This content originally appeared on Level Up Coding - Medium and was authored by Sunny Singh
6 Tips to Craft a Powerful and Compelling Entry-Level Web Developer Resume
An important part of getting your first entry-level web developer job is your resume. But what exactly is a resume?
Your resume is essentially a track record of the value that you have provided others in the past. This can be anything from past jobs to volunteering experience or even freelancing. Even if you don’t have “professional experience” in the industry, such as past developer jobs or internships, you can still show how you’ve provided value.
Your resume gets the employer interested in how you can help solve the problems that the employer is having. The aim of this post is to help you craft a resume that shows off your track record in the best way.
The following are 6 tips that I wish someone told me as I was getting my first web developer job. Here’s a quick summary of each one:
- Creating a Custom Objective Statement: Take advantage of creating a short custom-tailored objective statement for each position you apply for.
- Non-Generically Include Your Education: Don’t just list your major and where you went. Take advantage of past school projects by carefully reading the job description and tying it back into your projects.
- Tap into Your Past Experience: Instead of sending the same bullet points for your past jobs and internships, customize each resume with keywords that are in the job description.
- Mention Relevant Skills and Certifications: You might be applying for a web developer job, however, you most likely have many other skills that can be useful on the job.
- Link to Your Portfolio Site: You want to make sure that you include a link to your portfolio website. If an employer has made it far enough to check out your portfolio site, they’re interested, however, you can use the portfolio website to really showcase yourself.
- Share Your GitHub: Even though you might feel that your code is not the best in the world, it pays off to organize and clean up Github so that others can understand what your code is about. Once you’ve cleaned things up, include a link to your GitHub in your resume.
The rest of this post will essentially just go into detail about each one of these tips, however, something to keep in mind is that you must be willing to take a few rejections. Just know that you need just one “yes” and you’re on your way to landing your first web developer job.
1. Creating a Custom Objective Statement
Having an objective section can help to customize your resume for each job that you apply for. Creating a custom-tailored message for each job that you apply for can help you stand out quickly. The objective section is also where you can mention important keywords that can help you get past ATS systems.
If you’re not sure what an ATS system is, click here to learn about it.
In order to make sure what you write is effective, read the job description and try to understand what they are looking for and why. From there, you can go to the company’s website and further understand why. Understanding why the employer is looking for someone to fill that position can help you position yourself better.
For example, say that you are looking to apply to two front-end web developer jobs that are both asking for someone who knows React, Javascript and CSS.
The first employer mentions in the job description that they are looking for someone who can quickly create React components. With some further research, you notice that the company is a startup. They’re most likely looking for someone who can quickly build React components because they want to create quick prototypes.
Given this information, we can start to come up with something that includes important keywords for ATS systems and is also human-readable. One little tip is to bolden or highlight those important keywords. It won’t make a difference to an ATS system that those words are bold, however, when a human glances at your resume, the bold words will quickly draw their attention. So, my objective section could read as the following:
“Utilize my experience in React, Javascript and CSS to help Company ABC quickly build prototypes of features using the best practices for React.”
Doing research on a company these days is relatively easy as well. Most of the time a simple Google search of the company name will get you enough information. If you’re trying to find information about a startup, you can use Crunchbase.com to get additional data such as revenue, investors, how much money they’ve raised, etc.
2. Non-Generically Include Your Education
If you’re a student, you generally will not have much job experience to talk about. Employers know this, however, they still want to see how you can help solve their problems.
A big mistake, however, that many students make is to come up with an extremely generic education section. It’s fine to list out where you went to school, what your major was and what your GPA was. What’s not fine is just dumping course names onto your resume or what clubs you were a part of.
For example, if an employer is looking for someone who is well-versed with React and you’ve done a school project that was to build a website in React, talk about that in your education section.
Even for the soft skills that an employer may be looking for, you can most likely find something you did in school that shows that soft skill. For example, if an employer is looking for a good communicator and you helped organize a student club, you should mention that. Talk about how you had to communicate with multiple students and run a club.
You want to avoid being generic with your education section by spending a little bit of time researching.
3. Tap Into Your Past Experience
Jobs or internships that you’ve worked at in the past are a great way to show that you have a track record of helping businesses solve problems.
Again, you want to make sure you research the job description and the company to custom tailor the descriptions for your past jobs or internships for each resume.
But what if your past job or internship experience has nothing to do with the job you’re applying for? For example, you are attempting to switch careers from a non-technical background.
Even if your past experience is unrelated to the job that you are applying for, you can carefully word the description of your job experience to best fit what the employer is looking for.
