The Complete FAANG Resume Guide

FAANG companies review thousands of resumes. Your format needs to be clean, scannable, and ATS-friendly. Here's what works:

• One page maximum — Yes, even with 10+ years of experience
• Single-column layout — Avoids ATS parsing issues
• Standard fonts — Arial, Calibri, or Computer Modern
• Clear section headers — Education, Experience, Skills, Projects
• Consistent formatting — Same date format, bullet style throughout

The goal is to make it easy for both humans and machines to extract your key qualifications in under 10 seconds.

Every bullet point should answer: "So what?" Use the XYZ formula:

Bad: Worked on the payments team.

Good: Reduced payment processing latency by 40% by redesigning the checkout API using async processing, handling 2M daily transactions.

Quantify everything. If you can't measure it directly, estimate the impact or scope.

Structure your experience section to highlight impact first:

1. Lead with your strongest achievement — Don't bury the impact
2. 3-5 bullets per role — Quality over quantity
3. Recent roles get more space — Old roles can be 1-2 bullets
4. Use active verbs — Led, Built, Designed, Reduced, Scaled

FAANG recruiters spend 6-10 seconds on initial scan. Your first bullet at your most recent role matters most.

ATS systems scan for keyword matches. Include these strategically:

• Tech stack — Languages, frameworks, databases
• Methodologies — Agile, CI/CD, TDD
• Domain keywords — From the job description
• Scale indicators — Millions of users, petabyte-scale, etc.

Don't keyword stuff. Every keyword should appear in context within your achievements.

Projects are critical for new grads and career changers. Structure them like work experience:

• Project name + tech stack — e.g., "TaskFlow (React, Node.js, PostgreSQL)"
• What it does — One-line description
• Technical achievements — What you built, challenges solved
• Live link or GitHub — Only if the code is clean

Include 2-3 substantial projects. Quality matters more than quantity.

These mistakes kill FAANG applications:

• Two pages — Unless you're staff+ level at a FAANG, one page
• Objective statements — Waste of space, they know why you're applying
• Responsibilities over results — "Responsible for" is weak
• Missing metrics — Every bullet should have a number
• Generic skills lists — "Team player, fast learner" adds nothing
• Photos or graphics — Never on a US tech resume

Every line should justify its space. If it doesn't show impact, cut it.

Each FAANG has subtle preferences: