[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?
___________________________________________________________________
Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?
Never used to have any trouble finding employment. But it seems as
of recently my CV is toxic waste. If recruiters reach out, I give
them a good time to call and never hear back. If I reach out to
them, silence. Did I do something recently with an unpopular
technology? Did I piss off someone powerful? Did I get too old? Who
knows! Lots of coding experience; bosses have always been happy
with my work. I've written stuff about programming online that has
been well-received. Several personal projects under my belt, and
plenty of OSS contributions too. Suddenly nobody wants to know.
Has anyone here been in a similar situation? Did you fix it? How?
CV in case some kind soul wants to take a look:
https://foon.uk/robin-allen-cv.pdf
Author : rogual
Score : 106 points
Date : 2024-01-15 11:04 UTC (11 hours ago)
| wslh wrote:
| I am looking at your CV and have some feedback:
|
| - You missed your work goals objective paragraph! Why are you
| looking to a job? What is your interest? LinkedIn and Internet in
| general are full of examples. Why do I need to hire you beyond
| your specific skills? How are you as a human? as a team player?
| How do you contribute to organizations beyond your formal work?
|
| - I will not separate between full time work and independent,
| OSS, volunter. I will follow the typical reverse chronological
| order for work in a single column.
|
| - Put a summary of your skills somewhere (Python, C++) and learn
| and experiment with Rust if you want to increase your chances!
|
| If you ask me I would pay a few hours of someone to help you with
| your CV. It could be an average recruiter that has the hiring
| filters always present on his/her head.
| rogual wrote:
| Thanks very much for taking a look!
|
| I appreciate the suggestion of adding more "soft" human bits
| about me. As a dev my natural reaction to team-player stuff on
| CVs is "anyone can say they're a team player, who cares?" but
| maybe recruiters see it differently.
|
| I've gone back and forth on separating the volunteer work.
| Having it all in one column I felt it looked like I was trying
| to pad out "real" paid experience with unpaid "filler", but
| again, appreciate the different perspective and will try
| chronological again for a bit.
|
| I like Rust; done some OSS contributions in it. I'll try adding
| a section about that. Thanks!
|
| Will also consider professional help (of the CV kind).
|
| Thanks again for responding!
| wslh wrote:
| No problem. One more thing:labot "anyone can say..." you
| should be and sound genuine, use your own voice, not a copy
| and paste of the typical bully promoting its work working in
| teams.
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| > - You missed your work goals objective paragraph! Why are you
| looking to a job? What is your interest? LinkedIn and Internet
| in general are full of examples. Why do I need to hire you
| beyond your specific skills? How are you as a human? as a team
| player? How do you contribute to organizations beyond your
| formal work?
|
| This generally doesn't exist on UK CVs
| iamflimflam1 wrote:
| Things have definitely changed and I would expect to see
| something on CVs that come across my desk now.
| lsofzz wrote:
| Nice. I don't have anything for you but maybe this will be
| useful:
|
| My two cents: o Learn machine learning, artificial intelligence -
| fast.ai
|
| o Learn Rust, Rust, Rust and some Go
|
| o Scala is good. Keep it. All the stuff you learnt whilst using
| Scala and Python will be useful in _Rust_.
|
| o SDE is huge. Try something other can webdev and gamedev.
|
| No matter what others may say next frontier will be roughly
| these: - Artifical Intelligence - Quantum Computing
|
| Get good at these. Now, is the right time.
| hosteur wrote:
| What resources do you recommend for learning QC?
| cardanome wrote:
| There are barely any Rust jobs outside of crypto stuff at the
| moment. Not sure if this is good advice.
|
| While I agree that getting the basics of machines learning
| under your belt is a good idea, the "AI" field is pretty hype
| driven so one should also have plans for another Ai Winter and
| not solely rely on it. I don't think hype chasing is is good
| career advice.
| fardo wrote:
| Loved your Hapland games as a kid.
|
| Besides the standard callouts of "it's an anomalously hard job
| market right now due to a recent layoffs flooding dev supply of
| interviewees, due to a post-covid hiring frenzy hangover, due to
| anticipated US tax code changes discouraging hiring, and due to
| high interest rates in the US currently discouraging risks
| including hiring" the thing that may be actually in your control
| is I notice is a lack of quantification of project deliverables
| and accomplishments on individual projects.
|
| Looking at the first point as one example, it could be summarized
| "created app". Especially as your most recent work, I'd want to
| see you go more into the experiences the app enabled - perhaps
| the user counts who were using it, what the experience was for
| them, any metrics you might have that you moved the needle on, or
| what your changes enabled people at the installation to do.
| Quantifying the impact of your work with each work item I think
| would go a long way towards making the CV better.
| rogual wrote:
| Hey, thanks for the response.
|
| I'm in the UK so not sure how much the US situation is
| contributing, though there might be knock-on effects.
|
| I appreciate your feedback about what details to add and about
| that most recent point. I agree, and will spend some time
| rewriting.
|
| Again, thanks so much for responding and I'm happy to hear you
| enjoyed those games. Cheers!
| brailsafe wrote:
| It's the same in Canada btw
| infinitedata wrote:
| You have an impressing background!
|
| I think folks reading this are seeing that you are too technical
| and lack of business acumen (while maybe not true).
|
| For the work that you have done in each company they may be
| interested in the results of you creating these not that you
| created those. Did you ever find out what was the impact of your
| software development on the actual business?
|
| Make sure to include numbers, people love data and lifts in
| sales, reach, clicks, awareness, revenue, etc.
|
| You can save so much space by summarizing your language skills
| elsewhere instead of in each company. It also sounds redundant to
| say Used X, Y, Z because of course you needed to Use some
| programming language to achieve that. Group all of those
| elsewhere for those that you feel you are an expert with.
|
| Best of luck!
| rogual wrote:
| Thanks for the reply!
|
| I'm definitely guilty of thinking like a dev. Built what the PM
| wanted, they liked it, I did good, right? D'oh. I guess I
| should have been keeping notes of those business figures all
| this time. I'll definitely do that when I find a job again. Of
| course, even if sales improved while I was there, I'd feel a
| bit silly claiming it was because of me, but maybe I should
| anyway. Thank you!
|
| About summarizing those skills, you're probably right. I did it
| this way because I had a recruiter say it needed to be clear
| what tech was used in which job, but I guess people are always
| going to have different expectations. I'll try it the other way
| for a bit. Cheers!
| iamflimflam1 wrote:
| CV is now doing a 404 - happy to have a look - email is in my
| profile.
| rogual wrote:
| Hm, not sure what's up with that. Anyway, thank you! Sent you
| an email.
| iamflimflam1 wrote:
| Seems to work now.
|
| Here's what I emailed you - putting it here as all general
| advice that might be useful.
|
| ---
|
| First impressions are that for 13 years experience you CV is
| a bit short. I would not be concerned about letting your CV
| go onto multiple pages, there's nothing wrong with a long CV
| when you have sufficient experience to fill the space.
|
| You don't have anything about who you are on the CV - just a
| few paragraphs to give the reader a broad brush about what it
| is you do and what you are bringing to the table can really
| help.
|
| For each company I generally include something brief about
| what the company (or the part of the company I'm working in)
| does - you want the reader to think "That's an interesting
| business - I bet this guy learnt a thing or two there".
| People are trying to pattern match against what they are
| looking for. So anything you can do that will trigger
| thoughts like "I bet this guy has seen the same problems we
| have" or "We're going to hit similar things to what this guy
| has seen" etc..
