Joshua Paling

What I look for in a resume

I’ve been experimenting with having GPT help me grade resumes. This is what I’m looking for.

Two modes of hiring

Before we go further…

Sometimes, there’s one role to fill. In that case, the resume must match the role closely. Other times, there’s many roles to fill. In that case, you want to highlight candidates who match the role closely, but also flag any very strong candidates for consideration in other roles.

We’re in the second mode of hiring.

What I look for at all levels

Specific, not generic

A good heuristic is, if someone else in a similar position (eg same level, same tech) replaces your name with theirs - would it now be 100% lies? How many edits would it take for them to make it truthful for themselves?

Example - describing specific achievements

v1. Collaborated across teams to build dynamic, responsive websites.

🔴 Bad. Can be copied to any resume and hold true.

v2. Collaborated across teams to optimise page loading, creating measurable impact on performance.

🟠 Only slightly better. Can be copied to most resumes and hold true.

v3. Reduced checkout page load time by 40%, through lazy-loading route-level components for multiple payment methods and removing third-party script bloat. Partnered with Marketing to balance customer performance with analytics requirements.

🟢 Good. Almost certainly a lie if copied to anyone else’s resume.

Signal, not noise

Focus on what makes you stand out, that’s relevant for the role you’re applying for.

Example - describing specific skills

v1. Skills: React.JS, Angular 2-16 Versions, SCSS, MUI, Bootstrap, CSS, Tailwind CSS, TypeScript, HTML5, jQuery, Responsive Web Design, Redux, Router, JSON, Webpack, AngularJS, Sass, REST API, React, Ionic Framework, Jest, XML, JavaScript library, Next.JS, Postman, Vite.

🔴 Bad. Are they all relevant for the role you’re applying for? Do you really still use jQuery regularly?

v2. Skills: React, Redux. Strong testing focus using Jest, React Testing Library, and Cypress. Deep TypeScript experience, including advanced language features and building robust, scalable type systems.

🟢 Good. Focus on what you personally are best at, what’s the core of the stack, and what differentiates you from other engineers.

Companies

If someone has worked at AWS, Facebook, etc - that’s a sign they’ve passed a competitive interview process and are talented.

Experience in low-bureaucracy, high-paced start ups and scale ups is also a good signal.

If they’ve only ever worked in government roles, big banks, or large consultancies, they may not be the best cultural fit for us.

No Errors!

If there’s a typo in your resume, or your portfolio links to an expired domain, I’ll assume you don’t test well.

What I look for at each level

At all levels, we want to identify people who stand out as talented, ambitious, and hard-working. And, we want people who take initiative - who identify opportunities and push them forward, rather than just completing tickets assigned to them.

Below are the tell-tale signs of such people, at each level.

Juniors

In priority order:

  1. Projects, projects, projects. Put them live on the web and link to them. Make them novel and varied. Go beyond a basic portfolio site or ‘ecommerce store tutorial’. I’ve got 30 junior resumes to screen. Make your projects immediately stand out as the best. And make it clear you love to code, and learn. You’ll need to do a lot of both!
  2. Great grades. Distinction or higher. If you’re on the Dean’s List, you’re instantly worth a call.

Mids

Specific deliverables, clear growth trajectory. What have you done that other mids at your company couldn’t? Make that clear.

  1. Clear ownership. Proof you’ve lead features end to end. Tell me what you personally did — not just what the team delivered. “Delivered frontend for the booking calendar” is ok. “Scoped, implemented and tested a new calendar UX that increased booking rate by 8%” is much better. Bonus points for a particular challenge you solved on the way.
  2. Growth and initiative. Have you taken on increasingly complex challenges? Mentored juniors? Driven cross-team projects? Identified and pushed forward fundamental engineering improvements - eg. to tooling, testing, architecture?
  3. Some depth, not just breadth. By now, you’ve surely had a chance to dive deep on some area (e.g. frontend performance, build tools, database indexing, etc). Talk about it.
  4. Narrative coherence. Your resume should tell a story of consistent growth. Jumping between roles or companies every 6–12 months can hurt unless it’s clearly explained. A promotion at the same role is higher signal than a promotion through role change.

Seniors

For senior candidates, I’m looking for engineers who:

  1. Shipped impact, not just code. Eg:
    • Reduced lead time for changes from 1.5 hours to 15 minutes by streamlining the CD process, parallelising tests, and removing redundant steps and tests.
    • Increased conversion by 6% on mobile by redesigning the checkout flow: streamlined payment steps, introduced Apple Pay, and implemented persistent cart recovery.
  2. Show technical leadership. Did you rescue a late delivery? Jump on production incidents? Architect a major project?
  3. Demonstrate influence beyond your team. The best seniors make their whole org better. Eg:
    • Improved typical developer onboarding time from 2 days to 1, through improved documentation, docker-based developer infrastructure repo, and driving a “ship to prod on day 1” culture.
    • Championed new practices (e.g. observability, testing, documentation culture)
  4. Communicate clearly. If your resume is hard to follow, your code and design docs probably are too. A clear, well-structured resume with concrete examples tells me you’re good at communicating ideas and priorities.

Final thoughts

You don’t have to tick every box — but you should give me something to remember you by. A project, a metric, an impact story, a clear signal of initiative or excellence.

I reject most resumes in a minute or two. Make yours worth pausing on, and make it easy to say “yes”.