My company and I are currently trying to hire 3 junior developers.
The candidates that we've received from the local colleges are
less than impressive.
You are on the right track.
things that will help:
- creating your own portfolio site
- publishing code you have written on the site
- keeping the published work focused on the job you want
Don't bother putting your portfolio in your resume.
Do put the url to your website/portfolio on your resume. As a student with little experience, your resume shouldn't be more than a page and a half. Anything more is just fluff. I don't have time to read fluff.
So, to explain the bullet points. Fresh out of school, the assumption is you don't know anything. Having a personal site demonstrates that you at least have some motivation and know HTML. Build the site by hand, make sure
all of your pages pass validation. I don't expect good design for a programmer, on the same token, don't use color that make my eyes bleed.
Publishing code
you have written. Same assumptions as before. Here I hope to find out that you know how to code. Ask yourself how many of your fellow graduates can't code by themselves. Thats why I'll be hard on you. Don't publish group code, tool generated code, or anything your hands did not type. Be able to explain your code, and
why you did what you did. Be prepared for questions about your code.
Focus. Make sure the code is focused toward what you want to do. If you want a J2EE job, leave out the Visual Basic, Access, PHP, etc. Don't give me the kitchen sink. The first assumption someone has when they see the kitchen sink in a resume is
NOT "swiss army knife". The first thought is that you don't know anything and simply listed everything you've touched. Especially for a student. I know Perl and VB, they are not on my resume.
Quote:
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Are employers interested in seeing pages on what I can do, or are they just interested in seeing my work?
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I am interested in both. If I see your resume, and am interested enough to go to your site, I hope to see both what you can do and to see some of your work.
If you interview with me, bring some code you have written, and be prepared to write some code.
As to the structure of your resume. Go back to focus.
Think about what the job is you want to do. Leave off things that will not help you do that.
Start with your skills, a list f the things you know and how much experience you have with them. You better be able to answer questions about everything you have listed. Follow that with experience, education should be last.
In the experience section, say what
you have done. A big red light in a resume is the word
we. "we worked on...", "we developed...", "my team did ...". That makes the employer question what your role was.
Hope that Helps.
Sorry for being harsh but, its the reality.
BTW, if you're a citizen and in NE Florida, send me a PM