|
| What's the impact what you've done had on the business and
| users? For example the recent work you've done sounds like
| pretty important stuff - rather than listing it as a bunch of
| technical achievements try and reframe it as impacts on the
| business and users. E.g.
|
| "Created a set of user friendly administration tools for
| trial staff that allowed them to easily monitor participants'
| progress, and generate statistical data. This allowed them to
| focus on blah blah blah blah..."
|
| Think about why you were hired for each role - what is it
| about you that made them pick you and then try and express
| that in the CV along with how you met those needs. e.g. in
| the recent University job you were probably hired because of
| your expertise in software engineering and you probably
| brought a lot of experience to the role on how to leverage
| technology to get the job done.
|
| I always try and remember that the person doing the initial
| read of the CV is not going to be technical - you need to get
| someone excited about the problems you can solve in the
| business.
|
| Everyone has a list of technologies they've used on their CV
| - so you need to stand out from them.
| argiopetech wrote:
| This was my first impression as well. Additionally, by
| using multiple columns to avoid a second page, OP makes the
| document harder to read and thereby obscures his full work
| history.
|
| I recommend, following any rework, handing this to a few
| friends (preferably non-technical), in person, for feedback
| on readability and appeal.
| dsattt wrote:
| > _Lots of coding experience; bosses have always been happy with
| my work. I 've written stuff about programming online that has
| been well-received. Several personal projects under my belt, and
| plenty of OSS contributions too._
|
| That's the problem, you know too much. People in charge of hiring
| don't want to be outshined.
| sam8401 wrote:
| No one likes the truth, buddy.
| oumua_don17 wrote:
| My 2 cents: You have awesome 3D Graphics/Games development
| experience. The best way to leverage that would be to market
| yourself as a 3D Graphics SW Developer/3D Game developer (you may
| need to deep dive a bit into 3D Graphics principles, OpenGL).
| Almost every semi company (Arm, QC, BC, Intel etc) and even
| FAANG's have openings for 3D Graphics SW engineers and you are
| actually well qualified for those as background in games is
| highly valued for these roles. Note: you will miss working with
| GFX apps in these roles, but you will not miss the pay!!!
|
| The problem as I see it is: are you a games/3D Graphics
| developer, full stack developer or AI/ML engineer? The lack of
| clarity in this difficult market may be one of the reasons.
| rogual wrote:
| Hey, this feels like a valuable insight. Thank you.
|
| The CV would be a lot shorter with only the 3D graphics stuff,
| but maybe that's not a problem? I'll try creating a separate
| graphics developer CV and see what happens.
|
| I've heard the horror stories about games industry conditions
| so hadn't really pushed in that direction but will definitely
| start looking for non-gaming 3D jobs.
|
| Thanks again, much appreciated.
| oumua_don17 wrote:
| >> I've heard the horror stories about games industry
| conditions
|
| Yes, they are unfortunately true more often than not. My
| suggestion is to leverage your prior Game Dev related
| profile/experience to get into lower level of graphics tools
| stack (sorry that didn't come through). These exist in semi
| and FAANG's (but be prepared to play a bit of the leetcode
| game as well). Just check F and fruit company with 3D
| Graphics as keyword!
| caddemon wrote:
| I'm not sure about hiring in 3D graphics but my resume has
| two somewhat different paths on it and I've always made 2
| separate resumes just by switching around the focus/how I
| frame things. Like the main header would have the most
| relevant roles with greater detail, but I still mention
| highlights from other work under a second header, because I
| don't think it's entirely irrelevant either.
|
| Also, I think the process of doing this makes me consider
| more carefully what I'm trying to convey about each role, and
| what parts of the resume I want to draw the most immediate
| focus to for a given type of job app.
| heldrida wrote:
| Maybe add your Github profile. I'm based in London and noticed
| the same a few years ago when I was looking, and decided to stop
| applying to UK companies, I find it pretentious and a big waste
| of time; for me, it was mostly the 4 or 5 interview stages that
| seemed ridiculous, also take-home tests that took 2 to 3 days,
| etc. Processes that took weeks of hard work. I can imagine it
| just got worse now. I've interviewed some people in the last 12
| months, and seen a lot of CVs. When investigating, I found a lot
| of people lying. It seems that LinkedIn/twitter/TikTok are
| important for recruiters. I don't use it myself, but I've seen
| people asking for LinkedIn and Twitter for some reason.
|
| Good luck with everything, it's not your skills!
| rogual wrote:
| Thank you! Github is at the top-right but could be more
| prominent.
|
| How did you manage to find non-UK companies that will hire UK
| people? I find most remote US roles say "remote (US only)", and
| similar for other countries.
| heldrida wrote:
| There are opportunities, but you have to spend the whole day
| looking; a good start is the monthly hacker news who's hiring
| thread.
| farseer wrote:
| 1. List your skills separately as well in a small box somewhere.
| I shouldn't have to read your entire CV to find out.
|
| 2. You didn't mention your educational background. Please list if
| possible.
| rogual wrote:
| 1. Thanks! Will do.
|
| 2. University of life. Never been much of an issue, but maybe
| that's changing?
| DarrenDev wrote:
| It's possible the University of Bedfordshire role at the top
| makes it look like you're a student - to a lazy recruiter who
| doesn't read. The first bullet point "as part of a research
| project" again suggests you might be back in college - again to a
| recruiter who doesn't read.
|
| I may be wrong - just a suggestion.
| rogual wrote:
| Yeah that's a good shout, thank you! I hadn't considered that.
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| I think is partly because he's omitted any job titles.
| argiopetech wrote:
| And partly because he omitted education. I recognize that
| aging yourself or revealing a lack of technical degree
| (despite work history) may do you a disfavor under some
| circumstances, but it's also one of the first things a non-
| technical (read: HR) reviewer is going to look for and round-
| file if not found.
| austin-cheney wrote:
| You need to connect the dots between your employment history,
| your capabilities, and your interests. I could not do this any
| more when I lost my job last year and had to change to something
| new.
|
| In my case I was a 15 year full time JavaScript developer. After
| years of frustration watching children run the daycare crying
| about needing more frameworks, not knowing how to program, and
| hyper insecurity I could not go back to that kind of work. I
| largely made myself unemployable. If AI eliminates the need for
| framework junkies who cannot be bothered to write original code
| maybe I will give it another shot. In the meantime I am entry
| level data science and enterprise API management now.
| bluedevil2k wrote:
| I'd also suggest losing the "old guy arrogance" before giving
| it another shot.
| austin-cheney wrote:
| What would you suggest instead?
| dr_kiszonka wrote:
| Since you asked, based solely on your earlier comment, I
| would suggest being more open, humble, and respectful. I
| recognize the downsides of relying on frameworks, but I can
| also see good reasons for using them. I wouldn't refer to
| colleagues using frameworks the way you did.
| austin-cheney wrote:
| Why wouldn't you call it as you see it? When you have
| lost your job and are no longer seeking that employment
| you can afford to become a bit more honest. Fearing that
| someone likely under qualified for their job might be
| offended by the mere mention of such sounds like a first
| world problem.
| georgeashworth wrote:
| Rather than expressing frustration at the less experienced
| developers you are working with... as a hiring manager I
| would prefer to hear something more constructive, like that
| you are able to understand the common pitfalls a team of
| less experienced developers are likely to run into and
| proactively lead/wrangle/herd them towards success.
| raj555 wrote:
| up your network mojo (not the tcp/ip kind).
| coolThingsFirst wrote:
| how should he go about doing that?
