Job Ready

C++ is hired into several distinct tracks, and a reviewer reads your resume through the lens of the one they are hiring for. "C++, OOP, data structures" says nothing they can check; every graduate writes it. What reads as evidence is the working ecosystem around the language for that track, a project that uses it, and a number that shows it held up.

• Name the standard. "C++20" or "C++17" tells a reviewer you write modern C++; no standard, or only "C/C++", reads as legacy or academic.
• Every bullet: action verb, what was built, the tools in parentheses, and a number where one exists: latency, throughput, frame time, memory saved, build time cut.
• Mirror the posting. If it says "modern C++", "multithreading" and "Linux", use those words. An ATS matches strings, not synonyms.
• Projects above education with under three years of experience. Link the repository, and a demo video for anything visual.

Then check it against a real posting instead of guessing: paste both into the ATS resume checker. It scores keyword coverage against that specific job, flags formatting that breaks parsers, and shows which lines a reviewer's eye actually lands on.

Run the resume through this list before every application. Each item is something an ATS or a reviewer checks in the first pass, before a single repository is opened.

• Plain, single-column formatting: no tables, text boxes or icons. Parsers frequently drop content inside them.
• A skills line grouped by category (Languages · Build and tooling · Testing · Platforms · Domains), with the C++ standard stated.
• At least one bullet that shows depth, not syntax: a memory bug found with a sanitizer, a race fixed, a hot loop optimised with a profiler, an allocation removed from a hot path, a build time cut.
• Testing named explicitly: GoogleTest or Catch2, sanitizers in CI, fuzzing if you have done it. C++ teams read "tested under ASan" as "can be trusted".
• Three linked projects, each with a README, a CMake build and passing CI. A project that does not build is a project a reviewer skips.
• The certificate with its verification ID, once, under Certifications.
• One page under five years of experience. No photo, no fonts or graphics an ATS parser was not built to read.

C++ reviewers look for the same things in a portfolio that they look for in a pull request: clear ownership, no undefined behaviour, tests, and evidence that you measured performance rather than guessed. One production-shaped project beats five tutorials. The three below cover most tracks; swap the third for a small game or renderer if you are aiming at games.

1. 1
   A small, well-tested library

   Something other code would use: a fixed-capacity ring buffer and SPSC queue, a small JSON parser, an LRU cache, a rate limiter, or a flat hash map. A clean header API (templates constrained with concepts, [[nodiscard]], noexcept where true), GoogleTest unit tests plus a fuzz test if it parses input, CI on Linux, macOS and Windows with ASan and UBSan jobs, clang-format and clang-tidy clean, and a benchmark against a standard alternative with numbers in the README. Shows: Modules 07, 09, 10 and 12.

2. 2
   A concurrent network server

   A key-value store, a chat server, or a minimal HTTP server on sockets (or Asio): a thread pool or event loop, a clear threading model documented in the README, graceful shutdown, a load test with requests per second and latency percentiles, and a ThreadSanitizer run in CI. Bonus: persistence with a write-ahead log and a crash-recovery test. This is exactly what systems and infrastructure teams build. Shows: Modules 06, 11 and the concurrency questions in 15.

3. 3
   A performance-focused engine or tool

   Pick one: a limit order book matching engine (finance), a small ray tracer or software rasteriser (graphics), a particle or physics simulation with an ECS (games), or a log-processing CLI that handles gigabytes (infrastructure). The point is the optimisation story: profile with perf or a similar tool, change data layout or algorithms, and show before-and-after numbers in the README with the profiler output that justified each change. Shows: Modules 13 and 12.

C++ jobs cluster where performance, hardware control or an existing C++ codebase matters. Game studios and engine teams (Unreal is C++). Finance: trading firms, exchanges and market makers, for low-latency systems. Systems and infrastructure: databases, browsers, compilers, operating systems, cloud storage and networking. Embedded, automotive and robotics: vehicle software, drones, industrial control, medical devices, often with Qt for user interfaces. Semiconductors, telecoms and high-performance computing: drivers, 5G stacks, simulation, CUDA. Desktop and creative software: CAD, audio and video tools. Pay is strong and supply of genuinely skilled modern-C++ developers is limited.

Read a posting's tool list as the interview syllabus and map it back to the module that covers it:

• Check the standard and restrictions. "C++11, no exceptions, no RTTI, MISRA" (embedded) and "C++20, Linux, low latency" (trading) are different jobs with different interviews.
• Read the verbs. "Maintain", "extend", "port" means a large existing codebase, so reading unfamiliar code and debugging (Module 11) is the real job. "Design", "own", "lead" means the senior questions in Module 15.
• Years of experience are softer than they look. A strong junior with a measured, tested portfolio regularly gets past a "2 to 4 years" filter, because good C++ candidates are scarce.
• Watch for the second skill. "C++ and Python" (tooling and data), "C++ and CUDA" (GPU), "C++ and Qt" (UI), "C++ and Rust" (new systems work) are the common pairs.

Match every posting against this table, then paste it with your resume into the ATS checker to see which of its tools are not on the page yet.

The C++ certification exam draws 25 questions from a bank covering Modules 01–14: 35 minutes, 70% to pass. The questions are phrased the way interviewers phrase them, and the wrong answers are the misconceptions this handbook warned about: expecting 7 / 2 to be 3.5, thinking std::move moves something, holding a reference across push_back, or deleting a derived object through a base without a virtual destructor. Pass it and a SolutionGigs C++ Programming certificate is issued with your name, score, date and a verifiable ID.

1. 1
   Check the ticks

   The handbook landing page shows every lesson completed so far. Anything unticked in Modules 01–14 is a question you might miss; read it first.

2. 2
   Sit the exam

   Sign in with Google so the certificate carries the right name. It can be retaken; the paper is drawn fresh from the bank each time.

3. 3
   Put the certificate where it counts

   LinkedIn → Licenses & certifications, with the ID. Resume → Certifications, one line. GitHub profile README → one line with the link. The ID is what lets a recruiter verify it.

4. 4
   Then the funnel

   ATS checker against a real posting → fix the gaps it finds → apply with the portfolio repository in the first line of the application.

Your next step depends on the job you want. C++ developers are expected to know how the machine works and to be comfortable in at least one other language for tooling.

Keep the problem-solving muscle warm with graded problems in SQL practice and the patterns in Module 14, and revisit Module 15 the week before each interview.