Hi all,
I’ve been self-taught for a while and I want to start applying to test the water. Can you please take a second to review my resume? Any feedback is appreciated. Thank you!
Resume link: Imgur: The magic of the Internet
Portfolio Link: https://angry-knuth-03785d.netlify.app/
Thanks!
Hi @nuoya1996 !
Welcome to the forum!
Just a couple of thoughts.
I have never been a fan of skill bars
What does intermediate mean?
If we are working with different definitions of intermediate than this rating is kind of meaningless.
Also, you don’t need to rate yourself.
The perspective employer is going to judge you based on your work. Not a rating system.
I would personally remove it.
As for the projects, I think you should have a link for the live site and link for your code.
I am not sure why you have two sections for the same projects.
I think you should have one section just called projects.
Lastly, I think it would be nice to have a downloadable link for your resume.
Hope that helps!
Hey @nuoya1996,
Firstly, I agree with @jwilkins.oboe with the Skill bar. I just don’t think that is the right thing. You might see it a lot, but that does not really help you. You would usually just wants to show what programming languages that you know. It is up to the employer to judge how your performance with a language and by rating it yourself, you might show to them what they don’t want to see.
Other than that, and others that @jwilkins.oboe said, your resume is great!
Hi,
Thank you for the feedback! I certainly didn’t expect a detailed response like this on the internet. 
The way I rated myself is: I don’t think I’m a complete beginner as I’ve been learning for a while and I’m certainly not advanced or expert level, which puts me somewhere between beginner and advanced. But I do agree that skill bars can be quite misleading and will look to replace it with something else.
and of course I will add a link to my resume too. How could I forget about that haha.
I think the idea to have two project sections is I want to have all of my projects included but really showcase a few of the best ones. But right now I haven’t built that many projects hence the two sections seem a bit repetitive. What do you think? Is that a good idea in your opinion?
Again, thank you and really appreciate your feedback!
I would just showcase the best ones.
People are busy so they are not going to spend a whole lot of time going through your portfolio.
I would just have the top projects displayed.
If they really want to look at all of your projects, then they can dig through your github.
Hi Catalactics,
Thank you for the feedback!
Now I’m looking at it, the skill bar is probably hurting my chances at landing a job if anything. I will remove it. 
Speaking of which, what do you recommend me to do? I’m going to continue learning a bit of React and API integration in the next 2 months. I really want to get a job by July so I know where I’m going after my current lease. Otherwise I might be stuck here for another year. 
I think what you can do right now, you can try getting a job while learning a little of React and API integrations bits by bits. Your portfolio page is pretty impressive, that employers might be attracted by your skills. While waiting for the job, you can start learning React, which might also help getting a job because there are companies that want to Teach their apprentices React while being paid in the job.
Thank you for the confidence boost! It means a ton because I don’t know anyone in the industry. I will take your advice to keep learning and start applying. If somehow I manage to get a job, I’ll make sure to come back and thank you again! 
Love your portfolio!
The animations are really fun and I love the embeds you added under your “projects” section. It’s a really clean looking website too. Nice job!
I also agree with @jwilkins.oboe that you should do away with skill bars (as cool as they look). Unless you want to add completely irrelevant skills to showcase a bit of humar I think they’re pointless. If you listed skills like speed cubing, or parkour, or barbequing or anything totally random like that I would think it’s hilarious.
Some thoughts that might go threw someones head when seeing skill bars…
“Intermediate” in HTML? So you don’t know all the HTML tags? That doesn’t sound good. “Expert” in JS? Really? So do you actively contribute to the development of the language or what am I missing here? I’m going to rip this guy apart in his technical.
You know what I mean? It’s a mess. Everyone has their own interpretation of what skill bars mean, and none of them are correct. What does it mean to “know” all of a language or technology? It’s really hard to define. Best to just avoid them all together. Simply state the skills you have and leave it at that. Unless those skills are crocheting or cave diving or something… then add all the skill bars you want 
My other suggestion is maybe add a visual to communicate that you need to scroll after the “About me” animation finishes. I was confused because I thought maybe I was watching a video. I just stood there staring at the drone shot of the beech for like a minute before I realised it wasn’t going to do anything else.
I would also rework this first sentence a bit. There’s a typo and I wouldn’t use the word “aspiring” and saying you have a passion for “coding” I think is redundant. Maybe drop the passion part or change it to “animation”?
I’m an self-taught aspiring web developer with a passion for coding.
Could be:
I’m a self-taught web developer with a passion for animation.
You may even want to consider dropping the “self-taught” part. It can go a couple different ways depending on who’s looking at your profile. I’ve had people reach out to me because they found out I was self-taught but I don’t actually feature that detail anywhere. You have to do some digging to learn that about me.
“Self-taught” vs not is kind of irrelevant in my opinion. We’re all “self-taught”. You can’t stay relevant in this industry without constantly learning on your own.
The “projects” section is also laid out a bit odd to me. I love the embeds you added! But I feel like there’s a better way to organize it. Like @jwilkins.oboe mentioned it probably should be one section rather than two. But I also think you can have the embeds show up when you click on a project maybe. I’m not really a designer so I don’t have great advice here, I just know the experience feels a bit off and I think you can find a way to make it better.
As for your resume… it’s perfect. Plain and simple with a link to your portfolio and projects. Done and done. Nice job
Good luck!
Hi @nuoya1996 , I just want to say that I really loved your portfolio. I am new to web development only know basic javascript, node, and express but I really want make a portfolio just like yours. Can you suggest to me how can I do this?
