When I was looking for work two years ago, I sent around my software engineer resume but was not getting many responses. So I looked at ten job listings for open positions and analyzed them for many things.
Most of them said they wanted a software engineer, one said they wanted a software developer, one used both terms. Two companies asked for knowledge of data structures and algorithms. Three asked for someone who could write maintainable code.
One thing I noticed - mention of having high impact. Mention of agile, iteration, fast pace. Lots of mentions of team collaboration. Mention of being able to ship features, fix bugs, and learn.
My resume was mostly about what languages I knew and the like, I rewrote it to use words like collaboration, impact, agile and the like (all of which were true, I just didn't use the word collaborate in my resume, or mention I collaborated with product owners, UX etc.) Basically my new rewritten resume was a regurgitation of the job listing commonalities - but an honest one as I had been working scrum, collaborating etc., I just left that out of my resume and instead put technical buzzwords. Once I made the change I began to get more responses.
Most recruiters use a software to screen CVs before an actual human even reads them. If you don't have enough of the buzzwords then unfortunately it doesn't go through.
Most of them said they wanted a software engineer, one said they wanted a software developer, one used both terms. Two companies asked for knowledge of data structures and algorithms. Three asked for someone who could write maintainable code.
One thing I noticed - mention of having high impact. Mention of agile, iteration, fast pace. Lots of mentions of team collaboration. Mention of being able to ship features, fix bugs, and learn.
My resume was mostly about what languages I knew and the like, I rewrote it to use words like collaboration, impact, agile and the like (all of which were true, I just didn't use the word collaborate in my resume, or mention I collaborated with product owners, UX etc.) Basically my new rewritten resume was a regurgitation of the job listing commonalities - but an honest one as I had been working scrum, collaborating etc., I just left that out of my resume and instead put technical buzzwords. Once I made the change I began to get more responses.