Critique my Resume and Portfolio

@h15200

Thanks so much for your tips. Since I’m not much of a designer, it would be a great help if you could tell me specifically in which places the font sizes etc look bad.

As for the resume you’re right. I’ve tried to pack a lot of info into one page. I figured the more jobs and projects I listed, the more experienced I would appear, but maybe I went overboard?

Lastly, what would do to fix the about section? Move it above the work/projects sections? Or should it go further down in the page or in a side bar?

Thanks again for your help.

@jasonmfetzer Thanks!

It’s a tough question to answer because I think there is probably a way to make ANY layout work. As others have mentioned, designing is a different skill from coding and I struggle with it myself… I think ideally we all want to get to a point where you can look at something and know when something is not quite right just like we would identify a javascript syntax error. Design isn’t quite as black and white, but I feel like great designers immediately know what to do to “fix” things and the process doesn’t seem that different from debugging code.

I think the long and fruitful road is to just start studying design! I think on the short term you can use templates for your portfolio or ask a designer to sit with you for 10 minutes and point out everything that could be improved. Again, meetups would be a great environment for this. You might even be able to barter services with a designer who is starting to learn how to code. Good luck!

@h15200 Yes I guess you’re right. There no shortcut to mastering anything. I will have to just try to gradually pick up more design sense.

One other question:
I have an idea for a unique portfolio/resume, but not sure if it would look cool or just tacky. I’m thinking of using this library to make a fully 3d environment where you can walk around and see my projects, skills, etc on the walls. Like a virtual “house” for displaying my portfolio. And I think I can make navigation simple by automatically moving the camera around the environment based on the position of the scroll bar.

Is this something I should try? Would it impress employers? Thanks.

Hello @DouglasDev , how are you?

Responding to the last thing you say, I think the library you show is very good, but it is very difficult to visualize the content.

What you want is to generate impact, but that the user does not have to decipher how to see the information.

The beautiful thing cannot cause problems in the user experience. Do you understand what I mean?

Good luck!

Yes I get what you’re saying and you’re right that ease of use should always take precedence over style. But what if I could design the controls so that even though it’s visually complex, the page is still easy to navigate? Like something similar to this but in 3D?

The example is excellent, I am checking it from the mobile.
The video game feeling is very good. Then I will see it on the desktop.
If you can create something like that, it would be very good. try that the scroll is not very long.

Good luck with your project!

@Anon551122 Thank you so much for your incredibly detailed and helpful post. The information you’ve given me is invaluable. I will try to put everything you’ve said into practice over the next couple of weeks.

Since you sound like you really know what you’re talking about I have another question: What should I be doing to prep for interviews? Some people have told me to 1. practice answering these types of questions, while other people have told me don’t bother with those and 2. focus on algorithm questions, yet other people have told me that they won’t ask algorithm questions for front-end interviews and I should focus on 3. building web apps within a time limit of 1-2 hours.

Since I’ve only had two interviews so far, I really have no idea which format is most common but if you’re curious the first interview was format 3 and the second interview was format 2.

Lastly, most of my experience is front-end but I do know basic Node Express stuff. Should I try for full-stack positions or focus on front-end only assuming that I want to get a job within the next couple of months? And Is it worth taking the time to learn MongoDB? Based on job listings, it seems that nearly every company is using some variant of SQL, but I could be wrong.

Also, interesting coincidence: I also taught myself coding while teaching English in China. I’ve taught in Yichang, Nanjing, and Wuhan. What about you?

Okay I’ve already started doing the SQL course you’ve recommended. I guess I’ll just have to prepare for a bit of each interview style. Thanks again for your help!