Software Dev CV advice

Beren

Beren

Beren

Soldato
Joined
30 Jul 2004
Posts
2,837
Location
Auckland
Hey. I would love some advice from anyone who has hired a software rev about what they looked for in the CV's they saw.

I have been in recruitment for 5+ years but never recruited in the software space. I have a family friend coming over in the morning who is a first rate developer, but is highly dyslexic and not terribly socially confident... and just like the IT techs on here it is my job to help him put his CV together.

So any advice on what you wanted to see would be a great help.
 
The skills section should be grouped by Primary and Secondary skills for example mine is something like;

Core Skills

.Net, C#, TDD, DDD, Agile, N-tier architecture, RESTful API etc. etc.

Secondary Skills

Javascript, css, SQL, misc. JS libraries etc. etc.

And then a clear description of what you actually did in each previous role as well as what tech you used in each job.
 
Cheers for that, in terms of what you did in each role what kind of information is most important?

Is there an easy way to define the depth and complexity of a project? Does it matter how much client interaction there is and at what level it was at?
 
Highlight the skill set near the top (catch their eye at first glance - survive the first cull) with precedence given to skills relevant to each particular application, then give detailed examples of work which demonstrates how those skills were developed and used.
 
For a developer 1 page CV is usually plenty.
Summary, technical skills, experience, education.
Dont bother with the "loves socialising and playing with animals" garbage, nobody cares.
 
Advice as above, plus:

If he has got any contributions to open source projects or publicly visible personal projects on things like github, those need to go in.

Key thing anyone looking at when hiring a developer is: can they do the job. Being able to look at their code is very useful - and open source contributions seem to be the new hotness these days.
 
If it's a CV for general distribution to recruiters and the like, I always go with

Page one: Brief introductory paragraph, then core skills and experience, then list previous roles with bullet points of responsibilities. Finish off page one with degree and professional certs.

Page two: Big matrix of technical skills, every language/tech/application I've ever touched, with a % competency rating. Most of the page this one, it's there so you're getting maximum keyword hits on recruiter searches. Chuck a bit of random personal stuff at the bottom, sports, hobbies, personal website etc.
 
Position title - short description of duties and key skills/technologies used - few points on what you achieved in the position. Dont need an essay, just the key areas so people can quickly assess your CV as a "yay" or "nay".

Get some other people(ideally professionals) to proof read it and offer advice too.
 
We hired a developer a few weeks ago who has a masters in music and was working as a music teacher. Programming was something he'd picked up during one module at Uni and developed a passion for - he had no formal qualifications or commercial experience. The reason we hired him was because he was clearly very passionate about it and showed a great ability to learn by himself - his skill level was better than most graduates.

Myself and the other guy interviewing him both have CS degrees but we stressed we weren't fussed as long as you know what you're doing. Hopefully other people hire on this basis too :).
 
I use the first half page to outline what I can do in very plain words, no hyping up required just list out the important stuff like languages, frameworks, applications/programs, operating systems. For dev coder the buzzwords I would expect are MVC and object-oriented.
 
I think many people list technical skills many of which they've barely heard of. Most of the non technical people I know have a list of technical skills exceeding a developer with 30yrs experience. I think many just ignore these lists, grids of skills. As its impossible to reliably compare them. So you look at the projects/experience done, in particular those most recent.

Since contracting I don't do these skill lists. I just list my recent projects/experience with the current skills highlighted within that. But not in huge detail. Just the essentials. When contracting, I don't think anyone's interested in stuff you're not current with, so anything older than about 2 yrs isn't really relevant. (for contracting) So I squeeze the essentials down to one page. Though the older stuff spills onto a second page. I doubt anyone reads down that far.

See what you can read on a CV in 5~10 secs. That's the first filter it has to pass. If you get to interview you can bring a more detailed CV.
 
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