Hey everyone and welcome to Developer Tea. My name is Jonathan Cottrell and today I'm going to be talking to you about how to create a great resume. Now that sounds very broad so let me scope that in a little bit. This is going to be specifically for developers, people who are trying to get a job as a programmer somewhere and also those who presumably have enough work experience to put it on a resume. Hiring is very difficult. It's difficult for the people who are looking for jobs and it's difficult for the people who are trying to find employees. It's difficult for everyone and the reason for that is because you have a very short amount of time in order to decide if somebody is a fit or to decide if you are a fit for a given company. And that's difficult because you only have a short bit of time. We rely on our intuition and we rely on first impressions and we draw on our history with other people and with other employees in order to make decisions. And so it makes it very difficult. It's hard to present yourself in such a way that makes you seem hireable regardless of how hireable you might actually be. So let's get started. One of the building blocks of the hiring process, and this might not come as a surprise to you, is still the resume. The resume being a sheet of paper or perhaps a digital PDF that describes who you are and what you can do and why I should hire you and also what you're looking for. And the resume is still important because it's easily transferred between different people. It's a common form of communication and I'm looking for that as an employer, for example. I'm looking for you to know that a common part of the hiring process is the resume. So whether we like it or not, it's important to know how to create a good resume that speaks in the proper ways to a potential employer. So I'm going to give you four tips today. In my personal experience as an employer, as someone who is hiring people actively, I'm going to give you four tips as to what I'm looking for in a great job. Development resume, a developer's resume, you could call it that. So the first tip is put effort into your resume. This may seem obvious, but you'd be surprised how many people just go and grab the best template that they can find online, fill in the details and shoot that to their employer. Remember, your employer could be the most important step that you take in your career. Whoever your next employer is, that could be your most important step in your career. So if you care about it, then you should act like you care about it. And the way that people know that you care about something is that you simply put time into it. Put some effort into making your resume good. Take some time. Don't just pull down a template. You can use a template. There's nothing particularly wrong with that. But take the time to make it great. Make the links clickable, for example. Learn the software that you need to learn in order to make the links in your resume clickable. Make sure that you have the right software that you need to learn in order to make sure it's spell checked. Make sure there's not any errors. Make sure that your dates are correct and that the emails that you put for references, for example, are still valid emails. All of these little details add up to attention to detail, right? All these things add up to show me that you spent time and that you care about your resume. And you can even cater your resume to the particular employer that you are sending it to. It doesn't take forever. You can even cater your resume to the particular employer that you are sending it to. It doesn't take forever. You can even cater your resume to the particular employer that you are sending it to. It doesn't take forever. You resume. Now, this podcast episode is not going to give you a list of all the details or different sections that you're going to put in your resume because your resume is going to look wildly different from my resume. But there are some commonalities between them. For example, we both work with code and we probably both have an accessible place to see what we're doing. So, that project live. And so, if it is accessible and I can click on your link in your PDF, then I know you've taken the time to make it accessible to me. If you cater that PDF directly to me, I know that you've taken the time to say, I care about what you are seeing. I care about the way that I present myself in this resume to you as an employer. The next tip that I have for you today is simply show and share. So, if you're a person who's been doing this for a long time, tell. Show and tell. And what does this mean? Well, a good resume has a list of previous work or of relevant experience. You should have really high quality projects that you've worked on in the past, whether that is your own personal projects or perhaps for a client or maybe even at school. Whatever it is, those projects should be high quality and they should be in your resume for me to see. So, if you're a person who's been doing this for a long time, show and tell. Show and tell. Because the best way for me to determine how good of a worker you are and what kind of work you do is to look at work that you've done in the past. So, when you put a project on your resume, you should be showing me that project by at least giving me access to a live representation of whatever it was that you created. Especially if you're a web developer, this is very important that I should be able to access a URL that shows me the work that you've done. And also, if you can show me a web form, I should be able to access a web form that shows me the work that me the code, that's that much better. I can look at how you solve different problems and I could go through the code perhaps on GitHub. So that's the show side. The tell side is to explain to me what your role was in creating that project. Give me a little bit of background. For example, did you do all of the back encoding or did you do all of the front encoding? Did you have other people that you worked with? If so, who were they? How did you meet them? A very simple background to the project that you're showing me. Give me a little bit of information about it in your resume. If you miss one side or the other, for example, if you're only telling me about the project or you're only showing me the project, then I don't have enough context to really understand what you've done and how well you have done it. The third tip that I have for you today is that you make the rules. You make the rules. This is a very important tip. You make the rules. You make the rules. You make the rules. This is your resume. If you want it to look a particular way, if you want to, for example, design a logo, this is your resume. Go for it. It's absolutely up to you. But even more than that, if you don't want to include particular things about your past work history, you don't have to. I've received questions many times from you listeners about how to explain that you only have half a year of experience in creating a project. You don't have to. You don't have to. You don't have to. You don't have to. You don't have to. You don't have to. You don't have to. You don't have to. And the truth is, you don't have to explain that. You can just say, well, I have five years of experience, and here are the languages that I have worked with. And if the employer wants to ask further about your level of understanding of those languages, which is really the only thing that matters, then they can ask you further once they have brought you in for an interview. Now, this might sound disingenuous to you, but the reality is, you make the rules for your resume. If you don't think you are qualified for a given job, you shouldn't be going for that job. But if you do think you are qualified for a given job, if you think you will be able to function in that position, then it is up to you to communicate that you are hireable. It is up to you to communicate that you can do the job the best you can. It is up to you to communicate that you are hireable. It is up to you to communicate that you are hireable. It is up to you to communicate that you are hireable. It is up to you to communicate that you are hireable. It is up to you to communicate that you are hireable. It is up to you to communicate that you are hireable. It is up to you to communicate that you are hireable. It is up to you to communicate that you are hireable. It is up to you to communicate that you are hireable. At the end of the day, you may find yourself bringing your talent to the table when you are bringing your talent to the table when you are bringing your talent to the table when you are bringing your talent to the table when you are bringing your talent to the table when you are bringing your talent to the table when you are bringing your talent to the table when you are bringing your talent to the table when you are bringing your talent to the table when you are bringing your talent to the table when you are bringing your talent to the table when you are bringing your talent to the table when you are bringing your talent to the table when you are bringing your talent to the table when you are bringing your talent to the table when you are bringing your talent to the table when you are bringing your talent to the table when you are bringing your talent to the table when you are bringing your talent to the table when you are bringing your talent to the table when you are bringing your talent to the table when you are bringing your talent to the table when you are bringing your talent to the table when you are bringing your talent about this topic or any other topic for that matter, you can email them to me at developertea at gmail.com or you can reach me on Twitter at developertea. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Developer Tea. You can find the recording of this episode as well as all other past episodes at developertea.com. That is also where you can find show notes and links to subscribe to the show so that you don't miss any future episodes of Developer Tea. Thanks so much for listening and until next time, enjoy your tea.