Will drop pants for food....(advice please)

Blitzkrieger

I've just been looking at my CV and it's crap

I've been trying to keep it brief, a section on skills, experience, eductation and a line or two on hobbies. My main problem is it's too brief. I'm a graduate so most of my skills and experience were gained in college, and companies don't seem to give a toss.

Take C++ for example. Most of our college work was done in C++, so when we were learning advanced OO programming techniques, it was C++ we learned in. When our DB lecturer decided to cover ESQL, it was C++ we learned in. When our Dist. Sys. lecturer covered CORBA, it was C++ we learned in. The trouble is phrasing my C++ experience on my CV. How do I list C++ in my skills section, so that an employer will actually take notice?

Another issue I've been wondering how to put my salary requirements in my cover letter. Basically, I don't have any.

Back in the days when I used to go to presentations of companies like Intel, EMC, MS, etc., who came to the college trying to entice people into their graduate programs (which seem non-existant today), they were offering a basic wage of £17-19,000. With bonuses, stock options and other benefits it came to £22 - 25,000. I have no idea what they are offering today, but a simple Euro conversion gives basic pay of about €23,000. I'm not looking for that much money - if I could find a (software development) job in Cork I'd be willing to work for minimum wage. If I could find a job in Dublin, I'd be willing to work for bare subsistance (What would that be in Dublin? €18,000?).

How would I phrase that in a cover letter without sounding weird?

I also have a problem with phraseing my current employment situation. I'm working in my father's business at the moment, which has it's good and bad points. It's allowed me the luxury of being able to pick and choose which jobs I apply for, without the worry of starving on the streets distracting me. I want to get a job in software development, and I know that getting a job in a call centre doing tech support isn't going to help me achieve that aim. My second choice would be a career as a DBA and I've been considering pursuing some sort of Microsoft certification towards that end.

The main advantage of my current situation - that I can leave at any moment if I find a better job, is probably hindering my getting that job. When I state in my cover letter that "I'm able to start immediatly", they probably think I'm unemployed and too useless to get any sort of job.

WhiteWashMan

will get back to this one later if i have time (busy day )

but for the last point, just say you have two weeks notice.
most companies that are hiring will expect at least that anyway.

and think about your long term career. think hard, and think what you want to be.
personally i want to be a millionaire

ok, now think about how you can get there.
what do you need to know, what courses will help. what experience will help you along the way?

and think of what positions you will have to work in to get the different parts of this.

think of the easiest.

i wanted to be a network engineer. i pushed buttons in a factory for 12 hours.
i bought a pc. i played with it. i broke it, i learned how to use and fix and upgrade.
so i got a job in IBM doing tech support.
from tech support i got a job doing desktop support, then software support, and then networking admin, and then i became team leader of desktop support (these are all different places, you may find yourself changing jobs a lot!), and finally i got a job asa a network engineer.

then i thought what do i want to do next. and i went into hardware sales, and now im a hardware consultant inthe oil and gas industry.

and this is all in 5 years.
ok, fairy tale dream come true for me, and its not gonna work for everyone, but you get the idea.

make a big plan, and cut it into small managable chunks. like im gonna get this exam in the next 3 months. and after that you set another goal, once oyu achieve it, you go onto the next, and as long as its the path your on, fine.

occasionally, you will find yourself working hard and some opportunity comes along. consider it. if you like ti take and redefine your plan.
just be flexible, and try to enjoy the ride!

hussey

Blitz :

I am in a similar situation myself, although I have a job, it not what it said on the tin. (started off as programer, now I am not .. spent this morning designing a cover letter template)

most companys don't view college C++ the same as industry C++

ie if a student says he knows C++, most companys assume he is talking about college basics.

I remember 2years ago the standard was 23k irish, and most ppl have 20-24k euro!!

