An unordered ordered list of resume shower thoughts.

1. You are not getting auto-rejected.
   1. Probably not anyways.
   2. Here are some reasons why you may get rejected almost immediately
      1. You aren’t ready.
         1. Your application collateral doesn’t meet the standard of the person reviewing it.
         2. The review can take seconds and with hundreds to thousands of applicants, any small thing can be the difference.
2. If a bullet point isn’t understandable without context, it isn’t worth reading or writing.
   1. As a litmus test, try shouting your bullet point on the subway and see if anyone knows what you mean.
3. Metrics don’t matter.
   1. They’re nearly all meaningless without having a conversation about why they matter
   2. Most of them look made up.
   3. Vanity metrics are worthless
      1. Some examples of vanity metrics from real resumes
         1. Developed x personas
         2. Designed x screens
         3. Conducted x usability tests
      2. Who gives a shit how often something happened. There is no causation between the number of things that happened and a high quality result.
   4. If you aren’t in a metric driven product org, inventing metrics to convince me you did good work is stupid.
      1. Some example stupid metrics from real resumes:
         1. “Improving ease of use by x%”
         2. “Driving a x% increase in feature adoption”
         3. “Increasing user engagement by x%”
         4. “Increasing membership conversions by x%”
         5. “restructuring information architecture to cut task time by x%”
4. I don’t know what your company does. You need to tell me what kind of work it was.
5. I don’t know what your project is. You need to tell me what it does.
6. If you’re applying with recent (~5-10 years) non-US based locations on your resume, your legal status to work in the US should be clear to correctly set expectations.
   1. GC EAD helps.
7. Your current location should be clear on your resume. “Open to relocation” is not a location.
8. If you get an immediate rejection (Same day, maybe even same hour) it isn’t unlikely that a human being looked at your resume, saw a red flag, and rejected you.
9. If you’re working or have eligibility to work on an F-1 student visa (OPT/Stem-OPT), you DO require sponsorship in the future. Stop saying no to that question.
10. The design of your resume isn’t that important.
    1. I’m going to review it the same way even if it’s ugly.
    2. If you under-design it, it looks lazy but it’s also pretty standard. You’re just being a sheep.
    3. If you over-design it, you lose points for not following the instructions.
11. If your website has a password, it should be included in the version of the resume you submit with your application.
    1. I am never emailing you to get a password. There are too many other candidates.
12. Convert all links to links.
    1. Text should also be selectable.
13. The ATS has almost zero issue parsing things, and when it does—I’m going to spend the time to find your website or w/e anyways.
14. The layout and columns of your resume do not matter.
15. The number of pages of your resume do not matter.
16. Don’t include your photo on your resume.
17. Pronunciation guides help.

The tier list of importance