Your Resume Isn't The Problem...

Key Takeaways

This video is going to be very focused. I'm not going to talk to you about learning new frameworks, grinding le code for six months, or blaming the market. I want to show you how to actually get more software engineering interviews because if you're not getting interviews, nothing else really matters. Now, most people think that their problem is skill level. In reality, the problem is that they don't know how hiring actually works. Interviews are not about discovering talent. They're about pattern matching. And once you understand that, everything completely changes. So let's start with the most important thing by far, which is positioning and branding. Now, this matters more than anything else that I'm going to talk about. And this is the most important thing and the highest leveraged possible activity that you need to spend your time on. Now, if a recruiter lands on your LinkedIn profile or opens your resume, they're not going to deeply analyze it. They're simply scanning it for about 5 to 10 seconds and asking one question. Does this person look like what I'm hiring for? That's it. Now, if the answer isn't immediately yes, then you're done. And that's why generalist profiles fail. If your LinkedIn headline says software engineer, full stack developer, Python, JavaScript, Java, C++, React, AWS, Docker, Kubernetes, machine learning, AI enthusiast, you're telling them nothing, right? You feel flexible, but to a recruiter, you feel unfocused and risky. You need to pick one lane, one role, one clear identity. Back-end engineer, front-end engineer, data engineer, mobile developer, doesn't matter. Whatever it is, you have to pick it and commit to it. Now, even if you technically could do other things, that doesn't help you get interviews. And almost every resume I've analyzed in the last 3 months has this mistake. Okay. Next, your LinkedIn headline should instantly tell me what you are, not what you might be, not what you're learning, what you are right now. So, if you can't describe yourself in one sentence, then you're not positioned correctly. Now, when recruiters scan applicants for jobs on LinkedIn, all they see is your photo, name, and headline. They have to click in if they want to get more details. So, if your headline sucks, you're eliminating yourself already. Now, the same thing applies to your resume. Most résumés fail because they try to cover everything someone has done instead of telling one coherent story. Your resume is not a biography. It's a marketing document for a specific role. So convince the reader that you are the best fit for one role, the one role that you're applying for. For example, your summary should be boring and obvious. If you think it sounds generic, that's probably fine. Now, passionate developer means nothing. Detail oriented self-starter means nothing. But a back-end engineer building APIs and data pipelines with Python and fast API, that tells me something. I can understand what skills you have and that will help you pass the ATS system. Now, your experience should be framed around outcomes and relevance, not taskless. You're not lying or exaggerating. You're choosing what you want to emphasize on the resume. So, if you're applying for back-end roles, I don't care that you tweak CSS or you helped with QA. I care that you worked with APIs, databases, systems, and production code. Now, we get to projects, right? And this is commonly misunderstood. Projects can help, but only if they're the right project for the role that you're positioning yourself for. Three strong relevant projects always beats 10 random projects. And honestly, most of the time I recommend just one or two. So, if your projects don't reinforce your target role, then they're noise and you probably want to remove them from your resume. Now, if you fix nothing else, fix this, right? Clear positioning alone can double or triple your response rate because now you actually look like someone that a company could hire. Now, this is the number one thing that I focus on with my students in Devaunch, and I can't tell you how much of a difference it actually makes. Now, if you're interested to work with me one-on-one to help with something like this, as well as passing the interview and every other stage of landing a software development job, consider applying from the link below. Okay. Now, let's talk about the application strategy. Because once we have the positioning done and a good resume and you know a good LinkedIn, a lot of people completely fail this phase and they either don't have enough volume or they're completely wrong with the type of jobs they're applying to. Now there is this idea that the solution is just to apply to more jobs, right? People send out hundreds of applications and they hear nothing back and they assume that they just need to send out hundreds more. Now that's not a strategy. That's literally just a desperation at scale. Now the goal is not the maximum volume. The goal is targeted volume. You want to consistently apply to roles where you're a strong match and you have to use a profile that was designed for that specific role. If you're applying to everything, you're essentially forcing your resume to be generic, which is killing your positioning, right? So instead, you should be applying within one