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The Top Resumé Mistake I See, Plus the Best Resumé Advice I’ve Ever Received

Summary

In this episode of Developer Tea, host Jonathan Cottrell addresses developers navigating the job market, offering two core pieces of resume advice. He first shares the best advice he’s ever received: your resume is not a story. Its primary job is to get you in the door, not to narrate your entire career history. This means focusing on the needs of the recruiter or hiring manager who will spend only seconds scanning it, tailoring content to job requirements, and removing narrative elements that don’t directly demonstrate your capacity to deliver results.

Cottrell then discusses the biggest and most common mistake on resumes: failing to answer the question ‘what does this mean?’ for every line item. He emphasizes that assertions like ‘worked with Postgres to optimize queries’ are vague and don’t help you stand out. Instead, you should provide data and context that convey the meaning and impact of your work, such as quantifying performance improvements (e.g., ‘reduced query time by 70%’) and linking them to business outcomes (e.g., ‘increased signups’).

The episode provides tactical guidance on making each line on your resume informational and meaningful. Cottrell advises thinking from the perspective of the resume screener, who is comparing you against hundreds of other candidates. Adding specific, data-driven results provides ‘grip’ and helps your application rise above the noise. He also cautions against seeking feedback from people who know your personal story too well, as they may encourage you to keep irrelevant narrative details.

Ultimately, Cottrell argues that by removing storytelling fluff and ensuring every point clearly answers ‘what does this mean?’ with concrete outcomes, you will create a significantly stronger resume. While he can’t guarantee job market success, he asserts these are research-backed methods to improve your application’s effectiveness in getting you that crucial first interview.

Recommendations

Tools

  • Neo4j — A graph database sponsor mentioned in the episode. It is suggested as a solution for code burdened by joins and long query times, allowing you to model data as it exists in the real world. Useful for supply chains, fraud detection, real-time analytics, and generative AI.

Topic Timeline

  • 00:00:00 — Introduction and focus on job seekers — Jonathan Cottrell welcomes listeners and states the episode’s goal: to help developers find clarity in their careers, especially those on a job search. He notes the current difficulty of the job hunt and sets up the episode’s two main topics: the best resume advice he’s ever received and the number one mistake everyone makes on their resume.
  • 00:02:15 — The best piece of resume advice: Your resume is not a story — Cottrell shares the core advice: ‘Your resume is not a story.’ He explains that while humans connect through stories, a resume reviewer has limited time and mental bandwidth. The resume’s primary job is to get you in the door, not to tell your full narrative. This perspective shift helps you focus on what matters most to the audience: demonstrating you meet the job’s requirements.
  • 00:05:54 — Practical implications: Tailoring and audience perspective — Building on the ‘not a story’ advice, Cottrell discusses practical steps. He recommends tailoring your resume to the specific job posting to show you meet the qualifications, which greatly increases your chance of an interview. He also advises against seeking feedback from people who know your personal story well, as they might focus on narrative gaps irrelevant to a recruiter.
  • 00:10:16 — The biggest resume mistake: Failing to answer ‘What does this mean?’ — Cottrell reveals the most common mistake: resumes that don’t answer the question ‘What does this mean?’ for each line item. He stresses that vague assertions don’t help you stand out. The key is to provide data and context that convey the meaning and impact of your work, moving from rhetoric to measurable outcomes.
  • 00:11:33 — Examples of adding meaning with data and business impact — Using the example ‘worked with Postgres to optimize queries,’ Cottrell illustrates how to improve a line by adding quantifiable results and business impact, such as ‘reduced response time by 70% for a critical endpoint.’ He also discusses how to contextualize awards or leadership roles with additional information (e.g., competition size, retention rates) to provide credibility and stand out from the cohort of applicants.
  • 00:16:47 — Conclusion and actionable takeaways — Cottrell concludes by reiterating the two-part advice: cut out storytelling elements that don’t provide critical information about your ability to deliver results, and ensure every line answers ‘what does this mean?’ with concrete data and context. He states that implementing these changes will create a better, more effective resume, though he cautions he cannot guarantee results in the tough job market.

