Write the perfect Android Developer resume and stand out with ten simple tricks

With more than 15 years of experience, I have been a hiring manager and interviewer for small start-ups and Big Tech companies in the US and Europe. I have interviewed hundreds of Android and iOS developers, backend and frontend engineers, Tech Leads and engineering managers. Whenever I have to fill a new role, I get to review more than 50 candidates’ resumes. In big companies, this number grows exponentially.

I have seen many candidates make the common mistake of thinking the interview process starts with the first call. In reality, it starts earlier, when your resume lands in the recruiter’s inbox.

Your resume (or LinkedIn profile) is the key to opening the door to that dream job. It won't land you the job, but it is undoubtedly decisive in whether you get a chance. So, trust me, it's worth investing time refining your resume to stand out from the hundreds (thousands in BigTech) of candidates.

Let's boost your resume with ten simple tricks.

1. Focus on technical skills and experience.

Most recruiters and hiring managers do not read your resume. They SCAN it. They look for specific technologies, skills, and experience levels to quickly identify candidates worth considering for a role.

Make sure your resume highlights your experience and skills with concrete and specific examples. So, a reader can easily pick them up by scanning through it.

2. Don't describe the role. Highlight your direct contributions instead.

Most companies, and therefore people hiring for them, are already familiar with the roles (e.g. iOS Developer, Senior Android Engineer, Tech Lead, etc.). Please save your readers time describing the role for them.

Instead, highlight what you achieved and learned during that time in a few bullet points.

From

Senior Android Engineer @ Acme LLC (Sep 2020 to Present)

I was a senior Android engineer in the payments team. I worked on the company's Android app, developing new features following scrum and agile methodologies. I worked closely with other engineers, designers and product managers to define and implement new requirements. I proactively contributed to tech improvements in the codebase and documentation. Fixed several bugs to keep the app stable and helped improve technical documentation

To

Senior Android Engineer @ Acme LLC (Sep 2020 to Present)

• Developed business-critical features in the payments team, like the redesign of the paywall, which I led
• Increased the robustness of our networking layer by refactoring it to use Retrofit with Coroutines
• Documented the MVVM architecture followed with guidelines and examples

3. Back it up with data

Use data points to help the reader understand the impact and value of your direct contributions. Doing something great is fantastic but meaningless if you don’t help the reader understand why it was so amazing. Explain what you achieved and why it was important for you, the team or the business.

From

Senior Android Engineer @ Acme LLC (Sep 2020 to Present)

• Developed business-critical features in the payments team, like the redesign of the paywall, which I led
• Increased the robustness of our networking layer by refactoring it to use Retrofit with Coroutines
• Documented the MVVM architecture followed with guidelines and examples

To

Senior Android Engineer @ Acme LLC (Sep 2020 to Present)

• Led business-critical features for the app's payments team (XM MAU, >$Yk monthly)
• Delivered a redesigned paywall to reduce friction. Increased paid subscription conversions by 30% (+$Zk monthly)
• Reduced app crashes by 20% by simplifying the networking layer with Retrofit and Coroutines
• Documented the app architecture (MVVM), creating more than 10 high-quality guidelines and several code examples and templates

4. Keep it brief and to the point

A well-known rule is to limit your resume to one page. I'm not joking. I know hiring managers who do not read past the first page.

For more senior folks with 15+ years of experience, list the 2-3 most recent roles. A good rule of thumb is to cover your last 2-3 positions or the last 8-10 years, focusing on the roles and experience most relevant to the job. If you’re applying for a Director of Engineering role, listing your summer internship 20 years ago is not applicable (despite how much fun it was and all the fantastic things you learned, I get it 😛)

5. Real estate is expensive; use it wisely.

Now that we have established the one-page rule. If you are having issues adjusting the length to the above rule, here are a few tips and common mistakes to avoid:

• For each role, mention your top achievements. List only your most relevant achievements in each role (3-4 bullet points per role).
• Reduce details for older roles and education. This is particularly true with seniority. When you're a recent graduate or have less experience, it's okay to have details on your degrees and school projects. It becomes less relevant as you accumulate hands-on, on-the-job experience.
• Push down and prune the rest. Side Projects, Certifications, Open Source Contributions, Interests and Hobbies are relevant as long as you can highlight clearly why. Keep them to the most relevant and tailored to the job spec.

