Show notes

1:24 - What do our resumes look like? 3:40 - CVs vs. Resumes 12:20 - Resume design 17:09 - What if I don’t have formal computer science education? 23:44 - Should you have an objective or a summary? 25:00 - Should you put references on there? 29:02 - How can I create a resume? 35:57 - Using social media and personal portfolio to back up your resume 37:57 - Shoutouts

Resources

Transcript

We provide transcripts for all of our episodes. You can find them here!

Emma 0:00
Whether you’re seeking your first developer job, or you’re looking to move to a new company, your resume is the first thing employers will see. Having a strong resume is what sets you apart from the competition. And this week’s episode, we’re discussing all things resume building, including what’s important to include what can be skipped and best practices for creating your resume.

Kelly 0:23
Welcome to the Ladybug podcast. I’m Kelly. I’m Allie. And I’m Emma. And we’re debugging the

Emma 0:27
tech industry.

Unknown Speaker 0:29
Hey, Kelly, have you heard about this cool tool called AWS amplify? Tell me about it. It’s a suite of tools and services that enables developers to build full stack server lists and cloud based web and mobile apps. You get to use whichever framework or technology you want on the front end. That sounds cool will help me get up and running with things like hosting.

Kelly 0:46
Yeah, authentication. You betcha. Managed graph QL.

Unknown Speaker 0:49
Totally. How about serverless functions API is machine learning chatbots file storage. Yes to everything amplifies but especially in a ways enabled traditionally front end developers like yourself, Kelly to be successful because you can use your existing skill set to build a real world full stack apps than in the past would require deep knowledge around back end dev ops and scalable infrastructure. The amplifi console also allows you to use a GitHub repository to deploy to a globally available CDN with ci NCD built in. It’s super cool, but can I learn more if you want to learn more about AWS amplify

Emma 1:24
Missa AWS dash amplified github.io let’s talk about resumes. I just got done creating a course about technical resumes, which was like super fun, and I’m really excited to share some of that content with you all today. But I’m curious, do you all have resumes like are they recent? What did you use to make them tell me everything?

Kelly 1:47
I do not have a resume. I have not created a resume since I graduated from grad school which was in 2014. Of course, I run my own company. So I don’t intend on actually applying for a job and anti Soon. So my Yeah, I just I don’t have one.

Ali 2:04
So I have one I have not used it in years and years and years. But I actually just did revamp it. I just went through the process of getting my teachers permit which I was just approved for it very exciting. I needed a resume in order to get my teachers permit. And so I do have one that is up to date. I built it using sketch so I used it almost as a design experiment for me and I use all my colors for my personal branding and stuff like that, and I just had fun with it. I don’t know if it’s the technically the best resume out there, but I got good feedback on it from all my friends that I sent it to. But that’s my experience with my resume.

Emma 2:51
I actually built mine in sketch to I need to update it but if you are familiar with figma or sketch, it’s a super fun way to Build a resume because you’re not confined to the traditional layouts. And we’ll talk about layouts in a little bit. But let’s talk about like the main part of your resume, which is the content. This is really hard for people. So typically your resume is going to be maximum one page unless you have more than seven years experience in an industry. In a related industry. If you do have more than one or more than seven years of experience, you can extend that up to two pages. But just be mindful that your recruiter spends on average about 7.4 seconds looking at your resume. So that means you need to get your layout correct meaning put the most relevant information at the top, make sure your formatting is it looks nice. You’re not using 12 different font families and like absurd colors that are really hard to read, and make sure all of your information is relevant and up to date. So I also get the question a lot of to like, what’s the difference between a CV and a resume I’m going to ask you both Do you know the difference?

Kelly 3:54
I know the difference. TVs are more geared towards academia. So I think there you commonly used interchangeably but if you’re outside of the like the research realm, you’re more likely to actually have a resume versus a CV. A CV tends to go into more detail on the research you have conducted, the publications that you have put out whether it’s presenting at a conference or you know, submitting to a research journal or something like that.

Unknown Speaker 4:22
You are not fully correct, but it was close.

Kelly 4:25
That’s exactly what I learned in grad school. So we learned two very different things.

