Unsuccessful in getting a job

Hello all,

I have been trying for a job from the past 3 months. I don’t know what is wrong with my resume or what mistake I have been doing. I have no professional experience but have done Bachelors and Masters. Have been working on projects on my own to build my resume.
Please have a look at my resume and give me some suggestions.

Link to my Linked In profile

Thank you so much your time.

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Hi thank you for the suggestions. I am still working with my portfolio website. I will definitely add more content about me. I have done non-thesis in my masters. I will add my research project.

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Would it be correct to assume that you’re applying for Web development jobs in the USA?

First, I’d recommend tailoring your resume to fit a specific job instead of leaving it “catch-all”. Or to put it another way, delete the content from your resume that’s not directly applicable to the single job that you’re applying for, so you only have the content that matches the job description (and anything else that you might feel is most applicable).

Basically, make your resume easy to scan by a person, so try to limit what you put on it.

Like the other person said, I’d expect you to have completed something impressive (thesis, project, anything) considering you have an MS degree in computer science, so you should mention that.

And although you did attend college/grad school relatively recently, I think I’d recommend taking out your GPAs. Not to imply that there’s anything wrong with them (pretty good, actually), but explicitly providing your GPA could cost you against other applicants who have higher GPAs. And, if an employer does want to see your GPAs, they can request that later, it’s not something you need to provide upfront.

You might want to consider stating your degrees as “MS” and “BS” respectively, as the acronyms are widely used throughout the US. Spelling them out doesn’t make them as easy & fast to scan.

Similarly, you don’t need to waste space on your coursework. A lot of companies know what goes into a BS degree in computer science (DS&A, etc). Some companies will also know what goes into an MS. So you don’t need to have those lines.

The one thing I noticed about your Experience section is that it seems to mix personal projects with paid positions. Usually, the Experience section should consist only of paid, volunteer, or academic positions, so I’d recommend taking out any projects that are listed there, as they don’t belong there. Make a new section called Projects for anything you’ve done that wasn’t paid.

Now while that’s all of the points that I immediately saw on your resume, I’m most inclined to think that you’re not getting results because of how you’re branding yourself: Your resume tells me that you’re a recent grad school graduate with an MS in computer science, without much actual work experience, but you’re very familiar with a lot of different technologies and related tech stacks/tools.

So before I opened the links that are in your resume, I pictured you as a very technical candidate looking to get deeper into programming in some area.

However, both of the links that follow your “Portfolio” paint a very confusing picture. The first one doesn’t immediately indicate even a little bit that you’re a Web developer, and while that photo of you is very good (no doubt taken by a professional photographer), there’s nothing about it that shows you’re even into computers. Take a look at the kinds of photos that are common on LinkedIn profiles—you’ll notice that the vast majority of people are dressed conservatively, and for women in particular, they’re never “action” shots but always more formal and posed. That’s the kind of self-photo that you should be using on your site. Not the kind of photo that you might submit to a modeling agency, because to me that’s kind of what your photo right now says. You should instead present yourself as formal, poised, and professional.

Then, on that RubySpire.com site, it says there right at the top “Makeup & beauty | skin care blog”, which to most people would indicate that you’re looking to get a job in sales or marketing in the cosmetics industry. Not a job as a Web developer at a software company. It’s very confusing, and that’s probably where you’re losing employers. If you want to keep maintaining that blog, then I’d probably recommend deleting the link from your resume. It’s just too confusing, and is probably one of the biggest factors in what’s causing employers to not follow up with you. On the other hand, you could certainly keep this version of your resume if you want to work as a Web developer for a cosmetics company, in which case keeping the link would make a lot of sense… :wink:

And btw, your portfolio link should be at the top of the resume, not buried halfway down.

I also don’t mean to offend you in any way with this post, as I’m also just trying to give you honest feedback.

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Yes, I am looking for a Web developer jobs in the USA. Thank you so much for taking the time to help me out. I have understood how professional my resume should look. I will definitely make all the changes you have mentioned.