| jmarchello wrote:
| As unfair as this may seem, your problem may be UX, rather than
| content. There is no focal point and ironically the shear volume
| of experience makes it hard to get a quick picture of who you
| are. I'd recommend a punchy executive summary at the top.
|
| In my experience the 1 page constraint is less important so long
| as it's easy to get a good picture of you on the first page.
| chatmasta wrote:
| I agree with this. I glanced at it and had a hard time
| following.
|
| Simplify it to be all black text, single column, with
| underlines under each section heading. In other words, make it
| look like the most brutalist traditional resume.
|
| Other comments in this thread also have good substantive
| suggestions, but just nailing the formatting can make a big
| difference.
| dr_kiszonka wrote:
| Yes. There is no other way to figure out what OP specializes in
| and worked on besides reading all bullets carefully. A summary
| and job titles would help a lot.
| codingdave wrote:
| Your CV doesn't tell me anything you accomplished, it just lists
| things you did. Hiring managers want to know the impact of your
| work, not a page of bullets that all say: "I did a thing."
|
| Picking one at random: "Worked on frontend and backend systems
| for this health tech company." OK... and what impact did your
| work have? Can you cite a qualitative improvement on the business
| due to your work? If not, can you at least cite quantitative
| facts like: "Released 6 updates to the product."
|
| I'm going to make a suggestion that sounds negative, but is
| intended to help you realize if your bullet points read well or
| not -- For each one, imagine a hiring manager at an interview
| asking you, "So what?". Then throw out your original bullet point
| and instead type in your answer to that question.
| rogual wrote:
| Great advice, not negative at all. Thanks so much!
| taylodl wrote:
| Not the OP, but yes - your CV should convey _impact_ , not
| just you reliably showed up for work.
| keiferski wrote:
| This is the best advice here. You want to be able to say,
| "during the time I worked here, I did X and the company's
| revenue increased by Y." Swap in whatever metrics are
| particularly relevant to the job you're applying for.
| weinzierl wrote:
| Not saying you are wrong, but when does management even know
| exactly which specific X caused how much increase in revenue,
| let alone a software developer.
| keiferski wrote:
| It's not about saying you directly caused the specific
| increase in revenue, it's more about highlighting the value
| you can bring to a future organization - at least so you
| can talk about it in an interview. Remember, this game is
| not about determining if that increase was purely
| attributable to your work, it's about convincing an
| employer that you can add value.
|
| For example: you coded and launched a new feature, and that
| feature brought in 20% more users over the following year.
| Sure, there were probably other factors that helped, but
| when you can point at specific things and back them up with
| metrics, it's 100% better than just listing a bunch of
| skills and jobs.
| D13Fd wrote:
| Not only that, it shows that you understand and care
| about what matters (the success of the company).
| lurking15 wrote:
| Sure that's ideal but honestly I've worked on a bunch of
| stuff at several different companies but have yet to land
| in a place where I was able to collect these sorts of
| statistics that everyone is always going on about putting
| in your resume.
| keiferski wrote:
| If you don't have specific data, you can still frame your
| work in a way that is more compelling than, "I can code
| in Python and I worked at XYZ company for 3 years."
| Whatever value you were adding, put that first, even if
| it's just "built new products that increased company's
| sales and helped expand to X new markets."
| Volundr wrote:
| Numbers are ideal, and I'd think carefully on if there is
| a metric you can tie to a data point, but it doesn't have
| to be all about numbers. Example: maybe you streamlined a
| common app flow making it significantly easier for users
| to accomplish a task, or implemented accessibility best
| practices across your product making it usable by a wider
| range of people. Both of these have more pop if there is
| a statistic you can cite with them, but even without they
| speak to impact not just "worked on Python web
| application".
| ownagefool wrote:
| I have PS19m to PS75m revenue in approx 20 months
| bootstrapped start-up CTO on my CV.
|
| In the UK market folks aren't particularly receptive to
| that sort of thing.
| lurking15 wrote:
| In that case, I wonder if that makes you seem
| overqualified?
| Scarblac wrote:
| > For example: you coded and launched a new feature, and
| that feature brought in 20% more users over the following
| year.
|
| Even if I did, it was probably someone else's idea,
| someone else decided it would be worth adding to the
| product, someone else made a UX and UI design, I wrote
| the code, someone else tested it, maybe there were some
| iterations of those. It's all team work.
|
| Someone claiming such a increase as their personal
| achievement is spouting BS and would not get an
| invitation here.
| keiferski wrote:
| It was a simplified example. Obviously on a real world
| resume you would say "was a part of a team that did X."
| fuzzythinker wrote:
| I read resumes and that "bs" gets one negative point. Another
| negative point and resume goes to trash bin.
| keiferski wrote:
| Explaining how you've impacted the bottom line isn't BS,
| it's how business works. Failing to understand this is a
| common mistake made by technical people, unfortunately.
| lowercased wrote:
| It's also difficult to put 'truth' on there when... you
| did something that you knew was stupid, and there was no
| positive or measurable benefit.
|
| "Argued with CTO about importance of X. Did X, against my
| recommendation. Delivered X early, tested, documented,
| fast, secure. X flopped, and company laid off 20% of
| staff, including my team".
|
| There may not have actually been positive benefits to
| everything that you did, because... they were dumb moves.
| Do you put that on there? Or do you just put _what_ you
| did, minus the impact?
| codingdave wrote:
| I haven't worked on a successful product since 2017. But
| I have absolutely supported leadership who wanted to give
| an idea an honest chance by delivering the product they
| asked for. Their failure to find a market does not mean
| that my technical delivery was sub-par. So my work still
| offers value. So I say exactly what I did - "Delivered a
| new SaaS app.", "Modernized a legacy system to a new tech
| stack", etc. I did deliver what was expected of my role,
| and I can claim that regardless of the market success.
|
| Now, would it sound better if those products succeeded?
| Of course! But there is still something that can be said
| for my work.
| lowercased wrote:
| The OP was saying "don't just say what you did - say what
| the impact was!" (in so many words). Well... the impact
| was that this thing I delivered went way over budget, and
| the division shut down because we ran out of money.
|
| Or... what if the impact is "user subscriptions
| decreased, cancellations increased, revenue declined"?
|
| I was pointing out that "impact" isn't always positive -
| adding it to a resume might not be all that useful.
|
| This happened to me. Was told to convert a lot of stuff
| to an XML database, which... no one had any experience
| with. But the owner wanted to be in the XML space. They
| _sold_ a deal which was based on the XML database tech,
| but it was _so_ bad, and _so_ slow, and didn 't actually
| take customer needs in to account, that we burned over
| $1m over 6 months, and half the company was laid off.
|
| So, yes, I can put "XML database conversion" on a resume,
| but there's no positive outcomes to add to it. This is
| what the OP was being told to do - add positive outcomes.
| They don't always exist, and yes, it's outside your
| control.
| Volundr wrote:
| Welcome to marketing :-).
|
| But in all seriousness, in the scenario you describe
| above, I'd question if X belongs on your resume at all.
| If you did it, and it was worthless, is it something to
| brag about?
|
| There are no doubt exceptions to this, where something is
| really technically interesting, but honestly, 99% of the
| time, what you did is just not that novel; you are better
| off leaving it off your resume and instead demonstrating
| your skills with something where you delivered value.
|
| It's also worth noting that even where X flopped, you
| still hopefully contributed something positive. In your
| own example, you delivered X some (months?) early. That
| alone saves $.
