There’s arguably never been a better time to be a web developer. With an increasing number of businesses concentrating on setting up and strengthening their websites, web developers have never been in more demand. After all, without a skilled web developer on their team, a business won’t be able to reap the rewards of having a highly functional website that both performs well and looks great.

Projections from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) clearly reflect this demand. The BLS projects that employment of web developers will grow by 13 percent from 2018 to 2028. This is nearly 3 times faster than the average projected growth of all occupations, which stands at 5 percent. What’s more, web developers can generally expect to be handsomely rewarded for the work they do. As the BLS points out, the mean average wage for web developers and digital interface designers is $82,370.

Given this enticing combination of strong projected job growth and attractive pay on the horizon, you may be led to believe that you’ll be able to have your pick of any job at any company your heart desires.

But before you get ahead of yourself, remember that there are hundreds to thousands of other candidates all vying for the same jobs. It’s also important to reiterate that the salary quoted above is the mean average, so the actual salary of a job could be tens of thousands of dollars less or more. Needless to say, jobs with better salaries will be even more competitive than usual – especially if they come with good working conditions and perks too.

This is all to say that you can’t be complacent when it comes to applying for jobs. If you want to be hired for your dream job in 2020, you’ll need to learn how to make a resume that establishes you as a web developer that’s worth hiring (and paying a lot!). It’s relatively straightforward once you know how. Our resume writing guide will teach you precisely what you need to know including:

• Which sections are non-negotiable to feature in your resume
• What skills are valuable to emphasize
• Expert advice for how to effectively highlight your achievements
• Tips for writing your resume as an entry-level web developer
• How to make a stunning resume in one third of the usual time 

1. Multiple Template Examples

2. How Do You Write a Job-Winning Web Developer Resume?

How should you format your resume?

Whether you’re putting together a new website or making improvements to an existing one, it’s considered best practice to use the most logical and organized approach possible to get the job done. Fortunately for you, this is the very same approach you should take when formatting your resume.

If you want to guarantee getting this right, make sure to utilize a reverse-chronological resume format. By featuring your most recent job first and working backward from there, this format illuminates your career progression to recruiters in a logical and organized way.

Keeping your resume looking sharp will also require you to follow a handful of standard layout guidelines. From expert tips about fonts to header sizing, we’ve listed the most critical ones to be mindful of below:

• • Number of Pages: One only.
  • Fonts to Use: Legible fonts that command authority, such as Cambria and Lato.
  • Fonts to Avoid: Any font that looks robotic or otherwise unprofessional, such as Robotic Monkey 1 and Barrelhouse.
  • Margins: 1 inch on all sides.

• Line Spacing: 1 or 1.15.

• Header size: 14-16 point size.
• Text size: 11-12 point size.

What are the most important sections to include in your resume?

When compiling a report for your boss, it’s crucial to include all details – both small or large. Failure to do so could spell disaster for your company’s website. This is not the case when it comes to making your resume. Conversely, you’ll need to be ultra selective in the information you include because as we highlighted above, your resume should only be a total of one page. Here are the most important sections to include in your resume:

• Contact Information: Key personal details including your name, home and email addresses, phone number, and LinkedIn profile URL.

• Resume Objective or Resume Summary: A summary complete with examples that attest to the fact that you’re the ideal web developer for the job.

• Employment History: An overview of your work history that includes the title you held, the company name, and your most notable achievements for each one respectively.

• Education: A summary of your relevant educational background.

• Training and Certifications: An overview of any relevant training you undertook and certifications you hold.

• Skills: A list of your most relevant technical and interpersonal skills that you possess as a web developer.

How do you showcase your portfolio of past projects properly?

There’s no doubt that the contents of your resume needs to be solid if you want to impress recruiters. That being said, there’s only so much insight it can provide about your skills. As they say, the proof is in the pudding.

The best proof you can give recruiters that you’re a standout talent is to showcase your portfolio of past projects in your resume.

But hold up before you start copying and pasting all kinds of links and images of your past projects to your resume. Adding too many links or images to your resume is generally discouraged as doing so will make it look crowded and possibly ruin its formatting. 

It’s therefore far more effective to collate all of your past projects in a sleek online portfolio that you link to in your resume. After all, the very process of making an online portfolio gives  you the opportunity to highlight your web development skills in action. Talk about killing two birds with one stone! If you’re unsure of where to start, we suggest following these helpful tips.

So where exactly should you place a link to your portfolio in your resume? It will depend on the overall layout of your resume. In most cases, you can simply add it to your “Contact Information” section, but it’s also possible to add it to your “Resume Objective” or “Resume Summary”.

Pro tip: Registering a custom domain name such as yourname.com can cost as little as $10 a year. Hosting costs can vary, but if you do your research you can find plans that are around $5 a month. All in all, the total running costs are small investments that are sure to pay dividends.

