When I started applying for software engineering internships in my second year of university, I knew there were plenty of online articles out there that taught you how to write a great resume - this guide is a great resource, for example. But turns out resumes aren’t just about arranging words on a page. I learned a lot from those articles, but what was the point when I “had nothing” to put on my resume in the first place?

I struggled to get interviews at the companies I applied to, and I realized I had neglected to build up the relevant skills and experience that would make me come across as a strong candidate. It’s hard to get experience before getting experience, but through sheer luck and a bit of planning ahead, I eventually got my first internship.

One thing led to the next, and I went on to do a total of five internships: Tinkerbox / Honestbee / TradeGecko in Singapore, and Facebook / Asana in the US. This was only possible because I took two semesters of leave of absence (LOA) from school, effectively delaying my graduation by one year.

The biggest question I had during my journey was “How do I get from here to there?”. I knew of seniors whose resumes were already in great shape, and I often wondered if I, too, could be like some of them. The best thing I did was probably to observe and try to gather inspiration from the way they made progress. So I’d like to share what my own resume looked like throughout its evolution over the years, and hopefully you’ll find this useful.

Year 2 Semester 2 (March 2016)

This is what I meant by “having nothing” to put on my resume. I had some work experience that wasn’t related to tech, some CCAs, some school projects, some classes that I’d taken. My grades weren’t spectacular but I felt like I had to include it, otherwise I wouldn’t even have something “decent” to show for.

Even at this point, you should try to incorporate as many resume-writing best practices as possible:

• Keep it to one page.
• Start each bullet point with a verb (where applicable).
• Provide context! NUS students, don’t assume that everyone knows what “CAP” stands for (the more ubiquitous term is “GPA”), or that it is actually graded out of 5 points instead of 4. Another example - “Tembusu College” is the official name, but I chose to mention “Residential” explicitly to avoid any potential confusion.
• Put the most important / relevant content at the top.

I knew I needed to add more substance to the top half of my resume. The best way for that? I had to do more internships.

Year 3 Semester 1 (November 2016)

Main differences between this and the previous version:

• I switched to Google Docs (easier to track versions) and came up with a new design that I liked better.
• I removed the photography-related items and reorganized the things that weren’t directly related to tech into just one section, now called “Leadership Experience”.
• Per a friend’s advice to “fake it till you make it”, I squeezed blood out of stone and listed all the technologies that I had any bit of familiarity with under my “Skills”. If you’re struggling to fill your resume, make sure to include every little piece of relevant information. As long as it’s tech-related, what you think is unoriginal or unimportant may actually be worth mentioning.

There’s still a long way to go, but I was much happier overall with how the top half of my resume looked.

Year 4 Semester 1 (October 2017)

2017 changed my life forever. In one year, I did three local internships and completed two stints as a teaching assistant. This was the resume that got me interviews at Facebook, Stripe, Dropbox, Palantir, and Jane Street.

The peak hiring season for summer US internships happens around the September to November period. If you apply as late as January, chances are most of the openings are already filled. My resume was pretty inadequate in the previous season, so taking an LOA gave me an extra summer to make up for lost time. For the record, you need to remain as a student to be eligible for a US internship (mainly because of the J-1 visa requirement).

I also started preparing for technical interviews since the beginning of the year, and only stopped when all my interviews concluded in January 2018. Yes, I spent one year doing interview prep. Doing well in interviews is something that requires consistent practice. I highly recommend that you properly invest time into it, way before the application season begins.

Here are some things I was quite intentional about in this version:

• Shrinking the page margins to be as narrow as possible, so that I could fit more content.
• Not listing my grades.
• Americanizing everything, because I was going all out to get a US internship this time. This also includes conforming to the [first name] [last name] format - it’s just easier that way.
• Removing my high school (what did I say about Americanizing everything? 😉) from my “Education” section.
• Providing a short description and the location of each company I interned at. Again, context is important.

Year 4 Summer (June 2018)

This was the last resume that I sent out before I got my final internship at my dream company, Asana.

Across the different versions, I’ve made many space-saving changes to help me accommodate everything I wanted to include in my resume. I suppose you may be able to take away a thing or two 🙂

A few other pointers about applying for US internships:

• While it was sufficient to state that I was graduating in 2019, I learnt that recruiters really want to know your exact graduation date (month + year) to project your timeline for full-time conversion, so it doesn’t hurt to be more specific. In the US, the primary goal for hiring interns is to convert them to full-time. This isn’t always the case in Singapore.
• On the same note, US companies care about whether you are eligible for full-time work authorization (whereas internship visas are pretty straightforward to get), so you are usually required to declare your visa status when you apply online. I strongly suspect that most (if not all) companies automatically filter out applicants from schools outside of the US, because we are statistically less likely to be guaranteed to have full-time work authorization. However, some companies might not know about the H-1B1-Singapore visa, so if you are a Singaporean citizen, you should probably mention it in your resume.

Conclusion

Looking back, I’m glad things worked out, and I’m indebted to all the people who helped me along the way. If you’re curious about what my complete timeline looks like, you can check out my LinkedIn profile.

Finally, I’d love to have you join our Project Intern Telegram group! This is a place to ask anything related to tech internships and new grad jobs, with a focus on Singapore and the US. It’s also a community for us to share tips and stories that might help you think about how to start/grow your career in tech. I’m happy to answer any questions over there 😊