Comment by aga_ml | Hacker News Reader

Comment by aga_ml | Hacker News Reader

You seem like a cool person, and are working hard towards a transition - congrats on getting this far. I think with a bit of effort you can follow through. A few thoughts:

- Website makes you look like a front end developer, but you are applying to full stack.

Stepping back a bit, an employer is asking the question: is this person the best person for the job that I'm hiring for? As the job seeker, you need to think about what type of job you are going to be the ideal candidate for and really focus on communicating that.

- Bullet points on resume could be improved. For example, Content is easily added or removed using a JSON configuration file Its a given that you would do that. It is so basic that it raised a flag in my mind. Its like saying, I used numpy to do math computations in python. It would be better to not include that statement.

Full stack web developer who will help your company succeed by completing projects on time and under budget. This sentence comes off as pretty generic, and it is not clear that you have experience with that. It would be better to have an experience where you delivered a project under time constraints.

Anyways, sorry that I'm nitpicking a bit. It is hard to know exactly what is holding you back without knowing more about what jobs you are applying to, what is happening in the interviews, and so on.

I'd also think about if there is any company you can work at where having some background in industrial automation would be a plus.

I suppose I'm also curious, are you applying to jobs that do algorithms and data structures interviews?

If so, you really need to nail those. A lot of people complain about those interviews, but they do serve a real purpose. There is a significant gap between building a small website and building a system that scales. If you are going after high impact software engineering jobs in the bay area, then you'll need to demonstrate that skill set. I don't see anything about algorithms and data structures in your resume, so I'd assume that you don't have that knowledge.

Granted this may be an unpopular opinion, but not having those skills significantly limits your upward potential.

While i've yet to be put through one of those interviews, I would imagine that I'm applying to some of these places. I've been applying to mostly smaller companies, so it's hard to know what kind of interviews they do in a lot of cases. This being said, I do brush up on time complexity/data structures/algorithms/bitshifting etc. before I go to an interview.

I've been working on my portfolio/resume for a long time, so all there really is left to do is nitpick, so I don't mind at all.

I agree that maybe I can do more with the bullet points. I can think of some higher level things that "JSON configuration file"

I also agree with the "Professional Summary". I hate it. I workshopped it with some people and this is what we came up with. It sounds so stupid and now I'm thinking the move is to leave it off completely.

Could I ask what you mean't about my portfolio looking like I'm a front end developer? I'm pretty sure the majority of my projects are either Full Stack, electron.js apps, or have embedded components.

I just mean that the design of the website is very nice (fancy?) so at a glance, that is the main thing that I noticed. Granted, I didn't end up reading things too carefully because I was thinking about the design. I think that the website good as long as you put your resume front and center and improve your resume.

Thanks, i think. My resume is what needs the most work.

Just to be a bit more specific, the most important thing is that you make a compelling argument that you are the best person to hire for a given job among the candidates applying.

I think you need to put in some work to (1) have some more clarity on what you want to do (2) doing more projects along that direction and (3) updating your resume accordingly

As an example, one of my friends was doing public health, and she wanted to get into tech. She learned a fair amount about user experience design, built some projects, and then applied to jobs where her background in public health was an asset. In particular, she got a job doing user experience for a healthcare startup in order to improve the experience for people who are typically underserved by healthcare. She had experience in that area because her public health work looked into how underserved populations used and accessed healthcare.

It felt daunting to her to get into tech, but she did it by making a compelling argument that she was had a combination of skills that would make her effective at her job. She did end up applying to many jobs, but only the ones where there was a good fit gave her an interview.

Now you have to figure out how to make that type of argument for yourself. Of course that template may not work for you, but that level of preciseness and clarity of thought is what you should be aiming for.

One other thing that just came to mind is that if you have experience in the automotive industry, that could be relevant experience depending on where you apply to work. I'm not sure what it is, but you don't need to sell your self short on that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com