Front-End Developer

Career Advice
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Hi everyone, l am trying to land a front end web dev job for like a year now but no luck. I hold a BSc in CS and l completed the responsive web dev course here. Is it possible for someone to review my resume and my cover letters ? I have been making amazing sites and posting on github but all seem to be in vein. Help!!

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if you can post your resume and cover letter there will be people happy to help you

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Have you been able to get any feedback during your job search? Knowing some of this will give you an idea of “where you stand” currently, compared to what companies are looking for.

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Just post them on here, you’ll get lots of feedback

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No l did not receive any feedback.

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Here is my cover letter and CV for reviews. Thanks to everyone that will help.

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Hey!
Firstly, I would advise you to format your resume properly because It had some issue with whitespace as well as some spelling mistakes in it which does not look very professional.

Assuming you’re looking for a front-end developer position, the only time your resume mentions anything related to the web or the front-end is in the certificates section so you might want to add some related buzzwords into the summary.

I do not see any links or your github username on your resume, without which any potential employers might not be able to see what you’ve built with the skills that you have.

I would also recommend you to have a “projects” section mentioning a few major projects you’ve recently worked on which showcase your best work and are relevant to the job you’re applying for.

I would also recommend you to watch this video because this also helped me when i was creating my resume.

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Hello Paul

do you have a chance to host your portfolio outside of Github?

It’s hard to find there, takes a long time to load and some of the projects didn’t load at all, I gave up after 5 minutes. Unfortunatly hiring managers will give you less before they skip you.

Which is unfortunate because the projects look pristine and I would have loved to see them!

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Pauls projects.PNG
Pauls projects.PNG1336×580 71.2 KB

“Services” has Lorem Ipsum texts. You either need to fill or remove them.
It’s small details like this that won’t let you pass phase one.

But your work looks promising and you have the “magical” CS degree, with a few tweaks we should get you job-ready

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Thanks for the feed back, let me host it outside of Github.

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This is very insightful.

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Nice, please keep us updated.

You put effort in your education and work, we can help you remove the pitfalls like typos. It’s the devil in the details.

If you are interested in frontend work, you’ll need experience with frameworks like React, Angular or Vue, one of them, with React/ Next currently the most wanted.

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Noted,

So am currently working on React and building projects, hopping to post on GitHub soon.
Also l am rewriting my CV.

Thanks a lot.

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Hi @paulpmunatsi !

Welcome to the forum!

I agree with all of the previous comments about your resume.
I would also add to make sure it is only one page.
You don’t have any work experience in software yet so there is no reason it should be longer than a page.

Also, linkedin has a lot of recruiters and hiring managers on there.
A lot of new developers don’t look at this option but every little bit helps when you are trying to land your first job.

I suggest you look into Danny Thompson’ linkedin series

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Thanks
let me do that.

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Have you tried getting in touch with a recruiter? Your CV needs a little bit of formatting. Empty bullet points and lines out of order give the impression to potential employers that one doesn’t pay close attention to detail. Remember that your CV is your business card for an employer and it needs to look immaculate.

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The formatting is all over the place


  • bullet points don’t align with text
  • some words are missing spaces between them e.g ‘abilitytoreport’
  • education is mashed up in a thin column on the left?
  • your headshot overlays your phone number

As mentioned, you also need to talk about your projects on there as well as a link to your github profile

Also don’t write things like ‘strong work ethic’ or ‘frequent overtime’. ‘Strong work ethic’ is generic and probably something most people would say about themselves, and ‘frequent overtime’ in particular makes you sound desperate.

Focus on your skills, your projects and your experience, not your personal attributes like work ethic or general work skills like ability to prioritise work, multi-tasking, being a team player etc

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Hello @paulpmunatsi, congrats on completing your degree in CS. That is already a huge accomplishment! Given that you are in Zimbabwe (based on your resume) it seems like the reason it’s much harder to land a position is that you are competing with industry hires (people who have experience) which is probably why you’re not landing a position.

I researched for new-grad roles on Linkedin and it looks like there aren’t any of those options available to you in Africa. Given your situation, I would seek to get some real-world experience like building someone’s website for free (I did this for a local business, and saw my ratio of callbacks go up tremendously).

Maybe even consider contributing to open-source projects. Then when updating your resume to describe the project, do it like the following example:

Maintainer and lead engineer for Docusaurus v2, a static site generator which powers the documentation of many of Meta’s Open Source Projects - React Native, Jest, Relay, Reason, etc. Used by 7.6k > projects on GitHub. (source)

There’s no perfect software engineering template, but picking one and sticking to its format is a good practice when sending out applications.

Lastly, keep building and learning to become a better developer. When you finally get the opportunity, you’ll be much more prepared for not only the interview but also for the job itself. Good luck, and happy coding!

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I’m not able to click on any of the projects you did on “Home”. So I can’t see the sites and don’t know if they are any good. The homepage itself looks a lot better then I usually see though :slight_smile:

Edit: I also just realised that linking to #portfolio doesn’t get me to /#portfolio

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