For example, say that you’ve been a teacher in the past and are looking to get a web developer job. By reading the job description, you notice that they are looking for someone who can not only code but also present updates to team members. In the description of your past teaching experience, you can include that you would present the progress of your students to other teachers.
In general, when talking about your past experience, you want to keep the following rules in mind. They can help to better display your expertise.
Be Specific
The more specific you are about how provided value to an employer in the past, the better. Try to use numbers whenever possible.
For example, if you have helped clients improve how quickly a website loads in your freelancing projects, you want to try to include specific numbers. How much quicker? Just 10% quicker or 50% quicker? You want to be specific. It helps you better sell yourself.
Talk About Solutions
What you did day-to-day at your previous job doesn’t really matter too much to the employer. They want to know what solutions you were able to provide to previous employers. Try your best to avoid talking about anything that doesn’t show how you helped solve a problem for the business.
For example, at an internship, you may have used React, however, instead of just mentioning that you used React, talk about what you did with React that helped the employer. Did you come up with a set of components that got used to building a larger feature or product?
By tying your work into how you’ve helped employers in the past, it shows that you are capable of taking actions that help the business. You may just be applying to be a web developer, however, you are part of a business and you need to understand how your work brings value to the business.
Mention Keywords
This area is another place where you can add important keywords to your resume. If you’ve worked with a specific technology in the past, make sure to include that in some way and make sure to bolden the keyword.
For example, if you’re applying for a job that wants a WordPress and PHP developer. If you’ve worked with WordPress in freelance projects, you want to make sure you include that keyword in your bullet points for the job. Make sure to also bolden the keyword so when a human reads it, the bold text can draw out the eye.
4. Mention Relevant Skills and Certifications
You most likely have many other extra skills that can be helpful at the job. You want to talk about these extra skills in this section. Certifications can help you provide some proof to the employer that you do in fact possess the skill.
You generally want to keep this section as short as possible. Without certification, there’s no real way for the employer to verify that you possess that skill. The only other way to show that you possess that skill is to include an example of your work on your portfolio site.
For example, if you are familiar with React Native and have built mobile apps in the past, you can include React Native as a skill that you possess in this section. Then on your portfolio site, you want to include a link to your mobile app and the code for it.
If you include any important keywords that the employer is looking for, make sure to bolden the text as well. This will further help with getting past ATS systems.
5. Link to Your Portfolio Site
Make sure to include a link to a portfolio website. Even better, you can include a QR code that links to your portfolio website. Just make sure there is an easy way for the employer to reach your website.
For example, if you have sent your resume as a PDF, make sure that the link is actually clickable so they don’t have to copy and paste it into a browser. If you’ve sent a paper resume, you can include a QR code that can be quickly scanned by the employer.
Your portfolio website is where you can really sell your employer on why they should choose you. If an employer has taken the time to look at your portfolio website, they most likely are interested in you.
What’s unique about the portfolio website is that you can be as creative as you want with it, unlike the resume which has to be keyword optimized. You can design it any whatever way you feel would best show off your work and skills.
You can include links to websites or apps that you have built. If you have any clients from freelancing that are willing to give a testimonial, you can include their video as social proof.
There are many design choices that you can make when building your portfolio website, however, that’s not the goal of this post. Just know that there are many psychological biases that you can tap into to help guide how you design your portfolio site. I will write about this in the future and edit this post with a link to it once done.
6. Share Your GitHub
Including a link to your Github can help give an employer a chance to audit your code and work before even contacting you.
This does require that you optimize your Github as well though. If you have a bunch of random repositories that don’t really describe what the code is about, the employer is going to have a hard time finding what they are looking for.
You want to make sure you mention important keywords in the descriptions for your repositories as well. This will help to further sell that you can do the job. For example, you can mention that your codebase for a React project connected to a Firebase database.
Furthermore, if you’ve contributed to open source, you can show that off on your Github profile as well.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, it’s all about showing how you can solve the employer’s problems. It’s about selling your skills. After all, you are exchanging your time and specialized knowledge for money, so you need to sell your skills.
The better you can sell yourself, the more likely you will get an interview and get one step closer to your first web developer job. The points in this article help to guide you to create a compelling resume.
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6 Important Elements to Craft a Powerful and Compelling Entry-Level Web Developer Resume was originally published in Level Up Coding on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
This content originally appeared on Level Up Coding - Medium and was authored by Sunny Singh
Sunny Singh | Sciencx (2021-03-10T13:39:46+00:00) 6 Important Elements to Craft a Powerful and Compelling Entry-Level Web Developer Resume. Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2021/03/10/6-important-elements-to-craft-a-powerful-and-compelling-entry-level-web-developer-resume/
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