How to craft the perfect data engineer resume and LinkedIn profile in 2024

Layoffs are picking up this January. I’m sure y’all saw the layoffs announced by Twitch and Discord. There will be many more to come over the next few weeks!

With that being said, it’s probably a good time to do the following things:

• Polish your resume

• Update your LinkedIn

2024 is a time to stay nimble in your employee journey and remember that no job is so good that you’re immune to being laid off!

What’s the difference between your LinkedIn and your resume?

Resume vs LinkedIn is a battle that continues. Some people think resumes are outdated since we have LinkedIn profiles now that are better suited and more detailed than resumes ever could be.

This battle isn’t an either/or sort of thing. You should be crafting both of these with intent and remembering the rules of both.

Here are some obvious differences that you should be aware of:

• On LinkedIn

  • Have a high-quality profile photo, no photo means you’ll be seen by recruiters much much less!

  • Have a good summary/about me section. Have this be 2-3 paragraphs and written in your voice! Avoid writing this section in third person as it makes you sound like a robot!

  • List out every skill under the sun that you’ve ever tried. The more skills on your LinkedIn the more relevant you’ll be to various roles!

  • List out every experience you’ve had with the exception of short (<3 month) stints that didn’t work out

    • I include my entire work history back to when I was a grocery store clerk at Walmart in 2012!

  • Get to All-Star profile level by filling out everything. All-Star profiles get much more views from recruiters!

• On your resume

  • Never include a photo of yourself! Discrimination laws in the US can make including a photo hurt you in strange ways

  • Don’t include a summary/objective section! These paragraphs explaining who you are should be self-evident from the experience, education and skills sections.

  • Don’t list out every skill under the sun on your resume. Only list the skills that you would be able to demonstrate without Google or the internet.

    • For example, even though I’ve shipped production code in 13 languages in big tech. I only include Python, SQL, Java, JavaScript, and Scala on my resume because I’m comfortable enough in those languages to do an on-the-spot coding interview

  • Don’t list every experience you’ve had! Try to keep your resume to one page in length and only include the RELEVANT experiences to the role that you’re applying for. Nobody cares that you were a sales representative 8 years ago if you’re applying to a data engineering role!

How should you build up your LinkedIn network?

Having connections on LinkedIn is critical to landing high quality roles in 2024. Here are a few ways to build up your connections that you should try:

• Make content about your learning and career journey.

  • Did you just learn something cool about SQL? Post about it

  • Did you just meet someone cool that inspired you? Take a selfie with them and post about it

• Engage with other people’s content

  • Leave a meaningful comment on people’s content that you would want in your network. Continued support in this way will ultimately make you seem like a positive supportive person that people want closer to them!

• Connect with people in direct messages

  • Here’s a hack I learned from Stephanie Nuesi:

    • If you are in the same LinkedIn group with someone, you can send them a direct message without spending InMail credits! This can supercharge your networking and direct message game!

  • Don’t immediately ask for a referral or to “pick their brain”

    • Make sure you’ve given that person something before you ask them for something

• Go to in-person networking events and connect with them on LinkedIn

  • When you meet people in person, maintain that connection beyond the event by connecting on LinkedIn and following up!

How to craft the perfect new grad resume

Recruiters look at your resume for 7 seconds on average. So what story can you tell in 7 seconds to make them want to know more about you?

• The top of your resume should be your most relevant and impactful story

  • For students, this is probably your masters/bachelor’s degree

    • Don’t include your GPA unless it’s extremely good 3.8+

    • List relevant course work but not everything under the sun!

    

    This is my resume when I first got out of college in 2014!

• Have a friend look at your resume for 10 seconds and ask them what they thought about you

  • You’d be surprised how many small mistakes can be found here.

    • I reviewed a friend’s resume recently and I told her:

      • The story I get in 7 seconds is “Hi I’m a B student”

• Make sure you include the following links

  • Your Github

  • Your LinkedIn

  • Links to any relevant projects (if they’re Live and running that’s even better!)

How to craft the perfect mid-career resume

Once you have some experience under your belt, your resume is going to shift mostly in a good way unless you aren’t actually doing anything important in your job.

• Make sure your experience section lists IMPACT not RESPONSIBILITIES

  • Listing your responsibilities is the most guaranteed way to get your resume thrown in the trash because you made the recruiter fall asleep

  • Impact should be measured in numbers when possible. For example:

    • I optimized the pricing and availability pipeline by 25% saving $250k/year in cloud costs

    • I built a new metric measuring user engagement that caused a 10% lift in revenue from an experiment

  • To make these pop even more, add the technologies and methodologies you used. Don’t make these too long though!

    • I optimized the Spark-based pricing and availability pipeline to run 25% more efficiently by leveraging Parquet compression and saved the company $250k/year

    • I built a new user engagement metric in Druid and integrated with Statsig that caused a 10% lift in revenue in an experiment that involved emojis being strategically placed in notifications

• Beyond experiences the following rules should also apply to mid career resumes

  • Move your education to the bottom. If your education is still the number one most impressive thing about you, you have a mediocre career and I don’t want to hire you

  • List your skills and languages but don’t be excessive. If you have more than 5 programming languages on your resume, it feels hard to believe

• Remember to show that you’re not just capable with tech but also with business

  • Use words like led, defined, organized, etc

    • These words show that you’re not just a SQL monkey but actually a monkey that has good jokes, communicates well and can be fun to hang out with!

• Use Month + year when listing your job timelines

  • If you put 2022-2023, that could mean December 2022 to January 2023 (2 months) or it could mean January 2022 to December 2023 (2 years). Being honest by including month in your timelines will get your farther in interview processes!

This is my resume after 10 years in industry

When you have the perfect resume, y’all should sign up for DataExpert.io! We do free SQL trainings and resume workshops on a weekly basis and you can play around with cloud tools completely for free!

The next live boot camp for DataExpert.io is on May 6th and sales will open up for that in the next few days!

Thanks for reading this. What else would you include to have a perfected resume? Make sure to share this with a friend who is fearing layoffs!