But I went to monster.ie CV builder and did mine from there. I thought it looked fairly decent, although you will be fairly hard pushed to get a software development role, but if you send to companys saying you will work for 18k, they might look into it some more (as sending it direct means no agency fees)
.. just a thought

Greenbean

Speaking from about 1 year ago when things were just as bad:

Just before I left college (coming close on 1 1/2 years), things were rosey, a person leaving with hons comp sci degree of 2.1 or even 2.2 standard could most likely expect a 18grand (irish) a year job with one of the big multicorps (Sun, Oracle, MS etc) or one of the many small startup or medium and growing companies. If you were good you might get as much as 21 grand starting.

1 month later you couldn't get anyone to reply anymore. The well was dry. Had I some balls and a bit of money I probably should have taken a year out travelling in retrospect... though coming back around now would probably scare any notions of any poor backpacker.. might have travelled for eternity. Anyway thats an option at the moment.. TRAVEL, probably the best chance to do it if you can.

I'm similar to you, I worked in the family business (chippy), sorta part-time, sorta searching for work - for at least 6 months, after coming back from America over the summer. 2 things learned there - Firstly NEVER get your hopes up about possible job offers. Give it a shot but don't rely on it until its confirmed, keep searching like mad in the meantime - don't reject anything, ANYTHING, until it really becomes your choice whether to take it or not. Most likely the agencies are ****ing you around - adds in the paper are your best option and more likely to give you a proper interview with the people who might employ you. Search the local papers, any region - there might be some vb job going. Secondly living at home, out of your chosen career gets you down and pissed off. Supplement this by taking evening courses more close to what you want to do. (eg Cisco CCNA in the local colleges, MSCE, ...).

Do parttime projects and hobbies, like develop a mail client or something in mfc - start making yourself look attractive as a programmer, don't loose the skills, start gaining some (trust me college doesn't focus on proper programming skills anywhere near as much as you think it does - colleges are purely academic and theoretical .. at least ucd and trinity are).

Learn STL, MFC, C++, Visual Studio, .net; create a webpage with your programs on it as demos, have it linked on your cv. Go learn some assembly, figure out basics of memory management/pointers so you don't let yourself down if you get asked technical questions in an interview. I know some companies are letting 10's of candiates inteview for 1 job and they use 3 hour technical exams as the main way of choosing. When actually getting interviews at all is the hard part you want to be putting in an awesome performance when they come around - otherwise its going to be blind luck and time that gets you a job ahead of the other 1.1 graduates or recently laid off logica employees who are competing against you for that job.

Me, it was blind luck and time I suppose. After about 8 months (almost a year from college) I got wind of a startup local to my area, and they were interested, but it required blind faith on my part. As things got more and more serious I even ended up practically rejecting a job offer somewhere else to get the job; not easy. Thankfully my trust was repaid and I now work fulltime developing. I'm not sure what else exactly I could have done until the offers came along, but be patient. The only IT related field about thats employing is Call Centers, but they don't help much apart from keeping you more central to things than a chipshop does. Its a tricky position to be in and my sympathies go with you.

Regarding money, if they want to employ you, they already know its them calling the shots - you will end up taking whatever they say to make sure you're in a job and getting the oh-so necessary experience. I wouldn't allude to money, apart from to suggest you would work for a reasonable salary given the current economic climate.. blah blah etc. Your concerns are that if you get offered 18000 euro (which is ok/good, could be worse) that they actually pay you it and aren't taking advantage of you. 18000 grand in dublin is going to require you give up drink for a while and save the pennies, but definitely take it - you need experience more than money at the moment.

Mercury_Tilt

This post has been deleted.

Blitzkrieger

I'm moving to London next week to try to find a job, so I was hoping to get some advice on my CV before I go. Basically I want a way to put my college programming work on my CV (cos I'm a recent graduate with no exp) that makes it sound impressive. This is going to be tough to do because of :

Originally posted by hussey
most companys don't view college C++ the same as industry C++

ie if a student says he knows C++, most companys assume he is talking about college basics.