Where do you list any additional training and certifications you have and how do you do this correctly?

Who would you rather entrust an important web development project to: a web developer with plenty of relevant training and certifications to their name, or one without any? You’d surely trust the dev with more training and certifications.

So why, then, would a recruiter think any differently? Recruiters are looking for the crème de la crème of web developers, so it makes sense that they’d place any training and certification in high regard. That is, so long as they are relevant to the given job.

In regards to where you should list any of your additional training and certifications, add them to your “Training and Certifications” section.

However, make sure to avoid going on at length about what you learned like this candidate did:

TRAINING AND CERTIFICATIONS

• In December 2019 I took a very interesting online WordPress course from WPMU DEV which helped me to further develop my WordPress skills. After studying for several months, I also finally became Oracle certified in March 2020. 

All you need to do is list the following information for each certification or training you’ve undertaken:

• The name of the training or certification
• The name of the institution that provided it
• The year you obtained it

So the above candidate’s Training and Certifications section should actually look like this:

TRAINING AND CERTIFICATIONS 

• Advanced WordPress Development, WPMU DEV, 2019
• Oracle Certified Associate (OCA), Oracle, 2020

Pro tip: There are several online courses for web developers that you can complete to make yourself a more enticing candidate. Some can even be completed in a matter of hours. If you need any more excuses to get started, there’s even a plethora of free courses available if you search for them!

What are the technical and interpersonal skills a web developer needs?

You can never have too many skills as a web developer. The question is, what skills do you need to feature on your resume that will boost your chances of getting hired?

We can’t tell you a precise answer because it ultimately depends on the criteria for each given job. In other words, there isn’t one blanket answer as every job requires a different set of skills.

Fortunately, there’s a super easy way to pinpoint which skills you’ll need for any web developer job out there. Just take a careful look at the job ad! It sounds almost too simple to be true, but the answers are all readily available there. Recruiters use job ads to specify which skills they’re after. Be sure to look for skills-focused keywords not only in the job description, but also throughout the entire job ad!

When you’re analyzing a job ad, you’ll need to keep a lookout for both technical and interpersonal skills. You can learn more about each type below. We’ve even included some examples of both that we took straight from real-life web developer job ads.

Technical skills

Technical skills are often referred to as “hard skills” as they describe any measurable abilities a candidate possesses. For web web developers, technical skills can be further divided into task-oriented skills and programming languages/scripts skills.

For example:

Task-oriented skills

• Developing new web applications
• Maintaining and enhancing existing web applications and all internal systems
• Performing complete testing of web applications
• Conducting all user acceptance testing and report results
• Databases and data management
• Responsive web design
• Ability to answer support related emails

Programming language/script skills:

• HTML
• HTML 5
• CakePHP
• XHTML
• DHTML
• CSS
• WordPress 
• Javascript
• JQuery
• PHP
• C++
• Python
• Ruby
• MySQL
• Perl

Interpersonal skills

Interpersonal skills, otherwise known as “soft skills,” are those that require social and emotional intelligence to excel in. For example:

• Detail-oriented
• Organized
• Team player
• Self motivated
• Willingness to teach and to learn
• Responsible
• Hard working
• Ability to meet deadlines
• Ability to handle multiple projects at the same time
• Communication skills

So what should you do once you have a clear understanding of the skills a recruiter is after for a given role? Determine which ones you genuinely possess. Then, you’ll be ready to add them to your resume in the following sections:

• • “Skills” section: In this section, just list the key skills you offer. Around 6 to 8 is usually enough, unless the job ad contains more that you cannot include in the following sections.

• “Employment History” section: Ideally, you should include at least one skill for every achievement.

• “Resume Objective” or “Resume Summary” section: Include 1 or 2 skills that you especially want to emphasize to the recruiter.

How to highlight your most important achievements

In order to create a resume that recruiters will rush to read, you should always keep in mind who you’re writing it for. We say this because many candidates make the mistake of featuring the achievements that they believe are important, rather than the ones a recruiter would deem to be noteworthy.

If you’ve read the section above, you’ll know that each job ad boasts a goldmine of information regarding what a recruiter is looking for from their ideal candidate. In order to make it clear to them that you’re indeed this person, you’ll need to give them exactly what they’re after.

That’s why it’s pivotal to consult a job ad to work out which achievements will be most beneficial to feature. It’s all a matter of looking for keywords that expose what a recruiter values. Keywords can include skills as well as professional experiences, job titles, and other desirable attributes an ideal candidate should possess.

As soon as you’ve identified the keywords in a job ad, it’s time to decide whether they apply to you or not. Once you know this, you can formulate each of your achievements around one or more keywords.

