How To Use the FAANGPath Resume Template to Build Your Perfect Resume
Your resume is often the first, and sometimes, also the last impression you make on your employers when applying for jobs. In our previous blogs, we’ve talked quite a lot about the importance of a resume, how to make a well-structured professional resume, about ATS-friendly resumes and the difference between a resume and CV.
The primary motive of building a resume is to showcase your skills, qualifications, work experiences, and any other professional achievements. A recruiter spends about 6 seconds looking at your resume before deciding whether to move forward with your application or not. Since recruiters are flooded with so many applications in their database regularly, having a compelling resume in a standard format can be a game-changer🎯.
Most candidates use resume templates to build their resume. There are several free resume templates available out there, all with different features and formats. It is important to be careful of resume building tools and templates that produce generic outputs which are poor in terms of formatting and ATS-compliance.
But don’t worry, we’ve got you covered🤗!
FAANGPath Simple Template
FAANGPath’s resume template is an ATS compliant, well-formatted and easy to read template available on Overleaf. General-purpose text editors like Microsoft Word can be good tools to create preliminary drafts, but they often create a lot of problems with formatting every time you have to edit something. Our template is built using the LaTeX environment, which reduces the overall formatting complexity significantly and makes building a powerful and effective resume easier📃.
Here are a few reasons why LaTeX(via Overleaf) is a better choice for resume building over other tools:
- LaTeX is a document preparation system. It allows you programmatic control over your document, which makes it very versatile to use.
- It is a WYSIWYG editor i.e. what you see is what you get. It means you know what every piece of content will look like in the final output, without performing any additional steps. Every time you make any changes to the code, you can simply recompile to check what it’ll look like on your final resume.
- It has in-built versioning, so you can view the changes you’ve made from the previous versions and track your modifications.
- Overleaf also allows you to collaborate with other people, provide real-time feedback and add comments when building your resume, enabling multiple people to work on the same document.
- Lastly, you can choose the best from multiple ready-to-use templates on Overleaf and build your resume on your web browser, without having to download any software.
In this blog, we’ll take you step-by-step on how to build a perfect resume using the FAANGPath template.
The first thing to do would be to open the template on Overleaf. You can find our template here.
When you click on ‘Get The Template’, it’ll direct you to Overleaf’s Template Gallery. Click on ‘Open as Template’ and you’ll be ready to start editing the template as per your needs on the Overleaf Editor.
Let’s Start Building Your Resume🚀.
When you open the FAANGPath template, some initial code is already written for you, which you would not need to change, unless you wish to modify the spacing of your document.
Personal Details👨💻
The first section to get started with would be the header, that contains your personal details. This includes your name, phone number, location, email address, LinkedIn and/or GitHub URL and website(if any). These are all crucial details for recruiters/hiring managers to be able to contact you. A few tips to keep in mind for this section are:
- Your email address and LinkedIn/GitHub URL should always be clickable links. This ensures the recruiter can reach out to you or check your profile in a single click and wouldn’t have to go through the hassle of typing your address.
- Always enter a custom LinkedIn URL. LinkedIn’s usernames with auto-generated letters and numbers are difficult to find. Watch our reel on how to customize your LinkedIn URL here.
Related: Read our blog Your Job Search’s Best Friend — Your Resume for other important tips to keep in mind when building your resume.
# Code for the header section
\name{Firstname Lastname} % Your name
% You can merge both of these into a single line, if you do not have a website.
\address{+1(123) 456-7890 \\ San Francisco, CA}
\address{\href{mailto:faangresumereview@gmail.com}{faangresumereview@gmail.com} \\ \href{https://linkedin.com/company/faangpath}{linkedin.com/company/faangpath} \\ \href{www.faangpath.com}{www.faangpath.com}} %The double slash (\\) in the code here represents a new line.
Career Objective/Summary✅
The career objective or summary statement is your elevator pitch!
It must contain information about your past work experience, what you’re looking for, what your key skills are and the relevant abilities you possess that are mentioned in the job description.
There are two key pieces of information you can choose to convey through this section:
1. Objective Statement: The career objective can be a simple statement that conveys the job role you’re looking for. It could be as simple as ‘Seeking X type of role, starting from Y date’. This may come in handy for job seekers who’re looking to pivot careers.
Here’s an example of an objective statement:
2. Summary Statement: The summary statement could include an overview of your past work experience, along with the skills that reflect your competency for the role you’re applying for. This can be a great section for experienced professionals, who wish to highlight something specific
Here’s another example of a summary statement:
\begin{document}
\begin{rSection}{SUMMARY}{{\bf 4 years of software} architecture, writing and debugging experience, focused on {\bf public cloud services} software engineering. Involved in massive scale technical engineering and cloud infrastructure challenges. Often collaborating with leadership, bringing a {\bf committed attitude, reliability, innovation,} and {\bf strong judgement} to the table.}\end{rSection}
The `{rSection}` tag here is used to differentiate subsections within the document. Every new section must start and end with the `\begin{rSection}` and `\end{rSection}` tags.
Education 🎓
The next section would be your education details. If you are a recent grad or still pursuing your education, this section will be important and can contain details about your degree, graduation date (or expected graduation date), and any relevant coursework to the job. You could also add any Udemy/Coursera courses that you’ve taken which might be relevant to the job role.
However, if you are an experienced professional, having the education section at the top will not be the best choice. You could reorder your resume in such a case by simply selecting the code you want to take first and paste it there.
\begin{rSection}{Education}{\bf Bachelor of Computer Science}, Stanford University \hfill {2015-2019}\\
Relevant Coursework: Algorithms, Database Systems Implementation, Data Mining.\end{rSection}
In the code written here, `\bf` stands for bold and `\hfill` provides the formatting space on the page.