Episode Info

  • Podcast: Developer Tea
  • Author: Jonathan Cutrell
  • Category: Technology Business Careers Society & Culture
  • Published: 2024-04-25T07:00:00Z
  • Duration: 00:18:10

References

Podcast Info

Transcript

[00:00:00] Hey everyone, welcome to Developer Tea.

[00:00:14] My name is Jonathan Cottrell.

[00:00:15] My goal on this show is to help driven developers like you find clarity, perspective, and purpose

[00:00:19] in their careers.

[00:00:20] And if you are new on the job search, which is very common right now, the job hunt is

[00:00:27] very difficult as well.

[00:00:29] If you’re new on the job search, then you might have an old resume that’s sitting around

[00:00:36] that you haven’t done a lot of work on recently.

[00:00:39] Perhaps you got your last job a couple of years ago and it may have felt a lot more

[00:00:46] effortless compared to this round.

[00:00:49] And if you’re having trouble using that old resume, using whatever you’ve used before,

[00:00:56] or perhaps you haven’t even written a resume.

[00:00:57] Maybe you’re fresh out of college or you’re fresh on the job market.

[00:01:03] Maybe you’re fresh into this industry, into the tech industry.

[00:01:08] This episode is intended for you.

[00:01:10] And even if you have spent a lot of time in the tech industry, this episode is also for

[00:01:15] you.

[00:01:16] It’s really for anybody who has a resume.

[00:01:19] Because in today’s episode, we’re going to be talking about, first of all, the best advice

[00:01:24] I’ve ever gotten about resumes.

[00:01:27] I’ll share that piece of advice with you today.

[00:01:29] And the second thing we’re going to talk about is the number one mistake, the number one

[00:01:35] mistake that everyone makes on their resume at some point or another.

[00:01:39] If you’ve written a resume, you’ve almost certainly made this mistake.

[00:01:42] And it’s not just a clerical error.

[00:01:44] But if you fix this mistake, I can guarantee your resume will be better.

[00:01:48] I can’t guarantee what the results will be, but I can certainly guarantee that for the

[00:01:52] intended purpose for a resume, your resume will improve if you follow these two pieces

[00:01:57] of advice.

[00:01:58] I’d love to hear from people who decide to implement these two things.

[00:02:02] The first being a piece of advice, the second being a fix, a common error, a very common

[00:02:07] problem that I see in resumes that I myself have committed in my own resumes in the past.

[00:02:13] So first is the best piece of advice.

[00:02:15] The best piece of advice I’ve ever received about a resume, about writing resumes, about

[00:02:21] making my resume better.

[00:02:22] This piece of advice is so simple, but it has far reaching implications and it’s not

[00:02:27] explicit.

[00:02:28] It’s not a tactical piece of advice.

[00:02:30] It’s not saying, hey, you know, you need to change your font to some special font.

[00:02:35] You need to change the color of your bag.

[00:02:37] You know, it’s nothing about that.

[00:02:39] Instead, it’s about the content of the resume and really all of today’s episodes about the

[00:02:43] content of the resume.

[00:02:44] You can go other places to talk about formatting or, you know, about, you know, should I have

[00:02:50] an image on my resume?

[00:02:51] Should I include my physical address or not?

[00:02:53] That’s not what we’re talking about today.

[00:02:54] Instead, I want to give you this piece of advice that is far reaching.

[00:02:58] The piece of advice is very simple.

[00:02:59] Your resume is not a story.

[00:03:04] Your resume is not a story.

[00:03:07] Now, you may bristle at this a little bit because of course your resume contains parts

[00:03:12] of a story.

[00:03:14] It’s a pointer to your chronological history in work and in education.

[00:03:20] You may even include some things about yourself in there.

[00:03:23] You might include some of your interests.

[00:03:25] You may include some of your specific skills.

[00:03:27] You might include your hobbies.

[00:03:29] Your name is certainly on there, right?

[00:03:31] There’s lots of personal things that you include on a resume so it may feel like it’s time

[00:03:36] to tell a story.

[00:03:39] And this is very natural.

[00:03:40] It’s a human instinct to try to connect with others through stories and in fact stories

[00:03:45] are perhaps the most powerful rhetorical device that we have when we are communicating with

[00:03:51] another person.

