I will be applying for jobs any time soon.
I was hesitant about applying for jobs because I was pretty much ghosted and rejected from 70 different companies I have applied to just 3 months ago.
I felt very discouraged but decided to remake everything and learn more on React and Redux.
I need feedback on if there is anything I may need to fix or improve
I really wanted to make the portfolio as simple as it can be but still looks clean and easy to navigate
Thanks!!
****** Update *******
After applying what others have recommended, I have updated my revised portfolio and resume !!
Any feedback is very much appreciated! thank you
I donât think itâs a good idea to mention youâre self-taught even if you are.
If you have prior work experience, even if itâs not related, it would be worth mentioning the soft skills you gained there that would transfer over to a dev job. Otherwise they might wonder what youâve been doing to earn a living all these years.
Thanks,
I was deciding whether if I should mention self taught or not, but you have cleared my doubts
You also mentioned about putting prior work experience. Even if the work experience I have is not related to the dev job, should I mention it? Like I worked as an interpreter (Korean as you probably guessed) for a little and I mostly worked as a server
Iâd recommend ditching the split-column layout, as it doesnât scan well by ATS (Applicant Tracking System), which a lot of companies use. Stick to a single-column layout.
I assume you removed your contact info just for FCC? Because itâs not super-obvious. You should add your location on your resume in city, state format.
Unless you have absolutely no work experience at all, you have to add any work experience that you have. Otherwise, the assumptions that will be made about your lack of any posted work experience will just cause you to be rejected forever. It honestly doesnât matter what work experience you have, just write it down.
Iâd suggest leaving out technical details on your projects. Only another developer will really care to read about that, and in most cases, a recruiter or company HR rep will be the one reading your resume, not a developer.
Also if youâre going to post projects, they really need to have links to both a GitHub repo and a deployment (on AWS, Heroku, Netlify, etc). If you donât have enough space to do both, then leave out GitHub links and just provide links to a deployment.
Iâd recommend re-writing your project descriptions a bit. Keep in mind that a recruiter or HR rep will be the one reading your resume most of the timeâso make the wording easy to understand for an average person, and leave out tech jargon unless itâs necessary. Put things into a âbusinessâ perspectiveâi.e., how would your project help address the needs of a business?
If any of your projects are actual finished, real-world projects that arenât just prototypes or âproof of conceptsâ, then make that obvious. The more credence you can add to a project, the better.
You mention âwith a designerâ or âfor a designerâ a few times. If you worked with another person professionally, mention their name, and reference their website. Leaving that out subtracts from the credence of your resume, so definitely add that in.
If youâre going to say that you have âexperience in collaborating with designers and developersâ, then you need to legitimately back that up. Mention names and websites, whether of people or businesses. Otherwise someone reading your resume could easily get the wrong impression that youâre falsely inflating your experience, which will cause your resume to get rejected.
Youâve made this look like list of personal projects youâve done whilst learning: itâs not really a resume, itâs doesnât really tell me anything about you. If any of those are projects are real, separate them off and say what your role was: software is just a tool to do something, how did your skills help achieve that something?
Echoing that you need work experience. Server probably not important, translator very important. If any of those projects are real, then you have work history and it should say freelancing, and then you can state those projects are just the best ones youâve done (ie you are just showing a selection of freelance work).
Also grammar/formatting mistakes: eg âa single page application collaborated with a designerâ means the single page application itself was self-aware and was working with a designer.
Also probably donât say you just learned HTML last year: how fast you learned FE web development is impressive, but there is no need for you to advertise that you only started learning last year. You may very well be good enough (the stuff youâve done looks lovely, itâs super smooth and very attractive and puts you ahead of a helluva lot of other people), but it will work against you if you advertise you are so inexperienced. You look like you know what your doing, donât undermine that
Thank you for pointing out the things I need to fix!
I think I missed out a lot of thingsâŚ
I donât understand how ATS filters out the resumes lol I tried searching how ATS works but they talk about how ATS looks for specific words. So I was wondering how split-column would effect ATS scan?? (Iâm very curiousâŚ)
I canât thank you enough
Taking your advice along with astv99 and LiChoi, I will be working on it =)
I know that experience as a server is not that important but I decided to mention it briefly
Thank you!
Definitely recommend avoiding the split-column. Iâve heard ATSs will only read the first column. That means that your entire projects column where all the keywords are is getting missed. Go for a top to bottom presentation.
As well, I spent time using websites like hunter.io, LinkedIn, and the companyâs website to e-mail SOMEONE in the company directly. I did this for 30-40 applications, writing a cover letter for each (I had a general template and would swap our names, certain paragraphs/examples/topic sentences) and got hired within 1 month.
You should add links to your Github, LinkedIn, and personal portfolio website and make sure they reflect your resume. Keywords areâŚkey. If you apply on Indeed, the resume may never even reach the hiring person if it doesnât pass the resume scan.
Thank you for the feedback! Thatâs why it was mentioned to avoid split-column!
If you donât mind, I donât quite understand when you said
You should add links to your Github, LinkedIn, and personal portfolio website and make sure they reflect your resume. Keywords areâŚkey. If you apply on Indeed, the resume may never even reach the hiring person if it doesnât pass the resume scan.
Did you mean I need to add links to Github, Linkedin, portfolio website on resume? ( they were just removed because I didnât want to share my number =P )
What did you mean by when I apply on Indeed, the resume may never even reach the HR?
As for not reaching HR, from what Iâve heard and read, if the resume doesnât match whatever parameters set by the resume parser, then the hiring manager wonât actually end up reviewing it.
So, for example, if I send a resume with all keywords theyâre looking for, and you send one without any of those keywords, theyâll (some human) review/see my resume but not yours.
Thatâs why I e-mailed someone directly my resume and cover letter, in addition to filling out and submitting their online application.
Got it. So I should take time to try to find someone in the company to send email directly so that I can boost the possibility of getting my resume reviewed.
Awesome. Thank you!
Yes, especially as no one is âself-taughtâ if they read books or did courses on or offline, as the authors and course tutors are your teachers/tutors.
If you read a book by a well-known coder, you could claim to have been taught by that person, as that person gave their knowledge to you in their book, and would probably have told you exactly the same thing face-to-face. Likewise, an online course does the same thing. Despite the teacher/tutor not being next to you, they did still teach you.
Create, or have someone create, a portfolio website for all of the work you include in the hard copy portfolio. Include the link on your resume for employers to view before your interview. Bring copies of your original work for the interviewer to keep after the interview.