lane. Same role, similar tech stack, similar type of company. That's how your profile starts to actually resonate. So when possible, you obviously want to apply directly on the company website, not just through oneclick apply buttons that everybody's using. And then, and this is probably the most important part, you follow up. Okay? A short LinkedIn message to a recruiter or hiring manager does more than people realize. A quick email can actually get you noticed. And I know this because I've hired a lot of people. And sometimes you honestly just miss a profile. And a quick follow-up message is enough to at least get an eyeball on the resume. And to be honest, that's what you're aiming for. You just want someone to look. Now, you don't need to pitch your life story. Just say you applied. You know what role you're targeting. Maybe you put the link. and one concrete reason why you think you'd be a good fit. That alone puts you ahead of 99% of applicants because most people will say they do this, but they simply don't. Now, here's the deal. Most people are not going to reply to you, right, if you're following up with them on LinkedIn. That's fine because you only need one reply for this to work out for you. One response can turn into an interview, and one interview can literally change the entire trajectory of your career. Now, I actually had one student who took this way further than what we were saying, and he sent personalized video messages on LinkedIn, and he got over a 50% response rate because he was actually mentioning the person's name, the company, and literally sitting there filming like a 30, 45 second long video, and there you go, 50% response. Like, that's insane. You know how many interviews he got from that? It was crazy. Okay, so beyond that, I also suggest that you have a small number of ré versions ready. Not 20, just two or three different versions and each one aligned to a specific role type. So this way you can swap them based on the job that you're applying to instead of rewriting everything from scratch every single time. This is how you can build a repeatable system instead of just randomly applying and hoping. And the last piece here is scheduling and assessments, right? And this is where a lot of people are quietly losing when it comes to landing interviews. Now, when you get an online assessment or a take-home, speed matters more than a lot of people think. The longer you wait, the worse it feels. Anxiety builds up, motivation drops, and suddenly a 2-hour task takes 2 weeks or it just never gets done. I know countless people that have received assessments for top tech companies and they just never completed them. So, if you get an assessment, you should aim to start it right away. So maybe the next day, you know, a day after that, not because you're rushing, but because momentum is everything in job search and companies can and will move quickly. Now, you also need a basic weekly structure. Applications and outreach on specific days, prep and assessments on specific days. You don't need a perfect schedule, but some kind of consistency and structure is going to keep you focused, especially because this can take a long time, and it's really easy to procrastinate. Now, one important thing here is to stop waiting until you feel ready to apply. Just apply right away. Prep in parallel. Learn the skills that you need because interviews create urgency and urgency creates focus. Most people do this backwards and they end up overpreparing in isolation without ever getting any interviews. Now, if you put all of this together, clear positioning, targeted applications, and fast execution on assessments, you're going to drastically increase the number of interviews that you get. It's not a guarantee. There's no shortcuts here. This is just leverage, right? Using your time effectively. Now, of course, this also doesn't cover actually passing the interviews and negotiating the offer, but I just wanted to make a short video here to at least help you get one step closer. If you got one piece of advice or one tip from this video, that was my goal. Now, if you've done this and it's still not working for you, or if you want to avoid just spending months wasting time and figuring out the perfect strategy, you may want to consider applying to Devaunch. Now, we work one-on-one with all of our students to take care of every part of the interview process. We have a senior technical recruiter who will redo your resume, ex Google, Amazon, and Microsoft employees that will prepare you for interviews with mock interviews, system design, all of that kind of stuff, and systems so that it's not a matter of if, but simply a matter of when you land your next role. You can apply from the link below and see if you'd be a good fit. Right now, we've worked with over 200 students. We've had some fantastic results, and I know this can help you again if it's not already working for you right now. So, with that said, guys, that's all I had for this video. Any other tips you have for people, leave them in the comments down below. I know it's frustrating. I know the market's not great. It is possible. It just does require a little bit of effort. And fortunately for you, most people are not willing to put the effort in. So, if you are, you do have an advantage over a lot of other candidates. [music]