Keywords aren’t the only thing you’ll need to think about in order to write winning achievements. You must also make sure to quantify each one. That is, you’ll need to state the action you took in addition to the positive result that came about because of it.

For example, if you were trying to target the keywords “WordPress” and “responsive web design,” you should aim to write something as meaningful and eye-catching as this:

• Reconfigured the company’s WordPress website using responsive web design skills, leading to a 200% increase in mobile sessions and a 5x increase in time on page for mobile devices.

Pro tip: It’s crucial to try your best to keep any keywords you use in your resume exactly as they appear in the job ad. For example, don’t write “WP” if the keyword is “WordPress”. If you don’t include the keyword as-is, it may not be picked up by an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) the recruiter is using to quickly accept or reject resumes. Consequently, your resume may be rejected as the presence of keywords is one of the factors ATS uses to determine the worthiness of a resume.

How to write a resume objective or summary

Both entry-level and experienced candidates alike should open their resume with a section that succinctly explains to a recruiter why they’d make a valuable hire. If you’re an entry level candidate, a resume objective will do the trick. For experienced candidates, a resume summary is the way to go. Discover more about each one below:

Resume objective 

Entry level candidates often fumble writing their resume objective because they’re unsure of themselves. To be specific, they’re unsure of which attributes they can offer a recruiter. This lack of confidence and understanding of their own abilities transpires all too clearly in their resume objective. Consequently, it ends up looking something like this:

• Recent college graduate is looking for opportunities to work as a web developer. Although I lack professional experience in this field, I am willing to work hard to expand my knowledge and skills set if given the chance to work at Triangle Solutions.

While the candidate’s honesty about their inexperience is admirable, they put the nail in the coffin for their chances of getting hired by overly focusing on it. Your resume objective should emphasize why a recruiter should consider you despite your inexperience. If the only attribute you’re offering is your motivation to work, you won’t be considered a very enticing candidate.

Needless to say, motivation is a valuable trait in any recruiters’ eyes, but it’s not enough. They’ll be looking for someone who offers the full package, namely, the specific attractive qualities that they’ve noted in the job ad.

And if you’re thinking that it’s impossible to offer a recruiter anything of value if you don’t have any paid work experience, look at this candidate’s resume objective for inspiration:

• Recent graduate with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from California State University is seeking to apply their HTML and React skills at Triangle Solutions. As a highly organized and detail-oriented individual, I believe I would be an asset to your team. I am motivated to continue developing my skills, as exemplified by the fact that I have helped to successfully resolve over 50 problems on Stack Overflow. 

As you can see, this candidate managed to write a stellar resume objective despite not having an ounce of paid experience. They took a far more positive approach to showcasing their abilities by highlighting their educational background (their degree) as well as their relevant technical skills (HTML and React) and interpersonal skills (organized and detail-oriented).

They also made their strong motivation to keep developing their skills known to a recruiter in a much more effective manner than the previous candidate. Instead of merely saying that they’re motivated, they provided a tangible example of their motivation in action (their contributions on Stack Overflow).

As this resume objective example shows, it’s more than possible to write a compelling resume objective as an entry-level candidate if you put your mind to it.

Pro tip: If you graduated with a GPA of 3.5 or above, include it in parentheses after your degree name.

Resume summary

By the time you’ve racked up a couple of years in the industry, it’s much easier to think of the reasons why you’re a great web developer. Even so, you may still find it challenging to summarize why you’re an unmissable hire in your resume summary. After all, you can’t just state in general why you’re a killer web developer, you need to say why you’re the perfect fit for the particular job you’re applying for.

If you’re wondering if it’s really that bad to generalize in your resume summary, take a look at this resume summary example:

• Web developer with 4 years of experience working on various projects that have been highly successful. My ability to program in a range of programming languages and my helpful soft skills would make me an excellent hire for the position at Parallel Products.

The way this candidate has written their resume summary makes it seem like they have nothing concrete to show for their 4 years of experience. This is because everything they mentioned is a generalization.

For example, they wrote that they’ve been “working on various projects” instead of stating which ones and they stated that they’ve been “highly successful” without providing an example of how or why. Moreover, they mentioned their competency in a “range of programming languages” and “helpful soft skills” when it would be exponentially more insightful to specify what they are. 

So how do you make a resume summary that ticks all the boxes a recruiter is looking for? You need to provide specific information about yourself as well as examples of the draw cards you offer as a candidate. The following resume summary example shows precisely how this should be done:

• Hard wording web developer with 4 years of experience working predominantly on developing innovative web applications in HTML and CSS for e-commerce websites. I harnessed these skills to redevelop the company’s shopping cart application which resulted in a 150% increase in sales. My ability to juggle multiple tasks and meet tight deadlines would also make me an asset to Parallel Products.  

