GR-1.7 Resume and portfolio

What this is and why it exists

A resume is read for about ten seconds before anyone decides whether to read it properly. Everything about how it should be written follows from that one fact.

It means one page. It means lines that say what you did and how much of it, in numbers. It means nothing invented, because every line is something you may be asked about. And it means a layout that survives being read fast, and being read by software before a person sees it at all.

The portfolio is the proof behind the page: one project that actually runs, with instructions a stranger can follow. One that works beats five listed by name, and it is usually the first thing a curious recruiter opens.

The vocabulary

• Section — a block of the resume: education, projects, skills, experience.
• Action line — a line that starts with what you did rather than what you were responsible for.
• Applicant tracking software — the system that parses resumes before a person reads them.
• Parser — the part of that system that turns your layout into text. It reads columns badly.
• README — the file that tells a stranger how to run your project.
• Ninety-second test — handing the page to someone and asking what you did.

The mental model

Begin with what you can honestly fill. Read a guide to the sections a resume can have, then list the ones you can fill today without stretching. That list is usually shorter than the template, and that is fine. A short honest page beats a padded long one every time, and padding is visible.

If you have no work history, the structure is different and someone has already solved it. Coursework, projects and labs go where jobs would otherwise sit, and they are written the same way jobs are. Draft one page from that shape. Then, and only then, watch how the same document is read on an Indian campus. The format expectations differ slightly and the reader has even less time. After the draft, not before — otherwise you write to a format instead of writing your record.

Now the edit that does the most work. Rewrite every line as an action with a number: what you built, how big it was, what changed. *Responsible for the database module* tells a reader nothing. *Built the schema and queries for a records system used by forty people, cutting lookup time from minutes to seconds* is evidence. The number is what makes it evidence rather than assertion.

Then make it machine-readable. Most large employers run resumes through parsing software first, and two-column layouts, tables and icons come out scrambled or vanish. Plain text in one column is the format that survives. This costs nothing visually that matters and it is the difference between being read and not being read.

The portfolio is one finished project online with a README a stranger can follow to run it. Not five repositories with no instructions. The README is most of the value, because a project nobody can start is a project nobody can assess.

Finally, run the only test that counts before someone who can hire you runs it. Give the page to two people for ninety seconds and ask them to tell you what you did. Whatever they cannot say back is what the page is failing to communicate — and it is almost never the thing you expected.

What you should now be able to explain or do

List the resume sections you can fill honestly, and leave out the rest. Write a first page from your coursework, projects and labs when there is no job history to list. Rewrite every line as an action with a number attached. Strip out tables, columns and icons so a parser can read it. Put one finished project online with a README a stranger can follow. Run the ninety-second test on two readers and fix whatever they could not tell you back.

Check yourself