Emma 4:31
That is a very Americanized way of thinking because it is true for the US I would say in general, it is primarily meant for academia. But if you’re applying for jobs abroad, a CV is the primarily used method of applying for jobs. So I would say if you’re applying in the US, like that’s fair, like you should probably use a resume but if you’re applying in other countries like the UK, Germany, a CV is more widely preferred.

Kelly 4:54
So interesting. Yeah. Why don’t you go into your description of it then

Emma 4:59
are you See about this now, Kelly’s a little salty I sure.

Kelly 5:03
I don’t like being called out I’ll

Unknown Speaker 5:04
see about CV.

Emma 5:06
So first of all, CV stands for curriculum vitae, which is Latin for course of life, I think. And it is a comprehensive overview to your entire professional or educational history. And it is. It is chronological in order. So I think the things at the top on the front page, our most recent, and it goes backwards in time and it is comprehensive, meaning you are not restricted to one to two pages. Additionally, like typically, CV is at least the ones in Europe are expected to have a photo on them. This is very common, but in the US, we kind of talked about the trade offs, right, you shouldn’t typically put a photo on your resume because it can lead to ageism, or unconscious bias and you don’t want that your physical appearance has nothing to do with how competent you are for a role. But you know, when I was applying for jobs in Europe, it was really interesting because they all generally required pictures and they all generally required CV so If you’re applying abroad, just make sure you’re aware of the the accepted formats and things like that. We’ve kind of talked about length of resume, what are some of the things that you should put on

Ali 6:08
it? I can go through mine real quick. Yeah, go for it. So my first column is my experience. I also have my contact information above there. So I have my email, my GitHub, my Twitter, because I use my Twitter mostly for professional use, though, if you were to use your Twitter, not for professional use, I wouldn’t put that on there. But mine, I think, is a good demonstration of my personal brand. We have an episode on that and how much I hate that term. But I guess it is what it is I have my portfolio site and then also my blog site listed and then under that I have my experience. So all of my jobs that I’ve had that are relevant to programming. I also then have a column that have has my skills. It has my programming languages and frameworks that I use most recently. That’s mostly for search engines, right so that usually resumes aren’t read by are read by some sort of algorithm. So having the keywords on there is important. Yeah. And then I have a, I have a little information about your speaking and how many types of

Unknown Speaker 7:13
words that I’ve

Ali 7:16
been received. Oh my goodness, that was so awkward awards that I’ve received, and events that I’ve organized and been a part of, so that I was like the director of womanhood code. I have Ladybug on there. So y’all made it. I also have my blog and some statistics on that. And then I have my education. My last version of my resume actually had my research experience to I wrote three thesis is these thesis even called VCs. Oh, my goodness, that word is so hard. I don’t like this. This sounds like

Emma 7:49
feces and I don’t like it.

Ali 7:51
Yeah, I don’t like it. I do not enjoy this. Okay, we’ll move on from that word. And so I wrote three theses in college. And so I think used to have those listed on there because they were all relevant to me, I was doing work I was doing this well, the resume didn’t resume. So again, I will have my college. So

Emma 8:14
that’s really similar to mine. I mean, we all know Kelly doesn’t have a resume because she runs her own company because she’s a badass

Kelly 8:19
lady.

Emma 8:24
Now, mine sounds really similar and honest. And it’s funny because I also made mine and sketch that we’re very similar in that respect. But let’s talk about optimal layout because you’ve got a lot of content as do I. But if you’re just graduating from college from boot camp, if you haven’t had relevant education experience, we’ll get into the specifics of how you should list all those things. But you want to put the most relevant information at the top so contact information should be displayed first and prominently it should be accurate up to date. If you’re applying to enroll abroad, please list your actual address because a lot of times companies aren’t willing to invest in bernisa went over. So it’ll save you both the time of figuring that out over a call, for example, in terms of whether you should list experience or education First, it depends. If you’ve just graduated from some kind of educational program that’s relevant education should go at the top because you likely do not have enough relevant experience to be listed first. However, for people like Allie, who have a lot of different projects and roles that they’re exemplify their skills, work experience should definitely come before education, it’s the most relevant, and it’ll help you land a job interview. Yeah, I would say that’s mine. Also a really important note. When you’re listing your experiences, state, your outcomes are achieved outcomes instead of your objectives. So don’t say like, I held a Python training for my team. Like that doesn’t tell me anything. Instead, use quantify quantifiable data, qualitative data. I don’t know what the difference of those words and numbers use numbers. Use numbers where you can because they actually quantify that’s what I’m looking for. They quantify your contribution. So you could say how the Python training for 250 employees, which allowed the team to more quickly develop and push out new features, right? So what was the actual benefit of you doing these things? Well, it allows your team to be more productive. Don’t just tell me that you don’t know implemented accessibility? Why did you implement accessibility so that everyone can use your product? So be more focused on your outcomes and your achievements over?

