The end of the year is a time to recharge and enjoy some well-deserved rest (after you’ve seen Spider-Man: No Way Home, of course!)

It’s also the perfect opportunity to reflect on your biggest accomplishments of the past year, and consider your upcoming priorities.

The job market is still as hot as ever, so if you want to change jobs (or if you’re a career-changer looking to break into tech or move to a startup) you have a lot of leverage.

Revamping your resume is a great move in 2022, no matter what your situation might be – and we’ve got some hot-off-the-presses advice that can help.

1.) Google’s Global Head of Recruiting, Brendan Castle, says that the key to writing a top-notch resume is to tell your story and answer the question “Who are you?”

Here are Castle’s guiding questions for creating a resume that gets you noticed:

• What was your role on each team or work situation?
• How did you contribute to that team?
• What was the biggest impact you had on the team?

Castle also noted to Harvard Business Review that he is “always impressed by candidates who, beyond proving that they have the technical skills to perform well in a job at Google, show that they have a ‘growth mindset’ and are eager to learn from their mistakes and can tackle problems with a creative, open-minded approach.”

2.) Excite the reader by taking an achievement-oriented approach that highlights your impact instead of your responsibilities. Instead of saying things like, “Responsible for writing Project Requirements Documents,” include something like “Implemented a new customer support program that raised satisfaction ratings by 20%.”

3.) Keep your resume skimmable and concise by organizing it in clear sections.

DO Include these sections:

• Professional Experience (including company name and a one-liner description of the organization)
• Skills
• Education
• Awards
• Extracurricular activities (if they are relevant)

DON’T include these sections:

• Hobbies
• Your age
• Your parents’ details
• Religious or political beliefs
• A disclaimer saying the details of your resume are true (this is a given – you don’t need to say it!

4.) Google recruiters recommend an X-Y-Z formula to help you state your results quantitatively.

They describe the formula as: “Accomplished [X] as measured by [Y], by doing [Z].”

Here’s the example Inc. provided in the article:

• OK: “Won second place in hackathon.”
• Better: “Won second place out of 50 teams in hackathon.”
• Best: “Won second place out of 50 teams in hackathon at NJ Tech by working with two colleagues to develop an app that synchronizes mobile calendars.

Most recruiters in the tech industry use an ATS (Applicant tracking system) to organize resumes before reading them. 

To make sure the software can read your resume, upload it to your Powderkeg member account and let us review it for you and give you customized feedback.

You’ll learn how to land more interviews by:

• Improving your resume formatting for easy readability
• Including the right sections and information
• Ensuring your resume is ready to be parsed by automated systems

Upload your resume here to get started.

P.S. If you don’t have a Powderkeg account yet, no worries – click here to create an account and that’ll take you straight to the resume upload screen.