[00:03:53] But this is where the problem comes in.

[00:03:56] We imagine that when we send our resume, we have somehow communicated directly to another

[00:04:01] person.

[00:04:03] The problem is that the person on the receiving end of the resumes are not tasked with listening

[00:04:09] and understanding a story.

[00:04:13] Thinking about a story takes up a lot of bandwidth.

[00:04:16] It takes up a lot of mental energy and instead the person who is reading your resume is probably

[00:04:22] only going to give it a few seconds worth to capture their attention.

[00:04:27] I want to be careful here when I say capture their attention because some people take that

[00:04:31] to mean I should make my resume stand out visually.

[00:04:34] I should somehow set myself apart from the rest of the group in some flashy way and that

[00:04:40] is not the message that I want you to understand.

[00:04:43] But this piece of advice instead is intended to help you focus on the things that matter

[00:04:49] the most.

[00:04:51] The things that matter the most to the audience of that resume.

[00:04:55] The primary and sometimes the only audience, that’s true, sometimes once you get past that

[00:05:02] first stage, nobody ever looks at your resume again.

[00:05:06] That’s possible.

[00:05:07] It’s possible that the second stage doesn’t even look at your resume for longer than two

[00:05:12] seconds.

[00:05:13] Once you get the initial interview, in the vast majority of cases, your resume no longer

[00:05:18] is the basis for conversation.

[00:05:21] This does not mean, hear me very clearly here, this does not mean to fabricate anything for

[00:05:27] your resume.

[00:05:28] It doesn’t mean that you should misrepresent or inflate the facts about your performance

[00:05:34] in a past role.

[00:05:35] You shouldn’t add roles that weren’t really real.

[00:05:38] And you should be prepared to speak to the things that are on your resume because of

[00:05:43] course it is in the hands of the people that you are applying to.

[00:05:48] But for the vast majority of job searches, the resume’s primary and sometimes the only

[00:05:54] job is to get you in the door.

[00:05:58] It is not to tell the story, it is not to represent all of the information about you

[00:06:02] from head to toe.

[00:06:04] As with many things, it is very beneficial for you to try to put yourself in the shoes

[00:06:11] of the person reviewing three or four or five hundred resumes for a given job position.

[00:06:17] What are the things that you care about in those shoes?

[00:06:21] You care about them meeting the requirements.

[00:06:24] So if you have two people, one meets all of the requirements and the other one is missing

[00:06:29] even just one of the requirements, the first one is much more likely to get passed along.

[00:06:35] Well the second one probably will get the automatic rejection letter.

[00:06:39] So while I’m not going to tell you to add a bunch of keywords to your resume if you

[00:06:43] don’t have actual experience with those things, what I will tell you is make sure that if

[00:06:48] you do have experience with a specific requirement on the job posting, make sure it goes into

[00:06:54] the resume.

[00:06:55] So as a bonus tip here, hopefully you can recognize that this is necessary, you should

[00:07:01] probably tailor your resume to the job posting that you’re looking at.

[00:07:06] This may seem like a ton of work and it’s not zero work, but the quality of your application,

[00:07:14] the likelihood that your application is going to be selected for a follow-up interview goes

[00:07:20] way up if you actually show that you meet the qualifications of the role.

[00:07:24] So you can see that there are some practical implications to this advice.

[00:07:29] Your resume is not your chance to tell your story.

[00:07:33] A good interview process will give you ample time to tell your story and you should take

[00:07:39] time to practice that.

[00:07:41] You’d be surprised how much of your own story and experiences you can forget.

[00:07:45] So it may be hard to recall a time when you actually did do that thing that the recruiter

[00:07:51] or the hiring manager asked you about, you just totally forgot about it.

[00:07:56] Take some time to prep for that conversation as well, but it should be entirely separate

[00:08:01] from your resume.

[00:08:03] You can use your resume as a background, a way of highlighting parts of your story, but

[00:08:10] if your resume is not representative of every story beat in your life, that’s fine.

[00:08:16] That’s not the job of the resume.

[00:08:18] As an additional piece of advice, when seeking feedback on your resume, recognize that the

[00:08:23] people who are closest to you do know your story.

