Should I mention non relevant work experience on my resume or should my projects suffice.
My portfolio link: https://alesalsa10.github.io/portfolio/
I spent years as a professional musician and music teacher. That gets one line on my resume. I want them to know I wasn’t living in my mom’s basement watching Family Guy reruns, but I also don’t need to waste their time with a lot of details.
When trying to decide, I think you consider:
- How relevant was it?
- How conspicuous would that time gap be?
For example, I spent 6 years at Intel as a technician and even did a little programming there - that warrants a few lines - it’s technical field with a smidgen of programming and represents a chunk of time that would look weird if it wasn’t accounted for.
Your portfolio represents your body work. Your resume represents your qualifications. They are two different things.
Thanks for the information. Could you check my current resume. I feel like I am qualified for junior level positions but I get no call backs
OK, this is the part where I get really picky…
The overall layout looks very 1993. I open a bottle of wine, light some candles, and spend a nice relaxing our googling “best resume layouts” and “resume designs for developer”.
Watch for little things like the missing space after the comma after “jQuery” in Frameworks. And after “React” on your first project. And after “React” in your Pomodoro project.I see that and I would think, “My God, this is the guy I’m going to trust with my companies future?” It’s like a first date - she knows you aren’t going to have a fresh haircut and a new, ironed shirt and take her to a fancy restaurant every night - but you’re showing her, “When I do my best, this is what I can accomplish.” Maybe the formatting and proofreading of the resume doesn’t matter in terms of how good of a coder you are, but it is your first impression. Go over things like this with a fine tooth comb. Have other people read it. Read it backwards (seriously) and upside-down (seriously, you’ll see things you missed).
In your experience section, anything that doesn’t relate to coding, should be one line. Your resume should be one page. Only people with a lot of experience do two pages. You could probably reduce your projects list to you best three and then direct them to a portfolio site.
Those hiring managers are looking for an excuse to skip yours and move on to the other 237 resumes they have to look at before lunch - don’t give them an excuse - you want only relevant information and the most relevant should pop.
At the risk of some self-promotion, I once put together a doc on my thoughts on getting that first job.
I will suggest you not put anything which is not relevant to the job you are applying for. However, if you want to put some non-relevant experience, you can find a way to make it relevant or put it at the end of the resume after mentioning about your education, technical skills, and work experience.
Thanks for the input. From what I’ve gathered, it seems my work experience should just be skipped as it is not relevant and I should just focus on the projects.
you may want to dedicate it like one line at the bottom, just to say “I wasn’t living in my parents basement, I was working in an other field”
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I would say something. I spent years working as a musician and teacher, music transcriber and arranger. It has one line on my resume - “Musician and Music Teacher”. There were a few other odd jobs in there, but nothing relevant so I just leave it off and let that one line stand in for it all.
That’s what I will do. Just write down my current job, but have my projects be the main focus of my resume.
I really appreciate your input. I will mention my current job, but have the focus of my resume be on my projects
That’s good to hear that you are skipping the irrelevant experience, and Yes, your priority should be developing projects.