How to Prepare a Strong Tech Resume: Tips and Step-By-Step Guide from a Recruiter

Step-by-step guide on how to focus your resume on what recruiters actually notice first: clarity, structure, and relevance.

If you're trying to land a tech job (abroad), your resume is likely the first impression a recruiter will have of you. In most cases, they’ll only spend a few seconds on it before deciding whether to read more closely. That’s not a lot of time, so you want those first few seconds to count.

This is what I also heard from Giovanni Di Felice, Global Head of Talent Acquisition at Statista. He and his teams review hundreds of resumes from software engineers every month, and many of them run into the same issue: they apply to dozens of roles but don’t make it through. Sometimes, it is because not all of them are open to relocation. But other times, it’s the resume that gets in the way.

While exchanging a couple of words with him, I’ve noticed we tend to give exactly the same advice over and over again. It’s usually pretty simple and consistent: a strong tech resume relies more on clarity, structure, and focus than on design or clever wording.

Your LinkedIn profile is just as valuable as your resume, but it’s a different game you need to play for each

I recently published, along with Eli Gündüz, Principal Tech Recruiter at Atlassian and a freelance tech career coach, a set of recommendations for readers of The Global Move who want to optimize their LinkedIn profile. The primary point of that article is that you need to prepare your LinkedIn so that recruiters can find you. This comes after Anna, a friend and hiring executive, told me that the recruiting team she works with actively looks for about 80% of tech jobs.

But the guide I’m writing here is about your resume, not your LinkedIn. These two job-seeking assets exist in different formats and places. But, in any case, you should definitely read Eli's suggestions and stock up on both of them.

As a recruiter myself, I frequently host resume review sessions for The Global Move community. In this guide, I’ll go over what I usually suggest to candidates when we review their resumes alongside each other. These are tips that can help your resume come across more clearly, especially if you’re applying from abroad.

Step #1: Start with the right format and a classic design, because I need to know about you quickly enough

Let’s start with the basics. Your resume needs to be clean, consistent, and easy to follow. Choose a layout that lets recruiters find what they’re looking for quickly. That means clear headings, readable fonts, proper spacing, and a single-column structure. Stick to simple and clean design. Save it as a PDF. Also, format it in a single column.

Make sure that your resume allows you to highlight these two items:

1. Your work experience

2. The languages and technologies you’re proficient in

With those two items, recruiters be able to check if you’re technically fit for the role and also be able to grasp your seniority and how long you stay at jobs.

Make sure your name, email, and links like your GitHub (only if it’s not empty! If not, just skip it) or personal website are right at the top. This is one of the first things they might look for. If a recruiter has to scroll or search for your contact information, that already slows down your resume screening.

Also, make sure you list the following, if they apply:

• Where you’re based in (which is the polite way of saying “where you live”!)

• If you’re open to relocation, mention it

• If you’ve been working remotely, also mention it, because recruiters will be able to tell you’re already set up to work remotely. And remember that landing a well-paying remote job is one of the tactics I recommend you can use to relocate.

• You can include all these three in the summary, which I’ll talk about right away

If you're using a template, check that it doesn’t hide important details in fancy formatting. I won’t go hunting for your GitHub link in a shaded box or sidebar. Place things where recruiters expect to find them.

Here are some basic, well-formatted and free resume templates:

• This Google Docs resume template by Gergley Orosz from the Pragmatic Engineer.

• When you create your first resume, the FlowCV resume builder, which I recommend, is free.

• Resume Yay, created by Oras Al-Kubaisi, a software engineer with over 20 years of experience and my sparring partner for the article debunking the central myth around the ATS.

Step #2: Write a short, honest summary

Right at the top, add a short paragraph that helps me understand where you are and what type of role you're aiming for. Maybe you’re a backend engineer looking to move into fintech. Maybe you’re planning to relocate to San Francisco or Amsterdam. If you're transitioning into DevOps after a few years in QA, that's also useful. A short summary helps me understand your background and your goals quickly. It also sets the tone for everything that follows.