[00:08:28] And so if you write your resume as a story, they will look at it as an opportunity to

[00:08:33] identify gaps, again, in the story.

[00:08:37] They’re unlikely to tell you to cut out parts that you both feel like are significant moments

[00:08:42] in your life, even if the recruiter does not care and never reads that part of your resume.

[00:08:48] We’re going to take a quick sponsor break and then we’re going to come back and talk

[00:08:51] about the biggest mistake that I’ve seen on resumes over and over.

[00:08:56] This episode of Developer T is sponsored by Neo4j.

[00:09:08] If your code is getting dragged down by joins and long query times, it’s very possible that

[00:09:13] the problem could be which type of database you’re using.

[00:09:17] And you could simplify it by using graphs.

[00:09:21] A graph database lets you model data the way it looks in the real world instead of forcing

[00:09:25] it into rows and columns.

[00:09:28] Stop asking relational databases to do more than they were made for.

[00:09:31] Graphs work well for use cases with lots of data connections like supply chains, fraud

[00:09:36] detection, real time analytics, and generative AI.

[00:09:40] Then with Neo4j, you can code in your favorite programming language and against any driver.

[00:09:44] Plus, it’s easy to integrate into your existing tech stack.

[00:09:48] People are solving some of the world’s biggest problems with graphs.

[00:09:51] Now it’s your turn.

[00:09:52] Visit neo4j.com slash developer to get started.

[00:09:55] That’s n-e-o-4, the number four, j.com slash developer, n-e-o-4-j.com slash developer.

[00:10:04] Thanks again to Neo4j for sponsoring today’s episode of Developer T.

[00:10:16] Now that you have the top piece of advice that I’ve received about resumes, don’t make

[00:10:20] them a story.

[00:10:22] I want to tell you the biggest mistake that people make in their resumes.

[00:10:27] The biggest mistake people make in their resumes is they forget to answer, what does this mean?

[00:10:34] What does this mean?

[00:10:36] On any given point in your resume, any given line, you should be able to answer that question.

[00:10:43] Specifically, the recruiter who is reading your resume, the person who is screening resumes,

[00:10:49] should be able to answer the question, what does this mean?

[00:10:54] More often than not, what does this mean is answered best by providing numbers in context.

[00:11:03] This is very tactical advice and it’s kind of rare for the show for me to give you tactical

[00:11:08] advice like this, but most of the time, your resume is going to improve if you can represent

[00:11:17] the meaning of a given assertion by sharing the data, and not sharing the data in its

[00:11:23] raw form, but instead sharing it in a way that explains the meaning.

[00:11:29] For example, if you’re a software engineer, you might have a line in your resume today

[00:11:33] that says, worked with Postgres to optimize queries.

[00:11:39] Now, the recruiter may generally know what this means that you have some experience working

[00:11:45] with Postgres, but what the recruiter is looking for is, how good are you at that?

[00:11:52] What level of experience do you have doing that?

[00:11:55] For two people who have that same line on their resume, which one does a better job?

[00:12:00] Assuming you’ve already met all of the base level of requirements, these are the points

[00:12:05] where your resume can stick out from the crowd.

[00:12:09] So if you optimized a particularly heavy query and you brought down the response time for

[00:12:16] a critical endpoint in your infrastructure by 70%, say that.

[00:12:22] And even better if you can explain what the business impact was of this particular bit

[00:12:27] of work.

[00:12:28] So if that reduction in query time led to an increase in signups that you can qualify

[00:12:36] as related to the work that you did, you have had a very clear business impact.

[00:12:42] This shows that, first of all, you are good enough at this to actually make an impact.

[00:12:46] And secondly, you’re communicating in terms that actually matter to the business.

[00:12:51] Another good example of this, imagine that you won some kind of award.

[00:12:56] Maybe it’s in a specific industry that the recruiter or the person screening your resume

[00:13:01] is not familiar with.

[00:13:03] Well, while the award itself does provide some kind of meaning, this person has been

[00:13:08] recognized by somebody, if you were to qualify that with, let’s say, the number of participants

[00:13:15] in that competition, or if you can explain that your peers, the other people who have

[00:13:21] won this award before, are well known.

