How to tell your personal software development story.

Most of the resumes we receive are poor. That doesn’t mean there isn’t great talent hiding behind those resumes, but people often make their talent tedious to discover. And, admittedly, it’s partially our fault as an industry.

Here are some of the biggest mistakes we see on software developer resumes.

You tell us what, but not how.

If you want to join the ant club on the hill, start your resume by blasting the reader with the most popular development technologies like React.js, Golang, C#, or Postgres while giving zero indication about how you used those technologies in a meaningful way.

Admittedly, this resume habit is the industry's fault. Human resourcing departments, out of an attempt to cope with volume of applicants were somehow convinced to adopt automated applicant tracking systems which scan resumes and eliminate candidates based on keywords that may be absent (it’s unlikely developers were consulted while implementing this process). You see... people are awfully good at evolving. Really good at it. They’re smart.  They’re smart enough to know ATS are in use at many employers. So, now we see resumes that list every conceivable technology that an individual has ever heard of regardless of whether they have practical production experience using it.

I would seriously question whether or not you want to work for an organization that employs ATS screening tactics on resumes as it demonstrates a complete lack of understanding about what makes a great developer or team of developers.

If you’ve followed previous posts by our company you’ll know we have a saying: “What you don’t know isn’t nearly as consequential as what you can’t learn.” The best developers learn incredibly quickly. Maybe they used Angular.js on a recent project instead of React.js. Who cares? Exceptional developers are capable of making the jump between front-end development frameworks because their experiences are transferable and they're smart.

What should you do? Use your resume to tell a story about how you incorporated a piece of technology that was paramount to a project's success. Maybe an organization using vanilla Javascript was struggling to manage context and scope within an application requiring UI adaptation for levels of authenticated users. Maybe you used React.js context to solve that problem and bring order to chaos. That sounds like a story we'd like to hear! It demonstrates that you know how to use a piece of technology in a way that adds value to the end user as well as the organization.

Quantify your success.

Did you reduce the amount of code in a project? If so, by how much? Did you improve the performance of an application such that you were able to reduce the application fleet size? What were the cost savings? Did the adoption of a new CI/CD technology increase your time to value for customers? How frequently were deployments done after compared to prior to the CI/CD change?

Great developers know how to measure success (you could say that about any person in any field). All too often we see statements like “I worked on a successful project building React.js components.” Prove it! What was your contribution?

Assess yourself... honestly.

If you’re a full stack developer, consider rating yourself in various areas of the stack. Balance humility and confidence as you do it! Great people don’t hide from their weaknesses, they build plans to conquer them. And, they’re willing to show their vulnerabilities. We’ll let you in on a little secret: nobody on this planet has Kryptonian blood and anyone who’s considering hiring you knows you don’t either. Your ability to identify your strengths and weaknesses shows maturity reserved for the best of the best.

I’m a scatterbrain: on any given day I have 1000 ideas. This can cause issues with prioritization which in turn can pose risk to projects. If I were completely candid and somebody asked me whether or not I was a particularly focused individual, I would have to say “no.” I run my own personal sprint plan early every Sunday morning to identify my highest priorities for each day. I note the things that are inflexible and uncompromising. Process helps me overcome my challenge with prioritization while also allowing me to use my scatter brain as an asset: my creativity helps find abstract solutions to problems that most other people wouldn’t consider!

This type of assessment not only shows your maturity as an individual but it also helps us align any team weaknesses we have with your strengths. And, we can line up our strengths with your areas of weakness to help you grow.

Some rules can be bent, others broken.

I don’t agree with one-page resumes, but I do agree with hooking the reader in the top one-third of your front page. The idea of writing a one-page resume is asinine for a career professional and its mythology trails back to a time when typewriters... well.. they were a thing. Your resume is a short story about who you are and if you absolutely hooked my attention on your title page, I’m happy if you finish the rest of your story on subsequent pages. Instead of worry about a one page rule (or three page, or 3.141592... pages) focus on telling a compelling story your reader cares about.

Like all great writing you want to focus on being clear, concise, and consistent. The three C’s! Don’t write any more than you absolutely must. When I write website copy, articles, or other marketing material my general rule is to write out all your ideas freeflow as part of the creative process -- then cut it down by two thirds. Eliminate every sentence or word that’s unnecessary and isn’t adding unequivocal value for the reader. An unnecessary word or phrase is directly adversarial to the value statement of your message. Chop, chop!

Great supplemental additions to a resume include screenshots of UI/UX problems you may have solved or code examples that show particularly creative problem solving skills. This isn’t a substitute for a link to your Github page, but it does make it faster and easier when doing a quick assessment.

Just make sure anything you share isn’t violating a confidentiality agreement with your current employer!

Do your homework.

We understand that sometimes people are desperate for a job. But, you have to understand that it’s also fairly obvious when you’re mass applying for any job with the word “developer” in it.

As part of our early recruitment cycle we identify whether you’re looking for a job or looking for us. Candidates who have taken the time to understand how they personally align to our mission, values, and technology stack score significantly better: it’s more likely they’ll find happiness here which makes them less risky to hire. They know what they want.

A short cover letter is a great way to emphasize your interest in the company. My advice would be to avoid simply paraphrasing your resume in your cover letter. The most important thing you can put in a cover letter is something insightful that shows how you personally align with a company while gently pointing out one or two experiences that would make you a rock star in the role.

We like boasting about our developers: when they build something amazing we give them the megaphone to take credit. Public speaking terrifies most people but at Imagine Everything we encourage everyone to share their work via community webinars and use it as an opportunity to grow. Maybe you like the idea, maybe you hate it. But, basic research will tell you this is how we roll and if you’re in the “I like to be recognized for my work” category, commenting on this feature in your cover letter is a great way to show us you’ve done your homework and you have the soft skills to meet the demand.

Don’t apply, go get it.

Come to grips with this reality and it will change how you approach job hunting: the best people are rarely in the open market and employers know it. It’s very expensive to hire extremely talented people and great organizations are smart enough to hang on to their best people. Great people get reassigned to a different team or department and are rarely laid off. Great people get hired because they met another developer at a hackathon. Great developers get hired because they were approached directly by an organization seeking their talent.

Wouldn’t it be great to be one of those people? You can! A little networking and content marketing can go a long way to getting noticed, it just takes effort. But then great people aren’t afraid of hard work -- in fact, most of them aren’t even aware they’re working hard because they love what they do.

Strike up a conversation with the right people on LinkedIn. Find a senior developer or product owner who can act as a potential influencer for you in the hiring process. It gives you an opportunity to learn more about a company from somebody first-hand who works there. If you’re new to the industry you can even ask for mentorship training. Once you’ve established a rapport you could ask them how they were recruited and express your interest to join their team. The majority of positions I’ve hired for were filled by networking!

Start a developer blog and post what you’re learning about on social media. Make yourself easier for companies like ours to find you!

We’ve found that there are really only three ways to recruit remarkable people:

• You’re in the top 1-3% that graduated from post-secondary (and one of your professors was boasting about you like you were an adopted child son of Krypton)
• We try to find you online via blogs, social media, and online development resources
• Great people find us because they like our team, technology, and company culture; this is often done through networking and referrals

My last and most important piece of advice is to be ambitious and go get the job you want. Leave nothing to chance!