CV advice for someone coming from different experience background

Hi all,

So I have been learning coding with FCC for a few months now, and I am almost certainly not ready for a Web Dev job, unless they are willing to take someone with less experience but that wants to learn.

BUT I am keen to start getting my CV out there, but the issue I have is I have 3 years (and 3 jobs) worth of experience since leaving Uni in 2014. Which obviously takes up the majority of my CV.

Do you think it would be better to just remove all the info and just have these as a list of previous work employment, and have the majority of the CV based around my coding/web development? Or am I better including a small section at the beginning about what I why I want to get into development, and still giving a lot of detail about my other roles?

Not sure whether it’s better to focus on the fact that I have a decent amount of work experience, but not any Web Dev exp, or try and play down this point by making my CV all about development…

Any advice would be welcomed :slight_smile:

I live in the UK btw…

I personally removed all the irrelevant jobs from my CV and built it on personal projects because I thought with all of the older jobs I looked like a part time coder or that I was just doing it as a hobby. I wanted to be taken seriously for mid level positions (I didn’t bother applying for junior jobs at all).

Ah ok, that’s interesting to hear.

What put you off applying for junior roles?

Also, what level were you at by that point, were you done with FCC and building your own full sites/web apps?

I was at a level where I was actually selling websites to companies so I was pretty confident in my ability, I worked to this level because I didn’t want to take a pay cut to move forward. That may not be the case or level you are at so don’t ignore the junior roles. I would have been able to finish 75% of the FCC Front End challenges when I did this.

You’ll learn more on the job than you will ever do from all the tutorials and everything else on the net.

If you can find a junior role to get the experience and make the same or a little but more money I’d do it while you looked for a mid level job.

This guys channel was one of my greatest finds whilst deciding on how to build my web development career and this video about “faking it till you make it” was probably one of the best bits of advice I got.

Thanks for your advice, I watched the video. I think this is possibly quite an important step, getting over your temporary limitations.

A junior role will definitely be the one I aim for, I am not so bothered about money in the first role, so long as I am getting the right experience and learning. Plus I am nowhere near being able to sell websites to companies haha!

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