Akshay Phadké has spent the past decade in technology, from big tech to startups. He helped four resume strategies to win jobs to Microsoft.
Akshay Phadké, 32, has risen to the ranks in both big technology and startups over the past decade.
“I was aiming to work in such places with people who wanted to learn new things.
Webflow’s Seattle-based senior software engineer began his technology career with two consecutive internships with Erickson and a Masters degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Georgia Tech.
After graduating from his master’s degree in 2016, Phadké was hired full-time at Ericsson, working for Microsoft, B2B Saas Fintech Startup Vareto and Webflow.
In addition to the launch of offers from Microsoft, Phadké has also secured final on-site interview rounds on Meta, Amazon, Dropbox and Yelp, as well as job openings from 23andme and Wayfair.
However, the offer didn’t come easily.
He said there were “number of interviews” where the results were not his favor, and each was stabbed with rejections, especially when they reached the final stage of the interview loop. When Phadké got good news about his job offer, he felt “a shock that he had mixed with half-disbelief and relief, just like I just ran a marathon,” he said I did.
Four Ways to Make Your Resume Spotlight
This is the exact resume that helped Phadké win these wins, and the four options he felt helped him stand out from the other candidates.
Provided by Akshay Phadké
1. Focus on technical strengths narrowly
“Listing a lot of technology, even if someone is using it all, can hurt more than help,” he said.
“New graduates or early career candidates may tempt them to include more skills to make their resumes more competitive, but that opens up just by scrutiny. I will,” he said. “Tech companies are looking for engineers who have solved large, meaningful problems. These opportunities require time and effort to build. Therefore, for those with 5-7 years of experience, it is a good idea to know that The number of such projects is usually in one digit.”
If interviewers look into candidates’ capabilities, even if they name too many technologies, Phadké explained.
“An too low answer to questions about technology that you haven’t used recently is not used for technology that you haven’t used recently, especially when many candidates compete for the same role,” he said.
In his resume, Fadoke only mentions top technology (the one he used most and had the most technical knowledge) in each role, and self-rated skills from each technology expertise. Evaluated using a graphic indicating the level. 1 to 5.
“This is an attempt to demonstrate my confidence in a particular skill valued by me, and I acknowledged that there was more learning left over for other skills than those rated as low,” he said. said. “I wanted to make it clear that I didn’t assert professional level abilities for all the skills listed on my resume.”
Phadké highlighted his outstanding Apache Spark expertise in his account of his latest role. He said he stood out in Microsoft applications because it was one of the technologies the team was investing in.
When the recruitment team asked a deep-searched question about technology he had little experience, if he had no idea of the answer, Phadké was honest in advance. “It’s impossible to be an expert on everything, and being honest about not knowing the answer is better than speculation in my opinion,” he said.
2. Keep it concise with all resume elements
This same “less than” strategy provided fakke on his overall resume, and he kept it in a lean, one pager.
“Employment managers will devote 30 seconds to a minute to review each resume,” Fadoke said. “I wanted to ensure that my resume had created a powerful hook while conveying the most important information in that time frame.”
In addition to not adding too many technical details to achieve these goals, he uses 2-3 lines to explain each of his major projects and provided a hook.
“This has allowed me to generate curiosity and consistently secure technical screening interviews with hiring managers whom I wanted to know more about my job,” Phadké says. I did.
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3. It stands out visually
Even people with no graphic design skills can take steps to make their resume visually comfortable.
Phadké has included his past roles, school logos and university logos on his resume, creating a strong brand association. He also used custom SANS serif fonts over serif fonts to create a sophisticated, professional feel, adopting a palette of gray colors instead of black ones for a soft reading experience.
“I’ve never created a resume using Microsoft Word or text editing software,” Phadké said. “A resume created in this way is when most other people do that, especially if they use templates.”
Instead, he experimented with several software programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Latex and Figma to create his resume.
4. Clearly communicate responsibility and outcomes
Candidates may blend their achievements with those of their resume team. This makes it difficult to determine what work the recruiters and hiring teams actually did.
To avoid this, Phadké only listed the work his team did as individuals, not as collectively, and did it in simple terms without technical terms.
“Hiring managers are looking for engineers who can objectively communicate their results and clearly understand how their work is valued,” he said.
To demonstrate the full scope of the project area, Phadké ensured that his resume highlighted the project in a variety of areas of software engineering, spanning systems engineering, back-end web development and data engineering.
Phadké emphasized that by demonstrating the ability to adapt to new paradigms and technologies, employment managers are giving you the confidence to trust you with projects that are out of your comfort zone.
“Take-out for hiring managers was the ability to pick up new technology and succeed with them,” Fadoke said.
If you want to earn jobs on Big Tech and share your stories, please email Jane Zhang to janezhang@businessinsider.com.
