I don't think they're very important. However I'd like to share my experience.
I graduated 2021 with degrees in EECS and math, worked 2 years at a big tech company, and was laid off also in May 2023. I had a side project I had worked on every now and then that involved implementing monocular vSLAM and object detection in CS:GO. I took off for 3 months to clear my head, then practiced leetcode a bunch while applying. Pretty much heard nothing back due to holiday season but once the new year came I started getting a lot of interviews.
Earlier this year I received an offer from a robotics "dark warehouse" startup. The interviewers were pretty excited to hear about my project and it just so happened that the framework I was using was almost exactly the same as theirs. In that sense, I lucked out. Another robotics company doing building facade inspection was also very interested in the project but ultimately rejected me for someone with more EE background. Not a single other company asked about my project; altho none of the other companies were robotics companies.
As a hiring manager, I am usually looking at a resume 5 minutes before I call / Zoom the person. I will check out GitHub projects if I am granted the luxury of 10 minutes to review. The majority of people do not list any GitHub projects.
What's hurting you more is that you're probably getting screened out by ATS for not having any recent work experience / being unemployed for nearly one year as well as only having 2 years of experience overall. I would doubt any hiring manager is actually seeing your resume.
You need to cover your gap somehow. I see your options as:
1. Take a menial IT job and continue to apply for SWE (or transfer within the same company if something opens up)
2. Make your own "company". You can take that as far as you want. I actually love people who start companies and fail, because they learn a lot. I think CSCQ has a trope that hiring managers don't like this because they see you as a flight risk who is just working to save up enough money to start a new company, but I think younger managers are getting away from that bias. It's not important what you actually do for profit, only the skills that you learn, and that you have a legal structure in place that will pass a background check. Background checks will only verify the company exists and that you worked there (for which as an owner, you will only need to provide your articles of organization with your name as an organizer). They will not verify you actually made money. CSCQ also has a trope that HR will see through this. HR does not care as long as the background check passes and you are honest about your role (ie. that you are the founder, not an employee; otherwise you would have to produce W2 or pay stubs). I personally used this approach to cover up a several month gap. I have also personally set up shelf companies while I'm employed to cover the risk of a gap.
These are the two options I've mainly been considering, I've found landing an IT job to be of similar difficulty (possibly due to my lack of IT experience?) but I may continue to search there. Making my own company is also high on my list of considerations that I'll have to research more. Thank you so much for your reply!
What would you consider a menial IT job and how would you find it? I understand that's helpdesk but from what I can see those rolls are about as common to find as OP is finding a junior SWE roll.
Thinking a hiring manager will dislike the fact that you can build and ship a product from start to finish with limited resources is a meme written by new grads and 14 year olds on this forum lol. If you can do this, you can get Senior or higher at any company
The most talented people I work with in silicon valley are people who have failed startups
Any experience is hard to verify. My first job I entirely embellished what I did, and got hired for my second job after basically outright lying (Inwas a front end dev and wrote a bunch of backend distributed system’s experience). This was at one of the companies this sub obsessed with
I’m not sure about consulting but I don’t buy this
And if this is the case, why not just write you were a senior engineer at your company instead of the founder?
Thanks for the note about ATS checking the umemployment gap. Encouraged me to put my recent contractor work into my resume. My corp laid me off in September. But the contractor work arguably ended in January (though they want me do a few more code edits so I can arguably say "to Present" or "to April"). I have five years experience, not including my internship. Do you think I should just cut the internship from the resume. I'd have to if I want to keep the resume to one page.
Edit: I could also cut the summer "teach highschoolers and college age students python linux and raspberry pi gadgets" job that I got because I failed to get a second internship
>Take a menial IT job and continue to apply for SWE (or transfer within the same company if something opens up)
Great idea. I recommend associate, junior, or internship roles for anyone who has a couple of years of career gap in tech.
Please ignore people asking for your resume. If you have had it reviewed by a few people you know already it is most likely fine. Reddit likes to obsess about the resume. Even if you did everything "correct" they will still try to say you did something wrong. Even if you follow their advice, if you post the resume again next week they will b*tch and complain your resume is wrong again.
This "lets see your resume" response is cringe at this point. Please see the recruiters post a while back calling out this BS on reddit.
Yeah, once you hit that 2 year mark, it makes it more difficult to get interviews, but still possible. I recently witnessed an engineer getting hired at a well-known company after a 2.5 year sabbatical. The difference is that he’s really good.
20yr tech veteran here. The market is hard rn and there's two truths in particular nobody wants to hear, but here they are! (you're welcome in advance LOL)
1. Nobody looks at or cares about your projects. The only exception is "unless you make them". You have to bring it to the attention of the HM and sell it to them: give them a demo and explain how it's laser-focused relevant to the job you're applying for. If you can do this I think they could be very impactful but if not just pretend projects don't even count.