Skills
The Skills section is another very important element of your resume. Ensure you’ve listed all your technical and soft skills clearly. One common mistake candidates make is listing a lot of soft skills. While it can be very easy to mention headings for soft skills you possess, it is always better to quantify them in terms of impact in the work experience section. This makes your resume more credible.
Including the right keywords fitting the job description in this section is the best way to ensure your resume is ATS-parsable and that it showcases your compatibility to the role.
Here’s a before and after example of the skills section from a resume:
\begin{rSection}{SKILLS}\begin{tabular}{ @{} >{\bfseries}l @{\hspace{6ex}} l }
Programming & Python, Java, Javascript, Shell, Angular, AngularJS, JQuery, MySQL, Postgres, C++\\
Backend & Amazon Web Services(AWS), Google Cloud Platform(GCP), Oracle RDBMS\\
Technologies & Git, Containerization(Docker, Kubernetes), Jenkins, REST APIs, Operating System(*nix)\\
\end{tabular}\\\end{rSection}
The `\begin{tabular}` and `\end{tabular}` tags are used to create tables.
Work Experience 💼
Next comes the work experience section, this is the most important section of your resume which decides whether you make or break the deal. A recruiter or hiring manager will spend most of his/her time going through this part of your resume. Hence, you must focus on conveying your career journey so far in a concise manner in this section. At the same time, the work experience shouldn’t simply convey what you’ve done, but also the skills you possess for what you want to do next.
Optimizing your work experience section, including all relevant keywords tied with the job description, and quantifying the results of your work using the XYZ formula are effective ways of creating value through this section.
Here is an example of this section that lacks keywords and structure:
And this is how it looks once optimized. The new bullet points are concise and crisp yet clearly convey what the candidate has done, how they did it, what tools they used and what the results were.
\begin{rSection}{EXPERIENCE}\textbf{Data Analysis Intern} \hfill June 2021 - Oct 2021\\
XYZ \hfill \textit{San Francisco, CA}
\begin{itemize}
\itemsep -3pt {}
\item Analysed data generated by Base Transfer Stations(BTS) to classify it into various types based on different attributes using HDFS, HIVE(Cloudera Quickstart VM). Performed query analysis on a dataset of 200K samples.
\item Built a Web app using JSP and visualized generated data using Chart.js, d3.js and JavaScript API.
\end{itemize}\end{rSection}
The `\itemize` environment here lets you create a bulleted unordered list. If you want to add a new point, you simply need to write the `\item tag in a new line and add the information.
Other Relevant Projects📝
After you’ve added the work experience, you can also add relevant projects that you might have completed and any leadership activities that you were a part of. This can be a very useful section for candidates who do not have any work experience. You could leverage these details to showcase your skills and abilities relevant to the position you’re interested in.
\begin{rSection}{OPEN SOURCE PROJECTS}
\vspace{-1.25em}\item \textbf{E-Commerce App} {Designed and developed a full-stack Model View Controller(MVC) based movie review and shopping app - a test product blend of IMDB, Netflix, and Amazon(Java, MySQL, AWS).}
\item \textbf{Information Retrieval} {Developed a search engine, including a web crawler(crawler4j), indexing, ranking(Pagerank algorithm), and document retrieval functions(Java, MongoDB, NLP).}\end{rSection}
\end{document}
Now that you’ve built your resume, how do you order the information?
You must think, how can the order of the information on your resume make any difference? Well, it can. It can make a huge difference in how your skills and abilities are perceived. But this is an aspect that is often overlooked. The most popular order in which information on resumes is arranged is:
- Personal Details
- Career Objective/Summary
- Education
- Skills
- Work Experience
- Projects/Leadership Activities/Other Sections
While this order is good for recent grads or candidates who have very little work experience, it is a big NO for experienced professionals/freelancers and jobseekers looking to switch careers.
You can order your resume to tell the story you want your recruiter or hiring manager to know.
Experienced professionals can choose to order their resume as follows:
- Personal Details
- Career Summary/Objective
- Work Experience
- Skills
- Education
The reason for moving the education section to the end is that after spending a few years working in the industry, your work experience takes over your education. You should choose to order it at the top of your resume to convey what you’ve done, how you’ve done it, and the difference it made for the organization you were working for. The education section in these cases should only be used to convey that you’re qualified for the field you’re working in, and nothing more than that. A strong and effective work experience section can be your key to unlocking the doors of your next career move!
Similarly, candidates looking to switch careers must arrange their resumes in functional order. This is also often known as the skills-focused order since your skills are what you highlight to prove why you’re a good fit for the role. A resume in such a case would look something like this:
- Personal Details
- Career Objective/Summary
- Skills
- Work Experience
- Education
You can choose to put your education or work experience right after the skills based on its relevance to the role you’re applying for. This order is also a great choice for candidates with career gaps on their resume.
And, that’s it! You’ve made it to the end of your resume!
To show you what your resume would look like after you’ve followed these steps with the FAANGPath resume template, here’s an example built keeping all the important points in mind.
Although using LaTeX might seem difficult at first, especially for those who do not have any experience using a coding language before, once you learn to use it, it makes the process of building and modifying your resume much easier and provides a clean output. In fact, using LaTeX is one skill we believe every professional must learn.
The resume-building process may seem overwhelming, but we can help you create the perfect resume you need. At FAANGPath, we have professional resume writers who can do your resume review, LinkedIn makeover and provide any additional advice that can make the complicated job hunting process a tad bit easier. See how FAANGPath’s resume review services helped talented people land interview calls and get their dream jobs in companies like Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google, Microsoft, and more, here.
