Transcript from the "Resume Q&A" Lesson
[00:00:00]
>> First question is if you have a period of unemployment, how do you handle that?
>> If you have a period of unemployment, you could explain it away with volunteering or you can, it really depends on a reason but our industry is pretty forgiving. Particularly if it doesn't have anything to do with the, if you're education base as having to do with what we're doing anyway.
[00:00:27] They're usually forgiving of that. I've had people who they were in the military and can stay at home moms and now they're back out there doing software engineering. So I would maybe if it was something positive place what you're doing but if it was something, not just omit it, and if they ask you a question about it then explain it.
[00:00:51] But all I say our industry is pretty forgiving, forgiving with that type of stuff. So you had to worry about that too much.
>> How do you handle a bad relationship with an employer or say a client?
>> You focus on making sure that you extract the good things from that great example.
[00:01:14] Because the organization I was working at had a, was also a veteran services. They had said no to helping to how bits of code was formed, which was to help a person, family in need. For you guys that don't know, organization was actually birthed out of a veteran losing his life and family but not being able to bury him.
[00:01:38] They didn't have the funds to do that. So I used technology, built a website and I was able to raise $10,000 in 27 hours. So, even though they say no, they didn't like the fact that I did it on my own, or at least my executive director didn't like the fact I did it on my own.
[00:01:57] And I helped his family on life without them getting any credit for it, which was super weird. I was you said no, I get credit for it. So he was very upset about that and we had a very bad relationship. We still have a very bad relationship, whenever we see each other, we're scout and hate on each other the whole time.
[00:02:17] So what has helped me is continuing the good working relationships with my main manager at the time. She was actually a person who I recently had to call to give me a recommendation as little as I think four months ago. So that's how you do that you continue building, you keep the good relationships that you have had with that.
[00:02:42] And you keep those intact, right versus focusing on that negative person, especially if it's something that was outside of your control with a client or something. Cuz there's good and bad like things go wrong. Project, I mean, no one understands it better than technical people. Every project goes, it goes over the time limit and it cost twice as much.
[00:03:04] We know everything's bad, everything's falling red it, everything's basically a really bad Reddit stream, right? So what you do is you focus on the good, and you keep pushing out the good as long as the good outweighs the bad, no one cares.
>> Is there a limit of how much experience you should list?
[00:03:27]
>> I would try to keep everything on one page. So if it's not, especially if all the stuff is not relevant to what you're doing. Obviously in the same industry, I would focus on just whatever's in the industry and try to keep it as focused on your soft skills as possible, right?
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>> How do you feel about making a non-traditional web resume instead of a Word doc making a website or in some cases, people have seen a side scrolling video game, that kind of thing.
>> If you're talking about your portfolio, that's one thing, but if you're talking about just a resume that you're gonna end up handing off to people, they're gonna end up printing off and things of that nature.
[00:04:08] I'm against it mainly because the rule the name of the game is keep it simple, silly. So you got to keep this resume to the light, you have three users, right? So you're making a video game user how they're gonna be able to upload that to their HR tech.
[00:04:22] They're not gonna be able to do that. If you have some crazy design PDF thing how are they gonna be able to upload that. I'm not gonna be able to do it. So you have to do that and ideally it was your resume, keep it to the lowest common denominator, right.
[00:04:38] HR person isn't gonna be taken a call, the robot is just gonna be looking for words like literally what they're gonna do, the tech is gonna convert your resume either. If this PDF or Word is gonna convert it to a JPEG and use machine learning to pull the words right off the JPEG.
[00:04:53] So don't waste time trying to fancy things up. The rules I focus on it resumes are super simple. Don't use a Serif font because we're in tech, San Serif font look traditional download moderate, so keep it like that and try to keep it as clean and concise as possible.
[00:05:16] So I'll try to keep my resumes up to one no longer than one or two pages. Even now I try to make it two pages I don't know why I just throw stuff away because it doesn't help keeping it long, isn't gonna help how long resume isn't helped me get a better job.
[00:05:35] A strong resume is what helps you get a better job. So you got to think of strength versus length, right?