CV Review for Software Developer

TPD

Hi folks. I'm finishing up a years career break, and looking to get another job in IT as a software developer. I haven't written a CV since finishing college, so I was hoping someone would take the time and have a look over mine for anything I should remove or add.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gCrhJpVZYYtjPsq_iqQvOQg38ktnpMh_OcGAAJkBvhM/edit

I've stripped any personal details out of it.

Thanks very much!

Army_of_One

also maybe post in the software development forum , you might get senior devs who do interviews/hiring to look at it.

srsly78

Take out your student job in hotel, and put in more technical detail about software related stuff.

Also I recommend you remove referees (put available upon request) - otherwise recruiters will harvest their details and spam them.

TPD

srsly78 wrote: »

Take out your student job in hotel, and put in more technical detail about software related stuff.

That was my initial thought, but a person at the community employment centre (I think? The DSP sent me there to help write a CV a few months ago) thought it should be included. I'll do up another version without, thanks!

srsly78

It's your choice as to who's advice to follow:
A. Person in community employment center
B. Person that interviews software developers

TPD

srsly78 wrote: »

It's your choice as to who's advice to follow:
A. Person in community employment center
B. Person that interviews software developers

I'm taking yours!

I've updated the doc to remove the hostel experience and added the following under the 'skills' introduction:

In previous roles, had daily experience with the following technologies:
VB.NET, SQL Server, Javascript, jQuery, AJAX, ASP, JSON, HTML, CSS, SVN
Also had less frequent experience with:
C#, MVC, bootstrap.js, Azure, GIT, Xamarin

srsly78

Mention something about version control - you have surely used this right? Also something about testing.

TPD

srsly78 wrote: »

Mention something about version control - you have surely used this right? Also something about testing.

Yeah, I've used SVN and GIT, added those. I'll add that I'm familiar with nUnit automated tests too... Thanks again!

Reati

Honestly, it's a bit weak on detail. Grads send in very similar CVs to this. Listening a bunch of "I know this tech" doesn't tell me much about you as a SWE.

For example. I'd want to see what did you deliver. How did you make the software you worked on for company better etc etc. What project did you own and deliver?
What processes did you improve?

Wordsmith the skills section to be less of a read. Put in a personal statement at the start (even though I'm not a fan on them).

TPD

Reati wrote: »

For example. I'd want to see what did you deliver. How did you make the software you worked on for company better etc etc. What project did you own and deliver?
What processes did you improve?

I'm unsure how to add this without first giving a rundown of what the company did. For example, one of the bigger projects I owned was an interface between our software and a third party's software, providing real time actionable information to emergency services and reducing their overheads, which didn't exist when I joined and was adopted by most clients by the time I left.

But as vague as that description is it's still fairly lengthy - I'd have thought things like that would be better left to the interview?

Reati

TPD wrote: »

I'm unsure how to add this without first giving a rundown of what the company did. For example, one of the bigger projects I owned was an interface between our software and a third party's software, providing real time actionable information to emergency services and reducing their overheads, which didn't exist when I joined and was adopted by most clients by the time I left.

But as vague as that description is it's still fairly lengthy - I'd have thought things like that would be better left to the interview?

That in itself is better than a list of tech and things like "I talked to customers and get requirements for projects"

Reading that, I'd be like that's really interesting, I'd love to chat on the phone and learn more about this person and how they made that happen etc.

You need to have a balance of 2 - 3 things like this along side the what I know tech stack.

Phoebas

OP, on a quick scan of it the thing that struck me about it was that in the first sentence you describe yourself as a full stack developer. But in your experience section, you barely mention anything about producing code.

I'd be putting that as the first point under each of your role - including the languages you used in each role. I know you list these in your skills - which is good - but often people list skills that they used 5 years ago and I need to know which ones are current. I've interviewed a few people in the past who listed a particular skill that I really wanted to talk about and it turns out that it's something that they played around with years ago - and this can really throw an interview off course.

The first line of your experience is about visiting customer sites for user training and requirements gathering. While its good to know that you are comfortable dealing with clients, I'd be leading with a more core development statement.

You should also mention some recent projects - no huge detail or anything, but when I'm reviewing tech CVs, I'm often thinking about how the interview will go, and if the candidate can give me some stuff to hook onto that makes the interview easier (for both of us).

Also - if you've used an Agile methodology, mention it.

Phoebas

TPD wrote: »

I'm unsure how to add this without first giving a rundown of what the company did. For example, one of the bigger projects I owned was an interface between our software and a third party's software, providing real time actionable information to emergency services and reducing their overheads, which didn't exist when I joined and was adopted by most clients by the time I left.

But as vague as that description is it's still fairly lengthy - I'd have thought things like that would be better left to the interview?

In about 20 words there you've given me a bunch of stuff to get into at an intervoew
- what kind of interface was this (was it a REST API, was there an SDK etc);
- what tools / technology did you use to connect to it.
- how did you deal with security / authentication
- what about dealing with failures, unexpected responses, exceptions etc
- how did you deal with version compatibility when you want to upgrade a version of the 3rd party software
- how did you approach testing the integration; did you build some kind of test harness / stub.
- 'actionable information to emergency services' - that's just interesting in itself. I definitely want to know more about that.

Berserker

Aside from the nitty gritty above OP, what level of developer role are you looking to move into? You were hired as a software developer and you moved to a technical lead role from there.

TPD

Berserker wrote: »

Aside from the nitty gritty above OP, what level of developer role are you looking to move into? You were hired as a software developer and you moved to a technical lead role from there.

I'd be happy enough with a mid level role. The promotion to team lead was basically continuing the same development work, but making more of the decisions, and after a few months included the mentoring etc. of new hires on my team. I much preferred the development side as opposed to the managerial side.

Thanks for all the help folks, I'm going to update it tomorrow and check back with yous.

TPD

I've updated the document again, separating out the "Skills" and "Technologies" bits, and added a section for "Projects", giving a quick overview on the one mentioned above and a couple of others.
Would that be the right position for it, or should the detail of the last job go below the "Experience" section?

Thanks for all your help!

TPD

Hi folks, just going to bump this once today and kick it over to Software Development for a look tomorrow.
Thanks!

LincolnHawk

Get your LinkedIn profile up to date too OP. People have different opinions on it but my last 3 roles were all via LinkedIn and through recruiters.