Dec 13, 2006
We are in the process of employing another developer at gardyneHolt, and it's interesting to see how people present themselves via their CV.For anyone wanting a web development job, here's a little feedback from the other side of the fence...
What we don't want to see
We are employing a web developer. We don't care about the 3 years experience you have working at McDonalds, or if the shift supervisor says you are "honest and reliable".It's also of fairly small concern whether you like snowboarding in your spare time, or whether you are single, married, Hindu, Christian, gay or straight.
When you list the technical skills, be clear about this. If you did a 3 week ASP project at university, then you aren't an expert in ASP and it should be left off the CV.
What we *do* want to see
First things first - we want someone with the appropriate technical skills that can keep the customers happy. All your other peculiarities we can deal with later on.We love right clicking on your code and looking at the source code. We want to see how your sites work in Opera, what happens with JavaScript turned off, how well Google has indexed your site, and how happy your forum users are. We will spider your site for broken links, and try SQL injecting your forms, after we have checked for W3C validation errors, tested the loading time on your pages and analysed your black hat SEO strategies.
If you are going for a position as a web developer, we can tell much more about your abilities from 5 mins looking at your website than you could ever put into your CV.
What to do
I'm not a recruitment agent, just a developer looking for another developer to join the team.I would love to see a CV without all the traditional fluff, and simply a portfolio with good explanations of the projects. Use the CV to tell us stuff about your portfolio that we can't tell from looking at the source.
- How big is the database?
- How much traffic?
- What did the site cost to build?
- What increase in sales since you took over?
- How you measure success on the site?
- What was challenging, what was easy?
- And an explanation of something technical that we wouldn't have expected?
Of the 10 CVs I looked at today, only 3 had example sites attached. Are we seriously expected to hire a full time web developer that can't show us an example website they have developed?
8 Comments
That's my point though - a CV that contains the right information means you can quickly tell if someone has the right skillset for the job. It means you can interview the "good match" candidates, and save the rest from having to waste their time.
This post was intended to be helpful, rather than a whinge - though it may not have come across that way.
At the time of writing this, my desk was piled up with meaningless CVs with no real content, so this would explain any negativity.
patrick kanne - Sep 22, 2008
A bit late with the reply but here's my 2cts:
What you said here works both ways. In these past years whenever I need (or want) to look for other jobs I am stricken with the total lack of imagination, and outright lies, in those job offerings.
-EVERY single companty offered me (budget for) trainign. All training I've done in these past years have been on my own account and initiatif.
- all of those companies talk about how innivative and bleeding-edge they are, yet very few (err, one out of six) actually allowed a little R&D to actually BE bleeding edge.
- All of them talk about how brilliant and fun a team they have, yet NONE has allowed me to speak to one of their current or former employees. Why became only apparent after a month or so: brilliant was hardly the word to use and neither was fun.
- None of them is truthfull about how their (account/customer/client) management influenced the development-process and descicions, yet all of them let their development processes be heavilly influenced by these [censored] for brains types.
And the list goes on and on. I find it really hard nowadays to put in an effort. Both in looking through all those job opfferings that sound, taste and smell the same as in making a CV that stands out.
As for your remark about the website. You're probably the only recruiting person in the whole wide world that actually makes this effort. NONE of the recruiters I've ever came across was even aware that I had a website, nevermind it's listed prominently by my details.
Stuff most recruiters DO trip on:
Buzzwords (ajax, web2.0, flex etc, nevermind they are clueless about what these words exactly mean)
Client lists (I got more repsonse to the fact I had worked for Heineken, HP and Randstad then my DHTML projects for NS3)
I hope this brings some perspective to the debate...
ps: why aren't you guys located in Amsterdam? Would've LOVED to send my cv to someone who actually gives a sh*t ;)
patrick kanne - Sep 24, 2008
Agreed, which leads us to the bottom line: real world confirmation.
I can feed google any company name to see what the online world thinks of them, and how they relate to the global marketplace or how their employees link to my linkedin network. Just as a recruiter can feed my name to google and see what the world has to say about me (if anything).
At my current job they reeled me in with "I saw online that you were involved in [...] and like to [...]", without ever coming close to my site (which has been offline for far too long by now ;)). This was SUCH a refreshing moment compared to "so.." *leans back* "tell me a bit about you, what have you done lately?" that I all but immediately signed up. These were people that were interested in who they were hiring, not what I exaggerated in my cv or tried to brag about in my blog..
I agree with patrick that real world confirmation is good - it would be great if I could look up companies online profile before considering an application; but this is not always possible if the name is shielded by a recruitment agency.
Cerian York - Dec 17, 2009
Thank you for this article and the time you have taken out to write it. There are plenty of great books on writing CV's etc but to hear it from the 'horses mouth' is even better. This is one I will print for my job search folder.
Knowing how to deliver your skills to the people interested in them has got to be knowledge worth having. The role of 'web developer' is relatively new (compared to other professions) and yet there are a lot of amateur developers. Sorting through all those CVs is not a job I would envy you for.
Thanks again
Ceri
Dan - Jan 28, 2010
I agree that looking at a candidate's website can provide specific information about their competency level in respect of specific technical abilities. However, the "human factor" is also very important. Will the candidate integrate well with the current staff? Does the candidate possess enough self-motivation for improvement? It's important to get the right person, as you could hire a very technical person with the wrong personality and have to do the process all over again in a few months time when their tuna sandwiches and abusive comments have irritated your staff enough to cause something of an office mutiny. Only speaking from experience...
Dave Klaris - Nov 22, 2007
Relax. Anybody who takes CVs this seriously isn't worth working for. If you can't read between the lines of CVs, then you aren't going to get good people. Great developers don't necessarily write great CVs. You must have heard of 'interviews'. You can be a time waster too, you know...