Ali 10:34
That I feel like, I feel like you’re so right, especially because especially because, you know, we’re socialized to be humbled or to state our achievements and stuff. I think in a lot of ways, especially as women, we’re socialized for that. But your resume is your place that you’re supposed to use that hard data and really not be humble to list all those cold facts and all of those awesome things that You’ve done so my resume definitely has a lot of numbers on there. I have NPS scores I have, how many people I have lead. I have stats on my blog. I have stats on the listenership for this podcast, like how many people all of the things that I do how many people that region

Kelly 11:21
also to note under your work experience, it’s much easier as a recruiter or owner or whatever you want to call yourself

Unknown Speaker 11:31
myself.

Unknown Speaker 11:35
Oh my goodness, it’s much

Kelly 11:36
easier to read a resume quickly when you’re using bullet points and you’re not writing everything out paragraphs,

Ali 11:45
use texts hierarchy to make things skimmable. You don’t have unlimited amount of time for that person to read your resume. So if you make it so that they can read the main points in so little Time, that’s gonna give you a big leg up. So I have things that are bolded, some things that are italicized, I use white space. So there’s separation between different points, I use different sizes of texts for different things like using that visual hierarchy and also why whitespace is so important in order to tell the I where to go and what to look at first.

Emma 12:20
And let’s talk about design because this does lead into the design do’s and don’ts for creating a resume. Yeah, use italics and bold text where appropriate, but don’t overdo it. Because if everything looks bold, then they’re just they’re going to be like this looks terrible. Next. Thank you Next. So when you’re thinking about your design, and we’ll talk about tools you can use to build it. If you’re using like a word processor or a resume creator, they’ll come with pre made templates, and there’s not going to be a lot of leeway on design, which is good and bad if you’re good with design and it’s kind of a hindrance, right because it prevents you from being more creative. If you’re bad with design. It takes away the stress of having to come up with a good design. But here’s some news. and don’ts don’t use more than two font families and your resume. If you’re going to use two font families a sans serif and a Sarah are typically you know, a good pairing and if you go to Google fonts, they will have recommended pairings that you can use for your resume. But use something that’s easily readable, don’t use like really hard to understand monospace font and things like that. In terms of color scheme, figure out what color palettes work understanding color theory is going to be important to make sure that your websites your resume is like everything that you do if you just color understanding basic color theory of what colors pair well together is going to be very helpful. So you know, this isn’t a design episode and we could do a whole episode about like, like basic design skills, but in general, there are several different methods for creating color palettes and there are tons of tools we can link in the in the show notes as well, but monochromatic color palette, so you choose one shade on the color palette and you use different hues within that shade. very safe, they’re a really great choice. If you’re going to be creating a resume, because it is a professional document, you can use something like triadic, where you have the color wheel and you choose three different colors that are equidistant on the color wheel. These are going to help you stand out, but they’re also a little bit crazier. So like if you’re in a more traditional professional role, as opposed to a tech job, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend a triadic color palette, but they’re really great in the tech industry, because we have, we’re going to be creative. You could also do complimentary color palettes. So those are going to be two colors that are I think opposite each other on the color wheel. So it’d be like blue and orange, I believe are complementary colors. These also are really nice. But yeah, if you’re uncertain, monochromatic, so different shades of purple or blue or just a safe bet, just make sure that it’s legible. So like don’t use like lime green chartreuse spot on a white background. Keep it like still professional, it is a professional document.

