The D.E.N.N.I.S. system: Résumé tips for Senior Devs

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I have worn the hiring manager hat for numerous roles - leaving an endless trail of scrunched-up résumés in my wake.

The hiring process can be likened to dating on Tinder - before setting up a date to test compatibility, a hiring manager is going to swipe left on the vast majority of profiles after just a few seconds of evaluation.

I have identified 6 principles that will turn your CV from an instant swipe-left into a long-lasting, gainful relationship.

Introducing…

The D.E.N.N.I.S. System

The D.E.N.N.I.S. System was originally devised by Dennis Reynolds of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, which detailed his repeatable, reliable, and somewhat psychotic approach to seduction.

I have repurposed the system to help you seduce hiring managers, and ensure they’re lined up in your inbox, begging to give you a job.

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D - Drive Initiatives

E - Embrace LaTeX

N - Name Recognition

N - No More Lists

I - Impact is King

S - Short Stints are Dangerous

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D: Drive Initiatives

Here’s one of my favourite interview questions:

In your last company, what wouldn’t have happened without you?

As a senior, you should be proactive, not reactive, and this question quickly gets to the heart of whether you can get shit done.

While senior engineers are individual contributors; the best engineers’ best work is rarely code. Some real-world examples I have seen of top-tier initiative driving include:

• Drove the adoption of an RFC process that’s now used for all new system designs and changes to public interfaces

• Introduced security check-ins into our releases to ensure our application was up-to-date with OWASP best practices

• Set up our first platform team - focused on developing and maintaining internal libraries, SDKs, and build processes

E: Embrace LaTeX

LaTeX is a document preparation system that is mostly used for scientific papers - sort of like HTML for PDFs.

Using LaTeX for your résumé sends a subtle but clear message: you love software engineering so much that you've coded your CV.

This can unconsciously sway more technical hiring managers like me from “looking for reasons to reject you” to “looking for reasons to book you into a call”.

A neat shortcut to avoid learning all the syntax - CV templates from Github as a starting point and Overleaf to actually do the editing works pretty well.

Stuck looking for a starting point?
Feel free to use my Résumé as a template!

N: Name Recognition

I’ll surprise you here: hiring managers are humans.

And like most humans, we have a strong tendency towards familiarity bias - that means we overvalue options that we already know.

Therefore, seeing a name we’ve heard on your résumé is going to immediately put us in our comfort zone, and give a great first impression before they even meet you.

Admittedly, this is more strategic than tactical - but a stint at a well-known and reputable company generally does more for one’s CV than a more senior title at a no-name firm. Big-name companies surely have a high hiring bar, and so you must be a credible candidate.

If you aren’t fortunate enough to have a big name on your work experience, don’t despair - you could, for instance, contribute to popular open-source libraries and point us to that.

Another cognitive bias you could capitalise on is social proof - it will generate a positive impression with the hiring manager if you have lots of Github stars, a high StackOverflow reputation, or, of course…

N: No More Lists

The vast majority of CVs I see contain a section listing the platforms, frameworks, and libraries you’re familiar with. Unfortunately, all applicants for, say, an Android or iOS role generally have the exact same list.

You might have heard that hiring managers spend less than 10 seconds looking at each résumé. In the days of LinkedIn one-click-apply, this is a huge overestimate. Do you want to be using up valuable first-page real-estate on something that does nothing to make you stand out?

The key here is; you want to differentiate yourself through your unique skills.

It’s not interesting to a hiring manager that you know Dagger/Hilt/Koin, or that you’re proficient in UIKit, Foundation, and Core Data. But it would be interesting if you’re a rare specialist in BLE, Camera APIs, or low-level graphics frameworks - or, even better, if you’re a full-stack mobile dev who’s also great with API design, infra, and SQL.

In the mobile world, there’s been a massive UI paradigm shift to declarative frameworks such as JetPack Compose & SwiftUI. Deep knowledge of these modern tools is often a huge competitive advantage for some job listings, and so these are certainly worth embellishing your credentials in.

What about automatic CV screening?

There are many companies which use automated HR tools to screen CVs for keywords and filter them out before any human even takes a look.

This is understandable, in the age of LinkedIn one-click-apply - junior openings at well-known firms regularly get applications in the 1000s.

If you want to play it safe, try to include the tech with which you’re experienced as part of your work experience, or moving your list to the bottom.

I - Impact is King

Many applicants describe their work experience with mundane contributions like bug fixes, feature development, setting up CI, or mentorship. While these are a major part of any individual contributor role, none of this is very interesting to read.

If you can show you had ownership over a critical project, it tells me “your company trusted you to deliver” - it’s a strong signal that you’re capable. Showcase your impact by highlighting achievements:

• Specced out a high-level technical design for an analytics system that balances cost minimisation and fidelity, which halved our analytics spend without losing any information.

• Transitioned our release process from ad-hoc feature releases towards a structured regular process using automated SQL queries and an alerting system to run rollout health checks and instantly ping us if any issues occurred, reducing prod issues by 85%.

• Collaborated with our product and infra teams to create a feature flagging system that allowed us to roll back changes instantly, reducing the rate of SEV-1 and SEV-2 incidents by 85%.

When possible, use real-life examples and quantifiable data to support your claims of impact, but make sure you can back them up - if I’m on my 4th hour of interviews, you can bet I’m going to grill you if I smell bullshit.

S - Short Stints are Dangerous

Several studies show that new employees might take many months to become fully productive.

In the recent round of tech layoffs, sometimes it’s unavoidable to have one or two shorter tenures - hiring managers are aware of this, and so this generally doesn’t count against you. But giving the appearance of job hopping in ‘peacetime’ is another thing entirely.

If you’ve worked more than 4 jobs in the last 4 years, you’re in the danger zone. Many companies will discard a CV quickly if we don’t think you’ll stick around until next year.

My own Résumé

Of course, it wouldn’t be fair to pontificate about how to write a CV without dogfooding my own advice, and showing you my own:

Jacob Bartlett

82.4KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Please keep your eyes peeled for my next post, which brings us into how to perform phenomenally in your first-round interview!

Hire me… because of the implication

In conclusion, crafting a winning résumé doesn't have to be daunting.

By following The D.E.N.N.I.S. System and focusing on a few key principles:

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D - Drive Initiatives

E - Embrace LaTeX

N - Name Recognition

N - No More Lists

I - Impact is King

S - Short Stints are Dangerous

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…you’ll have a stunning CV, create a fantastic first impression, get an instant swipe-right into every interview and, ultimately, landing that dream job.