Those of you who hire, considering a candidate who is the absolute greenest, and in hiring on an entry-level job, would you consider the title of someone's cv as "Junior Developer" a good idea? What would that say about the person to you? Is that a phrase that you tend to avoid or is it appropriate? I've read mixed reviews on this.
It's definitely what I would consider myself.
-Ryan Norton
Latest comments (8)
As others mentioned, the junior/mid/senior are simply titles. In our company, we have junior, mid and senior level roles. The (unofficial) definition for these roles are,
Junior Developer: One who knows the basic coding blocks, familiar with at least one language (C, Java, Javascript) at least just enough to get around the code and understand what's going on, initially needs help/guidance in carrying out his day-to-day tasks and most of all, one who can listen and learn.
Mid Developer: One who is strong in at least one language/technology, can effectively work on his day-to-day tasks without any help from others, can collaborate with other developers in the team in implementing a solution.
Senior Developer: Person who not only understands the application which we works on, but also how it falls into the products and services offered by the company. He can coordinate teams and design/architect solutions, etc.,
Keeping in that mind, when we recruit we don't officially post that we want junior developers. We decide that after the technical interview.
As Kim Arnett mentioned earlier, number of years doesn't really justify the title. So even if a person puts on his resume as Senior developer based on his number of years, if the person doesn't have enough experience in the technology which the role requires (for ex. node.js) he would still be considered as Junior/Mid level developers.
My suggestion is to keep the role as generic and let them decide where you fit in.
Thanks for the advice. I found this extremely helpful!
Aside: There's the "official" job title, and then there's the title I put on my resume. In all my years, I've never been assigned a title that accurately describes my day-to-day job (nor acknowledges my level of expertise in one skill or another); therefore, titles are meaningless for the most part, IMHO.
I'll keep that in mind. Thank you!
in my opinion, the title is just a title, what you can do is the more important thing, when you give 'label' yourself is a junior, you will lose the opportunity when a company wants a senior. But if you keep making it general, you will be able to get the chance to sell yourself in job interviews and let them decide. :)
Thanks!
In my area-- Developer "job titles" are usually rated Developer I, II, III then goes onto architect, tech lead, etc. I being new, III being senior.
So personally, my job titles on my resume/CV have always been "_____ Developer".
People argue about what junior and senior actually mean. For instance, in mobile senior can genuinely means 2-3 years experience if you're working in the right technology. But, for other areas, it means 20+ years. Ya know?
My advice would be to keep it generic... if they want to know your familiarity with technology they can ask -- If they want to know how many years you've been in the technology they can come up with that through looking at your resume. There's no need to mark yourself as a junior. :)
Thanks so much!