In July and August of 2006, I held a professional, in-depth job search for a new student web worker. After I had hired the position, I informed the others that applied what I had looked for, where to improve, etc.

Likely, I should follow these too!

Email

Below is a list of what I looked for and liked when looking at your many submissions. I personally dislike that employers do not give me a clue what it was that I was missing, so here are mine!

Note: I am doing this out of the niceness of my heart in my personal time, so please keep negative vibes to yourself. Keep in mind that these are the criteria for THIS SPECIFIC JOB, and MY SPECIFIC PREFERENCES. Don’t use this as a catch-all for other types of jobs. I just want to give you some feedback as to what I looked for. I am a young, enthusiastic, forward-looking individual. All hirers are not.

List

- Followed directions. Some of you simply did not put “student employee” in the subject of the email. Also, many of you did not include a website for me to look at.

- Applicant writes and expresses good English. “i have question, how i submit resume?” Sentences like this are an IMMEDIATE turn-off. Try something more complete: “I have a question for you. How would you like me to submit my resume?”

- Applicant is versed in NEW web skills, not just html. XHTML, CSS, and PHP are waves of the webs future. Make sure you actually know a skill, before adding it to your resume.

- Quickness. People replying in the first 2 days with all requested materials, were prime candidates.

- Purchase and run your own domain / website. Instead of me seeing http://www.umbc.edu/~liber4, pay $5 a month and get a site like www.liberty4.com . It is professional, shows you truly know how to work with the raw web, and that the web is your passion.

- Spend time on your example websites. I look at the initial visual impression, and then I immediately inspect the source code to see how pretty and organized it is. I like well groomed, well commented source code. Even in html! If there is no indentations or the code looks like it has been auto generated, it is not a good sign to me. Some auto generated code is pretty though... a sign of a good Content Management System (CMS).

- Pretty, online (on a webpage) resumes are impressive. Do them with a wiki and its super easy to upkeep. Whats a wiki? Look it up, they are important.

- Resumes that are not too specific. I do not know what the acronym S.P.O.R.A.T.A. at Systems Analysis Inc is. Generalize the description or insert key words. Emphasize your technical skill keywords and make it easy for me to skim to find them. I like lists for easy to find keywords. Ex: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, XHTML, C++, PHP

- No 2 mile long resumes. I get the idea that some employers prefer 1 page, some prefer more, some don’t care. I don’t mind 2 or even 3 pages, but anything more is too much.

- I requested code examples from some of you. In the code that you gave me, I looked primarily for GOOD COMMENTING, DOCUMENTATION and ORGANIZATION. I didn’t run any of it, nor try to deeply understand it. I want to be able to read it for 5 minutes and know an overview of what the entire program does. This is what is needed in the real world. Your program might not work, but if it is well documented, any programmer can come and fix it correctly much faster.

 
blog/job_search_tips_for_web_devs.txt · Last modified: 09.29.2008 16:41 by nyeates1
 
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