|
| I was once part of a Salesforce (god help me)
| implementation where we were moving all our analytics
| into this new Salesforce platform with the idea that it
| would be the central hub for all employees. When all was
| said and done, it flopped. It tried to do too much at
| once, be everything to everyone, and was useless for
| most. 80% of employees only logged in once. It was
| exactly as you describe, where from the beginning, I
| warned we were on the wrong path.
|
| It doesn't usually land on my resume because, I mean,
| it's fucking Salesforce, but if it does, or if it comes
| up in an interview, I can talk about how I replaced our
| contractor's ETL with a custom one that ingested the data
| in 10% of the time making it possible for us to actually
| keep our data up-to-date, or how I was able to refactor
| the data model to take proper advantage of compression
| and save us around $30k/month in storage costs
| (Salesforce cloud storage is stupid expensive).
|
| Sure, the whole thing was a major screw-up that literally
| cost the company millions, yet I can still talk about how
| I made that situation a little better.
| lowercased wrote:
| The OP may not be constitutionally capable of finding
| little nuggets of positivity from the midst of huge
| failures.
|
| Already responded to someone else, but the OP was told to
| add the outcomes, not just what they did. Sometimes there
| are no positive outcomes to list, and listing negative
| ones just drags everyone down. Putting "implemented $FOO"
| may be all you can reasonably put in writing.
| Volundr wrote:
| Sure, I have one 6 month job where all I can reasonably
| list is "implemented audit logging across all our
| projects to ensure HIPAA compliance."
|
| It was the most demoralizing job I've ever had, and I'm
| grateful that I WAS laid off (easy to say now that I have
| a new job). Making every line on your resume a banger may
| be impossible. But if you've got job after job of
| "implemented SAAS app in Django", it starts to say
| something about you. Looking at it from a hiring
| manager's perspective, why would I want to talk to the
| guy who "built data analytics tools with SQL Server", vs
| the guy who "reduced the processing time on our main data
| warehouse from 24 to 2 hours, allowing us to provide
| real-time analytics to our customers". I've got 100
| resumes with SQL Server experience. The first one had a
| job; maybe they were good at it, perhaps they weren't, I
| don't know. I have literally nothing to go on. The second
| at least accomplished something (or is a liar; yes, I'm
| aware of this possibility). If you don't give me a reason
| to speak to you, specifically, you are just hoping you
| win the lottery and happen to be one of the ones I call
| in.
|
| > but the OP was told to add the outcomes
|
| Outcomes don't have to be the final outcome of the whole
| project. The outcome of the Salesforce failure above was
| millions of wasted dollars. The outcome of my refactoring
| our data model was a cost savings of $350k/year.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| We're engineers, not MBAs. That's a good thing, and it
| should stay that way.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Because the relationship between individual things in
| what a developer do and financial results is not so
| easily measured.
|
| There are for example a couple of projects where I
| worked, that should I failed to do my part, the company
| could be fined, and even maybe arrested. Thing is, I
| don't fucking have idea of what those fines could be, and
| of course it was a multiple team effort and it would be
| hilarious for me to claim credit alone.
| fuzzythinker wrote:
| How do you prove that X and only X cause the company's
| revenue or some other metrics increased by Y? And let's
| say you can just for sake of it, how does that metric
| gives you any idea how good an engineer is? When I read a
| resume, anything that is beyond his skills (soft & tech)
| and experience is just sugar coating. A little is
| acceptable, too much and it gives me a bad feel for the
| candidate.
| keiferski wrote:
| As I said above, an interview isn't about trying to
| determine if you were solely responsible for the outcome
| at your previous job. Obviously any intelligent person
| knows that it's a complex situation, and that it may not
| translate directly to the new company.
|
| The point is to convey that you're capable of providing
| some value to the company, should you be hired. It's like
| being on a championship football team: sure, you weren't
| solely responsible for winning. But being apart of
| winning team is certainly a lot more impressive than just
| listing your dribbling and passing skills.
|
| I think you are taking this entirely too literally and
| missing the forest for the trees. The simple point being
| made is that communicating your value is easier when you
| go beyond the basic Skills and Experience CV that every
| average candidate slavishly sticks to. It doesn't need to
| be an exact calculation, it just needs to convey that
| you've achieved something.
| egeozcan wrote:
| The impact, from your words, is also important to determine
| what you enjoy doing.
|
| Perhaps Gomde UK had you there just to drive the tractor
| (absurd example to get point across), but you really loved
| working with sqlite and you went on to create an event
| management system from back to front and received good
| feedback. How _you_ interpret your value tells a lot, share it!
| slotrans wrote:
| Why do hiring managers like such claims? They're all fake.
| Flopoto wrote:
| Not seeing anything fundamental wrong.
|
| Perhaps your python focus is a current issue in the UK market?
| ath3nd wrote:
| Because a bunch of obscenely rich people decided they want to use
| 'macroeconomic factors' as an excuse to rank in even more profits
| and bump up their stock prices, while throwing workers under the
| bus, tanking the industry and destroying our individual
| bargaining positions.
|
| Oh, they also can't take a blame for overhiring during the
| pandemic, they were simply following the same 'macroeconomic
| factors' that are the reason for the mass layoffs now.
|
| You'd think that the economy is some kind of terrorist with
| demands holding the gun to the CEOs' head. They just have to
| follow these demands and the economy simply happens upon them,
| absolving them of any moral and ethical responsibility for their
| lack of foresight and accountability.
|
| Basically they are all mere automata that bows down to and is
| animated only by the overpowerful economy.
|
| It's the same old in capitalist world, just this time software
| engineers are the ones affected.
|
| The system is beyond fixing now, as you have always been treated
| as an expensive but totally expendable cog in their money making
| machines. We should have organized into unions and elected
| government that cares about humans (and nature), and not for the
| GDP and their own bottom lines.
|
| Thank Elon and the FAANGs for starting the wave that flooded the
| market thousands of qualified good engineers as soon as they
| realized they need actual sustained revenue rather than the
| nebulous promise of never ending cancerous growth. When the
| market is that flooded with good people, of course our wages
| stagnate and our employability is in question.
|
| It's called 'end-stage capitalism' for a reason, because the
| diagnosis is simple: there is nothing coming after it.
| cooper_ganglia wrote:
| I agree with many of your points, but the comical levels of
| unadulterated doomerism make it hard to take very seriously.
| The world isn't over because a company decided some unnecessary
| backend employees didn't need to work there anymore.
|
| Standards of living have never been higher, worldwide poverty
| has never been lower, all hand-delivered to each of us via
| capitalism.
| sam8401 wrote:
| Agree
| ath3nd wrote:
| Capitalism is like a sleight of hand trick, a cheap con
| designed to distract with stupid toys and distractions while
| it robs you blind.
|
| It pretending that it's creating value, while never showing
| where the value comes from. Often it comes from extraction
| from other places. What the OP is experiencing is merely one
| of the many ugly heads of the very much real process of
| extracting value in pursuit of profit. There are many other
| sides:
|
| - Your cheap t-shirts are often created with child labor, and
| at tremendous cost to the environment.
|
| - Their cigarettes and pain relievers are your addiction and
| your death.
|
| - Your meat-for-everybody-everyday comes at the expenses of
| destruction of native habitat, immense animal suffering,
| toxic runoff and deforestation.
|
| - Your consumer electronics come at the cost of toxic levels
| of PFAs in your and your children's blood.
|
| - Your convenient transport comes at expense of choking
| cities, rising sea levels, and dying habitats.
|
| - Your ChatGPT/Dall-E convenience robs hundreds if not
| thousands of people from their livelihood, and has been
| trained of others' work without their permission or consent,
| and the electricity and pollution bill will astound you.