Kelly 14:54
I just really wants to drive that point home about the company that you’re applying to be very mindful of what that company is going to expect in terms of professionalism. Some do not want to see a super creative colorful lens, actually Rainbow is an immediate on offer. So

Ali 15:13
mine has actually been to my website like Alex has been my website, my name and rainbow and it also has shapes if you click anywhere, random color sheet comes up. And so the design of my resume is actually based off of my portfolio site. So it has the rainbow text for my name, but all the text is in black and white, so it’s really easy to read. Then I have some hints of the little shapes interspersed as well. But then again, I’m not using this to really apply for jobs. It’s for just kind of personal experiment or anything but yeah,

Emma 15:50
and that’s a quick shout out to a company, I guess. I really like it’s called CV compiler, and uh, basically, it doesn’t analysis of your What of your website of your resume compares to other really great resumes that would be submitted for a role of that specific type. It’ll tell you what language you should use or like change, like, maybe you’re using four different words to convey one word, right? So being concise and intentional with your language, it can also tell you like, hey, maybe you want to rearrange these sections and put your work experience of education because it’s more relevant. And it’ll tell you where you kind of stack up against your competition. And the improvements you should make will link them in the show notes. It’s really, really great. Really, it is, I think it’s paid. But honestly, it’s worth it. If you’re really looking for a job I would recommend.

Kelly 16:38
I think I’m still bitter about you calling me out on the CV versus resume thing?

Unknown Speaker 16:42
Well, your

Emma 16:44
answer was correct from an American perspective, but we also get like tunnel vision for these things, right? Like you only know what you’ve experienced in life and so like, you weren’t wrong, it was just, you know, in other parts of the world, they wouldn’t be correct.

Kelly 16:56
I think I’ve just spent too much time in academia. And while I do Don’t like do that now. I spent so much time in school and doing research and getting two masters degrees, that all I know is academia.

Ali 17:09
Amazing. So, on the other side of that a lot of people don’t have formal computer science education, like actually meet Kelly, to some extent to the fullest and full extent. Yeah. And so if you don’t have a formal education in computer science or programming, how do you feature that on your resume? As the expert you want to start? I have some thoughts too. But

Unknown Speaker 17:36
yeah, so if you attended a boot camp, or so let’s start with, there are a couple scenarios. So the first is, let’s say you have a degree but it’s not relevant to the job you’re applying for.

Emma 17:48
You, you can list it, but again, I would push your education to the bottom of your resume. And also another tip is maybe don’t list your graduation year it’s not relevant. And it can lead to ageism both if you’re A new college grad as well as if you are older. So if you’re new college grad right, some companies, they have the unconscious bias that recent college grads are a little flighty and they won’t stick around for very long. So just leave off your graduation year not a big deal. If you didn’t graduate from your program and it was a technical degree, you can do a couple things you can remove your your education completely, you don’t have to list it or you can choose to list specific courses you took which would help you in this role. If you attended a boot camp, I think this is a great thing to add you should list the program name, the location so the city and state the month and year that you attended so this is another important thing if you are writing dates for a work experience. So I while I wouldn’t necessarily list the date on a boot camp or college degree for example, if you’re listening at for work experience list the month and year because if you worked somewhere from like a I don’t know, like march of 2018 to, I don’t know, like, I forget the the numbers and I’m totally going to mess this up. So like, if you can short sell yourself, if you just say 2008 to 2019. It seems like you work there for one year, but you might have two years of experience there. I forget exactly how this worked out. So don’t quote me. So list the month and date. But yeah, in terms of boot camps, plus your program name, list, the location that you went took it, and also maybe a link to some relevant projects that you had have them on your GitHub, if possible, because they’ll exemplify your skills, and coming from a boot camp. I think we’re slowly changing the stigma. But in the past you you know, typically boot camp, people have had to work a little bit harder, unfortunately, to prove that they know their stuff. This is a completely wrong mindset. And I’m sure all you have thoughts on this as well. But list relevant projects that can showcase your expertise,

Ali 19:50
definitely So naturally, so feature your projects that you do or projects that you did want, especially if you did a really big Capstone that showed Your experience. Also normally you’ll have group projects at boot camps and definitely feature that on there too that you’ve worked with other developers and that you know how to maybe if you taught yourself in addition to what you learned there to show your teacher you’re definitely journaling people were your projects projects on there isn’t there to do and that’s what I had. From my old resumes when I had a little bit less experience in the field is that I had my personal projects listed on my resume to

