How to write a proper CV and get hired as a web developer
Disclaimer: the following tips are primarily for web developers (coders of HTML/CSS/JavaScript and some server side language), they will probably not work for other professions involved in web development.
The following is the view of the author, Christian Heilmann and does not represent the view of Yahoo! as a company.
I am once again in the situation where I am hiring several web developers for my current employer, and I think it is time to give out some information as to what I found that people are actually expecting from a good web developer. The following is rather subjective, but actually got me most of my jobs and worked for others, too.
How to read job ads
Hiring good web developers is almost an art. The main issue is that a lot of the Human Resources market and also infrastructure of job sites and magazines is just not cut out for web development. Web development is a niche skill and one that is so diverse and constantly changing that the red tape that is HR (and not because of them being bad at their job, but mostly due to internal politics and legal issues) cannot keep up with it. This leads to the job advertisements that are only partly what the department that really needs the resources asked for. Therefore it is good to consider the following:
- Don’t trust job ads. Even if you don’t fulfill all the requirements you have a good chance to get the job (reasonably so though, you won’t become a lead developer with 1 year of CSS and HTML). I’ve seen job ads that required 5 years of experience in technologies that were a year old at that time.
- Job ads however are a “best case scenario� which means you should be interested in the technologies listed. Nobody expects you to be perfect, on the other hand nobody will invest in someone who doesn’t show any interest in improving.
Relying on third parties leads in 90% of the cases to frustration
If you think that a head hunter or a company will find you if you sit idle and maintain a great amazing and fascinating online portfolio you will wait for a long time. Online portfolios are only good for freelancers who are looking for clients and even then you have to be very lucky indeed to get found as the market is quite saturated.
Your own blog or portfolio is a great asset to try out your skills and play around, and it will get interesting once you got the attention of a potential employer, but do not rely on it to make a difference in the first place.
It is up to you to keep your eyes and ears open, network, and find out about job openings – nobody can help you there. True, when you have an index-able CV on job sites you will get contacted, but 99% of these contacts are headhunters who seriously neither care about you or the employer much as long as they can connect the two of you and tick another box on their weekly activity sheets. The amount of job interviews I have sat and realized I had no place in after five minutes is staggering.
Networking is everything
A large part of the hiring process is not only what you know but also who you know. Getting recommended by someone who is known in the company (and who normally also gets a fee for finding you should you be good enough) is a great step towards getting hired. You already have someone to endorse you on the inside and this person can give the interviewers information that speeds up the whole process rather than guessing what you are like.
The last few years had an almost ridiculous increase of networking tools (social web2.0 software and the likes) and you should really take part and see who you can find in order to get to the point where someone endorses you. LinkedIn is an obvious choice, but also a bit crowded and washed out. O’Reilly’s Connection is an interesting playground and flickr or now even twitter is always fast and fun to get in contact with other people in the same arena.
This also applies to the people you might be currently be working with. You might be fed up with management or the company but never burn all your bridges. Many a workmate will cross your way later on and will be useful to know and still be on good terms with.
Write a good CV
Every employer will want a CV in a printable format. The reason is that your application will end up in an intranet system and a queue to work through and people will want to print out the information and go through it offline or talk you through several parts of the CV.
Always remember that whoever is hiring will have to look through dozens of CVs a day, which means you have good chances if you:
- keep your CV very short (2 pages tops)
- offer as many communication channel information as possible (and that you are feeling comfortable with) as soon as possible: Mobile number, email, IM name. Offer times when it is best to contact you
- list what is really important for the job as soon as possible (your A level topics are not really of interest immediately – your latest employers, achievements and expert technologies however are)
- give any information about mobility or special arrangements (visas)
- do not bullshit – ever. If you don’t know a technology, don’t list it in your details, you can list it in your interests though. Don’t try to pretend you know something by repeating what you read or heard, you will be found out and you will lose all credibility. Even worse, this will spread to other developers who might know other people that might have wanted to hire you.
Have a list of achievements and interests
Most interviewers will ask for a list of projects you have done and you are proud of. Have a list of URLs you can send them to have a look at and be prepared to be asked in detail how this or that happened to get to the sites.
Also list any other achievements you have, like your successful participation in mailing lists and forums, or groups like WaSP, Web Standards Group, GAWDS and so on and so forth.
Furthermore be prepared to tell people where you get information from, and what you consider good information sources. Don’t try to please the interviewers but be sincere in what you believe.
Know what you want
It is as important that you know what you want when you go for a certain job. Hiring a full time web developer is a costly business and the diverse nature of our job also means that department managers constantly have to prove to upper management the value and quality of their team. Don’t make a whole department and by proxy web development as a whole suffer by lying to yourself and joining a company because of its name or some other perk. You are only a good web developer when you are interested and proud in your work – it is a job where you constantly need to be on your toes.
So be aware that a good company will ask you what you expect from the job when you are interviewed, so read up on the company and what it has done in the past before applying. If this sounds appealing to you and you get confirmation of your wishes during the interview then don’t worry about the normal job perks like salary and benefits – good companies know what we expect.