If there’s one thing that’s for sure, this candidate would be at the top of a recruiter’s list of candidates to interview. Why? The candidate has provided them with not just one, but multiple reasons why they’re worth hiring.

For starters, they provided specific information about their professional experiences and technical skills (working predominantly on developing innovative web applications for e-commerce websites). They also clearly stated which programming languages they’ve utilized (HTML and CSS).

That’s not all, however. They remembered to emphasize their soft skills too (ability to juggle multiple tasks and meet tight deadlines). Last but not least, they provided evidence of their attributes with a tangible example a recruiter would find hard to look away from (the 150% increase in sales that their programming skills directly contributed to). This would in turn help to solidify that they aren’t just all talk.

Remember, recruiters want to be reassured that you offer the right balance of educational background, skills, professional experiences, and other attributes. So it’s vital that your resume summary makes this crystal clear to them within seconds. 

Pro tip: Neither a resume summary nor resume objective should take up too much space on your resume. 2 to 4 sentences is plenty to convey your points across.

How to write a web developer resume when you have little or no experience

There’s no need to fear writing your resume if you have little or no professional experience as a web developer. Every great developer had to get their start somewhere, so you can rest assured that you’re on a well-trodden path. To set yourself up for success, follow these 5 handy tips:

1. 1. Use a functional resume format: This format de-emphasizes your inexperience by strongly emphasizing your skills instead.

• Include relevant freelance jobs: If you’ve taken up any freelance web development projects, list them out in your “Employment History” section. Just because you didn’t work for a traditional  employer, doesn’t mean your experience is any less valuable!

• Volunteer: If you’re having trouble getting a paid freelance gig or traditional work, volunteer your skills at a non-profit organization. Many will be happy to take you up on your offer to improve their website. List any unpaid work you do in a “Volunteer Experiences” section.

• Complete online courses: Don’t wait until you get your first job to start improving your web development skills. Take up an online course to upskill yourself and simultaneously enhance your “Training and Certifications” section.

• Contribute to Stack Overflow: Building a presence on Stack Overflow can show your commitment to your future as a web developer. You can link your profile in your “Contact Information” section to show off your contributions.

How to make your resume stand out

You can significantly elevate your chances of being hired by making your resume stand out. Here are our top tips that you can put into action today:

• Don’t skip your education section: While an increasing number of employers don’t require candidates to have a typical web developer educational background (i.e. an associate’s degree in web design or a related field), many will still state this as a requirement or give strong preference to candidates who have such a background.

Recruiters want to know what formal education you bring to the table when evaluating your suitability for a position. So it’s essential to include the highest level of education you attained in your resume – even if it’s a high school diploma. List your education in a separate “Education” section. For each diploma or degree be sure to list: the name of the diploma degree; the school or college you attended; the state it’s located in; and the years you studied.

• • Shoot your shot: It sounds obvious to say, but if you only apply for mediocre jobs, you’ll only get mediocre jobs. If you want to work in a job you actually want, you’ll need to apply for them. Remember, you don’t need to tick every single box a recruiter is looking for or worked for the likes of Google in order to score your dream job. All you need to do is ensure your resume is relevant to the job so that it leaves no doubt in the recruiter’s mind why you’re worth hiring.

• Don’t exaggerate: It’s never OK to lie on your resume, and this includes exaggerating your skills or experiences. While you may initially be able to fool a recruiter into thinking they are highly proficient in X or have experience working on Y, the jig will be up as soon as they interview you.

Web developer interviews are notoriously challenging because interviewers don’t tend to hold back on testing your knowledge and skills. They may even ask you to complete a web development test before, during, or after the interview to see if you really have what it takes. If you want to keep your reputation intact, be sure to always stick to the facts.  

3. How to Simplify Making a Resume Using Resumebuild.com’s Resume Builder Tool 

You’d have a job in no time if only you could harness the same prowess you have for making flawless websites to make your resume. Unfortunately, most web developers (and job seekers in general) find it difficult to put their best foot forward in their resumes. After all, very few people have an inherent talent for making resumes!

And even with the help of our insightful resume guide above, many candidates still find it futile to make a stellar web developer resume all by themselves.

If you don’t want your resume to completely miss the mark, rest assured there is another way. Our easy-to-use resume builder tool at Resumebuild.com is the solution to all of your resume-making problems.

Instead of taking days to make your resume, it will help you make it in just minutes. Instead of trying to come up with engaging ways to describe your professional achievements, you’ll be able to pick and choose from hundreds of pre-written examples. Instead of wasting time perfecting your resume’s format and layout, you’ll be presented with dozens of HR-approved resume templates to select from.

As a web developer, you’ll also appreciate the fact that our resume builder has been designed to be as speedy and user-friendly as possible. So what are you waiting for? Start making a web developer resume that expertly showcases your talent to recruiters.