Giovanni from Statista recommends one or two catchy lines that are dense in information and are written in a friendly, conversational tone, such as:

• Passionate about x, y, z, I am an Android Developer with n years of experience and a deep interest in a, b, c

• Hi, my name is Paula/Jake and I am keen on anything QA. After focusing for x years on y, I am ready to embark on a new adventure in z.

• Engineering Manager with a background in x, I love building products that customers love. Meet me at the intersection of x, y and z.

In some cases, it also helps to put a stronger focus on your core technical skills. This gives recruiters a quick way to check if your tech stack aligns with what they’re hiring for. I’ll get again into this right below. Personally, it’s the first thing I look for. If I’m hiring for a Python role, this kind of detail helps me decide almost immediately whether to keep reading.

Extra advice: Don't treat the summary like a cover letter. Focus on being straightforward.

Source: imgur.com

Step #3: List the right skills and technologies in order of relevance

This section gets a quick scan, so make it easy to read. List the programming languages, frameworks, tools, and platforms you know and actually use. If you write Python scripts every day, that should be up top. If you once touched Ruby in a bootcamp and haven’t used it since, it doesn’t belong here.

Add structure to your skills. Group them by category (e.g. Languages, Frameworks, Databases). You can even include a few niche tools or libraries—these sometimes help you get picked up in specific searches.

Also, go beyond simply naming tools. A recruiter might see “PostgreSQL”, but what matters is how you used it. Did you design a schema? Tune queries? Handle migrations? If your experience with React was limited to fixing bugs on an inherited frontend, be honest about it. This gives more weight to what’s listed.

List the technologies, or weave them in

Gergely Orosz, the software developer who came up with the trimodal compensation theory and who runs The Pragmatic Engineer, says that you should list the technologies on the first page. I agree with his take. A separate section for “languages and technologies” on the first page of your resume is one of his best pieces of advice.

He says that, in this section, list out areas you are proficient with. The hiring manager will assume you know these things well enough if you list them, so don't bother stating your level of expertise. He also says that you can weave the technologies into the role descriptions.

These are two examples I took from a 2020 blog he wrote for Stack Overflow:

And, mention relevant soft skills through your experience

Recruiters also value soft skills like leadership, communication, or teamwork. The best way to show them is through real examples, like mentoring junior developers or leading a small project team. Avoid listing soft skills in a separate section without context.

Step #4: Describe experience with context, impact, and successes

This is the core of your resume. Start with your most recent job and go backwards. But most importantly, you need to provide some context. For each job, try to answer these questions:

• What kind of company was it? (e.g. e-commerce platform, B2B SaaS, fintech startup)

• What kind of team did you work with? (e.g. 3-person backend team, cross-functional squad of 12)

• What did you actually do?

• And what matters most: what came out of your work?

For example: “Migrated legacy services from a monolithic Node.js app to microservices on AWS. Led the design of an internal API that helped reduce duplicate code and cut page load times by 40%”. One candidate I reviewed noted they had 300+ five-star ratings on internal IT tickets. That kind of information says more than any generic list of tasks.

If you can’t attach exact numbers, that’s fine. Say what changed as a result of your work. Did you improve performance? Save costs? Simplify deployments? For example, you can include something like this: “Improved internal tools used daily by 50+ engineers”. Even small outcomes help me understand how your work contributed to the team.

Step #5: Keep the structure tight

Make sure your strongest experiences come first and stand out. If you're applying for a backend job, your three years at a digital agency doing backend work should take priority over a mobile internship you did five years ago. Stick to reverse chronological order (most recent first), but within that, focus on the roles that match the direction you’re going.

You don’t need to include every job you’ve ever had. If you worked as a cashier at 18 and you’re now applying as a software engineer at 30, leave it out. Stick to roles that show your path into tech or reflect the skills you're using now.

