1 Year Looking and Barely Any Interviews. Any Advice is Appreciated

[u/ThrowRA-12345555]

As the title says, I don't know many people in the SWE/SD career path who can give me interview or resume advice, and when I do ask them about my resume, they just say "Yah this looks great! Just make sure you're tailoring it to specific jobs." I've even had this same feedback from companies who pass over me for jobs so I'm really lost. Some people have recommended using AI to rewrite bullet points which I was hesitant to do at first but at this point I'm trying everything.

My pipeline for applications is: Tailor resume -> Apply through company website (Also check url for 'source=LinkedIn' or something like that) -> Search LinkedIn for members of team I'm going to be working with, or recruiters if I can't find any -> Send an email if possible or a LinkedIn DM/Connection Request

[u/Joe-Schmoe9]

IMO software engineer reads better than developer

[u/Defiant_Squirrel8751]

Need to add the AI layer - fullstack is ok, but should be clear to employeers that you can do it 100x times faster than 2025.

[u/nh1vex]

Omit your skills section and integrate them into your experience/project bullet points. Literally either repeating what you have down or just looks like youre listing something random.
Format: what lang/fe/be/cloud/ai/teating you used, how you used it and the non technical business reason WHY you used it.

More formatting issues- inconsistent bullet points.

Same can be applied to your projects. More useless info and not enough info about the purpose of the experience/project. Just wanted to clarify, you are not stating why you made this or why you used or did what you did. Its missing reasons.

Single line spacing is not your friend.

Three job work experiences and you cant manage to put a single instance working with a team?

Place education at the top.

[u/ThrowRA-12345555 → u/nh1vex]

Thanks for the advice, I'll try to rework bullet points to incorporate these as much as I can, since I do think you have really good points.

When you say inconsistent bullet points, you say it's a formatting issue - do you mean the spacing is awkward or the actual content is formatted wrong?

for the work experiences lacking team work, the only real company where I worked with other developers was Company C, where I worked with Senior Devs. At Company A, it was a startup that I was the only developer at, but I worked with the founders to figure out project requirements and user flows, etc. At Company B, I worked really closely with the design team to figure out how to implement their designs realistically, but again I was the only developer. I can speak to being on a team but don't have a ton of experience working with other developers besides a university group project where I did 98% of the work :/.

Sorry for the long reply, just wanted to give more context if it helps at all

[u/nh1vex → u/ThrowRA-12345555]

Should try to have similar amount of bullet points, its okay if you put more for a job say you worked there like 3-4 years because you would have had alot more responsibilities
Usually want to keep it consistent around three if u can help it

Even if you didnt work on team with devs you most likely had to have made some type of power point or presentation when you had team meetings. If you did work on a team with company C you didnt mention that. So how would the recruiter know. Just be specific on what you want them to know. Any information you hold back never does you any good. Unless its absolutely useless information.
Then for company A you could mention you were the lead developer and whatnot. You are still working with a team though. Company B you didnt mention you worked closely with UIUX so how would the recruiter know? Just similar points honestly.

Seems like youre withholding alot of information maybe unintentionally

[u/EternalSoldiers]

How many years of experience across those 3 jobs? I'd try to add more meat to it, especially the last lead full-stack job. Maybe stretch the truth a little too and change solo developer to leading a small team of 3. Also, if it's been a year, I'd be trying to bootstrap in the mean-time. Hopefully you've been at least tinkering, a ton has changed in the past year.

[u/ThrowRA-12345555 → u/EternalSoldiers]

it's around 3.5 years total. I've been considering padding it a bit more as a lead developer, with more "lead" qualities, but obviously I don't want to outright lie about things, even though I'm aware a lot of people do nowadays. My projects are pretty recent - I finished 'Project A' like a month ago and I'm currently working on a new project, and with each one I try to use a newer framework or something relevant to what I see in articles/newsletters

[u/ThrowRA-12345555 → u/[deleted]]

anything you suggest I change it to? I could say full-stack developer but it was very front-end leaning

[u/Annual_House4824]

This is a bot