Emma 20:32
one thing you mentioned earlier, Ali was awards and certifications and these are wonderful things to add to your resume. I don’t know why is that so weird? Um, so it does feel a little bit braggy to put these things on your resume but you just remember to that like your competition isn’t having that second guess in their head of like, oh, Should I add this is like no, they’re adding it and they’re trying their hardest to get this job. So if you are sitting there thinking like wow, you know, like as little bragging of you know, like say I got an award Do it. It exemplifies the fact that leadership or someone to some level of authority has has recognized your contributions. That is, put it on there and put it on your LinkedIn profile as well. LinkedIn will talk about social media at the end of this episode, but social media, specifically LinkedIn, I know there’s a lot of issues, maybe with the platform, maybe you don’t use it. But I’ve also I think I got my current job through LinkedIn. So having your awards and certifications listed on your profile is great for the reasons I just mentioned, but for certifications that shows really like learning, what are your

Ali 21:37
proud of them and having them on there? I think is important because I’ve gotten word both at work and then also for community work as well. And so I have all of that on there to show that my performance at work has been good and also that I have been involved in the community. I think it’s also really important to think about the goal for your resume. We talked about this with portfolio sites. But think about the types of roles that you’re applying to. I think we focus a lot on new engineers, so there may be trying to get their first role. And so this is really important for them. But also if you’re trying to get even further in your career, so if you’re trying to even go for like C level positions, or you’re trying to get principal roles or management roles, or to get a community role or developer advocate role, make sure that you’re featuring those things on your resume that make you a great candidate for those roles. So tailor your resume to the different positions that you’re looking at. So this advice might look different, depending on what type of role you’re looking at. And as you escalate in your career, showing your leadership skills might be more important than listing that you know, HTML for example,

Emma 22:52
for sure. And I there are a couple other things that people are typically uncertain if they should add hobbies is one of them. And my rule of thumb is like, is it relevant to your job and anyway, and if it is Go for it. So Allie, one thing you might want to put on there is that you blog, technically it’s a hobby, you may or may not get paid for it not a big deal. It’s just not your primary day to day professional job. So if it’s relevant, like if you were applying for a depth advocacy role, like adding all your conferences on there would be great. If you are a part time connoisseur of cooking. I can’t say that’s necessarily relevant to a programming dress so maybe leave that off. People don’t need to know that you dress your cat up and smell cowboy outfits and take professional photos of them I don’t do this you know I brought that up

Unknown Speaker 23:38
oh my god things if they’re relevant for we

Ali 23:42
is that Luna in the background wearing a cowboy hat?

Emma 23:44
Oh, shoot. I didn’t bring that from Texas. No, it’s fine. Um, the other thing people are are curious and I was curious about whether or not I should add this is an objective or like an introductory statement. I forget the other word for it. An objective In a summary of mission, Marie, yeah, I guess mission statement, corporate objectives in summary, so objectives, tell an employer what you’re looking for. This is really good. If you’ve just graduated from college and you don’t have a ton of work experience, you can be like, Hey, I’m a Java developer looking to enhance my Java skills by working on a full stack application and an enterprise company. That was a lot of buzzwords. So those are really good if you are, you know, don’t have a lot of work experience. Versus summaries are a summary of you. It’s like the sparknotes edition. I actually have one of these on my, my resume, but it’s very colloquial. So it’s using very informal language is like, Hey, I’m Emma. I’m a software engineer. And I moved from Texas and sold everything and moved to Europe. It’s like, we’re in an industry where it can be, it’s more acceptable to be more colloquial. That’s one of my favorite words about these things because we’re in a creative industry. So you may or may not want to add it. If you have the space, go for it. If you don’t, don’t worry about it. And then I think the last thing was though References What are your What are your opinions on us? Do you add references to your resume

Kelly 25:05
everyone I see just puts like references available references available upon request which to me is good you know if I’m if I’m going to be hiring you the last thing I want to be doing is still I’m going to be checking for references so I don’t really care if you mentioned it on your resume or not because I’m going to ask for them anyway. So I feel like you know, save that space on your resume use it for something else or add more white space. Oh, good. I got something right.

Unknown Speaker 25:34
That was something I turned into.

