Review
Title: The Tech Resume Inside Out
Author(s): Gergely Orosz
I've read quite a few articles on how to improve your resume/CV, but half of the times you don't know if the person giving the advice really knows about it, and the other half the advices are generic, not only for technical resumes. I heard about this book listening to a podcast and thought would be handy for my wife, but I've actually fully read it and applied quite a few of the suggestions it provides.
It's around 200 pages and includes a few handy templates if you don't want to start from scratch. I liked that it contains both advices from the author and from other hiring managers, recruiters and staff-level people, all of them from the tech industry. It also clearly states that a technical resume (at least one oriented either for a developer or for an engineering manager) has certain differences from a generic one, providing many examples and very specific points to modify or even remove.
The book also touches more sensitive areas, like potential biases, career switches, or coming back from long breaks, and being recent even covers COVID-19 specifics. It doesn't shies away from pointing out wrong software, services and myths about resume screening, a sincerity that I don't see often. Similarly, most of the "before and after" examples are very direct with the flaws (and why they are such), and you will probably feel identified with some of them (at least was my case).
I think the book is quite useful as there is not much literature specifically for software development and similar tech positions, plus the templates are a welcome extra. What I did was read it while applying some of the ideas and changes on my on CV, but can also just be fully read once and then do a second sweep directly focusing on what you felt would be improvements.