Looking for critique on my CV and personal page that I'm going to apply for jobs with

Career Advice
1

Hi Campers, my page is http://bradleybaylis.me and my CV can be found here. I would appreciate any feedback on my CV, projects or personal page/portfolio. Am i good enough?

Additionally, I’ve marketed myself as a full stack developer on my page and CV, because that is what I would really like to get into, but the reality is I have significantly more experience in front end endeavours then back end. I do have some experience with Node and Postgres though. Do yuo think this is an unwise move?

Thanks

2 Likes
2

Hey Brad,

I do like the fact you self taught through a bachelors however I would emphasize projects and topics covered, such as software design patterns, modular design, recursion, SSH, etc.) and I like seeing good scores in mathematics.

However I don’t think your portfolio sets you apart with a tic tac toe game and a templated project from the Udemy reactjs course from Andrei Neagoie, who is excellent but if I saw this I want to see something from explicitly from you and as an employer I’d want to see your ideas and what you can do without a tutorial. On this note try to finish the unique projects from freecodecamp as well as create a game that uses a more dynamic output (someone on here took 3 months to create a javascript tetris, yes that’s three months but it was very impressive)

I think It’s stronger and better to have a resume page typed out about the projects you did, link the source to github and get lots and lots of feedback as well (go to developer meetups in your area). In addition list and update to github if you can some of the mundane. Private Github Euler project progress, link to hackerrank, post your dabblings on codepen and if you do photography try to make a web page that hosts it and isn’t a bootstrap template.

If your goal is to get a job as quickly as possible I would say try to get really in depth with native and node JS, and design the workings and usage profile of an app that could manipulate a database on the backend while displaying and validating input on the front end.

Then look for jobs that targets fresh grads and if it lists php and sql, learn it. LAMP stack may get bad press for being outdated, but the position i just got offered uses C, LAMP and javascript because migrating the existing system to NODE js is not economically nor physically feasible.

Regardless, right now it seems jobs everywhere are experiencing an inundation in React JS applicants so focusing on MERN while not a bad thing is likely not something you can do at your first job easily at the current moment in time.

Juts take heart no learned language or platform is wasted. My C, helped me learn Java, then C++, then php, then python, …react js… angular… you get the spiel.

All it requires is a willingness to code in a different language and syntax.

4 Likes
3

Thanks @WhisperPntr for the advice, I appreciate you taking the time! :smiley:

4

And sorry I got carried away! But if you have the dedication to complete an online bachelors you definitely can go for something much further! Best of luck! :slight_smile:

5

@WhisperPntr no worries, I would rather hear the truth and improve.

6

Hey Brad, here’s some feedback:

Your head shot on your website looks low resolution/unprofessional. Would have liked to see a pic that didn’t look blurry/pixelated. I was also expecting an auto-scroll for your links. Might be just a personal preference but I think it adds a nice touch to single page sites (I used zenscroll and it was super easy to implement). Your about me section seems a bit crowded to me. I think it would look better and more readable if there was some more spacing between “Things I like” and the link to your CV. I really like the pop-up for your projects and the use of demo video. I would have liked to see more projects displayed especially considering you included the website itself as a project and your other projects don’t seem original (though I like the features of your tic-tac-toe game). I would have liked a demo log in for FaceBrain so I could check it out without registering.

That’s all I have for now, hope this helps buddy!

2 Likes
7

Hi @oscarfabiani, I’ve actioned your suggestions of adding auto-scroll, unsquishing the about me section and making FaceBrain accessible. I wish Ioculd improve the picture, but I don’t have a good camera :frowning: Anyway, thanks for your suggestions, they have certainly improved my site!

1 Like
8

I think that adding portfolio website to your portfolio is not a good idea. Any other projects?

9

Thanks for the comment @Soufyanbreda. I have a few other things on my github like a calculator and a pomodoro timer, but I’m not of the opinion that they are portfolio worthy.

The reason I included the site itself was as demonstration of me successfully deploying to a Digitalocean VPS and setting the server up with Ubuntu, Node and Nginx, which I thought might be of value. I’m concerned removing it will make the projects too sparse, but maybe including it is too problematic because it is the thing that sticks out.

10

Also, in my opinion, linking your portfolio in the project section is a little redundant. But that’s just my opinion.

1 Like