Tech Interview Handbook: Resume Guide

What the guide covers

• Why good candidates get rejected: often the resume, not the person. Many companies use applicant tracking systems to store and search applications, and a resume that parses badly or lacks the right keywords may never reach a human.
• Formatting rules: write it in Word or Google Docs rather than a design tool, submit a PDF, use a standard font at 10 point or larger, keep to one page with narrow margins, and make sure the text can be selected and copied.
• Section order: a short summary, contact details, skills, work experience, education, projects, then awards and certifications. Students with little experience can move projects and education up.
• Keywords: use standard section headings and include keywords from the job description, weighted by how important they are to the role, without stuffing.
• Bullet points: describe outcomes with numbers where you can, not duties.
• Common mistakes: complex layouts, keyword stuffing, and applying to many roles at the same company at once.

The broader Tech Interview Handbook, of which this is one section, has about 143,000 GitHub stars as of September 2026.

The change that matters most

Rewriting responsibilities as achievements. "Worked on the payments service" says nothing. "Reduced failed payments by adding idempotent retries, cutting support tickets by a third" says what you can do. Most early resumes are entirely the first kind, and fixing that is a single evening's work.

A useful pattern for each bullet: action verb, what you built or changed, how, and the measurable result. If you cannot measure the result honestly, describe the scale or the users.

How to use it

1. Read the whole guide once before touching your resume.
2. Rewrite rather than edit. Starting from your existing document tends to keep the phrasing you are attached to.
3. Check parsing: copy the text of your PDF into a plain text editor. If the order and words survive, most systems can read it.
4. Tailor per role: adjust the skills and top bullets to the job description for roles you care about.
5. Get one human review from a senior engineer or a peer who has recently been hired.

Things to be aware of

• Upsells: the page links to paid templates, review services and tools from other companies. The written guide itself is free and complete without them.
• US big-tech framing: some advice (such as no photo and one page) is standard for software roles in the US and at many international companies; a few local employers expect different conventions. For most software roles, this advice is the safe default.
• Applicant tracking systems: the guide stresses them heavily. They matter, but at smaller companies a person often reads every application; clarity helps in both cases.

Pair it with

• Jake's Resume Template for a clean single-column layout (built in LaTeX rather than Word, but producing the same kind of parseable one-page PDF)
• Jobscan if you want a keyword comparison against a specific job description
• Brag documents so you have concrete achievements to draw from

Common questions

One page or two? One page for students and early career engineers. The guide recommends it strongly.

Should I include a summary? A short one-line summary helps recruiters place you quickly; skip long objective statements.

How long does it take? Reading takes under an hour; a full rewrite takes an evening.

Best for: students and engineers starting a job search, and anyone applying without getting responses.