I didn't want to say it at the time, because I didn't want to look like I was throwing your advice back in your face (and btw, thanks for the advice guys), but I hate it when people say that. It belittles every thing I worked hard at in college.

[blow my own trumpet] If you give me any programming problem, I could probably think of a few different ways of doing it. We learned everything from BIOS and assembly using C (which we learned ourselves) to ESQL, CORBA and lots of OO programming techniques in C++ (super classes, inheritance, etc.), to GUIs, RMI and other comm. methods in Java (which we also learned ourselves). I also did my final year project in Java (three-tier remote database app) while others got away with crappy projects using nothing but scripts. A lot of the class didn't really learn it at all - a lot of the class were no good at programming. They learned all they needed to know off by heart for the exam, without really understanding it, and forgot it all five minutes later. I know a girl doing a doctorate at UCC, who never did a programming assignment herself in four years of college. In contrast, I did understand what we were doing and can remember most of it now (I'd have to look up details though ). [/blow my own trumpet]

All of which probably sounds ridiculous to anybody with two years programming experience, because - as they would say - professional programming is completely different to college programming. How exactly is it different? I imagine there's a much higher emphasis on quality and testing. When you're programming something you designed yourself, you tend to take shortcuts with both the design and the implementation, because you 'know what you're doing'. I usually take shortcuts with style and commenting too, thinking I'm the only one who will see it. In a professional programming I wouldn't be able to do this. I would have to stick to a rigid style set by the company. I'd have to have lots of commenting so that everybody could follow the code. I'd have to stick to the design, because I wouldn't be able to change it to suit myself, and I'd have to do lots of alpha testing, because even if my code appears to do what it's supposed to do, it may have to deal with errors from other peoples/company's code.

Apart from that, all I can think of is learning the specifics of classes/libraries. Who can tell me what is the difference between professional and college programming? If you could tell me, I could learn it, but all most people can say is : "it's harder".

But anyway......enough ranting. Anybody know how to make college/project programming experience look good on a resume?

WhiteWashMan

post up your cv and we'll take a look at it.
or is it alreayd up?
cant remember.
anywy, make sure its up and i'll look later.
by the way, what makes you think you will get a better job in london?

just curious really, not trying to put you off!

BuffyBot

Good luck with the move blitzkreiger. Don't know if thigns are any better here that back at home, but all you can do is give it a go

boo-boo

If you're thinking about doing small projects or getting a certification, I'd concider doing them in .NET, at least its partially more of a level playing field.
ie you won't be competing against some guy with 7 yrs + in C++
or 5 in Java or whatever. I know any decent developer can pick up a lang in no time but it would narrow the gap.


as GBS said, if you don't get what you like, you'll end up liking what you get.


On second thoughts, what the hell do I know, I'm on the lookout meself.

Clintons Cat

blow my own trumpet] If you give me any programming problem, I could probably think of a few different ways of doing it. We learned everything from BIOS and assembly using C (which we learned ourselves) to ESQL, CORBA and lots of OO programming techniques in C++ (super classes, inheritance, etc.), to GUIs, RMI and other comm. methods in Java (which we also learned ourselves). I also did my final year project in Java (three-tier remote database app) while others got away with crappy projects using nothing but scripts. A lot of the class didn't really learn it at all - a lot of the class were no good at programming. They learned all they needed to know off by heart for the exam, without really understanding it, and forgot it all five minutes later. I know a girl doing a doctorate at UCC, who never did a programming assignment herself in four years of college. In contrast, I did understand what we were doing and can remember most of it now (I'd have to look up details though ). [/blow my own trumpet]

This post might be redundant,but it seems to me (a non programer) that you have no real difficulty expressing yourself when it comes to programing,that seems to me a fairly decent (non-cv) informal resume of your abillities.If you are worried that your CV will carry to much repetition/be loaded to much towards C+ then can't you find away to work the information in without over relience on the Word, I.E Emphasise all the different aspects you learnt (ESQL, CORBA and lots of OO programming techniques ect) rather than the languge you learnt it in?


