A great résumé highlights your impact, not activities. - ThreadSky

kelseyhightower.com • 36 days ago

A great résumé highlights your impact, not activities.

Reposted from Tei

That's really good answers for what to include on a resume that isn't just numbers

Comments

This really depends on role and company culture. "Resolved 300 JIRA tickets (50% of team of 4) on project that went nowhere and we kept telling PM it would"?

amurmann.com•36 days ago

IMO this works best at companies that assign projects to individuals and not teams as collective and even then you are at the mercy of higher ups.

bryceenglin.bsky.social•36 days ago

So would you say numbers should be a tool used to help signify the impact.

I agree with that impact should be the center of a resume. At the same time I believe numbers if not over emphasized can help write the narrative of the impact.

kelseyhightower.com•36 days ago

Numbers can help explain the level of impact. Generated X amount of revenue tells a very different story than I wrote X many lines of code.

aleksandrhovhannisyan.com•36 days ago

It's frustrating, though, because most things devs do can't be quantified meaningfully. Unless you're on a small team, attributing macro profits/user count/etc to your individual contributions would be a huge overreach.

geekdownrange.bsky.social•36 days ago

Possible counterpoint - the verbiage for activities are likely to include the keywords the ATS is looking for. Tuning an "Impact Resume" for keyword matching isn't always an easy exercise.

Do experiences differ?

teikae.bsky.social•36 days ago

See, the fact that so much resume review is just the right keyword to get past the AI generator is incredibly frustrating if you don't have the correct jargon to express unique skills without losing out.

kelseyhightower.com•36 days ago

Do both, but the activities should be listed in support of the impact.

mrdowden.com•36 days ago

Perhaps, but I would argue that if you're a manager and anyone on your team doesn't have this type of résumé, it's a management failure. Most managers and companies do a terrible job of communicating the impact their teams have.

teikae.bsky.social•36 days ago

I agree, but without access to knowledge of how to hone those skills, if you've never had anyone tell you of your value, it makes it difficult to climb. Lots of incredibly talented, educated people are not able to use their degrees to gain higher experience trapping them in low paying jobs.

capitalist.bsky.social•36 days ago

Best engineers I've worked with have impact that can't be quantified. they taught me design patterns, tdd, brilliant abstract reasoning concepts. they just increased our cohesion and velocity, in ways that are obvious, yet virtually impossible to numerically quantify. I hate impact.

kelseyhightower.com•36 days ago

Did y'all go on to make a tangible impact? From a business prospective, if none of what you listed can be sold then it's not sustainable. I'm not saying it isn't valuable, I'm saying I can't afford to pay you to do it.

volkan.io•36 days ago

A great résumé is the one you don’t need.

As in, your impact and actions are so known that you don’t have to state on a sheet.

Strive to be Neil Armstrong:
If you have a résumé, it would say (in 32pts, bold, centered)

"The first moonwalker—Successfully led a crew of three to the moon and back."

volkan.io•36 days ago

Though getting there… therein lies the rub :)

antrix.net•36 days ago

100% agree!
I wrote about this a few years ago with tangible examples.. hopefully it can help others!
https://antrix.net/posts/2021/resume-outcomes/

clarityrestoration.bsky.social•36 days ago

📌

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