⚡️ asmbld · Issue #004

Written for engineers on the job search, EMs building teams, and founders hiring them.

01 · STAND-UP

Most resumes are designed to be read.

The best ones are designed to be scanned.

There’s a difference.

02 · SPRINT

I have a confession.

I have over 15 resume formats saved on my computer.

Different file formats. Different fonts. Different lengths. One of them — I’m not making this up — has headers set to hex code #800000.

Maroon.

I spent years on the candidate side of the table obsessing over aesthetics, storytelling, and depth. Colors. Content. Detail. And as strange as it sounds, I enjoyed it. Every revision felt like progress. Every format felt like a better shot.

I still got rejected for roles I was qualified for.

I thought I checked all the boxes.

Then I crossed to the other side of the table.

And after ten years reviewing resumes as a recruiter — different formats, different fonts, different lengths, including one from a VP of Engineering that clocked in at 14 pages — I noticed something I couldn’t unsee.

The resumes I spent the most time on weren’t the most detailed ones.

They were the ones designed like a homepage.

Here’s what that actually means.

Every website you’ve ever visited has the same basic architecture. A nav bar at the top with the essentials. A hero section above the fold with the thing they most want you to see. And everything else — the supporting information, the depth, the detail — lives below the fold, there when you want it but never in the way.

The resumes that stopped my scroll were built the same way.

Personal info at the top — clean, fast, scannable. The most relevant experience and signal on the first half of the first page. Everything else below.

Not because the rest didn’t matter. Because the recruiter — me — needed a reason to keep reading before I’d earned the right to care about the rest.

Here’s what most gurus say: design your resume for the person who will love them. The person who reads every line, weighs every detail, sees the full picture.

That person doesn’t exist in the first pass.

In the first pass, you have about six seconds. Maybe less. The question being answered isn’t “is this person qualified?” It’s “is there enough here to keep going?”

The homepage model answers that question in the first scroll.

I spent years on the candidate side not knowing this. I was building beautiful, detailed, thoughtfully designed documents — and handing them to someone who needed a nav bar and a hero section.

Now I know. And now you do too.

One more thing worth naming: this isn’t a universal rule. Not every recruiter reads this way. Not every hiring manager scans before they read. But enough do that it changes how I’d build every resume I write from here on.

Design for the scan first. Earn the read second.

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03 · RETROSPECTIVE

✅ What went well

This topic is noisy. So much advice out there from friends, family, social media gurus. We are told how to write a resume, how it should be structured, how it should look and feel, but not why it gets looked at in the first place. I hope this newsletter helped uncover the psychology behind it.

🔧 What could be improved

I want to show more of the actual structure. Next time I write about resumes, I’ll include a visual breakdown of what the homepage model looks like in practice.

⚡ One action item before next week

Pull up your resume right now. Look at the first half of the first page. If someone gave it six seconds — what would they walk away knowing about you? If the answer is “not much,” that’s where to start.

❓ Open question for readers

Which camp are you in — does the homepage model make you rethink how you’ve been building your resume, or does it make you want to throw your laptop out the window?

If the latter, I need a new MacBook Pro; ping me 😊

Thinking about replying but not sure what to say?

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