|
| - Coca cola and their plastic producing friends and its
| convenient packaging created an obesity epidemic and an
| island of garbage in the pacific.
|
| - Teflon and 3M and their amazing, revolutionary non-stick
| surfaces created our future cancers.
|
| What's happening with the layoffs in the industry is just
| another facet of extracting $$$ without looking where the
| "extraction" comes from, yet another logical level of
| "optimizing", disguising the fact that it's all a race to the
| bottom. Yet another group is going to be replaced by
| automation or less workers doing more work for less pay,
| simply in pursuit of "value".
|
| > Standards of living have never been higher, worldwide
| poverty has never been lower, all hand-delivered to each of
| us via capitalism.
|
| Yes, it's the excess before the imminent end, it's the idea
| you can infinitely grow in a finite world with finite
| resources. This idea is mirrored by the corps and their
| gambles on the stock market, pretending to create a value in
| the millions more than they actually do create. It's
| unhinged, unstoppable, unsupported by reality, grotesque
| growth, very much like cancer.
|
| You can disagree, protest and twist and shake your logic like
| an eel trying to deny the undeniable: the only thing
| capitalism is hand-delivering is the collapse of society, the
| mass extinction of nature, and the end of a livable Earth.
|
| The fact that the OP, a more than talanted dev, can't find a
| job easily atm is very much connected to the extraction of
| value, and the insidious exploitative character of
| capitalism. Take your growth and keep it to yourself.
| sam8401 wrote:
| Do not listen to these CV nazis too much, your resume is fine. I
| am having the exact similar experience to you. Star employee for
| a decade and suddenly unemployable (a year now). I am pretty sure
| a lot of us are out there, they just do not want to expose their
| unemployment status publicly like you and me (and I understand
| that). The answer by ath3nd might sound "conspiracy theory" but
| it is closer to the truth. The thing affecting you and me is
| mostly because of (macro) games played much high above us.
| iamflimflam1 wrote:
| I really don't want this to come across as snarky, and things
| are very tough out there right now, but if you think the OP's
| CV is fine and yours is similar to his then that might explain
| some of your own difficulties.
|
| It's no good being a "star" employee if you can't communicate
| that fact to other people.
| sam8401 wrote:
| Thank you I needed to hear this, but I also detest self
| propaganda. Maybe I need to find a middle ground. Or just
| reach out to one of my old employers ... which again, I am
| not a big fan of :)
| iamflimflam1 wrote:
| I think as someone else said - be authentic.
|
| We can have a tendency to underplay what we have done.
| Often in tech we pull amazing rabbits out of hats - and
| then when people say how great it is, we'll respond with
| how it was nothing and anyone could have done it. It's
| nothing special...
|
| Someone gave me some advice a few years back which was - if
| you don't feel mildly embarrassed when you read your CV you
| are probably underselling yourself.
|
| On the reaching out to old employers - unless you left on
| really bad terms - drop them a line. You are a known
| quantity, it's a low effort hire that won't cost them
| anything (apart from your salary).
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| Beware the comments here from the US that don't apply to UK CVs -
| which are a different style. Personal intros are not important.
|
| I can't see any job titles - which is frankly more important than
| the company and makes it easier to skim sections of experience
|
| Definitely go into more detail than just "Worked on" and "Used" -
| anything on stuff the company uses in the CV is not confidential
| and you can put on your CV.
|
| Finally put months on your CV - it's not clear if your most
| recent role was 12 months or 1.
| drcongo wrote:
| (UK CTO) I'd disagree with the "Personal intros are not
| important" bit, I use that a lot when filtering but the rest of
| this is good advice. It's also missing a list of skills you
| consider yourself to have, what you like doing with those
| skills, things you maybe do in your off-time - personality
| basically.
|
| The other thing I'd suggest is tailoring your CV to the roles
| you're going for - the last time I had to write my own I had a
| two page appendix of the awards won by my projects as that's
| the sort of thing the hirers I was targeting would be looking
| for. And as someone hiring now I'm far more likely to interview
| someone who's CV shows some interest in the kind of work we do
| and who we do it for.
| bmitc wrote:
| > Finally put months on your CV - it's not clear if your most
| recent role was 12 months or 1.
|
| I've stopped doing that because it gets tiring why I changed so
| frequently in recent years. It's not my fault places go
| bankrupt, startups do layoffs, or teams just up and dissolve
| after you join, and it gets tiring explaining that rather than
| discussing my experience, skills, and interests and the role at
| hand. It was a total mistake to enter into the startup world.
| DecentRecruiter wrote:
| At least you got the CHANCE to explain before. Now you can't
| even do that because your resume is not passing the screen.
|
| You're handicapping yourself with the lack of transparency.
| It just comes across as shady. Why are you worth the risk
| compared to the overflow of excellent candidates in this
| market?
|
| You need to suck it up and share this information. Briefly
| explain each situation on the resume (i.e. "fixed contract
| ended" or "startup shut down due to loss of largest
| customer").
|
| Edit: spelling.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| I've had way too many ATS's that require _day of month_. Like
| WTF.
|
| My automatic response there when filling out is "start date
| is always first of month, end date is always last of month".
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Find a recruiter and and offer lunch or PS for a CV refresh. I
| read some good advice in the comments here but we are not your
| target audience
| 3m wrote:
| Your C.V. isn't well laid out. In <10 secs I can't really figure
| out what you've done and what your primary skillset is.
|
| Refactor it to more clearly lay out your specific skillset,
| roles, and what you achieved in them (improving business
| metrics).
| lumost wrote:
| I'd suggest using a standard linear format. On first glance, it
| looked like there was a gap of 5 years in your experience from
| 2010-2015 (there isn't, but it took me a minute).
|
| As others have noted, you need to emphasize what you've done. I'd
| eliminate every "worked on" statement with something like "solved
| X bugs, launched Y product, lead z engineers, improved K metric,
| owned B area, used d,I,g technologies of interest"
|
| Anecdotally I've observed a shift away from LC style hiring to a
| blend of resume+SYS design/code review. I'd credit the shift with
| dual efforts to find cost effective engineers and a fear that LC
| has been overfit by interviewees.
| estebanrules wrote:
| I recommend including quantitative data, i.e. the feature I
| worked on increased user engagement by 15%.
| lfciv wrote:
| A bit of a different take, but given the amount of experience you
| have, I wouldn't put as much weight on using a CV at all.
|
| With an updated LinkedIn you can reach out to past bosses,
| coworkers, and friends for introductions to other people in
| industry (whether they're hiring or not) - and follow that chain
| until you find something you're interested in.
| gushogg-blake wrote:
| I have had some success with this CV so feel free to take
| inspiration or copy bits: https://cv.gushogg-blake.com/
|
| The main difference is I have a short para at the top as an
| intro. Also you can click each position for more details.
|
| Code for it is on gitlab: https://gitlab.com/gushogg-
| blake/svelte-cv
| nine_k wrote:
| Just in case: putting your value proposition on top of your
| resume, in very concise terms, helps. At least it worked for my
| resume [1], which employers and recruiters praise from time to
| time.
|
| [1]: https://dmitry.cheryasov.info/resume/
| burrish wrote:
| No way you are the author of Hapland, thank you I had lot of fun.
|
| I don't have anything more to say than what has already been said
| in this thread, I would just recommend modernizing your CV by
| using Canva [1] , the site has lots of free themes and they are
| generally well done.
|
| [1] - https://www.canva.com/
| gnutrino wrote:
| Hapland was a favorite of mine back in the day. I still search it
| up every few years! Good luck with your search.
