Making Your CV Stand Out in the Tech World

Hey everyone,

So I was reading this article and thought it was perfect for those looking for a job in the tech world:

http://www.theguardian.com/careers/technology-cv-covering-letter-job-search

Having worked in the consumer tech, consultancy IT and programming world before, it's gotten crazy competitive, so creating an online presence is a key way to stand out from the crowd, especially for larger companies who get tons of applications.

What do you think though? What are your views on the whole 'online CV' thing?

Yeah, I agree. With Facebook one just has to be careful an employer doesn't stumble on your personal page (saturday night antics shouldn't be seen by them...), but I guess you could integrate it into a blog or website to guide people to the right profile.

Blogging is a good idea but you have to ensure it is focused on the business areas you are applying to. I have seen people quote their blog on an application (actively giving you a link to it) only to find some fairly narrow minded/bigoted points of view in earlier posts which didn't exactly impress.

I think tech and more creative ways of promoting your personal brand are good for certain industries they are aligned to and possibly SMEs. But many of the approaches mentioned in the article would turn some industries off a candidate!

For software development a LinkedIn profile is pretty good (I got my latest job through it) and having your code published on GitHub can only help.

GitHub also offer a product called GitHub pages for free web hosting. I'm currently in the process of setting up a CV/portfolio/blog type website on it and it looks pretty snazzy.

Yeah, LinkedIn is fantastic! So simple to use, too. I heard they acquired a company called Lynda, who specialise in online learning, so that sounds interesting. And I didn't know that! If you don't mind, can I have a look at it please?

Things that are utter turn offs are people who list buzzwords, poor spelling and grammar or an appallingly written covering letter.

It's not quite live yet (I'm running the same setup on a VPS) but it's based on this template: http://deanattali.com/beautiful-jekyll/



Buzz words are a turn on to recruiters, though...

That looks pretty good! I haven't heard of using Github for this before, so you've taught me something new. If you ever need help with it, or want to save money on your VPS, let me know and I'll sort it out