Currently, I am a Software Engineer.
After getting turned away multiple times, I decided to do an experiment to see if recruiters actually read resumes (they don't).
Originally, this resume was fairly standard and I made up some bullet points that sound real. Albeit mostly fluff and buzzwords. The only strange part was that all of the hyperlinks rick roll you.
With that resume, I got a 90% callback rate - companies included Notion, ApartmentList, Quizlet, Outschool, LiveRamp, AirBnB, and Blend.
Fair, maybe they just didn't click any links but read the bullets and saw what they liked.
I changed some bullets and adjusted my summary:
Experienced software engineer with a background of building scalable systems in the fintech, health, and adult entertainment industries.
Team coffee maker - ensured team of 6 was fully caffeinated with Antarctican coffee beans ground to 14 nm particles
Connected with Reid Hoffman on LinkedIn
Organized team bonding through company potato sack race resulting in increased team bonding and cohesity
Spearheaded Microsofters 4 Trump company rally
and my personal favorite:
Phi Beta Phi - fraternity record for most vodka shots in one night
No way I get calls back with this right? Wrong.
Again, 90% call back rate - companies included Reddit (woo!), AirTable, Dropbox, Bolt, Robinhood, Mux, Solv, Grubhub, and Scale.ai (they actually read it!)
With that, I made the shown resume and began applying. Atlassian responded within an hour. Others that fell for this resume include: Wattpad, Github (nice!), Zynga, and Carta.
My takeaways from this experiment is that applying for Software Engineering positions is very similar to the golden rule of Tinder:
1 Work at FAANG
2 Don't not work at FAANG
And if you don't believe me, you can copy the resume, change up the names, dates, etc. and try for yourself.
Will update this as more companies reply back.