6. Tailor it to the role and company

The perfect resume should tell a story that matches the specific job spec and the hiring company's values. Create a template and produce different versions for each role and company you apply to. That way, you can highlight the key technologies, practices and experiences they seek.

Don't list all the technologies, tools, or languages you have ever used. Instead, only mention technologies relevant to the role and that you are confident with (live-coding interview confident) that you could go deep into if requested in the interview.

From

Experienced with the following technologies, programming languages and tools: Kotlin, Java, C#, Rust, Jira, GitHub, CircleCI, Android Studio, Ruby, Rails, Fastlane, Gradle, Amazon AWS, Firebase, Retrofit, Coroutines, MVP, MVVM, JSON, Visual Studio, SQLite, Trello, Sketch, Adobe Photoshop, Sublime, Git, Jetpack, XML

To

Experience:

• Languages: Kotlin, Java, C#
• Technologies: Retrofit, Combine, Firebase, AWS
• Other: Modular Architectures, E2E Testing, A/B Testing, API Design, Relational DBs

If you are applying to an Android developer role:

• Everyone expects you to have experience with Android Studio.
• You did C# in school but have yet to use it since? Toyed with Rust on your side project? Unless relevant, do not mention them.
• Remove all tools and skills that anyone can pick up (e.g. GitHub, Jira, Sketch, CircleCI, JSON, etc)

Even better, inline the technologies with the projects. It helps understand recency.

Oh! Talking about expertise. Please do not rate yourself. I've seen many candidates adding a section with scores, rating themselves stars or scores in the technology. At the risk of being blunt, let me tell you a secret: hiring managers don't care how good you think you are. Their job is to assess that by themselves.

Self-rating your skills is likely to harm you more than help you.

• If you rate yourself as an expert or 5/5 stars on a technology. Many managers will doubtfully read this. If you've spent enough time in the industry, you know no one knows everything
• If you rate yourself in technologies as proficient or 4/5 or less, it is probably a good sign that you should not be mentioning this technology at all. Also, if this technology happens to be essential to the job, the recruiter may see it as a gap and disqualify you immediately

7. Format for readability

Optimise for a format that lets the reader find out the information they are looking for quickly—for example, the latest role, years of experience, career progression, etc.

Small tricks like aligning all job titles, dates, and company info can make a huge difference. I’d encourage you to check The Pragmatic Engineer's template as a fantastic example of a clean, clear, easy-to-read resume (>6,500 downloads).

8. Quality Matters. Avoid typos and other clumsy mistakes.

Don't do them, period. Use a spell-checker like Grammarly and ensure you are not giving the impression of being careless by easy-to-make clumsy typos. Oh! And double check all links work and take the reader where you want them.

9. Ask for a second opinion

Ask a friend with a relevant background to review your resume and give you honest, constructive feedback. Take it on board!

10. Iterate

If you are not receiving callbacks to the jobs you are applying for, the resume is not doing its job. Review it and iterate over it, trying different ideas to see what improves conversion as you would do with any other app or product. A/B test your resume!

Templates, Tools and Other Helpful Resources

If you would like to take it a step further and learn more about making your resume the best it can be, I suggest the following resources:

• Follow a standard clean template: I recommend you have a look and follow The Pragmatic Engineer's template.
• Read 'The Tech Resume Inside Out' by Gergely Orosz. The book will teach you the best practice to make your resume stand out through lots of examples and input from experienced tech recruiters and engineering managers from FAANG (Facebook/Meta, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google) and some of the most popular Big Tech companies like Microsoft, Shopify, Miro, Uber, Atlassian, Spotify, Square, Airbnb and Disney.

Happy interviewing!

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