Resume

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>> Jerome Hardaway: The next thing we're gonna talk about right here is Modern Resume Optimization for Applicant Tracking Systems, or ATS. You gonna see that acronym a lot. I view ATSs as the big bad for juniors and seniors alike. Cuz even if you have a robust network and someone can seeing your referral, you still have to have a great resume.

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You just can't sit there and send a piece of paper with your name that says, my friend said I work well here, right? You can't do that. So you have to have a modern robust resume. No more one to three pages, even if you're a senior, stop at three pages, right?

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Cuz there's no, if you've been in tech past ten years, there is nothing from year one that's probably applicable to the type of careers that you're looking at in year ten, right? So that's what you have to think about as well, so no more than three pages, make sure your note is diverse, it showcases, remember, this is your highlight reel.

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So what resumes are, they are your highlight reel that starts with data it ends with stories, right? So let's go further into it. You have to showcase your extensive experience. You have strong technical skills, impressive achievements, leadership and collaboration. Your educational background, if you have it. Now, there's a big debate that if you're in a coed school, do you put down your education or do you put that in and work?

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I have a philosophy of you should put it in educational background, but you can put anything that you do that's open source or actually, like, contract into work. Which is why I am always pushing people to do open source projects, right? The open source community is out there to help you level up your game faster.

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Some people are like, put it in work cuz it's one of those processes, especially go to for-profit Code School, you're gonna put in work when you paid them. It's kind of a weird flex but, whatever, so, that's my picking on that. Continuous learning and certifications, especially if you are mid to senior, people wanna see that you are still out there learning, right?

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They wanna know that you're still out there, you're not just sitting on your laurels, not leveling up your game, not stepping up your game, right? So you have to make sure that if even if you don't have a degree, you're still showcasing, I'm still out there learning new things, right?

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Recognition and awards. Now this, not everybody has these, you can omit this if you don't have it. Diverse projects, definitely showcase diverse projects, especially projects that are in production. Remember, projects, I don't even call them projects, we call them products, products that people are using outranks projects that are in production, outranks projects that are not in production.

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So, building a thing that people use no matter how small is gonna get you further than building a thing that is live that no one looks at. And that's gonna get you even further in building a thing that is theory, that is not live, right? So, products projects, and then just coat that doesn't live anywhere on the web, right, just repose, that's how you should be ranking everything you built.

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And you can start small, right? Some of the most popular projects, or products that have happened in Vets Who Code are list on repose that just help people do things or our web developer, our web dev guide for Windows. It was shared with Microsoft, and I don't have a Windows machine, so I didn't know anything about it.

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But everybody was like, hey, I wish this was shared to me when I was learning JavaScript on Windows, and it ended up getting over hundred stars, right? And like, random troop did that they end up getting a job just because of that, right? So products that people can use, projects, and then projects that are like just code, or you have to rank it based upon the usefulness to users, because once people use it, you get metrics.

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And when you get metrics, you can add that to your resume, and it's like, this showcases you know how to track value, right? Cuz that's what our resume is about tracking and sharing our value. Volunteering and leadership, let's say you volunteer for Black Girls Code. Is there another organization, what's the Last Mile Foundation, which is a great foundation that Front End Masters actually supports that helps incarcerated people learn how to write software, or Vets Who Code, right?

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That showcases that you're doing that work and pouring back into community, particularly with your skill set as an extra points. People love looking at that type of stuff. And of course, publications, whether you're self-publish your own blog, or you get some cool crazy stories that you can share, publish went viral on.

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Was that not hacker rank? It's hacker news, yeah, there you go, that's the one with the bad UI that programmers use.