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Comment by japesinator | Hacker News Reader

Piggybacking off of this, if anyone would be so kind as to give me their opinion on my resume at http://writes.co.de/resume.pdf, I would be very appreciative. For what it's worth, I'm looking for an internship over the summer

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Blanket disclaimer: the opinions below are from a stranger on the internet, filter according to your own judgement

* The colored bits and the typesetting of your name are on the whimsical side of resume style. Probably okay if you're applying to tech companies, but consider a more traditional layout if you apply to a more traditional company (eg bank, consulting firm)

* In 'experience' and 'projects', take care to use active language wherever possible and highlight what you accomplished, not just what you focused on. Ingersoll and Katie School could use revision in particular, the others look pretty on-target

* What sort of CS independent study and research have you done at Illinois State? You have the page space to be more specific, and can tailor this to the job you're applying to. Similar for Bloomington Central: consider if you can make "focus on mathematics and the sciences" more specific.

* Stanford: what about Cryptography from Dan Boneh? Did you complete the course? Did you receive a certificate or ranking?

* You might consider revising "interests" and "programming" into one section "skills" or "expertise". Narrow these to match the job.

* Like others have said, I am not a big fan of the 'Student, Hacker, Adventurer' tagline.

It seems quite attractive overall, but I think the dark background header and the partially colored text are a little gratuitous. What matters in a resume is the content -- the experience and skills -- not the title or the headings. I would consider moving the emphasis away from the headings and title to the actual content as much as possible.

Also, it is odd that the job experience descriptions are italicized where the education and projects descriptions are not.

Finally, (and you may know this already, but I am just mentioning it for completeness' sake), you should adjust your resume depending on the position you're seeking. So for instance if you are looking for an internship at a company that is not very interested in functional programming, you might want to change or reorder your interests, as well as reword the descriptions if needed.

The colors are kind of odd, I would just go without them, and I would remove "hacker" from the title as that term has become meaningless and outworn to most technical people, but is still threatening to technically illiterate people. Other than that It looks great.

Nice and neat but I'd still include some detail about what your passions are and a little bit more about yourself. The list of interests is too packed and nothing lets me know why you dig these particular areas. Overall it feels high quality and is a lot better than a lot of resumes I've seen from developers with years in the field. Good luck with your search!

Definitely a bit on the whimsical side but has a lot of interesting stuff I respect. It'd work on me, but maybe not on a lot of people who might hire you - though that may act as a good filter for your sake. I'm not sure.

A agree with the post below about the adventurer bit though. It makes the rest a bit more over the top. I also agree with the posts about the colours.

> Student, Hacker, Adventurer

Does text like this really sell "you" to people? I find them quite pretentious-ish.

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