Resume Format and Structure

Your resume format should work to highlight your strengths. The chronological resume, perhaps the most traditional format, fails in this regard. A functional resume does a much better job of highlighting your experience in a specific role, but most web developers are good at more than one thing. I suggest mixing aspects of the two formats, organizing them in a way that makes sense for you and your strengths — then you’ll have a resume that stands out.

Here are the general sections found in a great web developer resume. With the exception of the first two, the rest can be ordered and/or further broken out according to your needs.

• Objective: If you’re searching for a job, you ought to know what you’re seeking! Customize your objective, as needed, when replying to job postings. (Note: If you’re not actively seeking a job, but still want to have a resume posted online, it’s okay to omit this section.)
• Summary of Qualifications: It’s a cheesy headline, perhaps, and all too often the summary is filled with buzzwords — but I have read really compelling summaries that made me want to know more about a candidate. Focus on describing your strengths and what you contribute to an organization.
• Skills: This is where the keywords and buzzwords will start showing up. That’s okay: you’ll back them up with evidence in the other sections. You can subdivide this section in any number of ways: Technical vs. Soft Skills, Front-End vs. Back-End Skills, Design vs. Development Skills, etc.
• Professional Accomplishments: Here you can include project accomplishments, awards, public speaking engagements, publishing credits, or descriptions of really awesome things you’ve accomplished. Like the Skills section, you can also break these out separately.
• Work Experience: If you’ve done any combination of full-time work, freelancing, and volunteering, this is the most generic title you can use for your work history. Some people like to break out their professional experience from other work, but I think that can undermine the importance of having taken on freelance or volunteer work. If you list accomplishments for each job in this section, don’t repeat them elsewhere, and vice versa.
• Education: I don’t like to see this section missing from a resume. Haven’t gone to college? That’s okay. Be proud of what schooling you have made it through and list it here. Oh, and that includes training programs, conferences — anything you’ve forked out money for that you’ve learned something from!

Required Information

If your resume were to consist of only two things, it should be these:

• Contact Information: You’d think this would be a no-brainer, but I have seen resumes where developers didn’t list a phone number, email address, or personal web site (more on that below). In my opinion, it’s a waste of space to display your full home address, especially if you are looking to relocate. No one’s going to snail-mail you an invitation to interview, so city and state will suffice. HR will collect the rest of your contact information later.
• URLs: I wish I could tell you exactly how many of those ~500 resumes didn’t include a single URL… but my gut says that at least half didn’t feature even a personal web site URL. Seriously? If you’re a web developer, you should have some URLs to share. If you’re brand-new to the field, put some of your school projects online. If you’ve only ever done intranet-type work, get permission to copy parts of the code and make it available, or create other projects of your own to demonstrate your skills. If you’re serious about getting a web development job, you need this.

On the flip side, don’t waste space on these bits of information: references (or the phrase, “References available upon request”), GPA, salary requirements, or personal information (except if you have hobbies that would be of interest to another geek and would increase the likelihood of getting invited in for an interview).

Frequently Asked Questions

Does my resume have to fit on to one or two pages? No, I don’t think that it does. However, I think it’s nice if a resume is so well edited and structured that, when printed, it fits to exactly one or two pages (one page if you’re young, recently out of school, or switching careers; otherwise two pages). However, if you truly have so much awesomeness to report, then, by all means, go on! If you’re really that super-duper, I’m sure I’ll want to know all about it.

Does one resume fit all jobs? NO! Don’t be afraid to tweak your resume format or content to the job you’re applying for. In fact, if you have diverse enough skills and interests (design vs. development) you should probably have completely separate resumes for these purposes.

I am graduating soon and don’t have much web development experience. What can I do to beef-up my resume? Use the “Objective” area to make it clear that you’re looking for an entry-level position. Highlight your strengths in the “Summary of Qualifications” area and place the “Education” section next, so it’s clear you’re just coming out of school. List your technical skills, as well as any soft skills that you can support with extra-curricular or volunteer work. If you have been active in a tech community or have attended technical or web conferences, list those.

I’m switching careers. I’ve taken some web design and development courses and done some small projects. How do I reflect all of this in my resume? First, don’t hide the fact that you’re switching careers! Your prior experience, even if in a completely different industry, has (hopefully) taught you how to deal with people and has helped you understand your strengths. Start your resume with an “Objective” statement that spells out your desire to move into web development. Then list your skills, training and experience with the web so far before providing your employment history and other educational details. Highlight any experience that translates across industries, but otherwise keep the non-web details short.

I hope the above helps you create an awesome resume. Remember, your resume (supported with at least one awesome URL) helps get you in the door for an interview, so take some time to craft one that truly reflects you!

If you have questions I haven’t addressed above, I’m happy to accept them in the comments below.