| SeanKilleen wrote:
| Lots of folks will have opinions on this; adding mine just to
| give you an additional data point. Specifically not looking at
| other comments so that I can give you my direct take; I'm sure
| others may disagree and that's fine. :) I'm a hiring manager at a
| small company that recently hired two .NET developers.
|
| * You're not alone. There are a lot of people looking for work
| right now, and less work to go around, it seems. I recently had
| 60+ applications for 2 developer roles without using a recruiter
| or anything but word of mouth through communities I participate
| in. From a pure numbers standpoint, this means applicants have to
| work harder to stand out, which sucks for applicants and also
| because it leads to people gaming the system.
|
| * So much of the hiring process has been enshittified. Tools
| doing keyword scans have replaced a lot of human judgment, and
| resumes have started to adapt to keep up. I abhor the practice,
| but: you may want to have a separate resume for places that may
| use these products, so that you get past auto-screening.
|
| * Your resume is nicely laid out. However, I fear it will likely
| get you auto-rejected as lots of screening tools can't parse it
| for roles. You may want to have a version that avoids the multi-
| column layout. Again, this will be a guess as to whether
| companies are using that kind of software or not.
|
| * I highly recommend adding your role or the equivalent role to
| the subtitle, e.g. "Senior Developer (Contract)" or ".NET
| Developer (Contract)" . It gives a quick overview of what type of
| work you've been doing, which is helpful when I'm scanning 60
| resumes. I would go so far as to suggest You make the role a part
| of the heading and keep the employer & date below. E.g. "Senior
| .NET Developer" up top and "Technically Creative (contract) | Oct
| 2021 - Dev 2023" below.
|
| * Suggest adding start/end dates including Month & Year (e.g.
| "Oct 2021 - Dec 2022"). It gives a sense of timing.
|
| * There's another tough choice you face: whether to share
| unemployment status. It's a double-edged sword for candidates.
| For me, people who state their situation get respect for the
| authenticity, and those who try to hide it make me suspicious.
| But I also respect that people are biased against unemployed
| people even though they shouldn't be, so I would suggest making
| that a per-application decision.
|
| * I already get a decent sense of this, but you may want to tweak
| your bullet points to reflect accomplishments/impact some more.
| Shows that you understand business value (which I believe you
| do).
|
| * Technology under each bullet point makes me as a reviewer do
| extra work. Some kind of summary of technology you're proficient
| in will be a good addition. Should you have to? Probably not.
| Would I still read this CV? Of course. Will lots of folks glaze
| over and move on when they have to do extra work while reviewing
| hundreds of applicants? Yes.
|
| * I like that you include your GitHub. I definitely look at those
| and it never counts against an applicant (for me. Again, double-
| edged sword).
|
| * I think the one-page resume is working against you here. With
| your experience since '05 I think moving to 2 pages and expanding
| on some of the suggestions above will work in your favor.
|
| * The title at the top of your resume, "Software Developer",
| could probably do with a tweak. It's one of the first things I
| see. "Senior Software Developer", "[Stack of Job You're
| Targeting] Developer", etc. may go a long way. I recently gave
| someone an interview because they had "Systems Integration
| Developer" in their title and I was looking for integration work.
| It would be an effective technique IMO.
|
| * Find your local & global communities on Twitter, Mastodon,
| Slack, LinkedIn, Discord, etc. -- many often times have jobs
| channels where things will pop up. Coming from a community comes
| across as a sort of implicit reference in terms of places you may
| participate. And there's usually little downside as you learn
| things, participate in discussions, and build relationships there
| that are nice either way.
|
| I wish you the best of luck finding your next opportunity!
| bamazizi wrote:
| Quick scan of your resume as someone who interviews 20-40
| people/year (although not so much lately) ... I couldn't figure
| what you're actually great at. Strengths, passion and project
| type gravitation?
|
| FYI, your resume is shallow but still better than a lot I see
| each year. For someone like me to decide who to interview and
| spend that 1 hour on, comes down to info presented on resume
| intended towards the people reading the resume and fit feel to
| the job description.
|
| Tips:
|
| - Post resume in "doc" format and not "pdf" this is because most
| recruiters and HR feed resumes to parsing engines that match
| content of resume to job description for keyword matching.
|
| - Recruiters have a DB of thousands and thousands of resumes, for
| each job posting, they can only refer top 3. They only get paid
| if the candidate is hired and bonus if they stay more than a
| year! So know who your target audience is.
|
| - Interviewers hate doing interviews too! Resume is easiest way
| to get a feel and reject allocating the interview slot time.
| RadiozRadioz wrote:
| I would advise against using Word doc format instead of PDF. I
| feel quite strongly about this.
|
| 1. PDF will render more consistently across platforms.
|
| 2. PDF can be opened in a web browser. Lots of orgs these days
| use cloud tools, you can't count on MS Office being universal
| any more. Also on a phone without additional apps, which is
| surprisingly common too.
|
| 3. Default PDF exports from most tools will include fonts,
| default Word exports don't. This makes opening Word docs
| annoying on machines with different fonts (or restricts you to
| "safe" fonts, which is probably a good thing, but this post is
| about formats not CV design)
|
| 4. Opening PDFs, there's less "junk". Opening Word docs in
| Word, you see all the squiggles under technical terms and non-
| Western names, draggable icons on tables, tooltips, etc. When I
| open someone's CV and Word throws up a bunch of popups about
| the document containing macros, "objects", fonts I don't have,
| it puts me in a bad mood for the next few minutes.
|
| 5. PDF can certainly be read by CV parsing engines. No
| question.
|
| 6. Having been on the receiving end, in my experience PDF is
| simply more common. Make the reader's job easier.
|
| And you shouldn't use "doc" anyway, modern versions of Word use
| docx.
| f0e4c2f7 wrote:
| We're currently going through the largest tech downturn since the
| dot com bubble. It's not you, it's the market. Tough for
| everybody who is looking right now.
|
| For the first time in 20 years there are more applicants than
| jobs again.
| ownagefool wrote:
| This.
|
| I'm in the UK. Strong skills. Good CV. Ghosted constantly.
|
| Half the jobs you're applying for ( or more ) are fake, and the
| recruiters are just trying to collect CVs to drum up future
| business.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| > For the first time in 20 years there are more applicants than
| jobs again.
|
| I'd argue that happened during 2008 and 2009.
|
| Source: I graduated and had to get a first job during that
| time. For every 100 positions I applied for, I got a call for
| 5, and had on site interviews for 1. Sounds like that may be
| the case again.
| brailsafe wrote:
| That was my experience pre-2023, now it's 100 applications
| and maybe one response, except there aren't 100 positions,
| all of them are the highest possible level of seniority and
| require 10 y.o.e plus a masters degree, and nobody responds
| to messages.
| eek2121 wrote:
| I had absolutely NO problem finding employment during that
| time period.
|
| First jobs are usually the "first" to go FYI.
|
| I'm a senior dev, and even back then I had a ton of
| experience.
|
| I agree with OP. This is easily the biggest down cycle since
| the dot com bubble.
|
| Just remember, things will recover. Eventually.
| intelVISA wrote:
| Indeed, the market is readjusting - thresholds are a tad higher
| but not impossible like some make it seem.
| dave1999x wrote:
| The worst thing about your CV is the non-chronological layout and
| the second item the "University of Bedfordshire"
|
| A lazy recruiter will see that as a watermark as your education
| and assume the rest is amateur stuff. This makes it look like you
| have less than one year experience.
