Hiring Engineers? You probably see a lot of Code/App/Bootcamp Academy resumes. This year alone Artsy has received over 160 resumes from graduates of various code schools. It’s a lot fewer than, say, resumes of Art Historians, so I read every single one of them. We’re aren’t even hiring juniors at the moment, but these things change fast, so I do occasionally invite a particularly interesting junior candidate for a chat, setting expectations accordingly.
Generally, it’s awesome to see more people switching careers to write code. But there’s definitely some fatigue on this side from resumes that look very much alike. For me, the problem is that the list of Projects includes too many toy ones.
Your minesweeper game isn’t going to get you hired, but you have nothing else to put on your resume, so what do you do? Here’s my advice.
Don’t put any small projects on your resume. Instead, create a personal website, ideally a Jekyll blog like this one and list your projects there if someone wants to see. Contribute to your personal website regularly. Reference your personal website from your resume. Leave everything else “as is”.
Your little pet or student coding project is irrelevant and is wasting my minuscule resume-reading attention span, and I don’t want to look at the source code for another Minesweeper on Github (trust me, it’s awful). However, your past work experience is very relevant and being a career changer is a huge asset that you’re totally underestimating. That is what makes you different from other junior candidates. For example, Artsy always looks for people with an art background. A financial firm loves Engineers with a finance background. A hospital wants Engineers who understand the medical domain. Everyone knows what a bootcamp coder can and cannot do as a baseline and will always pick a candidate for this other stuff. Bring your past work experience and non-Engineering education front and center, and just list your bootcamp or academy alongside.
For a more detailed look from here, check out my Other Side of Your Interview Video.