Chapter 4: Writing a great resume

Your resume is your first contact with a founder, hiring manager or recruiter. And while it’s not the end-all-be-all of your application, it’s important to make a good first impression.

Format your resume

While we’ve seen lots of resume formats that work, we recommend a standard template like this one . In particular, we like:

• The single-page format. The reader often won’t get to the second page, so do your best to keep it succinct and highlight your impactful work.
• Clear chronological order. Shows skills development and progression within and across companies.
• Putting relevant experience first. We only recommend putting education first if you’re 1.) a new grad, 2.) don’t have a lot of relevant experience, and 3.) your degree is related to the role.

Summarize each position

For each position on your resume, be sure to cover WHAT, HOW and IMPACT.

• What did you work on??

Assume that recruiters and hiring managers don’t know much about your last company or role. So provide a brief description about the product line or initiative, so they can find you the right role or team.

• How did you get your work done??

With each position, be sure to include technologies you used — programming languages, frameworks, libraries, etc. Do not dump them all into one big “Technology” section at the bottom of your resume. Technology is very contextual and time-specific: my SOAP/XML-RPC work at Salesforce made sense 20 years ago, but it makes no sense for a modern web stack today.

Also, provide team size and departments you worked with. It’s useful for a hiring manager to know if you’ve successfully worked cross-functionally — with product, designers, ops, and more.

• What impact did you have??

Share your impact on the business — growth numbers, cost savings, sales increase, marketing distribution. This shows you’ve been given responsibility — and delivered — to benefit the business.

Clean it up

Lastly, do some spring cleaning. Remove side projects that don’t necessarily match the job, especially if there are more recent examples on your resume.

For example, if you’re a lead of a team in your current role, having leadership roles from 10+ years ago in college isn’t as relevant. And trim down each position to 3-4 bullet points, maximum. It makes it easier for the recruiter/hiring manager to read it all, and shows you can be concise and direct.

Once you have that resume cleaned up and ready to go, don't forget to actually apply! Send out that resume – with a short, personalized message about why you're excited to work at that company. You got this!

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If you want additional feedback on your resume and?Work at a Startup ?profile – which is what YC hiring managers/founders see when you apply to roles at their companies – you can join an upcoming live event, hosted by Y Combinator :?

https://www.ycombinator.com/calendar