I’ve read over 100+ resumes of people applying to software engineering jobs, both as a mentor and as someone making the interview / do not interview decision. One of the biggest mistakes I see people making constantly is keeping experience on your resume long after it stopped being relevant.
Let’s say your career looked like this:
Data Structures & Algorithms Tutor
IBM Software Engineering Intern
Amazon Software Engineering Intern
Amazon Software Engineer
Early on, that tutoring job 100% should be on your resume (I had on on my resume for 2 years)
You might have written something like:
Data Structures & Algorithms Tutor
Tutored 30+ students and helped improve average course grades by 15%
Taught object-oriented programming fundamentals using Java and Python
Those are solid bullet points.
But once you’ve landed two internships, they are wasting space.
Every line on your resume has an opportunity cost
A resume is a finite amount of space (always keep it to less than one page)
Every job you add costs at minimum 3 lines because also need the company or organization name, your title, and the dates.
What could you have done with that space instead?
I’d much rather see one or two additional bullets about your most recent engineering job.
If you worked at Amazon for two or three years (or even just had an internship ANYWHERE), you almost certainly have more useful things to say than whatever you were doing as a tutor four years ago.
For example:
What was the most impactful system you built?
What happened because you built it?
Did it save the company money?
Did it improve latency, reliability, or developer productivity?
Did you work with an internal customer and solve a meaningful problem for them?
Did you migrate, redesign, or automate something?
Can you explain a technically difficult project in more detail?
Instead of giving me two lines about teaching Java in college, give me another line explaining that you redesigned a service that handles millions of requests per day and cut its infrastructure costs by 40%.
That is much more useful information when I’m deciding whether to interview you for a software engineering job.
Simple test, ask yourself: If I deleted this, could I use the space to say something more compelling about my recent work?
If the answer is yes, delete it.
Your resume will usually get stronger by saying more about fewer things.
P.S. If you're looking for personalized resume advice, DM me inside the Devmaxx Discord server. It’s included with your subscription, and I’m happy to take a look at your resume and tell you what I’d change.