Help for my resume and job searching

Career Advice
#1

This topic is mainly to get feedback for my resume, but I would also like to take this opportunity to ask for any advice that could help me with my job searching. I started applying for jobs like 2 months ago when I first finished my portfolio, ever since I’ve had some screening interviews that have lead to nowhere, then I stopped applying to focus on learning React because I was missing a lot of opportunities. Now that I’ve finally added React to my skillset, I feel ready again.

I am mainly trying to get a frontend developer remote job, the reason for this it’s because in my local market there are not as many opportunities for frontend developers as one can find for backend, but I didn’t know this when I started my journey 7 months ago. I intend to become a fullstack developer in the future, but in the mean time I would like to land my first job.

Here’s a screenshot of my resume:

Resume

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I am not going to lie, I hate writing resumes, so any advice to improve my chances is greatly appreciated.

This is also my portfolio, feel free to provide feedback.

Thanks in advance.

edit: also any site that you could provide to apply for remote jobs would be very helpful.

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#2

Remove personal pronouns from your resume. Write statements in bullet form rather than full sentences. The I is implied in your resume.

Don’t write that you didn’t get a degree, don’t give people a reason to not hire you. Just list the School and duration.

No need to elaborate too much on education. Kind of self-explanatory for the most part.

Focus your text on your projects and work experience. Succinct and meaningful description of responsibility and achievements. Something like " closed 500 support ticket monthly", “improved customer satisfaction by 20%.” Probably longer and more descriptive.

Not sure why your URLs are under work experience, move them to appropriate section.

Project link is unnecessary since you included you portfolio and github. Instead use that space for better descriptions of your projects.

Highlight technology the best you can, highly what you did with the technologies. Don’t just say built with jQuery. Why did you use jQuery and how did you use it to achieve your goals.

The opening statement can be omitted or kept, doesn’t matter that much.

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#3

Agree here. One possible way around it, in addition to just listing the school and duration is to list something like 'earned xx credits in graduate courses in '. Kind of a grayish area but it at least shows work…

It may help especially if it leans heavily towards the field you want to get into- IT/Web dev.

so as an example-

PUCMM University
city, Dominican Republic
2010-2015
* Earned 60 credits in undergraduate major Architecture.

(I don’t know what the system is like for your university- basing my example off of United States’ system)

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#4

Your resume just plain looks good. Clear. Easy to read. Not too much. It says that you understand the burden of the person reading your resume (who may become your boss) and you will try not to waste their time.

Suggestions:

Removing “autodidact” and removing pronoun tightens up opening statement: “Developer/designer, always learning”

For me, innovations in graphics on resumes is a turn off. I’m in a hurry. I don’t want to be distracted. So I would just bullet (with dot) or omit bullet and just indent.

Consistency is reassuring: provide months for Alorica job

I would omit the extra words about why you used jQuery. Just “built with jQuery” or “… webpage – jQuery, HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript”

I second Ducky and psychometry:

PUCMM University (2010 - 2015)
Architecture / planning / design thinking

If I were the hiring manager and I needed jQuery, Git, and Sass, this would get you a first interview: I would want to have someone ask you some skill questions over the phone. And see where it gets to.

Good luck!!

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#5

Hey, thanks for the feedback, a few questions though.

No need to elaborate too much on education. Kind of self-explanatory for the most part.

Do you mean that I shouldn’t elaborate on what I learned in the courses I mentioned?

Not sure why your URLs are under work experience, move them to appropriate section.

Thanks for pointing that out, I totally missed that, those links definitely were not meant to be under the work experience section.

Also did you have a chance to look at the portfolio, if so, what do you think about it? Thanks again.

#6

Not sure why your URLs are under work experience, move them to appropriate section.

Do you think autodidact come off as a bit arrogant? Because now that you suggested to remove it, I think it may sound a bit arrogant. But I’ve never given it too much thought.

I second Ducky and psychometry:

PUCMM University (2010 - 2015)
Architecture / planning / design thinking

Well the thing is that I didn’t want to imply that I have a degree in architecture, the way you put it seems like you’ve got the degree, no? English is not my first language so there may be something I’m missing.

I just want to be honest of who I am, I don’t people to believe that I have a degree and if someone cares enough to ask about it then I have to clarify that I don’t have a degree and they might wonder why did I imply that I have one in the first place, which could turn into a red flag.

But I absolutely understand your point, I didn’t want to state that I didn’t have a degree, I know it does not look good, reason why I didn’t want to mention my college experience but I know that for a lot of employers college experience is very important.

#7

Unusual words can seem arrogant. I would not use “autodidact” for that reason too.

I hear you about not wanting to mislead people. Practice with your friends: if it comes up, you say: “I have ___ credits to go to finish that degree. I’m not sure when I’ll get to those credits.” And stop talking.

To say you have a degree, your entry would look like this:

BFA Architecture, PUCMM University (2015)
Design / planning / design thinking

Omitting BA/BS/BFA and including years says you didn’t graduate. One nice thing about college is that it is not indentured servitude: you can stop if stopping is right for you.

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#8

Ohh I see, well that is very good to know, thank you!

edit: by the way, did you have the chance to look at my portfolio, if so, what are your thoughts? Thanks again.

#9

Online courses are hit or miss in term of quality and notoriety, also they tend to have self-explanatory titles. If they’re interested in what you learned in those courses, they will ask you in the interview. It benefits you more to demonstrate what you learned from those courses in a project description then to just say you learned it.

Here’s the thing, if your resume makes it through the keyword filters. The recruiter may only spare 10 - 15 seconds scanning over it. Details about your education are not what they want to spend their time on. They are looking for keywords and sentences that signify your qualification. The sentence “Learned [insert topic]” does not do that.

