- Maulik Suchak knows a thing or two about résumés.
- The lead software engineer has reviewed hundreds of his peers' résumés through a résumé-building site he built.
- He shared with BI the résumé that got him a Mag 7 tech job and what he wishes he'd done differently.
You could call Maulik Suchak something of a résumé expert.
His résumés have gotten him to final-round interviews at Google, Meta, Amazon, Netflix, and Atlassian, and led to multiple offers, including at Yelp, Microsoft, SurveyMonkey, and the Magnificent 7 company he's been at for nearly five years out of his 14-year career.
But, as the 34-year-old lead software engineer told Business Insider, "My deep dive into résumés didn't start because I was job hunting — it started because I was building a product."
Launching a tool to help people strengthen their résumé content and structure
In 2013, at 23 years old, Suchak co-created a résumé-building platform, CVsIntellect, with another engineer. The idea came from wanting to solve a very real problem; Suchak and his cofounder noticed their peers struggling to craft strong résumés, especially those without access to mentors or design tools.
Their vision was to make the résumé-creation process easier by offering a tool that didn't just generate résumés, but helped guide users toward stronger content and structure. This side project became Suchak's crash course in résumé content.
"I wasn't just writing my own résumé — I was reviewing hundreds of others," he said.
The platform grew rapidly, attracting thousands of users worldwide and surpassing over 100,000 résumés reworked via the site.
"This gave me deep insights into both the content and presentation side of résumés: what stands out, what gets ignored, and how different audiences interpret the same information," he said.
Leveraging his years of informal training helped him land job offers
Two years after launching CVsIntellect, while working as a software engineer in India, Suchak leveraged his learnings to finesse his own job-search materials.
"I knew how to write in a way that hiring managers would respond to, because I'd spent so much time thinking like one," Suchak said. Crafting a breakthrough résumé was about storytelling, positioning, and clarity — skills that ultimately helped him first break into Big Tech and later nab a role at his current Magnificent 7 company.
His efforts led to multiple job offers from companies such as Microsoft and Yelp. He accepted the Yelp offer and relocated to San Francisco, California, at the end of 2015.
In just under five years at Yelp, Suchak grew to lead a team of 14 software engineers as an engineering manager. In this capacity, he gained hiring responsibility, which gave him another foray into résumé review.
He also began mentoring other aspiring engineers. "Whenever someone reaches out for feedback on their résumé, I try my best to help," Suchak said. "Every résumé I read adds to my mental library of patterns — what works and what doesn't, what stands out visually and what falls flat, and how different people articulate their strengths."
Suchak followed his natural curiosity about how people at top companies present their experience. "I've spent a lot of time reading LinkedIn profiles, GitHub READMEs, and personal portfolios to understand how engineers craft their narratives — especially those in roles I admire," he said.
His research furthered his understanding of the language and structure common to strong résumés for Big Tech roles.
Landing a job at his current company
In 2019, Suchak moved to Silicon Valley and began applying to a flurry of Big Tech jobs, including several Magnificent 7 companies.
He reached the final round interviews at Google, Meta, Amazon, Netflix, Atlassian, and SurveyMonkey, again receiving several offers. In 2020, he accepted the job at his current Magnificent 7 company.
He attributes much of this success to the first impression his compelling résumé set. "With my résumé, I not only effectively initiated a lot of connections with recruiters and hiring managers, but I landed a job that I'm really proud of," Suchak said.
Five résumé strategies to capture the attention of Big Tech recruiters and hiring teams
Here's the exact résumé that helped Suchak achieve these victories — and five strategies he feels played a major role in ensuring his résumé told a persuasive enough story to open the right doors.
1. Show clear impact of work and projects, not just tasks
Every bullet point on his résumé included a tangible result — metrics or improvements that demonstrated real impact. This framed his work as meaningful and effective, not just functional.
"I always asked myself, 'What changed because I did this?'" Suchak said. "For example, instead of saying 'Worked on improving Yelp Cash Back sign-up page,' I wrote 'Improved Cash Back sign-up pages with various A/B tests with Python and JS resulted in 2X higher conversion.'"
2. Tell a precise story of career growth
Suchak treated his résumé like a narrative. In describing the roles he'd held earlier in his career, he focused on smaller-scale project impact; in his more recent roles, he showcased how he led product decisions or mentored others.
"Each role built logically on the previous one, and I highlighted progression — either in scope, skillset, or leadership," he said. "The idea was to show momentum and intentional career moves rather than random hopping around."
3. Stay clear, concise, and to-the-point — aim for 1 page
When building his résumé platform, Suchak often saw résumés that were three or more pages, filled with every job, internship, or online course candidates had ever done.
But when he realized most recruiters review résumés for less than 10 seconds, he wanted to do it differently.
"Each bullet was one to two lines max, and I avoided buzzwords," he said. "This made it easier for a recruiter or hiring manager to scan quickly and still get a full picture of my strengths."
4. Favor projects over certifications
In Suchak's early career, he spent a lot of time collecting technical certifications that he now feels didn't mean much. Over time, he shifted his strategy to emphasize actual working projects over just any certificate.
"In my résumé, I made sure to link to real-world projects, ideally hosted live or on GitHub," he said. He even mentioned one of his projects in a Magnificent 7 interview, he said, "because it showed initiative, technical depth, and a bit of product thinking."
Suchak has also tried to highlight independence. "I'd done a lot of projects on my own from end-to-end, which my employer now really appreciated," he said.
5. Remember readability and formatting
A "last but not least" job-search principle Suchak believes in is that even the best résumé content can be overlooked if the formatting is messy.
"A readable résumé feels more professional, even before a single word is read," Suchak said.
He opted for clean fonts, consistent spacing, and clear section headers. He also avoided dense blocks of text and added just enough white space to make for a comfortable reading experience.
He even printed his résumé out first to see how it looked on paper before submitting it online.
Suchak still doesn't think his résumé was perfect
"Looking back, if I could change anything about the résumé that got me into my Mag 7 job, I'd highlight more personal projects with shorter descriptions of each," he said. "I'd also try to add even more impact and numbers."
While many career experts suggest customizing your résumé for each job and company you apply to, Suchak didn't tweak his résumé at all for the job he ended up landing.
He now recognizes the value in tailoring résumés to the position you want, studying job descriptions, and integrating keywords from them to get past ATS filters.
"This is one I learned the hard way — while I received multiple offers, I also used to get a lot of rejections," he said. "Instead of sending the same generic résumé everywhere, I'd now match my experience to each role," Suchak said.
Do you have a story to share about your tips for landing a Big Tech job? Contact this reporter, Sarah Jackson, at [email protected], or this editor, Jane Zhang, at [email protected].
