If you want to include a photo may I suggest you flip it on the horizontal access so that you are facing inward instead of outwards. Facing outward makes it look like you're leaving the page.
I would suggest not to include a photo since the inclusion of a photo may make the employer feel you may put them in a position of direct discrimination which could be an issue for local, provisional and federal compliance laws they must follow when hiring. (EU résumés are standardized with headshots but they don't get creative with their photos.)
Title
Picking a title to help employers determine your fit:
Junior Full Stack Developer
Senior Front En Developer
Technical Content Writer
You appear to have cross-domain skills in Math and Tech, so you could lead with:
Secondary School Math Instructor + Junior Full Stack Developer
Goal
Do you want to be a math teacher that wants to do part time side projects? Do you want to stop being a math teacher and enter the education tech scene? Do you want to develop online course curriculums as technical/math content writer?
Terminology
This is small, but you say "Website" instead of "Web Application" which diminishes the project's technical value.
Social Links
There's no Linked In. It's 2019, you need a Linked In. I hate Linked In but you need a Linked In.
Document Format
The PDF you have is unconventional and when you are combing through 100s of resumés or you have a program that needs to extract out the text to process resumés in bulk the format of this resumé becomes problematic.
If this was a website résumé and you had a Linked In filled in, and a downloadable résumé in a simple plain format than that would make it easier to include your résumé instead of excluding it.
I've been a professional C, Perl, PHP and Python developer.
I'm an ex-sysadmin from the late 20th century.
These days I do more Javascript and CSS and whatnot, and promote UX and accessibility.
I think PDF is a good format for a developer's CV. You can control the layout, which gets mangled with things like word-processed documents, for a start.
The only time you'd care about having the text extracted in the real world is if you submitted your document to a recruitment agency through one of the big job portals, and to be perfectly honest, you're way less likely to get a job through one of those than you are targeting specific companies anyway.
I agree with avoiding the picture. Add that lovely picture of you and your family to your spiffy new LinkedIn account, because unless you're applying for a modeling gig the manager doesn't need to see your face at this point.
(If you'd like more of a push to create or update your LinkedIn account, I literally just wrote this post a few hours ago: Why You Should Update LinkedIn Regularly)
Thanks Andrew! A lot of good points. One follow-up question I have is, do you have an idea as to how I could make it more clear that I want a position that is not education related? I have been a teacher for years, but I'm really looking for a career change. I would be open to something education related, but ultimately I am looking to move more towards being a full-time developer.
You could mention that in the paragraph at the top of your CV, I think that is the ideal place to summarize what you are looking for. Just make it clear that you have experience teaching and want to jump into a developer position.
You can summarize all your past math experience into one line item and keep it under experience or remove all of it from under experience and mention in your goal/mission you were a math teacher for the last decade looking to switch careers.
You will be then left with lots of space which is good as you can expand on your projects
Structure your Projects as Experience
Give them a timeframe in which you did them, provide yourself a title eg. Full Stack Developer.
React Considerations
React is in demand and is the easiet way to enter the web-dev industry full time at good pay. I do consider React a dead-end in terms of career and salary progression but you need to get in somewhere with good pay its where I'd suggest to start.
I would suggest you to create a varation of your resume where you are a "React Frontend Developer". The problem with React is that it highly varies in terms of configuration which makes it hard for companies to hire juniors because they are never trained on that variation. If you can show you can work with any technical pairings you be overwhelmed with full time jobs offers.
So you would need to demostrate you can:
React + Typescript + Redux
React + No Redux + ES6
React + Rails + Webpacker
React + Laravel + Webpack
Showing lots of variation, and in a short time you could take on the label as Senior React Developer. Put a large emphasis on how fast you can get started on any project without being hand-held and you'll be in good shape.
Full Stack Considerations
The majority of startups use Relational Databases and a common growing pain is perfomance of queries which means that they eventually have to start writing raw queries. Demostrating you can write raw complex queries both in MySQL and Postgres (and I would suggest an emphasis on the latter) is a clear signal you are experienced.