Here, again, some more recommendations shared by Giovanni from Statista. For each job, start with a short description of your role and team. Then highlight three or four contributions that had a real impact. Don't make a long list of bullets with equal weight. A few clear examples are more useful than a packed section that’s hard to scan. Also, remember that information about team setup and responsibilities, especially for certain roles, is just as important as numerical indications of impact. Particularly for leadership positions, it is crucial to highlight the size and structure of your team and provide some basic information about collaboration with other functions within the company.

Step #6: Education matters, but don't overload it

If you have a CS degree or went to a bootcamp, mention it. If you’re self-taught, say so. But don’t use this section to retell your academic life. A single line is enough: “BS in Computer Science, University of X (2017)” or “Full-Stack Web Dev Bootcamp, Le Wagon, Paris (2022)”.

No need to list your GPA, thesis topic, or every course you took. And definitely don’t include things like your high school or that online course you didn’t finish unless it directly relates to the position.

Source: imgur.com

Step #7: Include personal projects or open-source work (when relevant)

These can be valuable, especially if you're early in your career or switching fields. But present them like any other experience. Don’t drop a GitHub link and hope for the best.

Instead, include a line or two explaining what the project is, what you built, and why it matters. For example: “Built a personal finance app in Django with 300+ monthly users. Integrated Plaid API for syncing bank accounts”.

If the project is no longer active, that’s fine. But if it’s a basic to-do app you followed a tutorial for, it’s better to leave it out. The same goes for hobbies. Unless they clearly relate to the role (e.g. open-source maintainer, hackathon organizer), there’s no need to include them.

Step #8: Customize your resume to the position

It’s not realistic to rewrite your resume for every role. But for jobs you really want, it makes sense to tweak the summary or move certain skills to the top.

For example, if a job ad mentions Kubernetes five times and you’ve been using it for two years, don’t bury that at the end of your resume. Move them up so they’re seen right away. The more you align with what recruiters are asking for, the more likely you are to pass the initial screening.

Also, just to clear up a common misconception: at most tech companies, your resume will be reviewed by a human. I know some websites claim that resumes get automatically rejected by applicant tracking systems (ATS). That’s not the case in tech hiring. These tools help organise applications, but you shouldn’t try getting “past” them or such. So instead of worrying about tricks or shenanigans, focus on making your resume easy to read and relevant to the role.

But you should still adapt your resume to the position you’re trying to fill. If you read the article I linked to just above, you’ll be able to check a video of how an ATS works, and this step will make more sense than ever before.

Step #9: Be clear about your timeline

As a recruiter, there are a few things I always look for in the work history section. I check how long you stayed in each role, how much time you’ve spent doing the kind of work I’m hiring for, and how your job titles evolved over time.

Here’s something candidates often don’t realize: when someone moves up a level while switching companies, I usually pay close attention to whether that jump matches their skills. It’s common for people to use job changes as a way to move up in seniority, but not every promotion reflects a real change in experience. That’s not a bad thing, but I do look for signs that explain how you made that leap.

Gaps in your resume are also fine. If you took a sabbatical, relocated, or freelanced for a while, just mention it simply. A short note like “Freelancing during relocation to Germany” can clear up any confusion.

Step #10: You’re done now, so read some final advice

If you want to relocate with a job, remember you don’t need a fancy resume design or a long list of achievements to catch a recruiter’s attention. But you do need one that tells a clear story. Help me understand what you’ve done, what you’re good at, and where you want to go next. That alone puts you ahead of most applicants. I’ve seen plenty of resumes with modest experience but great structure, and they always catch my eye.

Some months ago, I wrote an article for The Global Move detailing Why Your Resume Is Ignored (and How to Fix It). Many tips that I listed here are listed there, although from an “avoid this” angle. If you prefer other formats to a step-by-step guide, you can head over there and get started.

To stay informed about the latest tips and resources for relocation or getting a job, you can subscribe to this newsletter, The Global Move, so you don’t miss my updates! Also, be on the lookout for the next resume review session, where we can go through these steps together.