Hey Eric,
great work,
happy you’re making progress!
I’d consider putting the Projects above the Professional Experience as the projects are where you are now and the Poker Player is what you are moving away from.
Without reading the preceding posts in detail - if AWS is what you want to do leave it above technical skill, otherwise I think it’d flow better in the following order:
Technical skills
Projects
Experience
Certifications
Education
Similarly on your Resume website, I’d bump up the Projects so they are nearer the top - you have good descriptions on the challenges and these are what will most catch someone’s eye.
I agree trying to reach out to a technical lead within a company is more likely to get interest than applying to an HR person (who basically has a check list of boxes they want ticked).
Looks like you have some interesting projects and all of it done under your own steam so hopefully just a matter of when you find the right person willing to give you a chance.
Best of luck
I like the improvements you’re making keep it up.
I know nothing about playing professional poker. Are there any accolades you have that could make it look even more legitimate than what you currently have written?
I’m thinking possibly some things like tournaments won, large prizes, playing statistics, player ranking, or other things of potential significance?
Lots of cynics in the world would see eight years as a self-employed poker player and assume the worst case scenario so the onus is on you to overcome possible employer bias.
Best wishes
This one is good. I suggest to always check the qualifications of any job opening and see if you fit the job description or think you could do the job and apply. This usually gets positive results…apply and apply and apply
I am not saying its fair however listing yourself as a Self-Employed Professional Online Poker Player is definitely going to raise some red flags especially with more corporate type employers. I would consider modifying that somehow.
Honestly I think you have an extremely impressive portfolio for a Junior developer.
One thing that may be part of the issue is that my first impression is you’re trying to be a cloud engineer. You should be proud of those certs but making them front and center doesn’t tell me you want to be a web developer.
I might accidentally pass you if I’m hiring for a developer role.
It might help to have a couple or even a few variations of your resume that are more focused on specific roles.
The other thing could just be timing. Covid has been hard on a lot of businesses so naturally there are fewer jobs right now.
You also maybe just aren’t getting in front of the right people. A more targeted approach might work out better where you start networking with people from companies you want to work at even if they don’t have a job posting up right now.
The best way to get hired somewhere is to already know someone who works there before they waste their time with the job posting. Everyone I know would prefer to fill the position with someone they know first if it’s possible.
A more targeted approach also lets you tailor your resume and cover letter to the company you’re applying to as well as handpick one of your portfolio projects that is the best fit for what you think they would find relevant or interesting.
When someone just sees a list of projects, they might not checkout the one that would make the biggest impression on them. By targeting in on a company you get to tell them which project is probably the best to check out if they were to only glance at one.
Aside from all of that, I’d focus on improving your crypto data app. I noticed you’re hosting it on Netlify and that’s pretty cool already. But without adding any new features you could make it more impressive by adding a few things.
- Testing
- GitHub Actions to run your tests before deploys
- Setup ES-Lint and Prettier to have auto-formatting and linting in your codebase
- Edit your GitHub action to run your linter before deploys
- Publish code coverage reports from your tests to your README file
After that there are a lot of features you could add to this.
- Add user accounts
- Subscribe to crypto currency updates
- Notifications based on the value of a currency. For example, it would be cool if I could notified be BitCoin goes up more than 3%
Just keep coming up with cool stuff to build on the things you have already. Unpopular opinion maybe but I believe one really meaty solid project outweighs 100 simple ones.
Hey all,
Thanks for all the great feedback! Since I made this post, I have pivoted and narrowed my focus. I have focused 100% on building a cloud engineer skillset.
- I am finishing up my Terraform certification.
- I have focused more on Python and landed a freelance gig writing a script to scrape data.
- I have planned out a series of blogs to write about Cloud.
- I am considering getting the AWS Dev Associate or SysOps
- I have been landing more interviews, and currently just completed 2 interviews and a code test for a startup. Waiting to hear back!
- Going into the new year, I have narrowed my focus to companies to apply to. I am trying to make connections at those targeted companies and get referrals. I have had decent success so far, and will continue to do so until I land a full-time gig.
Once again, thank you all so much for all the feedback! It has made a substantial difference, and I hope to update this thread when I land a job in the new year!
You say 50 applications no interviews, yet you mention you got coding interviews… how did you actually land the coding interviews? was there any trick to that? My experience is sending out the resume to 30 or so places, and they all send back the same rejection template letter. Ive not succeeded in making contact with a human, let alone coding interviews.
I also applied to some internships, volunteer work, no luck there either.
Would like to know how he actually even got a coding interview.
I should get cloud certifications? Go back to school? join a bootcamp? fake the resume? Finish all the Fcc certifications?
Having some basic javascript/react/php/mysql abilities is not enough to recieve a coding interview?
I guess its hard for everyone nowadays.
But reading posts about people getting job offers after only studying 6 months. Whats their secret? are they just super smart/talented
Hi @kravmaguy !
I would suggest you make a post in the #career section asking for feedback on your portfolio and resume.
You might be qualified but you might not be presenting yourself well and that might be the reason why you are not getting interviews.
I think sharing your resume and portfolio with forum will give you some insight on how to improve your materials and land an interview.
People do that all of the time and the pros on the forum point out a lot of issues they see that prevent people from getting interviews.
Stop reading those posts. Seriously, it’s not good for you. That is a rare outlier and most people should not have that expectation. There are a variety of reasons why it may happen and you are probably not getting the whole story from the person telling it. For example, some reasons could be:
- Pure luck (being at the right place at the right time)
- Had connections (knows someone who has influence in hiring)
- Had previous work experience which translates well to their new job
- Had previous education that translated well to their new job
- May not have been the most technically proficient candidate but fit very well with the company’s “culture”
- Is very good at selling themselves and was able to convince someone to hire them even though they weren’t the most qualified candidate
And I could go on…
I’m not saying that these people aren’t good at what they do, they may be the best. But the fact is that there is more to getting a job than just your technical proficiency and too many people fail to take into account those other factors.
Also, I assuming you are joking about this.
But just to make sure, please don’t fake a resume.
That is a bad idea in any industry because people can easily verify information. 