Your impressive knowledge of backend is only matched by your imposing experience with frontend. Your list of development skills is awe-inspiring and has enabled you to accomplish a wide range of feats many would be proud of. All-in-all, you’re a full-stack web developer superstar, capable of taking any team to new heights — now we just need to show it all off in your resume!
But before you start plainly listing your accomplishments and sentencing your full-stack developer resume to life in the recycling bin, let’s take a step back. By carefully crafting your resume for different technical and non-technical audiences, such as industry supervisors and recruiters respectively, you will put yourself above the competition and so much closer to landing a job interview. Even if you don’t have extensive experience or a long list of accomplishments, this guide provides tips that will help you get noticed.
Let’s Start With the Format
The format you choose will set the tone for how your resume is evaluated. We recommend a reverse-chronological format. Begin with your personal information, provide a quick summary of your resume, and follow it with your experience, education, development skills, and a “special” section (we’ll get into that later). These formatting tips will help your resume look good too:
- 1-inch margins
- 1-page resume (if possible)
- Resume-centric fonts such as Didot and Helvetica
- PDF format for increased accessibility
So, why should this reverse-chronological format be your go-to resume format? It’s simple: work experience. Recruiters and hiring managers have to make split-second decisions on someone’s resume.
In fact, according to a 2018 eye-tracking study,1 about 80% of the time, hiring professionals look at names, job titles, work history, and education. By prioritizing this information and placing it near the top of your full-stack web developer resume, you’re highlighting the main reasons why they should hire you.
The Power of the Header
Your resume’s header includes all your basic information. Because a hiring professional will see your name and contact information first, it’s very important that you make sure it’s all correct. Imagine if a recruiter tries to reach you but you accidentally left out a letter in your email or added an extra digit to your phone number.
The header also showcases one of the most important parts of your resume: professional links. Github and Stackoverflow display your talents as a full-stack web developer, so it’s crucial that you add your links to these platforms in your resume header. We also recommend adding a link to your portfolio/website and even your up-to-date LinkedIn profile, as well as include the tech stack that you specialize in.
A Summary Adds Value
A full-stack web developer resume summary rests at the top of the page, right below your personal information. It quickly grabs the attention of the hiring manager and piques their interest in you. The key is simplicity — include just one or two sentences that showcase your experience and your full-stack web developer skills. Keep in mind, full-stack programming languages and other technologies are constantly changing, which is why it’s so important that you emphasize your adaptability and passion for learning more.
Showcase Your Professional Experience (Don’t Just Tell It)
Take a look at the following excerpt from the professional experience section of a resume:
- Managed software development team through successful projects
- Ensured vendor interaction led to favorable outcomes
- Led efforts to cut data storage
Now, compare it with this:
- Led software development team through 2 years of over $40 million in annual revenue
- Leveraged over 15 client accounts into a repeat-business increase of 50%
- Developed a data and expenditure cut plan that saved over $2 million in software development costs
The first excerpt tells the professional experience, while the second one shows it. Remember, this section is your chance to demonstrate the impact you’ve had at other companies, so spare no details, especially if they involve impressive numbers.
Also, write attention-grabbing bullet points in your job and technical project descriptions. It’s very important to write what you did and the outcome. A unique way to display your development skills in bullet points is using the What/So What Method: What did you do? What was the outcome of what you did? If your bullet points don’t follow this formula, an employer may become disinterested in your skills.
Leverage Your Education
If you have years of experience to showcase, you may not need to lean on your education section to validate your skills. However, if you’re brand-new to the industry and recently graduated, you’ll want to maximize your education as much as possible when writing a resume.
You can expand this section by including classes relevant to the position or projects that prove you’ve spent time learning full-stack principles and fundamentals. You can also add honor awards you’ve received, academic achievements, and leadership experience. Also, if you are currently working on additional education, indicate it at the bottom of the education section. It could look something like this:
Full-Stack Education
Institution
(2020-2021)
- Graduated with (honors)
- Member of (association)
- Completed (full-stack class)
- Completed (full-stack project)
Ongoing Education
Institution
(2022)
Display Your Skills The Right Way
A skills section is essential in your full-stack resume, but the way you display your development skills can potentially be the difference between getting interviewed and not. The first step is to take a closer look at the job posting, which will likely include a list of skills the company is looking for. Maybe they’re looking for:
- A leader
- Experience with JavaScript
- Experience with HTML and CSS
- Knowledge of front and backend programming languages
- Design proficiency
- Experience with database storage
Now that you know this, it’s your job to use these sought-after skills and display them in a skills section if they apply to you. Much like the professional experience section, it’s important that you show these skills rather than simply tell them. For instance, instead of saying you’re a good leader, show it by saying you took initiative in XYZ projects, provided support to your team members in XYZ ways, and collected XYZ resources to ensure a successful outcome.
One thing to note is your soft skills are just as important as your development skills. Even if the job application doesn’t list them, we recommend listing your communication, collaboration, problem-solving, time management, and critical thinking skills in this section.
Special Sections
While the essential sections we’ve covered so far may be enough to make a good first impression, additional sections can potentially make a great one. The bottom half of your full-stack developer resume is where you get to show off a few of those extra badges of honor.
Achievements
Whether you’ve been awarded employee of the month or received honors in the software development field, displaying these achievements shows your passion. They give your potential new employer a chance to see just how driven you are.
Mentorship
A great mentor can help level up the work environment by supporting others in reaching their full potential. If you’ve mentored, trained, or supported new employees at your previous position, we strongly recommend adding these experiences to your full-stack developer resume. Your future employer would greatly appreciate having someone who cares about helping others grow and improving employee satisfaction.
Certifications
Certifications are an effective way to gain expertise in a specific area of your field and continue developing your career. They’re also a clear indication of your motivation for professional development and tell hiring managers you’ve spent time honing your skills and preparing to become a valuable asset to their company. For example, you can earn an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Certified Developer designation that validates your knowledge of AWS areas, such as fundamentals, architecture, user support, and debugging.
Volunteer Work
Volunteer work shows hiring managers you care about making an impact outside of the professional environment. By adding volunteer work to your resume, you get to share your interests and give some additional insight into some of your most valuable skills. If you have minimal professional experience, but previously volunteered to build websites or even used your spare time to create an app, showing it in this section will help add value to your resume.
A resume is a 7–10 second image tool that tells a job seeker’s personal, educational and professional story. You only have a few seconds to persuade a potential employer to call you for an interview. Let your resume have your phone ringing off the hook!
The Don’ts
For every great addition to your resume, there are some things you should avoid at all costs. One, you should never use the same resume for different jobs. Each full-stack developer resume you send should be tailored to the specific requirements of the position and what you can offer. You should also avoid making your resume exceedingly long — 2 pages is the norm.
Two, keep an eye out for inconsistencies in your resume. For instance:
If you abbreviate months at the top of your resume, make sure you continue doing so throughout.
Don’t overlook the tense in your writing. Past jobs should be written in the past tense and present jobs in the present tense.
Keep punctuation and font style the same.
Lastly, don’t send your resume without proofreading it multiple times. The last thing you want is to deliver a resume with errors.
