Resume Checklist

Resumes are often your first impression, serving as a marketing tool or flyer to help people get to know you and your skills. Below is a checklist of all the content and sections you should have in your resume. This list will help you fulfill requirements to create a professionally endorsed resume. You can also a resume deep dive guide here.

We recommend this section order for most vertical one column resumes: Contact Information > Skills > Projects > Professional Experience > Education > Any other sections If you have tech-related past experience list Professional Experience above Projects. In general, keep the most relevant and related information at the top.

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Personal and contact information

‍This section is to let readers know who you are, and how to get in contact with you. When formatting this section, try to keep all information down to one or two lines.

First and Last name at the top of resume
Title, i.e. iOS Developer below name
Reliable contact number
City, State, not my full address (optional if applying only remotely or only out-of-state)
Professional email address
GitHub profile link
LinkedIn profile link (optional)
Portfolio link (if you have one)
Links to social media (if relevant/professional and if space allows)

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Skills
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This is where you get to mention, by name, the hard skills you possess and have a working knowledge of. This is not the section where you mention soft skills, as those will be referenced in your bulleted power statements in your projects and experience section. Not sure about the difference between hard vs. soft skills? This article will explain! For skills you'll want to...

Position this section within the top half of the resume (ideally below contact section)
List all technical skills, methodologies, and platforms related to your curriculum track, with your strongest skills at the beginning of the list

As you build out a list of skills, avoid formatting your content vertically as a list with one skill taking up an entire line. Format your skills section in such a way that takes up less space on your resume.

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Projects
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The projects you create through build weeks, labs, or on your own time, are evidence of your professional skills and capabilities. When writing about your projects on your resume, treat it like it was a job, using bulleted power statements to mention the skills and tools you used to execute the project. Here are a few "dos" you'll want to implement for this section...

Incorporate at least 2-3 total projects
List the title for each project, and mention the role you held, i.e. CoachMe - Front End Developer or CoachMe - React II Developer
Link to deployed project (preferably hyperlinked to the title)
When space allows or when the deployed link wasn't viewable/live, link to a GitHub repo
Included one sentence to describe what the project does (this does not have to be bulleted, it can be on the same line of the project title, or directly below)
List the tech stack used for each project
List 2-3 bullets highlighting responsibilities you had for each project, how the technology was used, and unique accomplishments when working on the project
List responsibilities in bullet point format (do not use a paragraph format)
Start each bullet point with a different an action verb
Notate dates of development, i.e. Month Year or Month Year - Month Year (optional)

And now a few "don'ts"...

Eliminate use of pronouns such as: “I,” “we,” "they, “you,” “me,” “us”, which is a general resume rule. For resumes we write in "first person implied".
Don't describe projects using words like "capstone" "Lambda Labs" or "School project", as this is unnecessary context
Avoid using more than 1 sentence to describe the project
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Experience or Employment

If you think your previous work experiences don't relate to what you'll be applying for, think again! Any work experience develops transferrable skills that help you grow professionally. If you need inspiration for how you can write about previous roles like "bartender", "driver", "sales associate", and so on, check out the search by title feature on jobhero's website. For this section you'll want to...

Select most relevant or recent work experiences and listed them under a section titled: Professional Experience, Employment, or Relevant Experience
Each employment experience should have consistent formatting that displays the name of employer, position title, job location, and dates worked for each job
List the location in this format: City, State or City, Country (optional), or use "Remote" to indicate experiences where you have worked from home
Include date ranges in this format: Month Year - Month Year (or Month Year - Present )
Include 2-5 power statement bullets that describe accomplishments or skills; these bullet points should reflect transferable skills to a tech-related job
When possible, quantify accomplishments
Use the past tense for past work experience, while present work experience is described with present tense
Use first person implied, avoiding the following pronouns in your description: I, me, you, we, etc.‍
Start each bullet point with an action verb. Your experience section should not have any paragraphed descriptions, as these are harder to scan.

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Education

‍You may be wondering why we had this closer to the bottom of the list, when Lambda School is one of your most related experiences for roles you'll apply for. This is a way to get you reader to look towards the bottom of your one page resume. When reviewing resumes, readers pay the most attention to the top half of the resume, reading the top of the resume's content more thoroughly. If they really want to know what education you have, they can scan the bottom for further content. In this section...

Include Lambda School, mentioning track name, and dates attended or graduated
Include all post-high school educational experiences, mentioning the name of educational institution, degree or program type/name, and date the degree was received or will be received i.e. May 2020 or Expected July 2025
Don't list high school experience
List schools in chronological order from most recent to least recent

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Text, type and formatting‍

You can make a strong resume content wise, but if it is aesthetically messy or hard to follow, you'll lose an opportunity to be considered for roles you apply for. To ensure your resume reads clean, take the following steps...

Keep your resume to 1 page by eliminating experiences past 5-10+ years if it's pushing you over your page limit
Don't capitalize non-proper nouns in the middle of the sentence, i.e. Ensured that Users understood the sign-up process..., Met with Stakeholders weekly to understand product specifications and communicate timeline..
No need for a headshot or image of yourself
Spell check or use Grammarly to catch errors
Use an accessible font (i.e. Calibri or Arial) size 10.5 or higher throughout my resume
Ensure each section has a header and this header stands out compared to body text (by increasing font size, using bold, and/or using a different font)
Eliminate the use periods after any bullet points
Fill in large or uneven chunks of white space
Check capitalization of tools, languages, and skills are correct and consistent throughout, i.e. JavaScript not Javascript
Check that my role titles/spelling are consistent throughout, i.e. Full Stack not Fullstack and FullStack and Full Stack