MongoDB has its uses but as primary database it is a mistake. Many startups eventually figure that out when they run into growing pains and make the switch to relational. MongoDB is the mark of an inexperienced developer. Why do so many juniors use MongoDB? Bad online tutorials and no real-experiece at succesfull startup to know better. When NodeJS became a thing MongoDB was the fad database at the time. The first NodeJS frameworks only had MongoDB adapaters and there were a wave of tutorials using MongoDB which is the cause of this problem.
DEV.to Contributor
My number one recommendation is open-source contributions and the best project to do so is DEV.to itself which is open-source. If you can knock out a few medium size tickets on DEV.to in a timely manner than I would consider you hireable. I talk to recruiters and the number one thing they say to me that their clients want to see is open-source contributions.
Thanks for all your feedback and follow up. I think I'll definitely be condensing my past experience so I can expand on the current projects I have going on and focus more on that.
Structure your Projects as Experience
Give them a timeframe in which you did them, provide yourself a title eg. Full Stack Developer.
I greatly disagree. If those projects did not hold you accountable like a job does, you do not pretend they are such to inflate things. You'll have background checks wanting to know who your manger was at this "Github" thing or reference requests for how you manged time and requirements on what was a hobby project. Be true to what happened -- if it was a project, keep it listed as such in its own section. I'd only consider projects experience if it happened while at work with formal expectations for how it would get done.
Not suggesting he passes them off as working at Github. I have small windows of time to contribute comments on DEV.to so I would hope readers would give me the benefit the doubt.
For personal projects, timelines help you understand how fresh and how long work has been invested in a project
Providing a title can help understand the role in the project.
If the goal says he's switching careers and working on multiple open-source projects to showcase his self-learned experience there is no deception here and in-honest it's not hard to infer they are hobby projects. The github project links are a dead give away.
Initially misread it -- yeah, having things formatted consistently would absolutely help the readability of this (though I more noticed education seemed copy-pasted from an old resume). I thought the advice was to consolidate things into one section, which my corporate work has shown that would be a nightmare.
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Photo in your Résumé
If you want to include a photo may I suggest you flip it on the horizontal access so that you are facing inward instead of outwards. Facing outward makes it look like you're leaving the page.
I would suggest not to include a photo since the inclusion of a photo may make the employer feel you may put them in a position of direct discrimination which could be an issue for local, provisional and federal compliance laws they must follow when hiring. (EU résumés are standardized with headshots but they don't get creative with their photos.)
Title
Picking a title to help employers determine your fit:
You appear to have cross-domain skills in Math and Tech, so you could lead with:
Secondary School Math Instructor + Junior Full Stack Developer
Goal
Do you want to be a math teacher that wants to do part time side projects? Do you want to stop being a math teacher and enter the education tech scene? Do you want to develop online course curriculums as technical/math content writer?
Terminology
This is small, but you say "Website" instead of "Web Application" which diminishes the project's technical value.
Social Links
There's no Linked In. It's 2019, you need a Linked In. I hate Linked In but you need a Linked In.
Document Format
The PDF you have is unconventional and when you are combing through 100s of resumés or you have a program that needs to extract out the text to process resumés in bulk the format of this resumé becomes problematic.
If this was a website résumé and you had a Linked In filled in, and a downloadable résumé in a simple plain format than that would make it easier to include your résumé instead of excluding it.
I think PDF is a good format for a developer's CV. You can control the layout, which gets mangled with things like word-processed documents, for a start.
The only time you'd care about having the text extracted in the real world is if you submitted your document to a recruitment agency through one of the big job portals, and to be perfectly honest, you're way less likely to get a job through one of those than you are targeting specific companies anyway.
I agree with avoiding the picture. Add that lovely picture of you and your family to your spiffy new LinkedIn account, because unless you're applying for a modeling gig the manager doesn't need to see your face at this point.
