What Reviewers Look For by Level

Evidence changes as your career grows

Reviewers want evidence that you can do the job at the level you are applying for, and the kind of evidence differs. For students and new graduates, there is usually little professional experience, so projects, internships, coursework with real depth, open source, hackathons and teaching or tutoring carry more weight, and the portfolio matters more. For experienced engineers, reviewers focus on recent roles: scope, ownership, technical decisions, impact on users or the business, and collaboration or leadership. Senior candidates are expected to show judgement and influence, not just tasks completed. In every case, clarity and honesty beat volume.

Signals by career stage

What tends to carry weight (general guidance, varies by company).

Student / new grad
  - projects you built and can explain in depth
  - internships, research, part-time or freelance work
  - relevant coursework only when it shows real depth
  - open source, hackathons, teaching assistant roles

Early career (1-3 years)
  - shipped features and what changed for users
  - growing ownership: bugs, on-call, small designs
  - a few strong projects if work code is private

Experienced (4+ years)
  - scope: systems, teams, users affected
  - technical decisions and trade-offs you drove
  - mentoring, cross-team influence, reliability
  - projects matter less; recent roles matter most

Write for the level you want

Read job descriptions for your target level and make sure your strongest, most relevant evidence for that level appears near the top of your resume.

Quick check: For a new graduate with no internships, what usually carries the most weight?

• Projects they built and can explain in depth
• A long list of every programming language they have heard of
• A photo and personal details
• A detailed list of school-level achievements