Learn to write a resume that gets interviews in three weekends
Three focused weekends — about 15 hours total — gets you from a vague reverse-chronological wall of text to a one-page resume that survives ATS parsing and actually books phone screens. The advice on the internet is mostly wrong. Three sources are right and consistent.
~15 hours · one-page ATS-clean resume, version-controlled, peer-reviewed
1.The Tech Resume Inside Out — Gergely Orosz
The best book on tech resumes, written by a former Uber engineering manager who reviewed hundreds of them and consulted with hiring managers at Google, Meta, Amazon and Microsoft. It's specific to software roles but the principles — impact-first bullets, quantified outcomes, level-appropriate language — are the same advice every senior recruiter gives in adjacent fields. Worth the price; the templates alone justify it.
$30 (Complete Package on Gumroad)
thetechresume.com →2.A free ATS-friendly template
Most "designer" resumes get mangled by applicant tracking systems. Use a single-column, plain-Helvetica or Calibri template — the Reddit-famous Sheets Resume template is the most widely-tested free option. Drop your bullets in, keep one page if you have under ten years of experience, and export as a flat PDF, not the .docx that some recruiters request (request both, save both). Skip every "AI resume builder."
Free
Sheets Resume template →3.r/resumes — get it roasted
Post your draft to r/resumes (anonymize the name and dates). The community is harsh, fast, and disproportionately full of recruiters and hiring managers killing time. You'll get five to fifteen specific critiques within twenty-four hours. Take the criticism that repeats across reviewers; ignore the lone-wolf opinions. Revise and post again. Two rounds is enough.
Free
r/resumes →If you're not in tech
If you're applying for non-engineering roles, swap the Orosz book for "The Google Resume" by Gayle Laakmann McDowell — same author as Cracking the Coding Interview, broader scope, covers consulting, finance and PM tracks. It's older but the structural advice still holds. Keep the template and the r/resumes review step exactly as written; they're industry-agnostic.
Why this path
The job market punishes resume mistakes that are completely fixable: dense paragraphs instead of bullets, responsibilities instead of impact, two columns that ATS software flattens into garbage. Orosz teaches you what hiring managers actually skim for; the template removes the formatting traps; r/resumes catches the blind spots a friend won't. Skip "AI rewriters" — they all produce the same bland prose recruiters now spot in three seconds.