Although I always identify myself as a technologist, I’ve been managing people for a while and that is the primary focus of my full-time work. Managing people is an art, not a science. It’s very hard work, and I didn’t completely understand this before becoming a manager. Honestly, I don’t think most people — even managers — understand how hard of a job this can be.

I think that I’ve become a pretty good manager — with time and experience, with feedback and mentoring. There were times when I wasn’t so great, though. In an attempt at radical honesty (hat tip to Erica O’Grady), here is a list of my epic management fails and what I’ve learned from them.

• I tried to keep my hands in the code. Somewhere I once heard that coders who become managers and still try to write code only do so because they’re arrogant and they end up sucking at both. While I don’t agree 100% with that statement, I can agree that diverting focus from management responsibilities can have a negative impact on people and projects. As a manager I’ve gotten so deep into code that I’ve trampled on the responsibilities and goals of my direct reports. I’ve also made commitments to deliver production-ready code but then been so distracted by management responsibilities that I caused project deadlines to be missed. While attempting to code for production work isn’t a good idea for managers, I think that coding for practice — to keep one’s skills in shape or to have experience with what the team is working on — is definitely a good thing. A technical manager who can coach a team on both a personal and a technical level is a huge asset.

• I didn’t prepare for one-on-one meetings. One of the top priorities of a manager is meeting with direct reports on a regular basis to review expectations, set and track progress of goals, provide feedback, and coach for achievement. If you ignore this responsibility as a manager, you’re not doing your job, period.* Over time, I’ve realized that some managers avoid these meetings because they’re not prepared. I’ve certainly made the mistake of meeting with an individual without having an agenda, or without having deliverables ready. Ever had an awkward review with your boss? Chances are, it was awkward because they weren’t prepared. I find that I have to practice difficult conversations before I walk in to a meeting, and I even like to rehearse giving feedback. When I’m nervous about a meeting, I know I’m not prepared. When I realize this, I’ll try to reschedule the meeting or, worst case scenario, I’ll admit to being unprepared and beg forgiveness.

  However, even if you conduct regular one-on-ones, you can do it very poorly. For example, I’ve had managers who’ve spent most of my one-on-one time talking to or emailing other people, just talking the entire time without listening, and even zoning out (staring at the ceiling, a piece of furniture). Other faux-pas include glaring at the person (or eye-rolling, laughing at inappropriate times), only giving negative feedback, never offering assistance, and never asking for feedback.

• I wanted more (or less or something different) for someone. I’m an overachiever and I’ve always had a vision for what I could and should be doing in any job. I know that not everyone is this way, yet somehow this fact escaped me early in my management career. Some of my earliest supervisees were just doing a job, with no vision for themselves in the future, so I adopted a style of pushing my own vision for a person’s career. I could pat myself on the back for the times in which this worked out, but there were times where this approach certainly backfired — such as the strong generalist who I thought should specialize in an area they didn’t care for, or the developer who I saw moving up the tech ladder when they wanted to move into management. Having a dialog not just about about an individual’s current role and goals but also about their future is crucial. I like to do this at least twice a year, now, to ensure that my direct reports and I are on the same page.
• I hired someone despite having concerns about their ability to do the job. This is a tough one to address in generalities, but I’ll try. Any hiring decision should be backed up with evidence gathered through a rigorous interview process. Every new hire presents some level of risk, but you want to have primarily positive feelings about a hiring decision, not concerns. I have, on occasion, made hiring decisions based less on evidence and more on what I thought could be possible, given training, coaching, and mentoring. Sometimes it has worked out wonderfully. Other times it’s been a painful experience for both the individual who was hired and for me. I do believe in giving people a chance, though, so I can’t totally knock taking these risks. These days I try to be open about expectations prior to hiring and I reinforce those expectations once the individual walks in the door in regular one-on-ones. I don’t usually out-and-out express my concerns, though — this can kill a person’s confidence! But if I must, I’ll also express my support for the person and assume responsibility for making sure the right things are in place for the person to be successful.
• I let my own issues get in the way of my responsibilities. Anyone who’s followed me on Twitter for the past year has seen this one first hand. I started a new job last January and spent almost the entire year unhappy with my role, the work, and number of other things. I focused on the frustration, vented publicly, and let public response further fuel my discontent. All of this distraction consumed me; meanwhile my team languished. I began planning an exit strategy and engaged an awesome career coach who ended up reminding me of my strengths and reignited my passion for creating positive change. I set to work on creating a plan to address not only what was making me unhappy but also what I felt was missing from making our organization a powerhouse. I’m now executing on that plan and seeing small successes, which I hope to grow into larger successes this year.

Do you recognize any of these epic fails, either personally or in a manager you’ve worked with? Does your organization have a strong culture of coaching and mentoring managers to prevent against these and other fails? Share your story below for others to learn from. I’ll share my epic wins later!