Ask HN: Help a Highschooler with His Resume

I would put the projects and job experience above the classes. Classes are easy and everyone with a (decent) brain can do well in them but spearheading a project and working without getting fired are two things that employers like to see.

Most employers do not care about your research interests. They are selfish beasts. All they are thinking about is can this person help me with a problem I have.

Do not send out a resume without a personalized coversheet. I know this is a pain but you NEED to do some research on the company and show them that you can craft a few sentences that pertain to a solution to a problem that they are having.

Also, If you know how to code, which it looks like you do, you should have no problem getting a job. Most employers are overwhelmed with terrible candidates who do not know how to program at all.

Good luck, I'm sure you will do fine.

Filling a resume at your age (yes, making an assumption here)/level of experience is tricky, but one the plus side it's easy to stick to the 1 A4 rule.

I'd strip the details of the courses you've followed - people reading the resume will probably know the general details already and use that space to add a section on motivation and interests (feel free to tailor that to whoever you're sending it to). Would front-end development interest you? Backend scalability? Systems automation? Networking? Security? Don't mention specific technologies, just some broad problem domains.

Good luck!

Work on an open source project. A real one. Mozilla is super-friendly to new guys, and working on Chromium means working with Google Engineers and other smart people.

Also, go to an epically good college. That'll be a huge help down the line.

You should probably consider working for a medium-sized company. Large companies have a tendency towards being soul crushing places for interns. A strong, almost-all-of-the-time tendency. The only exceptions might be Google or Facebook, but your odds of getting in there with only introductory programming. Most big companies want interns that they can recruit.

Definitely put practical project/job experience above education. That'll help differentiate you.

When I took Csci 1901 (at the U of MN, see Matthew's resume), I—and the other 200 people in the class—had an end of term project that applied what we'd learned. I'm guessing you probably had to do the same, right? Mention your end of term class projects. It'll help make your in-class experience seem more concrete.

On a vaguely related note: if you have the chance, take anything Loren Terveen or Joe Konstan offer. The experience you'll gain from their classes will pay off in spades down the road.

Your resume is all about you. Successful sales is all about them. I'd focus less on what classes you're taking (of rather less intense interest to other people than it is to you) and more on what you can do for them. Give higher billing to the fact that you have Actual Shipping Products With Code You Wrote In Them. ("Code I wrote actually executes in a production environment! And it doesn't explode!") This is a signal of ability to complete tasks, maturity, and a bit of professionalism sadly lacking in most academically inclined programmers.

(And I say that as somebody who was 25 before he started using, e.g., source control and routinely writing things that successfully executed the first time I pronounced them "done".)

My 5 cents, but I don't really like the A, B, A-, etc. Focus on what you know and what you like.. and if you want to show your grades, just join them on another paper.

Just list the titles of the classes -- they are impressive enough. Put your GPA instead of your grades if it is good.

Emphasize your projects the most -- if you have a good GPA, you need to distinguish yourself b/c lots of people have good GPAs. So, startups and companies will be impressed that you do personal projects and show passion.

Elaborate on the exact role you played in each project. For example, for ImpishIdeas you say you "run" the community, but this is very vague. Did you found it and design the website? What specific things (briefly) did you do to "maneuver" it to a #1 site? Similarly with TactfulTokenizer -- after reading about it, I'm still unsure about your exact role, whether you were part of a larger team, etc. You may want a brief bulleted list of major things you did for each project, just so it doesn't become too wordy.

I would put your honors (which are great but lots of people have them) at the very bottom.

I'd also get rid of the "Languages" section (unless you're applying for an internship with unique language requirements). Instead, mention the technologies you used in the body of each of your projects. The problem with a "languages" section is that everyone will list a ton of languages, and it is unclear how well the person knows each of them (even if you say "highly skilled" or whatnot), thereby making it a useless section for differentiating candidates.

As someone who is currently reviewing many resumes for two internship positions at IBM, I can confirm that you've put too much emphasis on the classes you've taken (but you are in high school, so that's understandable). I took the liberty of highlighting the areas that I find interesting in your resume: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1733/slyshy.png

My advice would be to continue to expand that bottom section with further projects (the open source world is awesome for this).

Your CV is often the primary reference point in an interview. So, it makes sense to put a number of "conversational hooks" in it that you are prepared to tell a compelling (true) story about. If you have a series of mini stories prepared in your head, and you've written your CV in such a way that you're likely to get asked about them, then you're well prepared.