Education & Volunteering

[00:00:00]
>> Jerome Hardaway: So I break it down with my jobs and making sure I have all that metric based stuff, now I have my education. I skip this because my education doesn't matter. I just leave it out immediately, when it comes to college cuz I have a criminal justice degree from light through this Community College Air Force and FSU.

[00:00:22]
No, only time I use that thing is when I'm trying to figure out who gave the dogs too many treats at home. Literally, which child is overfeeding the dogs, it's the only time I have to, actually use my degree. So that is where that it ends right there.

[00:00:43]
Four boys figuring out like detective work on who's, over treating the dogs. What I do add though, I do add all of my certifications because particularly in this market, if you're a junior entry level or getting back into the market tenure. The certifications help, they give a lot less time than going back to school full time or as low as a boot camp.

[00:01:09]
They're more centered on the technology directly and they give you more credibility and more chances there's more foot in the door. Four years ago you asked me about certifications or certifications cuz he did experience, right, being able to talk about it. But now in his current market, you do need certifications.

[00:01:30]
Now people asked me what type of certs, the way I look at certifications right now is, you need to go directly to the company of whatever thing you're trying to start. If you're gonna try to get certified, I want something cloud, and you don't know which cloud you're gonna do, you do CompTIA.

[00:01:49]
I hate to say it, I don't feel like CompTIA is getting you as far as other certifications are. But if you're gonna have to pick one, go AWS, go Azure, go directly to Microsoft or directly to AWS, get those certifications from them so that way you have that legitimacy, right?

[00:02:09]
Awards and recognition, you have awards and recognition at work, do it please. If you have a word recognition in your community that's affiliated with your job, do it as well, even if it's just or if they're big awards in your city, also add them. My first couple awards had nothing to do with my job, but they were so big that if I didn't add them on my resume, it'd be kinda weird.

[00:02:38]
Because your people, they Google you when they, research you and the biggest problem I would have, I was omit things and then, drums 40 under 40. It's, why did you not put that on your resume? It's, didn't matter [LAUGH]. But now I know better and I know, let me put that on my resume so it doesn't pop up, or something like that.

[00:03:04]
I make sure, but I'm also much better in controlling the things that are on my in my SEO on the Internet now. So all my stuff is tech related, so I put that directly in my awards and recognition projects. Now here is what we get into a problem when it comes to the most mid and senior, right?

[00:03:24]
Juniors, we already know their problem, right? They don't have enough meaty projects, but mid and senior, they have projects that they can't talk about, right? We've all been in a situation where the bulk of our work can't be discussed, right? Unless you're in e-commerce or you're in media, right?

[00:03:49]
Especially, or if you're in government, you can't really talk about a lot of the projects that you're on a lot of the things you built. So what I recommend is sanitizing those projects, all right? And then turn around and talk about exactly what you build. We did a project at work with Kroger that it was sanitized on my resume until Kroger did a whole article on it.

[00:04:16]
Then I was, now that Kroger has said something about it, I'm gonna say something about it and add it to my resume, right? It's saying wait, as long as the till the companies say something about what we're doing, I don't say anything about, I sanitize it, but I keep that work that I've done on my resume, right?

[00:04:34]
And I talked about I talk about how the value that I brought within the project, you have to talk about the project and the value and the data, right? This is a data-driven, world. Even if I have e-commerce platform, I have a million transactions a month because we are dealing with a robot, with your resume the first time, I am going to have a list of my skills, plain and simple, right?

[00:05:04]
For those keywords, because I can't put everything, especially if I have technologies that I'm still proficient in the past 10 years. I might not put them in here, because I'm assuming that you know this, that I'm doing this cuz it's a part of tech, we can't assume, right?

[00:05:24]
I can't sit here and assume that because for all technologists in here, we know version control is a thing, right? The robot it's not gonna assume that I know version control, that I know GitHub or I'm using GitLab or what is it, a subversion or something like that out there.

[00:05:48]
So it's not going to assume that, right? It's not gonna assume what text editor that I use, I'm gonna put I, use VS code is my workflow, use GitHub, I'm gonna talk about the tools I use a lot have Docker experience. I do a lot of infrastructure as code and I make sure I say, I don't use acronyms.

[00:06:09]
I try my best to still do everything you can to stay away from acronyms on your resume, and you have IAC that means nothing to the computer. Infrastructure is code though, that means something, that's a keyword term that means something to the machine, right? Then when it sees that and it starts looking for what tools that you've used, cuz it's gonna go to your skills or your Docker.

[00:06:31]
You got Kubernetes, you have Jenkins, you have all these, you have AWS Azure, you have these tools on here, they're also gonna be used with infrastructure as code. Now that's starting to make sense, right? Make sure you have your skills on here and you're not using any unless their comment.

[00:06:48]
If I'm gonna use Postgres SQL or SQL, however way you say it, I don't whatever, I'm not gonna argue with you on that. That's one that I'm gonna use it on. That's my first database I ever learned. And funny story DARPA actually funded the creation of that with Stanford, so it has military background.

[00:07:13]
So and I also put yourself skills, right? Leadership, communication, problem solving, team collaboration, I put leadership on mine all the time because I do a lot of leadership work in volunteering. So I was vets who code, so people see that and I wanna make sure they know that I know how to lead even at the lowest level, even at a social impact level, right?

[00:07:35]
I have that leadership ability. Your local tech meet ups, I think that's coming back now, after a couple of years due to COVID, people are starting to meet up more in public. I'm actually a big fan of going to your local tech meet ups, doing talks, that's one thing that helps your imposter syndrome starting locally.

[00:07:56]
Asking for feedback going in there and it helps you network as well, right? People help you work on your things while there. I think local, tech meet ups should have a section where they're just doing job prep because that's something that would make those local tech meet ups more impactful, right?

[00:08:17]
And of course, publications, even if it's your own blog, if it's something that was popular that you may wanna make them the listen, write or read. I have always put a publication or something I wrote on my portfolio, I mean on my resume, even if I wrote it and it was on medium and no one cared to the, now where I do write it.

[00:08:38]
I can write an external thing and someone might be, yeah, we're gonna put that out in the world and people care. Always show people that you're always trying to share knowledge. Always, that's why we have people always asking for your Stack Overflow or they used to, I don't know if they do that now.

[00:08:55]
But I know now, five, six years ago, he said always, hey at your Stack Overflow at your LinkedIn at your GitHub, right? But the reason they were asking for your Stack Overflow is to see how you communicate it and how you shared knowledge to other people, right? So blogging is a way of doing that blogging, vlogging, streaming like this world is so different now, I have had students get jobs off of vlogging.

[00:09:21]
Same blog, same people jobs I've seen vlogs I've seen tweets. There's no wrong way than doing this when you're building out a public, I've seen projects, I've seen products, I've seen list. This world is crazy, put anything that is getting traction and puts sets you apart from everybody.

[00:09:41]
This is where you start building your personality and your highlight reel on a second page, first page is all, we have this talk about sizzle and steak. You do it in reverse where the first page is all the steak where you're also your making a strong case database, analytical case, right there for ATS.

[00:10:01]
But then as you get further down, you're able to start sharing more personality and put more sizzle on it, right? So it would be, if you were to do something Suvi, right? You'll click it, Suvi, and then you would sizzle, you'll see it later, type deal. So I guess a resume should be more like a Suvi steak then.