How should a CS student present his technical skills in a resume?

Question

I've decided to join my college's co-op program and I'm going to start applying for jobs probably in October. I'm a bit unsure as to what I'm supposed to include in the "technical skills" section of my resume. I was told that since I lack experience, I should use a combination (highlight skills and education rather than experience) format resume. Unfortunately, I've been coding for only two years and I don't have cool or huge projects to show my potential employer. What I have built are small tools (command line and GUI) that I use personally. I know only a bit about lots of things (Linux, Windows, Java, C, Python, SQL, git) because when I discovered my passion for programming, I started reading and learning as much as I could.

My question now is, how would you like me to present these skills in my resume? Am I supposed to include as many buzzwords as possible? Would you like me to talk about those small tools that I've made? Or would it be better if I emphasize what I've learned in school?

Answer 1

First, any time you are preparing a resume remember the cardinal rule:

Always be honest

The quickest way to get into trouble is to "fudge" things on your resume. I've interviewed people before who put SQL Server expert on their resume, and they couldn't tell me what an IDENTITY column was.

Secondly, employers should realize that you are just coming out of school, so they aren't going to expect you to have working experience other than possibly an internship, etc. So it's ok to list the technologies you have worked with, such as C++, JAVA, etc. while you are in school, but clarify it (put it under a heading like "Languages learned during college" or something like that to make sure it's clear.

TIPS

If you worked on any exciting projects during your college experience (hopefully the answer is yes) then I think it's good to list these on your resume as well. For example, one of the neatest projects I worked on in college was writing an interpreter for a PDP-11. This was a semester long project, and we did it in C. I remember spending time discussing this in my interviews and being quite excited about it, which brings up another point:

Be passionate about the stuff you've done. When you are in the interview, you want to convey a sense that you really enjoy programming. Don't fake it, but hopefully like most folks here this will come completely naturally.

Finally, anything interesting you've done outside of school as it relates to coding is always good to mention, since it shows you care more about coding than just getting a CS degree and nice salary. Examples include open source projects, programming contests, such as ACM or TopCoder, etc.

Also, don't forget about writing a nice cover letter to any prospective employer.

Joel has a really fantastic article on this topic, you may want to check it out.

Answer 2

I've blogged about resumes before, and to extend that for a college student, here goes:

• Buzzwords: Avoid them. HR requires them, but good companies (and good interviewers) see right past them.
• Include your co-op as 'experience'. Make sure to put (Co-Op) in parentheses next to the company name, but it is experience.
• Include the courses you took for your major (until you have more experience)
• Include all personal projects (under the heading of 'Personal Projects'); talk about those small tools there
• Have a great cover letter.