Professional Storytelling II Resumes & Portfolios

Learning Goals

  • Review and refine your career vision and job search strategy
  • Utilize your job search strategy to customize your resume
  • Utilize your job search strategy to customize your alumni portfolio

Connecting your Career Vision and Professional brand to your Resume

As you start to think about your resume, your career vision will serve as a foundation. You can’t build an effective resume until you know what story you want it to tell. And we’ll start here by addressing a common misconception that resumes should be one-size-fits-all. Not only should you customize your resume for each job you apply to, but your resume should also be a direct reflection of your job search strategy.

Technical Resumes Lead with Projects

Since you are a software developer now, your software projects are an essential – arguably, the most essential – part of your new resume. You should include:

  • Turing projects
  • Side projects
  • Open Source projects
  • Etc.

You should include links to your repos and deployed apps. For group projects that exist on your partner’s GitHub, make sure you fork your own version and include that link instead.

Your descriptions for your projects should tell an employer what the project is and what is does in as few words as possible. The rest of the description should be about accomplishments from that project and value added. What was your role in the project? What specific goals did you meet?

Customizing Your Resume is About Telling Your Story

Reminder that you should always customize your resume to the position for which you’re applying. To make sure your resume is customized, pay attention to 3 things:

  1. Telling your story through a summary statement
  2. Showcasing specific projects
  3. Highlight transferable skills

We recommend using a summary statement on your new resume so that you can:

  1. Describe why you’ve made a career change
  2. Make a connection between the company you’re applying to and the work you do/want to do

Again, your projects can be used to your advantage to tell a specific story to this company as well. Showcase the projects that use the same tech stack, relate to a similar product, demonstrate your interest in their work, or showcase teamwork that is similar to the company you’re applying to. A great idea is to build a project using a company’s tech stack – you’ll discuss this more in-depth with Ian in his workshop.

And lastly, highlight your most relevant transferable skills – both technical and professional – that relate to this particular company.

Creating an ATS-ready Resume

An ATS, or applicant tracking system, is used by most companies to screen resumes. Each ATS system is different and it’s important to always follow the directions for that specific company, but there are a few key components to keep in mind when creating a resume that is optimized for ATS systems:

  • Use a Word doc or a Google Doc (which can be downloaded as a Word doc) to use as your main copy. Not all ATS systems can read PDFs.
  • Use a single column.
  • Compare your resume to the job description and pull out key words to highlight in your skills and experience
  • Need some inspiration? Check out these free resume templates from JobScan

For a more “stylized” resume to use in your Terminal portfolio or to send via email as a PDF, check out the templates listed here.

Other Important Reminders

When building your resume, make sure to keep this checklist handy as well:

  • Double check your spelling, grammar, and readability. How? Read it out loud to yourself to hear how it sounds AND ask a peer or mentor to read it also. As with coding, it never hurts to get a second set of eyes on something.
  • Do not lie. This is important. Expect to be asked about anything that is listed on your resume. If your resume does not accurately represent you, you will not get this job, and it will hurt your chances at that company in the future.
  • List work and education in chronological order. If you’re concerned about gaps in your employment, list the length of time at a position rather than the dates.
  • Include your contact information. Email is absolutely needed, but you can also include your LinkedIn and GitHub profiles. There are differing opinions on phone numbers, but you can decide at your own discretion.
  • Don’t include a headshot – it will take up valuable space and it’s not a norm in this industry.
  • Your resume should only be 1 page. Employers will not read past that 1 page.
  • There are a lot of templates you can use, but be conservative with colors. Consider readability and printability.
  • Don’t list your special interests or hobbies. They don’t belong on a technical resume. Instead, you can put them on your LinkedIn profile.

What to Do

This week is focused on building your working resume.

Resume Review Practice

To see what different technical resumes can look like, you’ll act as a hiring committee for a junior engineering position at your company. Check out the following resumes of alumni who were searching for their first job. For the sake of this activity, the position is language agnostic.

Consider:

  • What is your first impression of this candidate?
  • What do you know about this candidate’s technical abilities?
  • What questions do you have about this candidate?
  • Would you choose to interview this person based on their resume? Why or why not?
  • If you decide to interview them, what follow-up questions would you ask?

Setting up your Alumni Portfolio – Welcome to Terminal!

Turing provides a space for professional portfolios on our website. Employers come to this part of our site to find candidates, and we also share these with employers who come to us asking for candidates. Terminal also functions as a job board – this is where the job postings in #job-hunt come from!

How to Set It Up

  • Log into Terminal at https://terminal.turing.edu/developers/sign_in
  • Go to “Edit Profile” from account menu
  • Fill out profile until all sections are complete
  • Click “Request Review”
  • Staff member will review your profile and approve for publishing or request additional changes
  • For more info on how to set this up, watch this demo

Once published, your profile will be visible on the main alumni directory at terminal.turing.edu as long as you are participating in job search support until you get your first job. While you are actively job searching, the Career Dev team will use your portfolio in referrals to companies.

Terminal Portfolio: What Should Be Included

What needs to be included in order for your portfolio to be published? Here is what the team is looking for:

  • Title
  • Professional-looking photo
    • This should be a photo of just you (no kids or animals, sorry!)
    • Use the same photo as your LinkedIn and GitHub profiles if possible
    • Don’t have a professional-looking photo? Check out this post for tips on how to take one at home
  • About Me Description
    • Tell your professional story – what is your story about your past, present, and future that you want to share with employers? Make sure to answer these questions: who am I? Why am I in this field? What’s next for me?
    • Consider how this is consistent with your LinkedIn and overall brand
    • If you’re struggling with writing this and need additional support, please contact your mentor and/or members of the career development team
    • Check out your peers’ About Me sections to see what you like and don’t like on Terminal
    • Make sure to have someone else review this section for clarity, spelling, and grammar
  • Email address
  • GitHub profile
  • LinkedIn profile
  • Polished draft of resume
  • Preferred Locations
  • Previous Industries
  • Skills
  • At least 2 projects
    • Show variety: paired, team, individual
    • Include an estimation of project contribution hours
    • Include screenshots
    • Tools Used
    • Code Repository Link

Nice to have but not required for initial publication:

  • Pronouns
  • Skills you are currently learning
  • Twitter profile
  • Project collaborators
  • Deployed Project link

If you have any questions about this portfolio, please reach out to the Career Development team!