Really boil your language down to the criteria of why should a hiring manager care, and can you make them care on first impression.

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#10

  1. you’re not lying by just listing the school and duration

  2. Honesty is important to a person, not to a machine.

The fact that you’re not writing BS/BA…etc is actually already a hurdle. ATS probably already recognized that you did not list a degree, and some company probably would already archive your resume base on that criterion, which means a human being will never see it. I can’t be certain of the level of sophistication that the tracking system filters, but having more negatives things for the filter to pick up does not help.

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#11

Thank you guys for the feedback. This is what I came up with after having considered some of your suggestions.

New resume

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I think it looks a lot better now, what do you guys think? My biggest weakness is my work experience, no much I can do about that. I will just have to work really hard to work on more projects that I can showcase my skills and get more in demand technologies to improve my chances. And grind, I might also need to fix my cover letter.

#12

Agreed, in my last project I documented everything in the README file on GitHub, I think that’s a good place to that because the resume being only one page there’s no too much room to detail everything.

#13

You really did not change all that much.

You’re still writing a little too colloquially.

Go on indeed or glassdoor, pick a job you think you are qualified for, and run that description and your resume through www.jobscan.co to see the importance of highlighting keywords. Don’t worry if it’s not 90%, but shoot for 70+, you have reasons for concern if it’s lower than 50%

Don’t list every online course you’ve taken, strategically list a few is fine.

#14

Looks good!
“Advanced CSS and …” Add the “d”
You’re switching bold-facing midway: at first it’s bold headings, & not-bold content. Consistency is reassuring. Consistency is like demonstrating that you will pick one case rule and one indentation rule and stick with it.
Good luck!

#15

Perhaps you could provide me with a resume example?, I am trying to be as specific as possible to save space and make it easy to read and not waste anybody’s time.

Yes I heard about that tool yesterday, I am going to use it for every application from now on and shoot for 80+ at the very least.

Going off of that, how long do you think should be a cover letter? I have a generic one because I absolutely despise writing resumes and cover letters and I was just randomly applying to every job I think I could fit. But now I decided to be more thoughtful with my applications, instead of applying randomly I should just pick a few per day and invest at least an hour with each one, this hour could be used to customized a cover letter, doing research about the company, etc.

Cover Letter

While looking for a job on different websites, I’ve come across your company and I thought it might be worth sending over a quick message to introduce myself.

My name is Gilbert, I’m 27 years old and I live in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. I’m actually trying to make a transition into a job in the IT field. In particular, I have an interest in fron-end development and about 7 months ago I started my journey learning some of the main front-end technologies such as HTML, CSS, Sass, JavaScript and React. I have a strong understanding of how these technologies work together to build beautifully designed websites and/or webapps. I have built a few projects using these technologies along with other development tools like Git, GitHub and npm packages.

I am enthusiastic, eager to learn and extremely hard working. I am looking for any entry-level position that might be available, with the opportunity to learn and progress. I am able to work for minimum wage as I am just looking for someone to give me an opportunity. If you would like any more information or to discuss this further, please do not hesitate to contact me.

I took this from someone else and changed a few things, I don’t remember the link to the article right now. Would you say it’s too long and generic? Should I avoid try to sound like a junior developer?

#16

Nice catch, it’s impressive how easy it’s to miss spelling errors.

#17

you can find sample with just a little googling.

FCC itself has done post on this topic a couple time

I personally have not found cover letters to have much impact, at least not through a job board or application system. Most don’t even really require one. It is slightly different however when you email someone or message them on LinkedIn, then the email/message is your cover letter and therefore extremely important.

The key thing is to not make grammatical or spelling mistakes. Grammarly helps, having other people proofread also helps. Also highlight the company, position you’re applying for and why you are qualified.

#18

I really like the resume from the first article, but we have to agree that plenty of us can’t add all that work experience on our resume (I could probably leverage my experience as Tech Support since I had to do troubleshooting and such). Which takes me to something I had suspected, I need more complex projects in my portfolio other than websites, projects that I can use to compensate for my lack of relevant work experience, like this project. After seeing the first guy resume, I realize that there’s a lot more I can say about that web application to make it sound more impressive.

I’ve adopted a new strategy following the advice from some people here, when I see an offer on any of the job boards sites, I try to look for the name of the hiring manager or recruiter so I can connect with them on Linkendin. The problem is that you cannot chat with them until they accept the request, and the message that you can send them with the invitation is limited to only 300 characters, not much one can say.

This is a cover letter I wrote for a job I recently applied. key words: communication skills, mentorship, design

Cover Letter

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#19

There are shortcuts like linking them to a document.

Write a specific message regarding the specific position can help you stand out.

Chances are the first guy’s resume would pass through the filters even without the employment section, but the experiences are always major pluses. It’s a hurdle that many people run into, cannot really fix that. You just have to try and make it up with projects, which was my point all along. Project descriptions is the thing that you need to put your effort on, not all these other sections that you can copy and paste over and over

#20

Have a flu so if this looks wacked or I sound grumpy that’s why.

From several years of lashings from senior manager sisters resumes should be:
Succinct, passionate, impressive, but most importantly ERROR free.

So no spelling errors nor buggy code.

Also if English is not your native, no worries. Make it short.

Other points:

  • Consider separating your coding and non coding experience.
  • Coding Experience = Github collaboration.
    ** You need to join other projects.
    ** If you know of Andrei Neagoie or Colt Steele, siq, you know what I mean
  • Portfolio Design. Really nice. Keep it up.
  • Portfolio Code, checked movie database, don’t see movie descriptions. Looks like an error, fix this.
  • Resume. Needs some work. See attached.
    resume_pass_1
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Note a lot of it IS dummy data. But that’s the template. Do some real soul searching and try to boil those figures into numbers. Have references who will back you up.

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