|
| For some companies/recruiters they often like to see month and
| year for each position. It can be a red flag as it looks like
| hiding of career gaps.
|
| Lack of personal statement is a lesser problem. Recruiters won't
| necessarily care, but it makes a hiring managers job harder. The
| job positions should be seen as supporting evidence for the
| claims in that statement.
|
| That said, despite these problems, the jobs market is at the
| slowest it's been for years. Particular for more senior roles.
|
| My company has a hiring freeze despite being profitable and
| growing and we're cutting costs to avoid making people redundant.
|
| I'm UK based and have reviewed hundreds if not thousands of CVs.
| syngrog66 wrote:
| it has gotten extremely bad compared to 2023 or any other year in
| my career memory. and I am the same person. no: I'm better and
| more skilled and accomplished than ever before, with new
| achievements and attractive evidence (in public view) added to my
| CV this last fall. in any sane and objective world I'd be treated
| better than before
|
| no
| thr0way120 wrote:
| I DISAGREE THAT IT IS SOMETHING ABOUT YOUR RESUME.
|
| You said it yourself: You got lots of pings, resume or not. The
| resume is secondary to the state of the market.
|
| Going through same. This is like 2007-2008 or 2000. You need a
| playbook here.
|
| 1. You are a media-related programmer, you better be stacking
| skills in Generative AI, showing your work, and becoming
| proficient in generative AI tools across all stacks. It hasn't
| happened yet, but Generative AI + your skills will be in serious
| demand (AI technologist / AI generalist developer or Creator). It
| hasn't happened yet and won't happen until the layoffs are done.
| Don't get caught off-sides when the hiring market resumes and
| suddenly everyone is demanding Unity + Generative AI skills.
|
| 2. Sometimes there is literally nothing you can do but wait
|
| I have been in same position the last six months or so.
| Absolutely nothing is moving. I have been through multiple
| interviews, companies pretend to be wanting to hire (they
| actually arent). There is ZERO urgency in this hiring market,
| companies are in full on scale-down mode and pivot. We are still
| in waves of layoffs. After / during the layoffs and
| restructuring, companies must THEN reconsider a NEW direction to
| go on.
|
| A new set of skills will go into vogue and suddenly everyone
| starts hiring in that direction. Unfortunately, you cannot
| control the timelines. It could take months or years before
| companies decide which direction to take next. AI is going to
| obviously be the #1 skill. Ability to show you can supercharge
| what you are doing by augmenting via AI and Generative AI will be
| in the most demand imo. But that is a strategy decision and
| companies are still winding down and moving out of their prior
| strategies they used the last decade.
|
| 3. This is the end of the old cycle and start of a new cycle
|
| Expect it to take time to ramp the new cycle. Skills that were
| super valuable before are now less valuable. Companies are more
| focused on shutting down the old strategy than hiring the new
| strategy.This is a very uncomfortable in-between period and it
| could last another 6-18 months. The best you can do is focus on
| predicting the market and getting "into position."
|
| The market may suck for longer than you think, you have to "wait
| well" and stack skills and networks. Unfortunately there may not
| be anything other than to wait, and let the market work itself
| out.
|
| Gaming has been getting annihilated as a market.In a downturn,
| the shakiest stuff gets thrashed out first. Crypto, gaming are
| "nice to haves" from the perspective of the market.The market is
| going to contract down to only the essentials. Stuff people
| absolutely need to spend money on. All the "nice to have and fun"
| stuff is getting defunded.
|
| Follow the money. It will flood into generative AI and AI
| productivity tools.
| bmitc wrote:
| You are apparently in the UK, but the job market in the U.S. has
| similarly been very spooky lately. I was laid off and have
| received almost no interviews outside of a single previous
| employer. My resume was flat out rejected, even from places that
| I had previously worked or was made an offer from as little as a
| year or two ago. It was really weird. As in, previous contacts
| would not even reply to emails or LinkedIn messages. I felt the
| same thing, thinking things like if I insulted someone's dog or
| something. I even got contacted by a former company asking if I'd
| be interested in coming back, and then when I responded, they
| responded with a flat "we don't see a fit". Just purely bizarre.
|
| I am finding that more and more people are looking for extremely
| specific and narrow experience. Like, if you haven't used <x>
| technology and worked in <y> domain, they don't want to even
| speak to you. They'd almost rather higher a new grad who happened
| to work in <x> than someone with experience in many languages and
| domains. It's really weird. I've been thinking a lot about how to
| make my own path, because it's exhausting trying to apply and
| work for myopic places.
| brianwawok wrote:
| If there is a surplus of talent, a company would rather hire
| someone who has background in the current stack and can jump
| right in.
|
| If there is a lack of talent, companies hire whatever is even
| close and trains the new stuff.
|
| Seems pretty straightforward to me.
| bmitc wrote:
| It is very short term thinking, which doesn't seem
| straightforward to me.
| erulabs wrote:
| Why is it short term? Are employees less familiar with the
| technology they're using day to day more likely to stick
| around? I'd guess the opposite?
| mecha_ghidorah wrote:
| It kinda depends on the candidate. Someone who already
| has experience may not stick around long because they
| aren't learning new skills, where as someone who isn't
| familiar with a particular technology will have added
| satisfaction and reason to stay from developing mastery
| of a new tech
| klyrs wrote:
| Damn. I recognized your domain name... I absolutely love your
| games, and got so much playtime out of them. I wish I could help,
| but I'm in a similar boat today.
| cjcenizal wrote:
| I don't have information that explains your experience but I can
| give you concrete resume advice based on my own experience as a
| hiring manager: https://www.cenizal.com/resume-advice-for-
| engineers/
| dubeye wrote:
| There are a couple of lines of commercially interesting
| experience hidden away in your CV but it took a while to find
| them.
|
| I would hire someone to rewrite, edit and reprioritise the whole
| thing.
| freedomben wrote:
| I do hiring in the US not the UK, but I'm only (I'm guessing) a
| few years older than you so you probably had the "keep it to one
| page" rule pounded into your head.
|
| I get a lot of resumes, and that is definitely not the case
| anymore. Two to three pages is perfectly fine. I would suggest:
|
| 1. Add a list of skills and/or technologies you're particularly
| good in. You can include stuff you've used but aren't current in,
| but make sure it's annotated as such
|
| 2. Add a high-level summary that hits the aggregated highlights
| of your career. Especially important for making sure that the
| resume reader quickly understands your specialties and focus,
| depth and breadth. Your Blender work is badass and should def
| show up in that summary
|
| 3. If you have education, I'd add a small thing about that at the
| bottom. For smaller orgs it doesn't matter but bigger ones it
| will make a difference. Ditto if you have any certifications
|
| Overall though, I heartily agree that it's a vicious hiring
| market right now so don't take it personally. You look like a
| fascinating candidate! If we had open slots and our markets lined
| up more, I'd be shooting you an email. I'm a little weird in this
| regard, but I am particularly impressed by open source work that
| people do. It shows passion, motivation, and a willingness to
| make the world a better place, which are three things I really
| appreciate.