Emma 25:36
I think I did that wrong when I was starting out I think I didn’t add them to Kelly’s point blank if you don’t have the space for it, leave it off completely. If you do have the space you could add references available upon request, but you should never add them in general it’s not gonna like just chillin it was phone number Yeah, it’s not going to kill your your ability to get a job interview but what it does is a takes up valuable real estate because that is a valuable resource. That something else, whether that’s listing your skill sets or things like that, that could take up. But also, like you mentioned, Kelly, asking for references is something that’s going to be done after the interviewers, pretty certain they want to give you a job offer. It’s kind of wrapping up the process. So you don’t need on your resume, because you’ll have already been through the interviews before they ask you for that. Although Personally, I’ve never been asked for references. theme, but I do reference checks for students all the time. So

Unknown Speaker 26:25
apparently, some companies do. I asked for references in you know, in

Kelly 26:30
it, I asked for them. But I also realize that I need to take those references with a grain of salt because nobody is going to ask for reference from somebody who just did not like them.

Emma 26:40
But to be fair, you also run smaller company. So the stakes, the stakes are higher for you.

Kelly 26:45
Yeah, for sure. But I mean, like even my husband works for a larger company known as well. It doesn’t really matter. But I mean,

Unknown Speaker 26:54
he see Kelly cuz now and I believe you,

Kelly 26:57
okay, he works for the intercontinentalexchange was the parents company for the New York Stock Exchange. They own markets all over the world and do a lot of things they don’t understand. So anyway, everyone really confuses it. So they’re headquartered here in Atlanta, but also intercontinental hotels group is headquartered here in Atlanta, which means everybody thinks that he works for intercontinental hotels group, and then he gets like free hotel benefits. And that definitely is another thing. Anyway, he has he always does reference checks for everybody as well. So is it I mean, it’s a it’s definitely pretty common to see in in large companies and a lot of small companies as well. But the fact being, you know, I just don’t think I’m ever going to hear from somebody who is not going to give a good recommendation. And there are also like, legalities around what you can say negatively in a reference request. But like, if I were to ask or somebody were to ask me about a previous employee that I may be, like, fired for whatever reason, I can’t say that they were a terrible employee. I can only say yes, they they worked for me in the past. And that’s all I have to offer.

Emma 28:00
Yeah, this is another thing to your references can make or break your ability to get an offer. So if you list someone as a reference, please be certain they’re not going to trash you. And if you quit a job in an unprofessional way, it can totally destroy morale between you or like your relationship. So, actually, I’m gonna link a blog post and the notes, I wrote a post about how to quit your job and not burn bridges in the process. Knowing how to quit a job is kind of a skill, and it’s a hard skill. Absolutely. It’s not a fun thing to do. But if you do leave a job, leave it in such a way that you can ask people for references and you know that they’re going to talk highly of you

Kelly 28:39
unless you know you’re leaving a job with it was a toxic environment and you have no intention of asking for references, but still, it’s a good professional thing to

Ali 28:49
know how to do work for a company yet for for my story. I worked for a company for work two years and now I work for that full time again.

Unknown Speaker 28:58
On and now I And

Ali 29:02
you decided to go back Sunday. Okay. Um, how about the actual technical side of making a resume? Should you use a resume builder? Or what tools should you use and I think Emma’s gonna be our expert here.

Unknown Speaker 29:18
Um, you should actually hand scribe it on a piece of slate, actually, like get someone to engrave it and then like, mail it to the company, because that’s going to set the best impression. I expect all of my resumes to be paperweights as well. So,

Emma 29:33
God, I’m such a loser. The most basic tool that you can use is a word processor. So Google Docs has resume templates, Microsoft Word as well, but that is a paid application. There are benefits and drawbacks to this. The benefit being they’re very easy to use, and once like Google are in the cloud, so they’re going to be very easy to access and update and you don’t have to worry about design. The downside is going to look like everyone else’s because everyone else is probably using the same thing as Another tool you could use is a resume builder where they physically walk you through each step of the process like entering each job, piece of job information and stuff like that. So it’s very user friendly. Again, there’s not much room to play with the design and, but they’re also like easy to update information. As you know, things changed. The last tool that Ali and I both used our design tool, so sketches and example figments another example. If you have any visual design skills whatsoever, these are really great. They are a little harder to use. They require some knowledge on how to actually use these tools, but they will allow you to create fully custom designs. If you’re bad with design, this can be hard, because it might end up looking terrible. So like, I always go on dribble and look for design inspiration, well link dribble in the in the show notes. It’s a really great site for it’s basically like the hub for designers, where they just go in, they share their designs, great place the inspiration. And

Kelly 30:54
so the benefit is also nice to see the things that I put on dribble A long time ago that I’m now embarrassed about.

