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Deciding what skills to include on your developer resume

06/22/2021

Every day, developers become more and more integral to our society. Businesses rely on developers to build and maintain their websites and applications, financial institutions need devs to help manage their massive databases, etc.

Our global reliance on developers means that they have one of the fastest-growing job markets — projected by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics to rise by 22% over the 8 years. So, if you’re looking to enter this booming job market, there’s no time like the present.

But, to get your foot in the door, you’ll need to highlight the right skills on your resume. Below, we’ll explore some of the hard and soft skills you should include in your developer resume and explain why they’re important.

What hard skills should I include in my developer resume?

Because developers have a wide range of responsibilities, the hard (or technical) skills you’ll need to include in your resume will depend on the specific role you’re applying to. Review the job postings from the companies you want to work for, and make sure their desired skills are reflected in your resume. In the meantime, common hard skills to feature in your resume include:

Programming languages

Programming languages are the tools developers use to write code and build applications. The specific languages you’ll want to include will depend on your specialization. For example, aspiring front-end developers will want to indicate their proficiency with languages like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. If you’re more interested in mobile development, you’d want to emphasize your skills with Swift, Java, or Kotlin.

Libraries and frameworks

Libraries and frameworks provide developers with pre-written code that expedites the development process. Like programming languages, the frameworks and libraries you’ll want to include in your developer resume will depend on your role.

If you’re pursuing a career in web development, you might want to emphasize your familiarity with frameworks like Angular or libraries like React. Or, if you were more interested in game development, you’ll want to include tools like Phaser.js or A-Frame.

UI (User Interface)

Adding UI skills to your developer resume shows potential employers that you can accommodate the needs of their users. You might also want to briefly summarize any demographics you’ve targeted while building a clients’ UI and your approach in fulfilling their needs.

If you’re new to UI and looking to add it to your skill set, check out our responsive design course. Responsive design involves writing code that allows applications to adjust their appearance to fit users’ devices.

APIs (Application Programming Interfaces)

APIs play a pivotal role in development as they help developers save time that could be better spent on other projects. Showcasing your proficiency with APIs in your resume lets employers know you’re comfortable with the technology and know how to use it to meet key objectives.

You should do more than simply mention “working with APIs” on your resume. If possible, try to explain:

  • The reasons behind choosing specific APIs
  • How you altered an API, if applicable
  • Ways you strategically used multiple APIs in conjunction with each other to improve the final product

What soft skills should I include in my developer resume?

Your soft skills include the qualities that, while not technical, are equally instrumental in completing a project. For developers, these qualities include the ability to communicate, collaborate, and solve problems.

Communication

Developers often work in teams to tackle larger projects, so each member needs to know how to communicate effectively. Still, good communication goes beyond conveying your own ideas in a clear, concise manner. You’ll also need to know how to actively listen to your teammates and implement their recommendations.

Use examples to illustrate how your communication skills contributed to the achievement of organizational goals, such as:

  • Serving as the liaison between the dev team and C-level executives
  • Assuming the role of lead developer for a project or a specific period of time
  • Implementing suggestions from others on your team to improve the end result
  • Composing reports, presentations, or email newsletters

Collaboration

Communication plays a big role in collaboration, so people often use the two interchangeably — but they’re actually very distinct. While communicating involves sharing ideas and keeping everyone informed, collaboration involves working with your teammates to accomplish a goal. Illustrate your collaborative skills on your developer resume with examples of pair programming, code reviews, and similar practices.

Problem-solving

Developers are digital problem-solvers, so you’ll want to emphasize your problem-solving ability in your resume. Your experience with problem-solving may be easy to highlight when outlining:

  • How you overcame challenges while testing an application
  • How you’ve altered code to incorporate feedback from other departments
  • Anything related to maintaining a solution or system after it has been rolled out
  • Efforts made towards incorporating user feedback or supporting a solution post-roll-out

Take the time to come up with a few solid examples of your problem-solving ability. These will help you later during your interviews — especially technical interviews, which involve completing a coding assignment on the spot to help your interviewer understand your approach. Check out our technical interview guide to make sure you’re prepared for the next steps of the process.

How to present your skills in your resume

Your developer resume should only be a page or two long, so you’ll want to make the most of your space and list your relevant skills properly. Listing hard skills like programming languages and libraries is fine, as you can always explain your proficiency in greater detail during your interviews. But, soft skills usually require a bit more context.

The best way to present your soft skills in your resume is within the context of your previous roles and responsibilities. For example, to illustrate your collaboration skills, you could say something like this:

  • Collaborated with the marketing, sales, and product development teams to fine-tune user interfaces.

In this way, your softer skills can come across as clearly as your hard skills.

As we said above, the specific skills you’ll want to emphasize in your resume will depend on the role you’re applying for. Take a look through job postings from the companies you want to work for. If you notice any gaps in your skill set, use our comprehensive catalog of programming courses to hone your skills, build projects, earn certifications to include in your resume, and more.

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