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| This is good advice no matter what country you're in. Best
| advice I ever got is two things:
|
| 1. Make it easy for someone reading your CV to quickly know
| your core skills and experience (i.e. your points 1 and 2).
|
| 2. Don't just say you did the job, that's a given. Talk about
| specific points for each role you are particularly proud of.
| These will become talking points in an interview.
|
| Saying something like "worked on front end and back end
| systems" tells me almost nothing about you. What did you do on
| them? Anything interesting about it, any tricky technical or
| business problems you solved?
| luke-stanley wrote:
| You've clearly got an array of interesting skills and you could
| expose them more readily, perhaps at the top so people don't have
| to scan through the whole thing to get a gist of your skill set?
| Seem pretty interesting to me but it could use some polish.
| elzbardico wrote:
| As someone else said, forget the one-page rule, you're cutting
| content that it takes some experience and good will to infer from
| what you wrote. Screeners receive a lot of resumes, and you don't
| want them to be left wondering if your experience is relevant or
| not, at least not on this market.
|
| 2 to 3 pages for someone with a few years of experience is
| perfectly acceptable in software development.
| brianwawok wrote:
| When I'm hiring if still prefer 1, and give negative points to
| anyone that goes longer.
| haspok wrote:
| I think one of the problems with your CV could be that I can't
| really tell who you are and what kind of a job you are really
| looking for, unless I read the whole thing (and even then it's a
| wild guess!). Sadly, "software developer" is not really a thing
| anymore. You'd probably want to mention that you are full-stack,
| have X years of experience in Python (backend), and Y years of
| experience in Javascript (frontend). Databases (SQL / Postgres) Z
| years. Looking for full-stack roles, preferably contract (etc).
|
| And I have to concur with those who mention that you don't list
| titles next to your job assignments. Not sure why, but it
| looks... strange.
|
| Finally, where are you based? Are you looking for remote stuff,
| or onsite?... And be sure to include a phone number when you send
| it to anyone, especially agencies - they LOVE to start
| conversations on the phone, in fact, I don't know any serious
| agent whose first step is not to call you and have a 10 min chat,
| to prove that you are not some kind of weirdo. (Ignore this if
| you just removed your number for the post.)
| araes wrote:
| Another note with this, the job titles look worse or less
| impressive with increasing time. There may not be much you can
| do about the impressiveness, yet rearranging to emphasize other
| work / skills may help.
|
| "Worked on industry-leading tools" -> "Worked on a research
| project" -> "Created a 3D experience" (which like others have
| mentioned sounds like "wrote an app")
| a2code wrote:
| Did any of you laid of web devs try making a CV site for laid off
| software engineers? Seems like the time is now. Here is an
| example. The frontpage contains a form to fill out (a CV
| template), and a login registration interface (similar to Hacker
| News). Once the form is filled out, website/your-username.pdf is
| the generated CV, that you can share only by linking.
| asd88 wrote:
| Some quick feedback: It's hard to parse your CV quickly because
| there are no actual job titles. I have to dig into the bullet
| points to get some idea of what your role was.
| araes wrote:
| General advice, make at least a slightly different resume for
| each group / organization / company that you're applying to that
| are targeted to their hiring spiel and filtering forms.
|
| The concept is not that bad, as you can break up the resume into
| blocks of info, and then just rearrange based on whatever the job
| posting really wants to emphasize.
|
| Even just rearranging the primary skills (languages, frameworks,
| ect..) around into a feature block targeted toward the specific
| recruiter may help. Some people are diligent about reading
| through resumes and trying to give each a chance. However, when
| the tragedy of the commons gets bad enough, and people can just
| LLM-spam responses, the interest in "give each a chance" probably
| goes down.
|
| Ex: UK.Indeed has 3100 software engineer jobs in the last 2 weeks
| listed.
| https://uk.indeed.com/jobs?q=software+engineer&fromage=14&vj...
|
| A GitHub, Inc job has: "React experience on a senior level. 3+
| years of hands-on experience in modern web stacks." Your resume
| has a listing for React, yet its not clear if that was a major
| component, or just some minor detail. "Worked on backend and
| frontend systems for this fashion retailer" And the description
| sounds like a lazy highschooler. To get the job you would have to
| tell them why you actually have web-stack skill GitHub would care
| about.
|
| J.P. Morgan job has: "Proficient in coding in React, TypeScript,
| JavaScript" You have those, they're just mostly buried and not
| emphasized. The job also has "Familiarity with Investment
| Banking, FinTech, or Financial Markets" You (appear) to have
| those. "Worked on industry-leading tools used by cinema chains to
| manage their estates." However, it is in no way emphasized and if
| it was just sent out shotgun, would probably be ignored in favor
| of a resume that emphasized the React, Typescript and FinTech
| work.
| nmaley wrote:
| As others have said, rewrite the CV. It's not clear to me who you
| are and what kind of role would best suit you. Put a summary at
| the top making clear what you are best at and what kind of role
| you are looking for. Summarize your skills and achievments.
| Consider using simple graphics. eg List of tech skills rated with
| slide bar from expert to familiar understanding.
| eek2121 wrote:
| You aren't.
|
| The economy is absolute garbage right now.
|
| I'm in the US and the situation is similar here. I've never had
| an issue finding a job before either, but I've been unemployed
| since the middle of 2023.
|
| Assuming you aren't under financial hardship, my advice is to
| spend more time on your hobbies and check back in around
| July/August. That is when the layoffs are projected to drop and
| hiring is expected to keep up.
| WXLCKNO wrote:
| Every time I bring up this uneasy feeling of everything feeling
| like it's going to crumble soon, I get employment data hurtled
| at me and the stock market thrown in my face.
|
| Maybe Canada is worse due to how insane housing is but for the
| average person life does not feel anywhere like it used to pre
| pandemic at least.
| acjacobson wrote:
| While the numbers for the macro economy may be pretty good -
| for the tech sector they're terrible.
| pgwhalen wrote:
| I truly do not mean this in a snarky way - who is projecting
| that layoffs are projected to drop and hiring is expected to
| pick up around July/August?
| aaomidi wrote:
| The fact that feds have signaled interest rates are going to
| drop this year.
| sn9 wrote:
| Interviewing.io compared public data to their internal data
| and make a compelling argument for hiring to pick up in Q2
| [0], though I don't know if the recent spate of 2024 layoffs
| change this calculus.
|
| [0] https://interviewing.io/blog/when-is-hiring-coming-back-
| pred...
| da39a3ee wrote:
| It's not your CV, you clearly are an attractive candidate.
|
| Btw so many people here have reviewed your CV and no-one has
| pointed out the typo ("impariment")!
| epolanski wrote:
| I went from being contacted 4 times a week to once a month,
| maybe.
|
| There's too many devs and too few jobs imho, so it's tougher.
|
| Market will rebalance, and we need to cope with this new reality
| of jobs being harder to find.
| StreetChief wrote:
| We live in a world of techno-fuedalism, you are not alone. Every
| company wants an MIT graduate. They want someone "sexy" like a
| "rock star." One company's I looked at asked me "what is the most
| impressive thing you've worked on?" Like that really indicates
| the quality of my work.
| PretzelJudge wrote:
| It isn't you. I have a solid resume (I know because I've
| interviewed hundreds of people in my career), but the market is
| just much slower. In 2020-2022 I was getting 5-10 recruiters
| reaching out every week. If I thought something was interesting,
| I'd respond saying that I'm not really looking for anything new,
| but I'm open to a conversation. People would still be thrilled to
| speak to me, even though I was upfront that I'd only leave for
| something perfect.
|
| Lately, I get maybe one person reaching out every month. I
| responded to one last week, even though I'm not looking, just to
| see what the job market is like. I was ghosted.
|
| I think we're just not in a hiring frenzy right now. People don't
| want to leave their jobs and risk it on something new. Some
| companies are laying off. For the companies that _are_ hiring,
| they are probably seeing many more applicants and a higher
| conversion rate.
|
| Things will come around.
| v1l wrote:
| Why are you not freelancing in the interim?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-01-15 23:02 UTC)