Emma 30:59
Did you really Oh, yeah, we’re gonna let Kelly awful drawings in the show notes. I am deleting them right now. So I think I mean, that’s a benefit where like, your resume is not gonna look like everyone else’s. But the downside is, if you’re using sketch for example, it’s really not super easy to update your information and you have to have your computer on you because it is a like a desktop application. figma is web based so you can access it, you know, on the internet, but it requires you to have internet access to actually update these things. So you know, pick your poison. If you’re just starting out, I’d recommend a word processor for you.

Ali 31:36
And this is this might be a self critique of myself. So critique of myself, we talked a little bit about how most resumes are actually read by a computer or by a machine instead of by a person, at least at first. How does that machine or that computer process resumes that are built in something like sketch versus a word processor,

Emma 31:58
no frickin clue. True. So basically, you want to export your resumes to a PDF format, those are gonna be the safest. The doc and doc x formats, while generally accepted, actually, some programs will block them through email attachment, because they can contain viruses. So I would definitely save it as PDF. And additionally, what that’s going to do is preserve your formatting. So, you know, as opposed to like a doc or doc x, where it will preserve your formatting. I think when you provide a PDF version to these algorithms are probably trained on that. I wouldn’t focus like there, I don’t know, I would assume that they’re trained on on reading, like textual content from a PDF, so I wouldn’t focus too much on like, Is it going to be okay, I mean, and this is another thing we’re going to talk about in the February Book Club, which might be out by the time we do this invisible women, data bias and a world designed for men. I think it’s what it’s called. They talk about like, how these algorithms can hinder You’re a female or woman programmers ability to like get a job interview or be contacted, because by nature, they will like siphon out, or they’ll like rank men’s stuff higher, because like the men were the ones programming the algorithms. And I think like the data sets that they train them on were geared more like with men’s portfolios or resumes. By default, I, I don’t know if it works the same with resume. So I’d be interested because it talked about like portfolios or like job applications, didn’t talk about resumes, but I’d be curious of like the algorithms are using to read these resumes also has a database there.

Ali 33:34
There’s also been studies that less European sounding names tend to get filtered as well. But I think that those are all on humans instead of the computers. I wonder if the computers ignore names. I don’t know. This is all really

Emma 33:51
fall into that conversation, but

Ali 33:53
interesting, too.

Emma 33:54
Yeah. I think the big takeaway here is like there’s no right I mean, yeah, there are guys lens that you should use what creating resume but, you know, don’t let it stress you out. Like you’re gonna if you follow the basic steps of like understanding layout of not going overboard with a design, exporting it to a PDF over, you know a doc doc x format, those simple steps and this tips that we’ve talked about can really help your chances. So don’t freak out if like it’s using the wrong hue of blue like it’s, it’s Robin egg blue and it should be navy blue, it’s going to be fine, like you’re going to be okay. And if it takes a long time to hear back from a recruiter, just remember that we all struggle with this. It doesn’t really matter who you are, how long you’ve been in the industry. It takes a long ass time to talk to a human and a lot of cases and just don’t let that get you down.

Ali 34:47
Oh Also, make sure you proofread your resume. I feel like we bring this up like every episode about something but like, run it through something like Grammarly or some other text processing system. That’s going to check your grammar and your spelling and make sure that you didn’t typo. Because that’s kind of a bad Look, if you have things misspelled, or something

Kelly 35:09
like that I will never forget the time that I wrote a cover letter for an internship and I started with to whom it may concern. And it wasn’t until like two weeks after I applied for the internship that I realized that I accidentally typed to as Tw o instead of to,

Unknown Speaker 35:26
oh, no.

Kelly 35:27
Needless to say, I did not get that internship minimums are hard.

Ali 35:30
Yeah, it’s really hard. So using use a tool to help you but it’s one of those things that it’ll look a lot more professional if you do kind of run things through a grammar checker.