January 9th, 2007 at 2:36 pm
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How To Get Hired As A (fill in here)
Over at wait till I come!, Christian Heilmann recently wrote about how to w [...]
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January 9th, 2007 at 10:24 am
You should probably add to the bit about including IM names on your CV that if your IM handle is hotforsexxx69@hotmail.com, it might be time to register a new profile… ;)
January 9th, 2007 at 12:33 pm
I’m working at finding an intern for my degree, and this article was really helpful. Going to reword parts of my CV now to reflect what has been said.
One question though, are employers really interested in your personal interets like sports and music you into? We always get encourages to write it, but it always seems a bit pointless..
January 9th, 2007 at 2:49 pm
John – I think it depends on the employer as to whether or not they look at the interests section.
Personally I think that if written carefully your interests can help to show what sort of person you are – are you a team player, do you have good communication skills – those sorts of things. Obviously a catch all list of things you like without much qualification isn’t really of benefit.
January 9th, 2007 at 3:37 pm
Nice insight from both sides of the fence; especially like the point about not making your prospective colleagues suffer.
John: as Christian points out, this type of hiring is as much art as science. Knowing a person’s interests outside work tells you something about them, kind of like the excellent interview questions “tell me what I’m going to like most about you a year from now” and “tell me what I’m going to like least about you.”
January 10th, 2007 at 5:41 am
I just had to chime in and say that I am currently searching to fill a couple of positions for my web dev company, and I could care less about a CV at all!
I’m sure when it comes to a big, corporate company, you must have one – and I would encourage everyone to have a top notch one prepared if they are looking for a job. However for myself I care only about two things – the email (cover letter) and the portfolio.
The email should show me that you are socially skilled and can write well and fluently. Ideally you will allow your (good) personality to shine through a bit and will demonstrate intelligence, wit, and education. The portfolio should be impressive to look at and even more impressive when I look under the hood.
That’s all I need to schedule an interview.
January 10th, 2007 at 7:57 pm
Mani said that a CV is useless. I disagree. Yes the portfolio would be good, but it may have been a team project and the parts you like were done by others. How do you know? You really don’t. I went through management training here and they had a technique that was interesting and went along the lines of “You said you did yyyyy, how did you handle blah blah” and reword it for various situations. I was one of three interviewers and it worked really well. I would suggest that be the metric, i.e. How did they handle things in the past.
TJanuary 10th, 2007 at 10:46 pm
Just to relate a story about interests:
When I applied for my job at Yahoo! Europe (I’m a colleague of Christian’s), I spent the last of my interviews discussing basketball and wine with my prospective employers, as they had interests in those things also.
Disclaimer: Things may have changed since then, so don’t take my experience at Y! as law if you’re thinking of applying to work with us. Don’t let this disclaimer discourage you, either. ;)
January 11th, 2007 at 7:29 am
I’m hiring in a candidates’ market at present, and the sheer number of applicants who answer the question “can you show us some examples of your work” with “no, not really” or “I’ve only worked on intranets, and they’re not publically available” and expect that to wash, simply astounds me.
A portfolio of work, even if it’s your personal website, demonstrating a sandbox of things you’ve played with is far better than nothing. I had one candidate who had genuinely worked on intranets and took screenshots of several critical parts of functionality and worked those into a document demonstrating what he’d executed, with rationale. He was hired.
Demonstrate. Ask for access to a machine in the interview. Show your passion. And if it isn’t a passion, do something else.
Finally, I concur with the above. Do not bullshit – ever! It takes two weeks tops in the world of web to realise a developer did that and move them on… In Australia we can do that without fear of retribution.
January 11th, 2007 at 8:29 am
i think a cv should be simple and included all information also co-curriculum activities and interests
January 11th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
Very good article, Chris! :-)
Keep’em coming:)
I agree with you on most points. I think trust is one of the most important things –
– If you can code CSS, say “I can code CSS“. If you can’t, then don’t say it… I’ve met people who can write in their CVs… no, they actually wrote in their CVs that they can handcode html and CSS after a week-long course;-) hehe…
While on the same subject, I recently read also another article on almost the same subject at Maratz.com (link:
maratz.com/blog/archives/2006/10/21/you-are-looking-for-a-job-impress-me/)
As to should we write a CV or not – I think we should. Although it could be written in a stricter or more free form, it is important in any case. And the online portfolio is important, as well. Err… and imagine if you did all of your websites on a Intranet, and didn’t make any screenshots of them, nor didn’t keep any code – then take a chair, sit in front of a keyboard and show what you can do “live”:)
January 11th, 2007 at 5:22 pm
PS As to the interests of the candidate, I think this is important, too, as it shows what kind of person you are, outside of your professional life. It’s almost as imporrtant as your technical skills are, IMHO:)
January 11th, 2007 at 5:24 pm
Last year I finished a Master’s in interactive multimedia, a course I was accepted on with no previous higher education but instead solely on the basis of my (at the time) 8 years of professional experience. I took the course because I wanted the chance to refine my skills in a changing market and thought that a good university, in step with the trends, would provide an environment to do that. I had very little interest in the qualification itself, and as it turns out being in step with the trends is a very hard thing for an institution the size of a university to do.
