Preparing a Resume

My first try on an elevator pitch about myself:

On the server side, I enjoy working with Ruby on Rails. I write tests using rspec but I don’t follow a strict Test Driven Development workflow. The best advise I was given is that I should never let my own inexperience stop me from writing code and exploring what happens when I run it. Tests are great to give myself immediate feedback on what I’m programming but there’s nothing wrong with admitting that I don’t know enough to ensure that my tests are actually useful or that it’s hindering me from learning at some points. I use Bootstrap or Foundation to start positioning sections of html along grids and styling common elements like navigitaion bars and form inputs but I know how to work with css without relying on them. I use jquery to include behavior in the client side and I have enough exposure with the ember that I’m very excited to learn more about what I can build with it.

Links of resources that I’ve been reading

General notes from those links

Elevator Pitch

  • Don’t sound one dimentional and include your personal passions.
  • Say as little as possible.
  • Decide what kind of work you’re looking for.
  • Figure out who you’re talking to.
  • Ask yourself what problem you solve rather than what you do.
  • Describe what you do in one day.
  • Include numbers and concrete detail.
  • Be quirky or unexpected.
  • Take something out.
  • Turn it into a conversation.

Six steps towards a resume

  • Identify the job requirements
  • Pick a Resume Type
  • Create a tailored summary
  • List of previous experiences
  • Include relevant skills
  • Review Format and Feel

Things to consider

  • A screener’s job is to quickly screen out the worst resumes.
  • Don’t use more than one font.
  • Check for spelling and grammar mistakes.
  • Double checke the dates.
  • Delineate sections.
  • Don’t include an overview section since a cover letter is better for it.
  • Include keywords carefully.
  • The tech and hr review is further screened by quick decisions and more detailed reading. Ensure you pass those quick ones since they’re deal breakers
  • The three major resume adaptions are tech, hr and a mix of both, figure out which once a job post is leaning towards.

The Three people who read the cover letter

  • HR Person / Recruiter - Appropriate skills, Employable, and Eligible
  • Hiring Manager - Do you have actual experience, Do you have the other required skills, Do you have any open source work
  • The Interviewing Developers - Do you know programming, Could they work with you, Give them interesting things to talk about you

Summary Section

  • Help tell them that you’re in the right place.
  • Demonstrate understanding by being descriptive about your toolset.
  • Give interesting topics that other programmers could talk to you about - personal development projects.

Skills

  • Talk about important things first.
  • Talk about experiences as proof that you’ve actually used the tools you talk about.
  • Insights gained from experience and something you could talk about in an interview.
  • Talk about something slightly contentious and this gives an interviewer something to ask and something you can prepare for.
  • ‘some exposure’ is a great phrase to point to something you’ve played with before but aren’t prepared to answer in detail.
  • Certain skills in bold for recruiters.
  • User the same approach for non language specific skills.
  • Demonstrate understanding by giving opinions.
  • Throw in a little bit of personality but don’t go overboard.
  • Throw in other things that aren’t too important at the end.

Open Source Experience

  • Make it prominent if you have a lot of it.
  • Link to your blog if you have great content and only mention it if you don’t.
  • If you don’t have a lot of it, talk about things you’ve done outside of work or what you’ve learned like online courses.

Other stuff

  • Unless you have something awesome to share, leave out Education
  • If you did not finish your degree, then write in the amount of credits that you obtained, what major you pursued, and relevant coursework taken.

Outside the resume

  • Have an online footprint
  • Links to portfolio, projects, and GitHub then review them
  • Prioritize work that’s relevant to the position
  • A bulleted list of links in your cover email
  • Employers will google you

Commands I’ve learned

  • git commit --amend
  • git log --pretty=oneline shows a terse history mapping containing the commit id and the summary
  • git rebase --interactive provides the summary for each commit in the editor it invokes
  • git config --global alias.home 'rev-parse --show-toplevel' - cd 'git home'