago, Steve Krug wrote a book about web design called Don’t Make Me Think. It’s a classic, and the main point is that good design should make everything painfully obvious to users without demanding anything of them.
Resumes are just the same. Your resume shouldn’t make recruiters think. It should serve up the most important things about you on a platter that they can digest in 30 seconds or less.
Before I share some resume tips, there’s something important I want to reiterate: Don’t spend a lot of time on your resume. You can read my piece about how resume writing is snake oil, but the TL;DR is that recruiters spend a median of 30 seconds looking at resumes, and most of that is spent looking for top-tier companies. If you don’t have top-tier companies (and in some cases niche skills), wordsmithing your bullets or rearranging your sections or changing your layout won’t help. If you do have top-tier companies, sometimes doing some wordsmithing and rearrangement will help… if your top company experience or niche skills are buried.
If you don’t have top-tier brands, the best bang for your buck is to switch from online applications to hiring manager outreach. Here’s how to do it.
With that said, I know that no matter what I say, people will still grind on their resumes instead of doing outreach. Grinding on resumes is safe. Outreach is scary and opens you up to personal (rather than impersonal) rejection. So, look, if you’re going to do something to your resume, let’s make sure that that something is low-effort and high-return. Unlike the endless resume tweaking that most candidates do, these changes directly address how recruiters actually read resumes.
Here we go.
Stop putting filler buzzwords in your "About" section. Use it to spell out the most impressive things about you.
Your "About" or "Summary" section is prime real estate. Yet so many candidates fill this section with meaningless jargon like "passionate self-starter" or "detail-oriented team player." Instead, use this section to explicitly tell recruiters the 2-3 most impressive things about you in plain English. This is your chance to control the narrative. Want recruiters to take something away from reading your resume? Don’t assume they’ll figure it out. They’re not reading it long enough to intuit anything. Spell it out for them verbatim in this section. Do this, not that:
❌ Results-driven full-stack engineer with a passion for scalable systems and user-centric design
✅ Senior engineer with 3 years at Amazon, promoted twice in 3 years (2X the company average)1
Don’t include your GPA if it’s under 3.8
This is simple but effective: only include your GPA if it's 3.8 or higher2. A middling GPA doesn't help your case and might inadvertently signal academic mediocrity.
If your GPA isn't stellar, focus on other academic achievements: hackathons, technical competitions, fellowships or scholarships. These provide better signals about your capabilities than a so-so GPA.
Context matters for lesser-known companies
If you've worked at Google or Facebook, recruiters instantly get what kind of company you're coming from. But when you have "TechStartup123" on your resume, they have no idea what they're looking at or how impressive it might be.
For lesser-known companies, include a one-line description explaining what the company does, along with any impressive metrics or investors:
❌ "Software Engineer, DevTools Inc."
✅ "Software Engineer, DevTools Inc. ($50M Series B from Sequoia, 2M+ active users)"
This simple addition provides crucial context that helps recruiters evaluate your experience properly. Without it, they might discount valuable experience simply because they don't recognize the company name.
Avoid the "job-hopper" misperception
Here's a common mistake: listing each role at the same company as if they were separate jobs. This can make recruiters think you've job-hopped, which is often seen as a red flag.
Instead, group different roles under the same company heading:
❌ Listing separate entries for "Junior Developer at XYZ" and "Senior Developer at XYZ"
✅ "XYZ Company - Senior Developer (2021-Present) - Junior Developer (2019-2021) Promoted in 2 years vs. company average of 3.5 years"
The second format clearly shows growth within a single company and explicitly highlights faster-than-average promotion, which is a strong positive signal. (You may also want to carry over your promotion cadence into your “About” section, as you saw above.)
Be crystal clear about your work authorization status
This one is particularly crucial if you have a foreign-sounding name and/or education outside the US. I've seen many qualified candidates get passed over because recruiters assumed they needed visa sponsorship when they actually didn't. Don't leave this to chance.
Make your work status explicit in your header or summary section:
❌ No mention of work authorization (leaving recruiters to guess)
✅ "US Citizen" or "Green Card Holder" or "Authorized to work in the US without visa sponsorship"
Career changers: provide context about the change
If you've switched careers, your resume can look confusing without proper context. Recruiters might struggle to understand why someone with your background is applying for this role, or they might not recognize how your previous experience translates to your current trajectory.
Address this head-on in your “About” section.
❌ Listing previous career experience with no explanation of your transition
✅ "Transitioned from marketing to software engineering in 2021 after completing a bootcamp" or "Former accountant who pivoted to data science through self-study and online courses while continuing full-time work"
This context helps recruiters understand your timeline and puts your current title and achievements in perspective. Without it, you risk serious misinterpretation:
- Recruiters might think you're far more junior than you actually are in your new field (potentially ruling you out for appropriate-level positions)
- Or conversely, they might assume you have years of relevant experience in your new field (and then wonder why you haven't achieved more in that time)
Both misinterpretations can be fatal to your application. By providing a clear timeline of your transition, you help recruiters accurately gauge your experience level and set appropriate expectations. This transparency also demonstrates valuable traits like adaptability and determination.
And here's another key point for career changers: you don't need to list all your previous positions before the transition... unless they're impressive. Be selective about what pre-transition experience you include:
❌ DON'T include mundane or irrelevant details from your previous career that add nothing to your current narrative. Your three years as a retail associate before becoming a developer probably won't strengthen your software engineering application.
✅ DO highlight prestigious achievements from your previous career. If you were, say, a concert pianist, a lawyer who graduated from a top-tier law school, or a management consultant at McKinsey, absolutely include that. These signal that you're smart and high-achieving, regardless of domain.
In conclusion
If you do all these things, you may or may not see a return. After all, even the impact of these tweaks pales in comparison to having top brands on your resume. But, given that these will take you a few minutes to do, it doesn’t hurt. Here’s the TL;DR:
Footnotes:
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I have no idea what the average promotion cadence is at Amazon, and this example is meant to be illustrative rather than accurate, though maybe my readers will tell me the cadence now. ↩
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I realize this diverges from the advice in Beyond Cracking the Coding Interview, where Gayle recommends including it if it’s 3.0 or more. This is one of the cases where the authors had differing opinions. We’re (mostly) human. ↩