The reason I mention this is because I think a lot of people who are looking for work are fresh out of school and as such are hoping that their CV (read: certified qualifications and student portfolio of unpaid work) will get them the job of their dreams. It may, it may not, generally though (unless you can demonstrate that you are exceptionally talented) it may not.
As it happens I now teach a certificate program myself and though I’m now in league with The Man I have to say that I pity my students for being so naive as to think that listing this certificate on their CV will truly lead to employment.
A good CV is a must in order to gain an interview, but it is little more than a way for the employer to get a feel for you as a person, remember your name and see your achievements – the latter of which is what your CV should be highlighting. Without the professional experience and a portfolio to match your chances of getting employed dwindle proportionally.
So, I would add to this article that if you’re new to design the more paid for work you can get the better. If this means you’re doing sites for friends and local businesses for next to nothing just to build your portfolio, then so be it. At least you can list it as paid experience in your portfolio, which believe me counts for more than something you’ve been working on for the last two or three years as part of a university course.
January 18th, 2007 at 1:32 am
Spend a few minutes polishing those example sites.
First thig a potential employer is going to do is right click and view your source code.
Really, it only takes a few minutes to go through your template and css, indent everything properly and clean out any nasty coding.
I would find it hard to employ someone for a web developer’s position if their code had font tags in it.
January 21st, 2007 at 5:51 am
What is a CV? Is this European for Resume?
Edit: Actually it is Latin, and means the same. Résumé on the other hand is French and also European :)
January 24th, 2007 at 9:49 pm
Im new to the web development role and am in the tricky position of having been recruted internally after a restructure. I had a flare for coding but other than that no previous experiance and was lucky to be given the chance and i love it. Im intrested to hear from you all what your tips are for somebody starting out that only has 3 years corporate experiance and no portfolio.
Cheers
Lee.
January 26th, 2007 at 8:36 pm
I find the blog can be the new CV for a web developer. I was contacted about a job simply from my blog. If you think about it, your categories can be your “skills”. Say someone clicks on Microformats on my blog. They can find that not only do I use them, but I’ve been thinking hard about them… things like the overpublishing of hCards and whatnot. It can almost act as a first interview.
Of course, if you can’t talk the talk, this won’t help.
March 3rd, 2007 at 8:03 pm
What social skills do employers require of web developers/designers?
richard
April 13th, 2007 at 6:37 am
^ Richard….
I think what they are looking for there is the ability of a developer to not only “mesh” in with existing employees and office culture but to be able to successfully interact with clients as well.
Don’t want to lose a client (no matter the size) because your developer can’t do anything but write code yet not emails.
May 5th, 2007 at 4:22 am
i really enjoyed reading this article and all the comments. and wanted some advice for my current situation. im a student at a community college and im 23, i had to take a couple semesters off cause of family problems, I should be getting my associates in computer science at the end of the summer. for the past 2 months i have been developing custom sites for local businesses and artists to build a portfolio and make money, i have 2 finished already and im working on 2 others now. my IT teachers at school don’t really know too much about what they are teaching, so i learn a lot from message boards, tutorials, books, etc. i live in area where there aren’t a lot of web jobs. but im close to nyc and philadelphia and would like to get a job in one of those cities and also finish school(get b.s.) there too, or maybe go to art school. i know xhtml, css, xml, flash/actionscript, photoshop, video editing with premiere, some java, and some php. im teaching myself javascript now then ajax next, and want to get better with oop in java and actionscript, and also learn more php. i know how to do a lot of advanced stuff with the programs i do know. i would love to get a job working with mostly just flash, maybe start out as a jr. flash communication server programmer. i have decent gpa 3.4, but i feel as if i really need to make up for my education with a stunning portfolio. im just curious about where i stand given what i know and my situation, would you hire me or not if i applied for a job. any suggestions to what i should put on my CV would help a lot, since i haven’t made one yet. also i hate when people bullshit, so its the last thing i would want to do.
August 7th, 2007 at 2:06 pm
Hi, great post.
I`d like to translate your article to Polish. Let me know if its ok?
August 22nd, 2007 at 8:51 pm
Hi great article but does anyone have any idea what I would write in the ‘qualifications’ bit on a CV if I havn’t yet left school and so not actually got any qualifications yet either? I’m 15 and I want to get a part time job when I turn 16.
August 26th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
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November 3rd, 2007 at 11:36 pm
[...] at wait till I come!, Christian Heilmann recently wrote about how to write a proper CV and get hired as a web developer. He opens with a disclaimer explaining how his tips are really only for prospective web developers [...]
January 15th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
Nice insight from both sides of the fence; especially like the point about not making your prospective colleagues suffer…
February 29th, 2008 at 5:44 am
I understand how it is hard to show off work that you have done for clients. Some workplaces are very strict on ownership of designs and things. Some people may of completly designed and constructed a site that looks terrific and would be a great asset to their portfolio, however if they are working for a company who is strict on ownership etc they can sometimes not be allowed to show this on their portfolio.
Its hard, becase they may be a really good person to have on staff, I think companies who try and stop staff from saying they worked on a project should have a re-think sometimes.
April 2nd, 2008 at 8:16 am
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