DEV Community

Discussion on: Critique My Resume!

Collapse
 
jamesthomson profile image
James Thomson

IMO, it's too wordy. You have to imagine you're a manager hiring or HR employee sifting through resumes. Imagine how many you get per day (I've been in these shoes, you can easily get hundreds per day). Most of them are crap. Perhaps not because the employee is crap, but because their resume is inefficient, poorly written, 5 pages long, provided in some obscure format, etc., etc.

When you're hiring you need to be able to quickly scan through a resume so you can short list the potential candidates. So the more concise you can make it, the better. Organisation is key, bullet point everything! Think about what your employer would want to see. In our field it's usually skillset followed by experience.

Have a look at my old (wow, 4 years old now) online resume: getreworked.com/#/cv

If you were a hiring manager, could you get a good idea of my skillset and experience within 1 minute?

Additionally, you may be tempted to print the resume. So, it's important this page is print friendly - part of the skillset you're trying to show off ;)

As for your experience, keep it to what's relevant to the field you want to work in. Changing careers is never easy and you do want to highlight that you do have work experience, but because it isn't related to the field, it should probably take a bit of a back seat. If you have anything that is related to the field, highlight it. E.g. "Freelance developer 2017 - Current". Maybe that just means you've done a project or 2 on the side, but it might just help you get your foot in the door somewhere.

Also, I agree with the comment about the photo.

Finally, let your initial email be your cover letter. i.e. remove it from your resume. This way you can special tailor it to each employer you send an email to. 9/10 times I get an application, I'll read through their resume IF their cover letter is solid and straight to the point. That means keeping it concise and only a few sentences max with a link to their portfolio - I don't want to have to search through a PDF to manually copy and past your portfolio link.

Example:

Hello, I'm a full stack junior developer with a passion for the web. I have X year of experience as a developer with a further X years as a math educator. Because of this, I think I would be a great candidate for the XYZ position at COMPANY NAME. Please have a look at my resume at doylecodes.com/resume and consider me for the open position.

All the best,

Ryan Doyle
Full Stack Developer
555-555-5555

It could be embellished a bit more to add some of your own personality, but like I said, keep it short and to the point.

Hope that helps. Good luck!

Collapse
 
doylecodes profile image
Ryan Doyle

So much goodness here. Thank you so much. I think I will be re-working my past experience a lot and toning down on the wording to highlight actual current work. It's a good point to add freelance developer as I have actually been doing that. I'll give imposter syndrome the credit for that. Thanks for your example CV as well!