The Resume That Got Me Into Google

This is the resume that got me into Google, Facebook and Uber. But copying this template is  

useless. What worked for me will not work for you.  That’s because your education and work experience  

is completely different from mine. Some of you  might not even have a fancy degree or job to put  

on your resume. So, the structure of the perfect  resume will be different for different people.  

That’s why, instead of just showing you my resume  today, I’ll also tell you why I chose to write my  

Resume this way. Once you know the reasoning, you  can move different sections around to tailor the  

resume to fit your own unique profile. At the  end of the video, I will also tell you 3 things  

you can do to instantly improve your resume if  you don’t have a good degree or work experience.

That’s Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon  telling us how focussing on the customer  

is key to the success of Amazon. Yet when it  comes to resumes, nobody ever thinks about the  

customer. There are primarily 3 customers, if  you will, for your resume. Number one, is the  

recruiter that would shortlist your resume. Number  two is the hiring manager that would give the final  

stamp of whether you are worthy of an interview.  And number 3, which most people forget about,  

is the resume filter which is a Software that  automatically filters out your resume if certain  

keywords are not present. To get that final  interview call, we have to impress all three.

Both hiring managers and recruiters are very  busy people because they have to go through so  

many applications everyday. On an average they spend  about 7 seconds on reading your resume. To know  

what that feels like, I set the timer and tried  reading my own resume. I was more generous and  

gave myself double the time a hiring manager would take. And this is how far I could reach in 15 seconds. From this exercise,  

it is obvious to me that how you start your  resume is the single most important thing. And  

I can bet that recruiters don’t even read  your name until they have found something  

interesting in the top part of your resume.  So, guard this part with your life and write  

the most impressive thing about you here.  Forget all the rules like a resume should  

start with education or skills or whatever.  These rules are bogus and have no data to  

support them. So if you have a weak education or work experience section,  

write your best project or skills here.  And if you see my resume, I have listed all my  

skills at the top. In hindsight, this is the  first mistake I made in my resume. I have 2  

more mistakes that I will share later in the video  but see if you can spot them yourself. Anyway,  

I believe that the most impressive thing about my background was my work experience at Amazon and that should have gone 

at the top. But my previous job before Amazon was not  that impressive and I used to avoid writing it at

the top. And for this resume, I simply copy pasted  my old template and made this blunder. Let this be  

a lesson for everyone that copy pasting others’  or even your own template is not the best strategy.

Now that you have intrigued the recruiter, they  would have the urge to know who this amazing  

programmer is. So, they will come back to the very  top to know your name. Write your name in large  

font to make it memorable. Give your  basic contact details like phone number and email  

here. If you have a Linkedin profile, add it.  If you don’t, make one and add it. Linkedin  

is a must in 2022. To be honest, if you have a  good linkedin profile, you might not even need  

a resume to get hired. If you want me to cover  Linkedin tips in upcoming videos, let me know  

in the comments. Enough about Linkedin. Moving  on, if you have a github or personal website,  

include that here as well. If you don’t, they’re  nice to have but not critical. So, don’t sweat it.

Now that we have that out of the way. Let’s talk  about the Skills section here. The Skills section  

does 2 things for us. One, it helps recruiters figure out if you have the desired skills.

Two, it helps  us get past the resume filter which is the third  

customer of our resume as we discussed in  the beginning. So, when applying for a job,  

read the job post carefully to figure out the skills  the recruiter is looking for and if you have them,  

make sure you include them in your skills section.  Before we talk about the work experience section,  

let me tell you 2 mistakes I have seen many people  make in their skills. One, they start rating  

themselves on their own skills. Frankly, nobody  really cares how good you think you are. I  

mean I felt like I was the best looking guy in  college but girls in my college disagreed. So,  

please skip ratings. Second mistake many people  make is that they include soft skills. This is the  

second mistake I made in this resume. I mean  who doesn’t think they are a team player and they  

deliver results. These skills are redundant. In my defense, I was too much into Amazon's leadership principles at the time

and I thought it would be a good ideas to include them. Anyway, save this space for something useful.

Let’s move on to the work experience. For  people who don’t have work experience,  

the equivalent section would be your Projects.  Here, I would like to mainly focus on how to talk  

about your projects. There are 3 key questions we  want to answer when writing about the projects.  

What did you do, How did you do it and What was  the impact? So, we start with an intriguing title  

that piques the hiring manager. Then we explain  what we did in a little more detail in the first  

sentence. After that, we talk about how we did it.  When explaining the how part, we want the hiring  

manager to feel 2 things. One, they should be  able to see that the project was challenging. Two,  

they should feel that the project had a big  scope. It’s not always possible to achieve  

this with every project but that’s the goal. In  this example, I have tried to show the technical  

challenges by mentioning some technologies I  used. To demonstrate the scope of the project,  

I have talked about the design discussions where  multiple teams were involved. After establishing  

how you achieved the final outcome, we want to  make a strong statement for the impact. Ideally,  

you want to add some key metrics here. My impact  statement was very similar for all these projects.  

So, I just added one statement for impact.  But in an ideal scenario, you want one for each project.  

Additionally, if it’s your personal project  that has a working app, providing a link to the  

app can also work as your impact statement. And  don’t forget to start your sentences with action  

verbs. If you don’t know what that is, we have  another video on the channel for the basics of  

resume writing. I believe everyone should know  these basics. So, make sure to check it out.

Before we get into how to improve your resume  when you don’t have a degree or work experience,  

let’s talk about the right column of my  resume. On the top we have Education with  

my GPA. If you feel your GPA is not good , you can skip it. Below education,  

we have honors and awards from college time and  some of the courses I did. These 2 sections are  

the third and the final mistake I made in this  resume. That’s because once you have worked in  

the industry for some years, the awards  from college and your coursework makes  

no difference. The point I am trying to make  here is just because you have done something  

doesn’t mean that you have to mention it  in your resume. When it comes to resumes,  

sometimes Less is More. At the bottom of the  right column, I have my interests. These are  

nothing but conversation starters that help  break ice with the interviewer.

You can write your resume in the  best possible way but there's still  

a possibility that you might not get a job.  That’s because “Resumes are not just written,  

Resumes are built over time” and there's  a big difference between the two. So,  

if you are having a hard time finding a job,  focus on building your resume first. You  

don’t need a degree or work experience to build  your resume. Here are 3 ways to start building  

your resume right now. First is to participate  in hackathons. Another way is to contribute to  

open source projects. And the last but most  effective way is to build your own projects.

Today’s video was more about the psychology  of resume writing. I did not cover some very important topics  

like action verbs you should use, how to  write your impact statement and the free  

online resources to make a beautiful  resume. To learn all these things,  

watch this video at the top. My name is  Sahil and I will see you in the next one.