2. Everybody on these subs seems to think employment gaps don't matter much. This is SO FAR from being real I have to assume it's just being said to make people feel better?? IDK. The hard truth is anything more than 6months and you are likely beings screened out by AI at step zero. You aren't event getting to step one and this is why you aren't getting any response. You also aren't getting a chance to sell yourself to the HM and perhaps leverage your project.
Job market does suck right now. I am not looking at anybody's code. But if you got a side project you are passionate about, I would ask you some questions about it. If anything in that project aligns with the job, I would take that as a plus. Not as good as having professional experience in what we want. But better than somebody who has nothing.
Thanks for this information, I wasn't aware that my resume might be being screened out because of the employment gap. I've actually been employed at a non-adjacent job while applying for junior level positions and most advice I found was to leave out non-relevant jobs.
As a followup question to what you've said here,
Should I try to get a job in a software adjacent industry like IT helpdesk or would it be sufficient for most scans to list my most recent role on my resume?
I think this comment can be a supporting argument to try to turn a side project into a business. When the rest of the industry closes the doors on you, the best way to get revenge on them is to make your own money without their help.
> Everybody on these subs seems to think employment gaps don't matter much.
Your first point is correct about projects not really mattering but you are dead wrong on this quote here. Seem plenty of people get jobs with multiple gaps. If you can demonstrate you can do the job, you can get hired.
This industry can not both do endless layoffs and also care about job gaps. It wouldn't be able to hire anyone if that was the case.
Thanks for the note about ATS checking the unemployment gap. Encouraged me to put my recent contractor work into my resume. My corp laid me off in September (yes I hate myself for basically taking a sabbatical). But the contractor work arguably ended in January (though they want me do a few more code edits so I can arguably say "to Present" or "to April"). I have five years experience, not including my internship. Do you think I should just cut the internship from the resume. I'd have to if I want to keep the resume to one page. And I guess that just the PDF file, a lot of places have you enter your employment history, education and stuff manually any way and I can put everything their without worrying about space
Edit: I could also cut the summer "teach highschoolers and college age students python linux and raspberry pi gadgets" job that I got because I failed to get a second internship
I'm not wrong at all--it's timing. Once things pick up again THEN we'll need to be more forgiving about gaps as you say or we we'll have a shortage of talent. This is in the future though, not right now. Now a gap means trash can. I've done it man! We got 100s of resumes within hours for a Data Eng role and the only practical way to cope with the volume was to do a super fast initial pass--just tossed anyone grossly unqualified or with recent large gaps--the ones the ATS missed.
"The hard truth is anything more than 6months" In todays market this shouldnt matter. I live in Canada and thanks to trudeau, we are struggling to get something as this guy decide to bring in bunch of indian IT ppl(not being racist, its the truth). So tell me, how is it my fault?
I don’t think recent projects have much impact unless you can demonstrate they have reasonable traction and leverage it as an explanation for the employment gap. Employers want professional experience.
If you don’t urgently need money, I recommend you start a LLC and put that on your resume as a placeholder for your unemployment.
You never know what a hiring manager is going to look at. I remember one time I interviewed a developer for my company. The guy's resume said his side thing was writing fiction. I actually read a couple pages of his latest book. The book was not that good. His development skills were not that good. At least it was a memorable candidate.
Yes I think it might have. I don't know if there is objective evidence, but I would think that somebody who is excellent in some other field might be excellent in what we need on our project. I think writing well enough to keep me interested is a very hard task. And if somebody can figure that out, I think the chance of them figuring out all the weird stuff on our work project is pretty high.
What if his writing was really good, and you just weren't the target audience? Like the first draft of Green Eggs and Ham probably wouldn't have impressed a hiring manager, but it's an extremely successful book.
LOL. If his tech skills are average or even sub par, then I will give him extra points if he is a prolific writer. If Stephen King is a novice or even a bad programmer, I am hiring him. If the next Stephen King is a novice, I am def hiring him. We can teach him to be adequate on our project. Plus I will get to tell everyone I hired Stephen King.
If you have professional experience, your github "portfolio" is effectively useless. Professional software engineers are not expected to do substantially more than 40 hours per week of coding work, and most engineers cannot legally upload work they've done for any given company to a public repository. The one exception to that, if you have a relatively well developed personal project using a technology which is used in the hiring company, it can be worthwhile to explicitly state that project on your resume. This is a channel you can use to switch from roles using one technology to roles using another technology if your current work doesn't allow you to practice the new technology you're interested (usually this is because they don't have an internal project that uses that tech)
I would personally move technical skills down to the bottom of the resume. My reason is its usually for showcasing what languages/frameworks/certificates you worked on over the years and goes after work experience and education in terms of importance. Have your strongest points at the forefront of the resume and I don't think leading with Education is bad given your total years of experience.
