I Interviewed With More Than 50 Companies: 3 Dead Simple Resume Rules To Guarantee Interviews As A Software Dev

A CV will get 30 seconds of reading before it is tossed away.

Despite this, most CVs from my friends and colleagues still include walls of text that are hard to pass through. A resume that is hard to read transmits the message that you are not organized.

The best CVs are clear and transmit the information the recruiters need fast.

But how do you present as much information as possible in less than 30 seconds of reading?

1. Include a picture

This is non-negociable.

• It makes you a real person, not a piece of paper.
• Showing a smile builds trust.
• People know what to expect from meeting you.

Not including a picture means you don’t care.

2. List your skills as bullets

The first thing a recruiter looks for is if you fit their requirements:

• List the most relevant skills first.
• Limit to 10 skills — Listing more indicates you are filling up space.
• Don’t include soft skills — Most are implied or tested in the live interview.

The easier you make it for recruiters, the better your chances.

3. Show results & skills learned from previous jobs

When scanning your work experience, recruiters look for skills and results. Good example:

Awesome-O Startup: 2020–2022

• Moved legacy codebase to modern Typescript stack
• Improved startup time of mobile app by 3secs
• Implemented CI/CD pipelines that reduced production errors by 70%

Tech: React, React Native, Node.js, Typescript, PostgreSQL

There are no wasted words in this example. Try to make all your experience listings like that.

Now, go and read your resume and see how it compares with these rules. You can look at resume.io for some good formats.

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