Just wanted advice from real Elixir developers about my Resume. There is a junior role with very little Elixir knowledge to know. I would like to apply for it. I have my resume attached to this link. I did remove a few links for safety reasons. The Resume will be going to the Founder and CTO I really want to put a good first impression.
Tell me your thoughts on my Resume, and what you change or add to make it stand out.
How can I word it differently?
Would you an Elixir engineer be excited to see someone with my experience applying for a Junior Role?
Should I put Elixir on Skills as number 1?
Any feedback is fine
Other than the changes in @dtew’s post, do you have any personal hobbies/skills that you think might make you appear interesting in some way? I remember when I was at school and we were being taught about CVs our teacher said he knew a past student who was into sword swallowing and fire-breathing started mentioning it in her CVs… and when she did every single one invited her for an interview! Many remarked that they just had to meet her because she sounded so interesting!
Remember that people hire people. How you come across/your vibe, who you are as a person etc matter more than your current ability than you might think and especially so in some jobs or types of jobs.
If it’s an Elixir role… I would! (And why haven’t you mentioned Phoenix? Or an interest in Erlang?)
The best advice I reckon is to read it back from he perspective of a team member of the team you want to join - would you want to work with the person in that CV?
Also check out the Dev Profiles section as similar tips have been posted there
@AstonJ you gave some good advice here that I will do my best to implement into my Resume
While I think this a great idea, I find it redundant to put in a professional resume. How would I even word it. It sounds more like a dating profile than a resume. See my point.
I should have definitely put that in there. Since I have used the framework and built projects with it.
I have been on this platform for about 2 years or more now. I have seen you @AstonJ is many of my questions. I always humbly respect all of the developers answers and as always Thank You.
Try to come off as friendly and easy to talk to. I’d rather work with someone who is a good communicator than a programming wiz, at least most of the time.
It’s a small detail, but when I looked at the resume, there were a couple spots that I actually missed upon first glance, or had to squint at in order to understand. For example, I didn’t immediately notice your Biology degree since it’s so close to the next section. Also, I thought that the part that reads as, “Obtained a solid understanding of the language JavaScript, and React …” blends in with the preceding date, so I read it as just “Sept2020 – Sept 2021 Obtained a solid”. Finally, I would consider moving your professional experience section above your project section.
Looks like you have some nice projects there. Try to have some thoughts prepared to say about them (eg. What you learned, something that was challenging, how it turned out, etc.)
I think it’s cool and interesting that you have a degree in Biology. If I were doing the interview, I’d be interested in learning about that experience, as well as what brought you to programming.
Sometimes if you are able to have enough questions about the job or the company, it shows a lot of initiative and curiosity. You can sort of “fill the time” doing this and make a good impression. After all, you are also interested in learning if you’d be a good fit too. Don’t make up questions, of course, but the more questions that you have the better.
Why are you drawn to an Elixir job rather than something more mainstream like Java or Node, etc.?
Remember that it’s your ability to communicate and solve problems that makes you a good developer, not so much the specific languages and frameworks that you know. Maybe the latter becomes more important as you get more “specialized”, but for a junior role, just being able to communicate effectively is a very important aspect.
Good luck on your interview, let us know how it goes.
1_ Profile
2_ Professional Experience
3_ Projects
4_ Education
5_ Skills
6_ Languages
Since your projects is the strongest section of your CV, I would expand each one of them with the things you learned while creating them. Sprinkle them with stuff people who hire want to read, like:
Learned to use s3 storage.
Learned to manage postgres databases.
Learned LiveView.
Learned React.
Learned how to do CI/CD.
…
In your profile I’d put that you are a looking for a Junior dev position where you can learn.
I am a creative full-stack engineer with a drive to learn and constantly seek out innovative solutions to everyday problems. Having already contributed to a dozen projects and worked in an agile team-based environment with other engineers to tackle problems and generate solutions, I am now looking for a Junior Dev position where I can continue to learn and grow my skills. My current experience includes but is not limited to Elixir, Phoenix, Ruby on Rails, JavaScript, React and Redux, HTML, CSS, and SQL. I bring strong skills in critical thinking, project management, attention to detail, and a strong work ethic.