Emma 35:40
I mean, not only that, even if you’re not a native English speaker, and you have to write a resume in English. For those of us who are native English, we still use tools like this, like there’s no shame in using a tool like this. I think that’s really, really helpful. And also it can help you with your vocabulary as well for sure.

Ali 35:57
So to wrap this up, also We can use other sites to bolster our resume as well. So your resume is just kind of a static piece of paper. But there are other sites as well to use to show your experience. So we’ve talked about having a portfolio site, we can link our portfolio site episode. Also, people use GitHub as a resume of sorts and LinkedIn to another thing that I’ve seen recently that I love is that people looking for jobs will have a searching page on their portfolio that will have a listing of all the things that they’re looking for in a company and their experience. And I just absolutely think that that’s an incredible idea, especially if you’re somebody with more experience and be a little bit more choosy. So if I were to go on a job hunt, I would definitely do that.

Emma 36:43
That sounds really cool. I admire that can be like if you’re if you’re searching for jobs, but your employer doesn’t know like that can be really difficult as well. That’s also a tricky thing to navigate, right? Like if you’re looking for jobs, how do you do that? Like how do you let people know if you’re searching without telling your current employer.

Ali 37:00
Yeah, this was all for people that either were self employed and moving to companies or who had quit a job or been laid off or something like that, who are looking for a new thing. But I really, really love that idea. And if I were to search for a job, I think that that’s a thing that I would build at this point. Any other sites that people should keep up to date as kind of a moving resume?

Emma 37:23
I can’t think of any but I also just want to explicitly state that like having a fully fledged GitHub, having a portfolio, all these things are very time consuming. And, and oftentimes, they’re, it’s honestly, it’s kind of a privilege to be able to have the time to devote to filling these things out. So if you can’t devote a lot of time, if you have family, if you work two jobs if you know, for whatever reason, if you can’t have a GitHub if you can’t have a portfolio, like it’s okay. It’s definitely a privilege to be able to have the time to spend on those things. So for sure,

Ali 37:57
should we do a rapid fire round of shout out

Emma 38:00
Yeah, except I want to go last because I can’t think of one.

Kelly 38:03
I’m gonna shout out our editor Chris because he’s been really great to work with. And even though he called us out with our terrible clapping tests at the beginning to aligner audios, which is hilarious. He’s been he’s been really great.

Ali 38:18
Yeah, I normally kind of deal with the editors and working with Chris has been the best thing ever is my job so much easier and feel like our sound quality has really improved too. So massive shout out to Chris at lemonhead projections will link him in the show notes, both his twitter and his company. My shadow goes to very I think that my shout outs are kind of like Ali’s personal book clubs. But I just finished this book Verity and it has so many twists and turns to it and oh my goodness, it kept me up and I had to go on a long walk to go and finish the audio book for it but it is So good. Emma, how about you?

Emma 39:02
I want to shout out the LinkedIn learning team. So if you kind of enjoyed this podcast, but you want something visual that you can go off of I created a course I just finished filming it. I flew back, what two days ago. I’m a little jet lagged. I’m all about technical resumes. It’s really useful for anyone that can create a resume in general. But it has tangible tips. I think I’ve also included some like worksheets there as well that you can physically fill out to make sure you’ve got everything covered. So I want to shout that out. And we’ll link that in the show notes as well once that’s released, hoping that’s in March. But I want to shout out to the team because they were incredible to work with. And the LinkedIn learning platform, formerly known as lynda.com has been something I’ve used for a long time and they were such a pleasure. Amazing.

Unknown Speaker 39:46
Cool. Well, Emma, you want to send us off? No, no, I think we should

Ali 39:54
just keep the episode going forever.

Emma 39:57
If you liked this episode, tweet about it. We love to read your tweets and your feedback. And leave us a review on Apple podcast. I mean, honestly, these are the things that warm our hearts and that keep us going. And to give back. We are giving away a Smashing Magazine book. We’ve got things from design systems. What are the other ones we have performance. That’s just like an accumulation of different Smashing Magazine books that we have to give away to you as a thank you. So if you want to win one of those tweet about our episode, and we’ll pick one each week to win we’ve already given away quite a few. So we post the podcast every Monday, make sure to subscribe to be notified and leave us a review and with that, I hope you all have a fantastic day of the week that you

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