BTW GoodLuck Mate.

Blitzkrieger

Originally posted by WhiteWashMan

anywy, make sure its up and i'll look later.
by the way, what makes you think you will get a better job in london?

Up where?

It sux atm - it's far too long. Sorta what CC said, I've been long-winded in describing what I can do, and people probably aren't taking the time to read it. I'm hitting a mental block trying to find a concise way of putting it.

It's not really a better job I'm looking for in London, it's any job.

WhiteWashMan

post your cv to boards.
add it as an attachment

Blitzkrieger

here 'tis

Greenbean

No-where near bull****ty or professional enough. Its late, I've had a few drinks but basically you have to do a "skills-based" cv since the experience is sparse. They are always tough to flesh out, but just take a look at some bull****ers cv, realise what stuff they are trying to get away with, when you KNOW you'd be 10 times better than them at the job. Although you might think the work experience was only moderately challenging you've got to make it look like some rite-of-passage, amazingly interesting, incredibly challenging, detailed and involving time in your life. You "dealt with clients on a day to day basis, as an IT Technician in Apple Computers, Corks." You "played a key role in ensuring the day to day maintence of system critical network services, and were on call to troubleshoot all network issues" from which you "have gained an important insight to maintaining a live network in a typical big business enviornment" yadda yadda.

List out the programming languages you know (even vaguely):
C++, Mfc, Swing, Java, Vb. Add things like Vb, sql and perl to the list even if you didn't do them. If you actually get an interview (a very hard step to do) you can then worry about learning/brushing up on those languages in time for the interview... so go jump in a river if you actually mess up the interview for looking like you didn't know your stuff.. getting the interview is the much much harder bit and you can take solace that its neither a sin or a crime to mislead people for their own benefit.

Fake the cv layout so that it looks much closer to the standard non-skills based cv - name, address, education, certificates, experience, hobbies. Most people focus on the experience, in your case fill it with your projects. Theres a rake of filler cv stuff you can have throughout your cv to make it look better. Typically a hr person is going to initially veto your cv, appeal to them first of all - a skills only cv will just confuse them.

Finally and most importantly in my opinion START DOING SOME SMALL SIDE PROJECTS!!!! You will immediately start learning so much you will feel stupid from before within weeks, you will be extremely confident in interviews and finally you can point prospective employers to hard-factual demonstratable skills that they can't deny. A quick look at any program you've done with a small description will let the lead technical guy really know what sort of skill level you are at and it will let them know if they want you immediately. Best to avoid being rejected because they don't really get to know your skills in the interview.

Blitzkrieger

Thanks Greenbean. Trouble with side projects is they take time nd resources. I've loads of time here in London cos I'm unemployed, but I've no PC, books, library access, etc. Back home I had all those things except time.

Clintons Cat

go down and enroll at your local libary,

72hundred

Seem to have come across this thread by complete chance, but I wonder 5 years on how did it all work-out in the end?

Heisenberg.

This post has been deleted.

mikemac

You're better off sending a pm to the OP if you want to check they are doing

They are still around, old-skool :cool:

cooperguy

I didnt realise I was looking at an old thread until I saw the last posts! Please tell me ye IT graduates are earning more than that starting off now?!

72hundred

The Scientist wrote: »

And given the title of the thread, one would wonder how you just stumbled across this thread....
I wonder what you were googling... :pac:

Hilarious.

But if you must know;
boards.ie linked at cycling forum.

Vanbis

Blitzkrieger wrote: »

here 'tis

I cant remember who it was but she was a female and posted up a while ago looking for advice about starting a small business writing up CV's for people as she had done her fathers who was impressed.

Found the thread OP. If i was you id send her a nice PM and she might be able to help with the CV. I'm not sure but maybe the mods could ask her for a sticky or template on CV writing?

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055404061