Yeah, those sound pretty good to me. Remember, only ask the questions that you actually care about. Some of those questions sound a bit generic to me, but if you are indeed interested in the answer then go for it. Prioritize the questions that you want to use in order to “guide” the conversation toward things you’re interested in , or things about yourself you want to make sure and highlight.
What does the company culture look like?
What do you believe sets your company apart from competitors?
How does the company measure success?Great question. Consider making it more personal, like, “If you were to hire me for this role, how should I plan on measuring my success?” I think that asking about how you can gauge your own success shows that you want to take responsibility for this. You may already have at least some kind of answer in your mind for this, so you could share that and see if your expectations line up with what theirs are. Now you’ve just had a meaningful conversation that gives both you and your interviewer some great insight.
What strategies does the company use to stay ahead of trends?Personally I’m not sure how I would answer this, unless you were to make it a bit more specific. For example, if the “trend” you were interested about was specifically “working from home”, then you might ask, “Do you plan on sticking to a fully-remote friendly development team? … What are some challenges you’ve seen with doing that? < insert something about your experience with working on a remote team here >”
What are the biggest challenges the company is currently facing?
What opportunities does the company offer for career growth?
What kind of feedback do you get from customers? Sure, but why are you asking this?
How does the company ensure employee satisfaction? Maybe think of a less-formal way of asking this. You may consider asking this toward the end of the hiring process after they have indicated that they want to move forward with you.
What values does the company prioritize when making decisions? Yeah, kind of a formal question, but I think it’s good to know what the values are. Hopefully they tell you this without having to ask.
What strategies has the company used to create a successful business model?Personally this feels too formal and random to me, unless you have a way of asking it organically.
Nice corrections! The only thing I would like to add is that there is a high chance that a single person (unless it is a CTO/CEO) will not be able to answer all the questions, I tend to ask questions depending on the position of the person that interviews me, as the conversation will flow more naturally.
I’m just gonna focus now on the headline (profile):
The main goal of is CV is: To get you in an interview.
Who stands between you and your interview? People who read hundreds of CVs and book interviews.
Having said that, you need to empathize with your reader. Their goal is not necessarily to find the perfect person at this stage, but to find plausible persons to put in the next step in the pipeline. Hiring is a funnel process, just like visits to a website turned into “first add to cart”, turned into customers.
With that in mind, I’d re word your profile to fit into two lines.
Who am I, What do I want, How you fit my desires.
That would be my structure.
This of course means there’s a 1:1 CV produced per application, which I believe to be a great advantage over other candidates. It shows you care.
PS: Here’s a hack: send a nice emails (or tweets) to recruiters, asking for some CV roasting, they’ll have great insights. Also, it would be a fairly uncommon action, so you may get special access for things in their sphere.
Your profile blurb is too generic. Be more specific about why you’re in the industry and why you want to be a dev.
Your resume is too wordy. Know that a seasoned dev will be reading it, so cut the cruft/fluff, use appropriate acronyms, and use bulletpoints for easy scanning.
Move the skills/languages section down to the very bottom, it is the least important.
Move your professional experience up, it is the most important.
Rename your Education section to Projects.
Include an Education section for degree if you have one, and put it at the bottom above skills. It is less important Projects and Experience.
Each description should be less than 50 words, ideally just one sentence. I’ve got no time to read an entire page in detail and I’d be scanning many resumes for interesting projects/experiences and requirement keywords. If they’re not interesting or value-adding to your career or role, leave it out. If a project can be codegen-ed and has no interesting business or technical problem, leave it out.
As others have said, your personal life could be a factor for the hiring manager to remember your profile, but all that is moot if your profile doesn’t match the requirements. Tailor the project emphasis and profile blurb for each type of role you’re interested in. If it is a polyglot role, don’t emphasise any specific language, and don’t focus only on a specific framework (especially if you’re a junior). The more the merrier, and it shows a knack for learning fast.
Finally, I would consider moving your professional experience section above your project section.
