To: Siddhartha Gupta, English 301 Student
From: Geneviève Bolduc, English 301 Student
Date: August 15, 2020
Subject: Peer Review of Applications Package
Thank you for providing the application package. Each aspect of the application felt carefully approached and relevant to your career prospects in the field of software engineering.
First Impressions
The application is complete and detailed. The package does include doubles of the documentation and could be shortened from a 19-page document to an 11-page document by removing the duplicate information.
Job Advertisement
The MLA citation is present. An indentation starting at the second line would improve the formatting.
Cover Letter
Style
The name and addressed of the recipient (left) are unaligned with yours (center). This creates a visual break and deters from the flow of the letter. Moreover, the different lines of the address should be single-spaced. This will help consolidate your letter onto one page, which is ideal for cover letters.
The rest of the letter is broken down into relevant paragraphs and makes for an organic read.
Content
The opening line of the letter is upbeat and compelling. In that same starting paragraph, it is worth mentioning that you are applying for the specific position that was advertised. Companies may be advertising for multiple jobs at once, so it is crucial to identify which position and which post was being referred to.
It would be worth re-examining what is worthy of an explanation in your letter. The Terrorism Project is mentioned without any contextual information. If this is a personal project you are proud of, it will be worth the additional sentence about what it is and why you created it. In the same vein, you do not need to explain industry standards, which is done in these sentences: “Most companies have a partial-Agile methodology. Scrum methodology is a subset of Agile.” Recruiters for a software engineering position will already know this and explaining it may unintentionally come across as condescending.
This sentence raises a couple questions for the reader: “We could not go fully agile as we had to produce a lot of documentation before we started coding to ensure that our expectations with the Company were appropriate.” Who is the Company in this context? In addition, rather than phrasing that sentence as a negative (“we could not go fully”), it may be worth reframing as a positive (i.e. “we were able to utilize many aspects of agile methodology”).
Grammar
Overall the piece was well-written. A hyphen typo worth fixing can be found in the turn of phrase “consumer oriented-developer”. It should instead ready “consumer-oriented developer”.
Resume
Content
The contact information is effectively identified at the top of the resume followed by a personalized objective. Well done!
It was great to see that your projects were drawn from very recent experience. The CS319 information is duplicated on page one and page two. It would be sufficient to have it only once.
Along these lines, many of the projects are very interesting and relevant. It is important to shine them in a positive light. Because of this, avoiding negatives such as “However, I did not have enough time” may strengthen the quality of the resume. This line could be removed or cast in a positive light.
Specific presentation grades do not need to be included in the resume. What are you trying to convey in the communication section? If you are trying to convey fluency, instead of grades, you could do a language section and identify that you are fluent. If you are trying to say that you are interested in linguistics, it may be more relevant to an ‘interests’ section. In that same section, “Planning on joining Toastmasters” might not be necessary. The purpose of a resume is to identify what a person has done, and not what they plan to do.
The following sentence is incomplete and would benefit from an ending: “I also used Lighthouse Labs to optimize”. What are you optimizing?
Style
The sections are clearly outlined and readable.
The font changes in the internal description of your projects. Keeping the same font throughout the document makes for a smoother read. Some of the words in these same descriptions are bolded while other descriptions have no bolded words. The resume is inherently a short document, it may not be necessary to bolden any words. If you do elect to pursue highlighting specific words, those pertaining to specific skills would probably be best. SQL, C#, React are marketable skills, backend and frontend are not.
Grammar and Punctuation
The resume would benefit from a fine-combed punctuation review. Two of the three objectives have periods at the end of their sentences, one does not. The semi-colon (;) is not typically used prior to a list of items. Here is a short list of the sentences worthy of review.
- “Getting a Job for Software Engineering at MasterCard” (missing period).
- “The stack was; JavaScript and D3” (unnecessary semi-colon).
- “My key role was to populate the database and Registering Module” (missing period).
- “Bachelor of Science: Major in Computer Science:” (extra colon).
There are typos such as “spirt” instead of “sprint”. Fixing errors such as this will demonstrate care and attention to detail.
Reference Letters
Content
The reference letters identify a clear goal that the reader can discern. This is effective.
Praise or a clear reason the recipient is well suited to write this reference may increase the likelihood of getting a response. Why did you select that recipient? Was it because you learned a concept in their class that would be relevant? Such personalization may go a long way.
Setting a clear deadline was a great choice. It gives the reader a timeline to work with.
Getting the names of your references exactly right is important. Double-check name spellings. “Jonathan” should actually be “Jonatan” in one of the letters.
The body of all reference requests are polite and professional in tone.
Style
Similarly to the cover letter, the unaligned break between the sender and recipient contact information may have a cleaner feel if both aligned to the left.
Grammar and Punctuation
The semi-colon at the end of the following sentence could be replaced by a period: “Please let me know if there is any information that I can provide with regard to my experience;”
Overall, the application package conveys a clear picture of your goals, interests and qualifications. I hope the recommendations outlined above are helpful during the revision process. Do not hesitate to reach out with any questions or concerns.
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