.devClub’s Google Tech Resume Workshop Notes

For those who didn’t attend or want a refresher. All personal information has been anonymized to ensure transparency.

General Tips

Important Notes for First Resumes

High School Highlights: Know when to Let Go
- If they’re good you can keep there, but you should let go especially as years go on
- Focus should be on college as you do more
Beyond the Classroom: Build Your Story Now
- You should have clubs, projects, hobbies
- Don’t have to be technical, soft skills like leadership and teamwork are great to develop
Skills That Shine: Focus on What You Can Do
- Skills don’t need to come from coursework, but also clubs and projects
- Don’t have to always be technical
Resume Essentials: Clarity, Structure, and Impactful Language
- Presentation is important

What should I include?

Must Have
- Contact Information: Email and phone number, don’t need address
- Education: Your school, when you’re graduating (month + year), state major, don’t use acronyms
- Technical Skills
- Leadership/Activities
Good to Have
- Awards/Honors
- Qualifications/Projects: Some online certifications you can do
- 1 Page: Very unlikely you have the content necessary to fill one page
Small Stuff
- Consistency
- Proofread
- Action-Based Language
- PDF Format: Word documents have weird formatting across devices

Resume flow: Our recommended structure

Education (*Technical Skills)
- Include GPA if you’re proud of it
- School, major, graduation, GPA, coursework
Work Experiences
Projects (Classroom & Personal)
Leadership Updates

Powering Your Bullets

XYZ Formula

Accomplished [X] (what you did), as measured by [Y] (the metric/result), by doing [Z] (the actions you took).

Results-First Bullets: What You Did & Why It Matters
Highlight Innovation: Did You Build or Improve Something? Include quantifiable data where possible
Quantify Your Wins: Numbers Speak Volume

Examples:

Good: Increased server query response time by 15% by restructuring API
Bad: Participated in city hackathon working on a facial recognition project
Good: Won second place out of 40 teams in the City Hackathon, building facial recognition software that helps detect human emotions, utilizing Python and Java

Before:

Worked with another intern to create a speech classifier
We worked through the entire development process to launch stage
Language: Python

After:

Worked with another intern to upgrade a speech language classifier app using Python, resulting in 95% accuracy, a 12% improvement over the old process
Completed entire development process for app, including writing design docs, implementation of front-end tool using Java, going through design reviews, and launching internally

What if I don’t have work experience yet?

Experience & transferable skills can come in many forms

Student organizations and national security chapters (e.g., NSBE, IEEE, etc.)
Research opportunities, teaching assistantships, tutoring
Programming competitions & hackathons
Class & personal projects
Tech-focused developmental programs

Projects

Impact-Driven: Quantify your achievements! Use the format
Highlight Both:
- Course Projects: Mention key projects, especially award-winning ones
- Personal Projects: Showcase your passion and initiative outside of coursework
Tech Skills Spotlight
GitHub Showcase

Leadership / Activities

Clubs and organizations
National society chapters
Programming competitions & hackathons
Relevant publications, papers, patents
Conference presentations
Teaching assistantships and tutoring
Research opportunities
Volunteering
Tech-focused developmental programs

FInal Recommendations

Passion & Skills: Let your resume showcase your tech enthusiasm and key technical abilities.
Education: Clearly state your degree and expected graduation date (Month/Year).
Experience is Broad: Highlight impact from projects, coursework, internships, and activities.
Quantify Impact: Use the “Acommplished X, measured by Y, by doing Z” formula whenever possible.
Tech Skills Visible: Showcase your use of languages like Java, Python, C++, etc.
Tailor Your Story: Connect your experiences to the types of roles you’re interested in.
- Customize your resume

Resources

Google Career
Build your Future: g.co/buildyourfuture
Google Careers OnAir: g.co/careersonair
Google Scholarship: g.co/scholarship

Resume Critiques

General takeaways:

Remove old experiences
Make sure font size is presentable
Make sure bullet points quantify impact
Don’t have a “Summary” section unless it’s really good
Be consistent with formatting choices
If you put anything on your resume, be prepared to talk about it on the level of expertise you claim to have

Q&A

Should you include relevant information from 5 years ago?
- It has to be really relevant. Know that it may look weird. Every section should say something new, so you should stick with recent experiences.
Should you bold words on your resume?
- It’s a style choice. However, recruiters do only read resumes on average 3-5 seconds, so it might help.
- Might help resume not look like a wall of text.
Is there any secret sauce on resume?
- Probably no, every recruiter has a different opinion (with exceptions like one page, XYZ format).
- If you don’t get a job because you “didn’t bold something”, it’s probably a bad working environment.
Red flags?
- Caveat: Developers only see resumes after recruiters looked at it.
- Old stuff, such as high school experience: means you haven’t done anything since high school.
- Not listing what you studied in school.
- Inconsistent formatting.
How do you pass ATS? Should I care about ATS to begin with?
- Google doesn’t do bots, FYI.
- Standard formatting and listing same tech stack is the most important.
- Injecting “white text” is possible…
- Test by putting your resumes through PDF parsers.
Where should you start?
- Create your own personal website: easy HTML, JavaScript, maybe some backend. If you do use a template, they’ll know and ask you about it.
- If you look for leadership opportunities, go see what student organizations are there, leadership opportunities are there all the time.
How should you take notes on what you’ve worked on in past experience?
- Team standups where you tell your manager what you’re doing, so that should happen anyway.
- Even if weekly, write down what you do on your current project, especially your achievements.
- Notetaking is also important for promotions, not just job seekers.
If you were students again, how would you advance through this era of job-seeking?
- Don’t feel like you have to do projects or clubs. You come first, don’t worry about what other people are doing or say what you have to do, take care of yourself.
- Don’t skip class and learn as much as possible, when you enter industry not much time to learn. Should put some flavor of AI somewhere in your resume.
- The only way to get through is to make sure you’re okay. Have some different, unrelated hobby to take a breather from CS. Be personable, don’t spend all day in front of the computer. Do as many mock interviews as possible.
- Don’t force yourself to do things you don’t enjoy. “Study this subject because it’s useful” end of the day nobody knows what’s going on. Find something that actually drives you and spend time on it, not things you don’t enjoy, it’s a waste of time.
LeetCode and programming contests on resume?
- If you’re just solving puzzles, don’t put that on your resume.
- If you’re actually competing in something organized, maybe.
- Probably don’t burn through LeetCode; better to spend time with a friend in a “mock interview” session and doing it on whiteboard to each other.
Final tips?
- Fail as much as you can, the later you go the less you’re allowed to mess up.
- Schoolwork takes as much time as you give it. Set time aside to have fun and take breaks.
- Spend your internship learning what you hated. Look for different internships so you know what you’re looking for, while you still have flexibility to do so.
- Cultivate your relationships. The people you know will help you.