(If you'd like more of a push to create or update your LinkedIn account, I literally just wrote this post a few hours ago: Why You Should Update LinkedIn Regularly)
Thanks Andrew! A lot of good points. One follow-up question I have is, do you have an idea as to how I could make it more clear that I want a position that is not education related? I have been a teacher for years, but I'm really looking for a career change. I would be open to something education related, but ultimately I am looking to move more towards being a full-time developer.
You could mention that in the paragraph at the top of your CV, I think that is the ideal place to summarize what you are looking for. Just make it clear that you have experience teaching and want to jump into a developer position.
Condense the math experience
You can summarize all your past math experience into one line item and keep it under experience or remove all of it from under experience and mention in your goal/mission you were a math teacher for the last decade looking to switch careers.
You will be then left with lots of space which is good as you can expand on your projects
Structure your Projects as Experience
Give them a timeframe in which you did them, provide yourself a title eg. Full Stack Developer.
React Considerations
React is in demand and is the easiet way to enter the web-dev industry full time at good pay. I do consider React a dead-end in terms of career and salary progression but you need to get in somewhere with good pay its where I'd suggest to start.
I would suggest you to create a varation of your resume where you are a "React Frontend Developer". The problem with React is that it highly varies in terms of configuration which makes it hard for companies to hire juniors because they are never trained on that variation. If you can show you can work with any technical pairings you be overwhelmed with full time jobs offers.
So you would need to demostrate you can:
React + Typescript + Redux
React + No Redux + ES6
React + Rails + Webpacker
React + Laravel + Webpack
Showing lots of variation, and in a short time you could take on the label as Senior React Developer. Put a large emphasis on how fast you can get started on any project without being hand-held and you'll be in good shape.
Full Stack Considerations
The majority of startups use Relational Databases and a common growing pain is perfomance of queries which means that they eventually have to start writing raw queries. Demostrating you can write raw complex queries both in MySQL and Postgres (and I would suggest an emphasis on the latter) is a clear signal you are experienced.
MongoDB has its uses but as primary database it is a mistake. Many startups eventually figure that out when they run into growing pains and make the switch to relational. MongoDB is the mark of an inexperienced developer. Why do so many juniors use MongoDB? Bad online tutorials and no real-experiece at succesfull startup to know better. When NodeJS became a thing MongoDB was the fad database at the time. The first NodeJS frameworks only had MongoDB adapaters and there were a wave of tutorials using MongoDB which is the cause of this problem.
DEV.to Contributor
My number one recommendation is open-source contributions and the best project to do so is DEV.to itself which is open-source. If you can knock out a few medium size tickets on DEV.to in a timely manner than I would consider you hireable. I talk to recruiters and the number one thing they say to me that their clients want to see is open-source contributions.
Thanks for all your feedback and follow up. I think I'll definitely be condensing my past experience so I can expand on the current projects I have going on and focus more on that.
I greatly disagree. If those projects did not hold you accountable like a job does, you do not pretend they are such to inflate things. You'll have background checks wanting to know who your manger was at this "Github" thing or reference requests for how you manged time and requirements on what was a hobby project. Be true to what happened -- if it was a project, keep it listed as such in its own section. I'd only consider projects experience if it happened while at work with formal expectations for how it would get done.
Not suggesting he passes them off as working at Github. I have small windows of time to contribute comments on DEV.to so I would hope readers would give me the benefit the doubt.
For personal projects, timelines help you understand how fresh and how long work has been invested in a project
Providing a title can help understand the role in the project.
If the goal says he's switching careers and working on multiple open-source projects to showcase his self-learned experience there is no deception here and in-honest it's not hard to infer they are hobby projects. The github project links are a dead give away.
Initially misread it -- yeah, having things formatted consistently would absolutely help the readability of this (though I more noticed education seemed copy-pasted from an old resume). I thought the advice was to consolidate things into one section, which my corporate work has shown that would be a nightmare.