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Sure no problem. Btw, I thought you might find useful these links for Gayle McDowell, who’s a woman fairly well-known within the programming community and wrote the book “Cracking the Coding Interview”, and thought maybe you could borrow some inspiration from her LinkedIn and/or personal website, which are both quite professional-looking. (I was trying to think of well-known women in the computer industry and she was one of the first that came to mind, and her experience is impressive enough that if she wanted to work someplace new, companies would be lining up to call her for sure.)


https://www.linkedin.com/in/gaylemcd/

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I have come across Gayle McDowell, she is a very talented programmer and an entrepreneur. I will take points from her website. I appreciate your help.

I see you received a degree from A&M Kingsville. If you are still in Texas you should definitely try looking for jobs in Dallas, Houston, and to a lesser extent San Antonio. Austin has a high concentration of tech jobs, but it is saturated and becoming an unpleasant town to live in. I am in the Houston area. From my personal experience, your degree could potentially land a job at a big company even without listing projects since you are a recent graduate. Did you ask for assistance from your college’s recruiting office? Typically the recruiting offices have established relationships with big companies across the region, and can give graduates a leg up over the general population.

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I’m just speaking from the resume side of things, since I don’t have much experience coding.

Your resume has a lot of text on it, which I think detracts a little. I think once you consolidate your work experience versus classroom experience, that will help make it less dense looking.

I think you should rework the order of the information you listed as follows:

  1. Name, contact info and portfolio address
  2. Certifications (if that’s important as a coder or programmer, it’s probably important enough to come first)
    3 Experience or Skills, whichever seems better to put first. For skills, list stuff that applies to the type of job you’re seeking, but is not listed within your work experience section.
    For instance, if there’s something in your Education and Core Competencies section that you really excelled at, list those in brief under work skills.
  3. Experience or skills.
  4. Education.

For job listings, you want all jobs to be listed the same way throughout the page. If you start with job title, company name, dates employed, do that for each job in your experience list. The way it’s set up right now:
*on job 1, you have job title, company, place, dates employed.
*on job 2, you have a game title, website, and dates employed.
It reads better if the layout matches throughout the job listing, so their eyes don’t jump around the page trying to figure out where the other info is and why the way you laid it out changed.

  1. Education.
    I don’t know if someone said this or not, but I think the related courses in the education section should be removed and you should keep it to the basics.
    Like:
    Master of Science of Computer Science, Texas A & M University, December 2016.
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No, I did not get assistance from college recruiting office. Thank you for the suggestion. I will contact them right away.

I will edit my resume with the suggestions you have given. Thank you so much for your time.

You’re welcome; good luck on the job hunt!

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Thank you :slight_smile:

May be a Resume like mine could at least get you in the second review pile. I still need to work on the data but it looks cool I think.

What do you say. Reviews are welcomed.

EDIT: Link updated as previous one got expired. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

You seem to be really prepared in the field, especially for entry level positions. My advice: make your resume stand out a little bit more. Not with further experiences, votes, GPAs, projects or whatever, but with making it a little bit more unique to stand out from the rest of the crowd.

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Thank your feedback. Kindly give me suggestions about making it unique.

I think you have been getting some good feedback regarding re-branding yourself and focusing on finishing out your portfolio website. I checked out your portfolio website, and it does need work if you want to include it on your resume. I just also want to say that it’s hard to put yourself out there and get criticism so stay positive and keep your head up!

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You could try to use color theory and a color palette and stick with it for your resumé and portfolio; also, you could declutter the resumé and add a little bit more white space, this would probably give it a more professional and neat look. Considering your skillset, you have diversified skills that might be useful for one job more than another, so try to write a resumé based on a job search. You can still add further skills when you get the meeting :slight_smile:

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Nice resumé but why the photo on both pages?

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I used a template and it suggested me to use pic on both pages. What do you suggest should I remove the later?

Because unless you print it front and back on a page it’s really cluttering and not useful, but that’s my opinion friend, so don’t take it as a “lesson” XD

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