When a lot of students write out their technical resume for the first time, they either write vague bullet points or write only about the technical aspect of their project. Examples include:
- “Wrote production-level code”
- “Built an app”
- “Programmed game in Java”
- “Built a web-app using React for frontend and used MongoDB for backend”
- “Implemented REST API using DynamoDB, Python, and Serverless”
Is this something you do? Unfortunately, these bullets don’t give employers enough information to decide if this applicant would be a strong technical candidate. Recruiters are looking for someone who: a) can code, b) can communicate and work effectively with teams and c) is driven by impact.
Writing Strong Bullet Points About Software Projects
When writing about an internship or project, there are 3 components that will impress the recruiter:
What Did You Build
Students usually are involved in building a Web-App, Mobile-App, API, Dashboard, etc. However, the “what” you built should be more than just “Mobile-App” or “Dashboard”. The bullets should include the specific details about the product you built.
Here is an example:
“Developed a mobile app to connect doctors and patients during rehabilitation to optimize surgical outcomes.”
In the above bullet point, the bullet point gives specific details as to “what” the mobile app does.
Why Did You Build
Most software projects automate tasks so they save time or cost or both. You can further strengthen the bullet point by talking about what the impact of your work is, perhaps how many developers/clients your code impacts.
- Time: How much developer time did you save? How much client time did you save?
- Cost: How much infrastructure cost did you save for your company? How much money did you save for your client(s)?
- Usage: How many developers use your project? How many clients use your project?
- Magnitude of Work: How many lines of code did you write? How much data does your project process? How many endpoints did you build in the API? How many unit tests did you write? What was the coverage?
Here is an example:
“Reduced pipeline development time from weeks to days for 10+ teams to aggregate supply and demand signals for pricing.”
This bullet quantifies how much time was saved and is further strengthened by including how many teams are impacted by this.
How Did You Build It?
The “How” bullet point is more than just the technical stack they used to build their project. It should also portray they can work/communicate well with other people.
- What programming languages did you use? (Java, Python, JavaScript, C++)
- What technologies did you use? (React, AWS, Azure, Django)
- How many developers did you collaborate with?
- How many product manager/clients did you work with?
Here is an example:
“Collaborated with 4 engineers to build a Texas RoboCamp attended by 50+ high school students annually.”
This bullet includes how many people the student worked with and the number of people this product had an impact on.
Examples
Strong Bullet Point #1
“Built Waves, a mobile app for cancer and mental illness patients that uses music therapy to assist in treatments.”
Strong Bullet Point #2
“Created a forum web application that allows over 40,000 students to gain visibility on shared issues from student leaders.”
Strong Bullet Point #3
“Developed an NLP summarization algorithm that condensed ESPN articles of 4 pages to less than 4 sentences.”
Strong Bullet Point #4
“Collaborated with a UI/UX designer on Figma and with a backend team via Git to reliably deliver stakeholders’ feature requests.”
Strong Bullet Point #5
“Conducted research with 10 nurses and robotics team to ideate UX of Moxi delivering items via mobile app for 3 hospitals.”
Writing Strong Bullets & Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs)
Many students sign Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) as part of internships that prevent them from talking too much detail about the work they did in the role. We suggest talking to someone at the company (your supervisor or mentor) and discussing what type of information you can disclose in your resume.
Here is a good resource on how to write strong bullet points without violating an NDA: Resume vs Non-Disclosure Agreement
Applicant Tracking Systems
Many companies that hire students for technical internships and full time roles use Applicant Track Systems (ATS) to collect use to collect, rank, sort and review resumes before an actual recruiter or hiring manager does. Make sure you check out our tips and tricks to create an ATS-friendly resume here: