[argonaut]

Some of my thoughts:

It is very common for high schooler resumes to get no attention. After all, these companies want college interns. And to top it off, you're a high school sophomore. Most HS seniors never get internships either.

I'll second what jfaucett said. It is much more important to show 1-2 projects that you actually shipped, rather than 10 projects you never finished. This should make intuitive sense.

Things on your resume that are not very impressive: 1) Your GPA (high school GPAs are meaningless to a startup) 2) Software Dev Club VP (high school club leadership is meaningless to a startup)

Honestly, it's a turn off when the first 3 things I see on your resume are that you're a sophomore in HS, your GPA, and a club leadership position, since I know how meaningless those things are. You should put your experience/projects at the top, since those are the most impressive. I'm not saying that you shouldn't include those other things (GPA, club), but they should be at the bottom of your resume.

Some notes 1) Get your app on the Google Play store. 2) Add a link to your django-based news aggregator 3) Countervail is down. Get a version up on your own domain (randallma.com) and link to it just so you can show it off.

In fact, you should get your personal website up and running so that you can have a digital resume that actually shows people your projects (with links and screenshots). A drab resume is not going to get past HR.

Your Hackers&Founders description also has a grammar error.

Finally, the high school students I know who got internships at software companies ALL had some sort of inside connection - typically through their parents or a family friend. See if your parents have any contacts they can leverage.

[caw]

I'd agree with some of this. HS resumes are going to get binned unless you prove otherwise. Your resume might be decent in getting a "high school" job like a supermarket, but it's still not great.

I think the Software Dev Club VP could be something, but you don't explain it at all. What is it? Did you cofound it? What do you do as VP? Accomplishments?

Your resume is somewhat fluff. You have skills, but it takes up >1/3 of the page without much to show for it. Try 2 column for skills. I'd also move it to the bottom, since your experience should speak for the skills you have, the skills are just a reminder^H^H^H^Hkeyword spam and list other things that may have not been included.

Not enough info at that point? Try speaking to some of your hackathons. It's an extracurricular thing.

One trick for designing resumes is to flip it upside down and look at the text as shapes rather than words. How is it balanced? Are there noticeable gaps, and are those intentional or should they be filled in?

Also, cover letters should be custom for each job. If you template them it's really only 1 paragraph you should have saved, and the rest should be custom per job.

As a high school student, don't send to jobs@. How do you even know the mail alias exists and actually gets looked at? Send to somebody.

EDIT: One last thing -- your resume is pretty flat. You are obviously strong technically, but you have no reference to teams or working with others. Hence why you should expand Club VP (maybe to experience section). If you do volunteering or organized something or did a Boy Scout project, I'd put that on there. You do get a bit of resume forgiveness as an intern that you don't get professionally.

I've looked over resumes for interns before, and basically you know that the most you can hope for is technically strong. Most of the time you want strong soft skills and they just grow technical skills through the internship. You don't show me any of the soft skills.

[argonaut]

Two things I would like to disagree with / clarify:

1) Just to be clear, the software dev club VP position is not a negative, just that it's not going to impress anyone. And honestly I can't think of situations in which it would. Co-founding a club in college, let alone HS, is very easy.

2) I disagree with the statement that "Most of the time you want strong soft skills and they just grow technical skills through the internship." Keep things in perspective. It's hard for a HS sophomore to impress on the soft skills side of the equation. I mean, even something that might be impressive to a college in admissions, like organizing a community service outing, is not going to be very relevant to a startup engineering internship. I actually think the way that you shine on your resume is to have extremely strong technical skills. If I know you have exceptional technical skills, I am assured you will be a useful contributor. If I am assured that you have exceptional soft skills, that still does not tell me how much you will be able to contribute. It's not like you'll be doing biz dev or sales. Looking through your github profile, it's hard for me to get a handle on your technical ability, which is why I recommend having a personal website with a visual portfolio (screenshots) of your projects and more detailed descriptions of the technical challenges and features of your projects.

I am not saying that you should neglect the soft skills side of things. Be involved in clubs. I cannot stress how important it is in the general scheme of things to be involved in something that requires public speaking. Club leadership is not public speaking. Something like theater or debate is. The payoff for those things shows itself in college admissions and in life after college when you have to deal with people and managers. As an intern you are not likely to face interpersonal challenges that require articulation and persuasion.