# Three Resume Tips

Source: https://sumnerevans.com/posts/software-engineering/resume-tips/
Published: 2026-05-07
Software Engineering, Resume

I have been asked a few times to review student resumes and in my
[current position](https://sumnerevans.com/portfolio/#experience-canam-tech-lead)
I review quite a few resumes of potential candidates.

I think a lot of resume advice out there is tied to formatting, presentation,
and writing style. While all of that is important, I think that it's been
well-adjudicated.

In this article, I would like discuss the _content_ of your resume. I'm going to
describe three rules that I made up to guide your resume's content.

1. **The Percent Allocation Rule: the amount of space you allocate to a section
   should be proportional to the relevance of that section.**

   You should assume that the resume reviewer will read a random(ish) sample of
   your resume. The more impressive the thing is, the more space you want it to
   take up so that the random sample is more likely to encounter it.

   At this point in my career, my last two positions take up half of my resume,
   and then two conference talks take up ~20%, and my BS+MS from Mines takes up
   only a single line.

   For most students, the following sections are likely the most important:
   internships (work experience), education, side projects.

2. **The Top-Down Rule: you should assume that the random sampling from the
   percent allocation rule is weighted towards the top of the resume.**

   Put the most important things for humans up there, and leave all of the stuff
   for automated systems at the bottom. In my opinion, a good example of
   something that should go towards the bottom is a skills section.

   For me, this means that my degrees from Mines are at the very bottom of my
   resume since my experience in my most recent engineering roles greatly
   overshadows my academic accomplishments.

3. **The 5 Minute Rule: you should be able to talk about every line in your
   resume for at least five minutes to a recruiter or interviewer.**

   If you don't have five minutes of things to say about a thing, it probably
   shouldn't be on your resume. You don't have to be able to talk exactly about
   that one specific thing for five minutes, but you should be able to branch
   out from there with at least five minutes of content.

   At the very least you should be able to describe a specific challenge you
   faced while doing the thing, how you overcame that challenge, and what you
   learned from doing so.

   When practicing for interviews, I might even practice doing this for every
   line of your resume, so that you know how to bend the conversation towards
   whatever you want to bend it towards regardless of what you are asked about.

These are a few of the rules I've come up with for my resume. Do you have other
resume tips? I'm happy to hear about them in the comments!