[00:13:24] This helps provide more material, kind of more grip if you will, for the person who’s

[00:13:30] reading this to understand, to grasp what this particular line means.

[00:13:35] Again, an award might mean something, but you can add credibility by adding a little

[00:13:42] bit more information.

[00:13:45] Now that word is very important.

[00:13:46] We’ve been talking a lot about this recently on the show, information theory.

[00:13:50] If you are adding words that explain your skills or your strengths, these typically

[00:13:56] do not provide information that is more valuable than the next person.

[00:14:02] Think about it this way.

[00:14:03] Your resume does not stand alone.

[00:14:06] It is one of two or three or four hundred resumes that might be on the desk of the recruiter,

[00:14:11] the screener, the hiring manager.

[00:14:15] So you should consider yourself a part of that entire cohort.

[00:14:21] So if you are listing out that you know X, Y, and Z technology, while this may help you

[00:14:29] avoid getting cut early, particularly if those things are in the job description as requirements,

[00:14:37] in order to actually stand out from the rest of your cohort, the other people who may be

[00:14:42] hired for this role, you should be adding information.

[00:14:46] This means more than just what the other people have.

[00:14:51] Many managers, for example, have led a team of engineers.

[00:14:54] That is not particularly informational in the sense that it doesn’t provide anything

[00:14:59] new.

[00:15:01] But if you can show that you’ve led engineers to successful outcomes like promotions or

[00:15:06] you’ve retained all of your reports through rocky times at the company, those are actually

[00:15:12] informational pieces that might stand out from the rest of the crowd.

[00:15:17] Once again, for every bit of your resume, try to ask the question from the lens of the

[00:15:22] person who’s reading from your target audience, ask the question, what does this mean?

[00:15:29] You should be telling somebody what it means rather than making them figure it out.

[00:15:35] Don’t make someone imagine how good you are at something.

[00:15:38] Let them know exactly how good you are at something.

[00:15:41] Not with rhetoric, not with words, because those are imprecise, but instead with real

[00:15:46] outcomes, real data.

[00:15:48] As often as you can, try to express things through data points, specifically data points

[00:15:54] that are intended to convey meaning.

[00:15:57] As a last little bit here, we can kind of differentiate between data and meaning for

[00:16:01] a second.

[00:16:02] Data does not necessarily communicate to the person the underlying meaning.

[00:16:09] In other words, numbers don’t always communicate without you providing some context for what

[00:16:14] those numbers mean.

[00:16:15] People don’t have an easy time dealing with numbers in their raw form, especially if they’re

[00:16:20] very large or very small numbers.

[00:16:23] We may do another episode on how to communicate various magnitudes of numbers in ways that

[00:16:32] provide more meaning.

[00:16:34] The important takeaway here is to try to glean or provide as much meaning as you can for

[00:16:40] every line item, every assertion that you make in your resume.

[00:16:47] If you make these changes to your resume, I can almost guarantee that you will have

[00:16:51] a better resume coming out of that.

[00:16:53] I can’t guarantee anything about this job market right now, but what I do know is that

[00:16:58] these are the kind of research-backed ways to improve your resume right now.

[00:17:04] You don’t have to go and do much at all other than providing these two things.

[00:17:09] One, cut out the parts that are just the storytelling parts, the things that are not providing new

[00:17:16] information or critical information about your capacity to provide results.

[00:17:22] If you are having a hard time explaining the results of a given line item, it’s very likely

[00:17:28] that it is rhetorical, that it’s some kind of story item on your list, and you may consider

[00:17:33] removing it altogether.

[00:17:35] Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Developer T.

[00:17:38] Thank you again to Neo4j for sponsoring today’s episode.

[00:17:40] If your code is getting dragged down by endless joins and long query times, try simplifying

[00:17:45] the complexity with graphs.

[00:17:46] With Neo4j, you can code in your favorite programming language and against any driver.

[00:17:51] Go see what graphs can do for you at neo4j.com slash developer.

[00:17:55] That’s n-e-o-4-j dot com slash developer.

[00:18:01] Thanks so much for listening, and until next time, enjoy your tea.

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