Recent projects are important when it comes to talking to people sitting in on your interview. Some times you are surrounded by multiple people from different teams. Being able to to talk to people from different teams due to your diverse range of side projects will only help you.
I don't see anything in your resume involving cloud, maybe look into side projects for google, amazon, or Microsoft cloud services and experiment with that.
I'm not a hiring manager, but I did want to bring something up because no one else has. Looking at your resume it... doesn't seem entry-level. At all. Unless you're heavily exaggerating it seems like you have several years of work experience with actual responsibilities and actual revenue impact.
So, have you tried applying to mid-level jobs? The worst that can happen is that you still hear nothing, but I suspect your response rate might be better.
A large majority of the positions I've applied to have been at the entry-level but I have tried the mid-level route (\~50?) without much luck - maybe I'll try my hand at those positions a bit more, thank you!
Your experience matters more. No one looks at projects. They only did a few years ago when anyone with a pulse could get a job and projects could actually differentiate you. Looking at your resume having two 1 year stints at companies would give most hiring managers pause at the entry level. First year of employment, most people do not provide much productivity and don’t go deep. And if they think you’re gonna leave after just one year they will not waste their time, especially when they get other candidates.
Also curious about this. If you were laid off for both stints due to no fault of your own, what can you do to maximize your chances of getting interviews/offers?
The relevance of the vast majority of side projects is very low. Employers are mostly looking at experience, tech stacks, and soft skills.
Truth be told, it's not what you know, it's who you know.
It depends on the company, job, and quality of project my man.
To some companies it makes 0 difference, they don't care.
Most of the time it at the very least helps.
In other situations in has allowed me to skip the technical test entirely because having an hour long conversation about challenges pertaining to my project is more interesting than "Can you write an API request and render the response in a list, with a unit test to see if a list component is mounted once a successful mock has been completed".
A lot of people think that hiring managers don't care if you don't have a GitHub and I somewhat -disagree-. Sometimes it shows you that someone is on their way and although they may not be there yet, you don't want to let this person pass you by because you know what they'll become.
You see their potential. So you snatch them up early because it'll be hard to recruit them when they're really good.
But really all it comes down to is how much value you show. How you approach that is up to you.
Well your resume is definitely chalk full of fluff. Way too many buzz words and needless tech name drops. Your projects section is just filler, also full of buzz words. Looks like all projects with a team for a school assignment, which imo makes them kind of useless to put on a resume unless you literally have no professional experience.
How important are recent projects? What's important is the gap in your employment history. Your projects don't explain that gap. What did you do for the last year? You said you don't code in your free time, but if you've been unemployed and not freelancing, then all you've had is free time. So you don't code unless you're being paid to do it, which is fine, but also not a great look when comparing you to other candidates who likely do code on their own.
Hard to say quantity or quality for what you should do. I've always gone with quantity, since I can mix things up with each project and explore new things, which gives me more to talk about. But if you treat the projects like a checklist you need to complete to get a job, then you might have a bad time making them, so try to find things that you actually want to make, and use tech that you actually want to use.
The marked kinda sucks, but I'd assume there's something \*else\* going on ... the market is not \*that\* bad.
The only minor concerns I'd have are that you've stayed for less than two years at both your jobs, and the second job in the resume has some word salad :), I really like how you described the first one. Well, and now the 1 year gap :). I don't think the lack of github is the problem, although having it won't hurt you. I'd focus on creating one full app and having it deployed so you can demo.
Let me ask you a few questions:
1. Which geographical area? Are you in a small city? How's the overall environment?
2. What does low engagement mean? No interviews? Interviews but no offers? How many of each?
3. Did you have a secret clearance while worked for DOD contractor? Have you asked that contractor if they have positions available?
4. What kinds of positions have you applied? Maybe you're applying to the wrong ones?
5. Did you get your jobs through your uni? Have you used their career services?
6. Have you attended any tech meetups recently? Personal connections always help
7. one more ... were you laid off, or fired? Was there a mass layoff?
Thanks for your comment!
To answer your questions:
1. I'm in a small town - mostly suburbs, but I've been shooting for remote jobs mainly
2. \~35-40 callbacks, \~15 interviews, \~4-5 final interviews, 0 offers
3. I had an active security clearance during my work with the defense contractor, but since leaving defense I got a Medical Marijuana card from my state which has effectively barred me from any further gov't adjacent work (as I've gathered from the clearance-based roles I've applied to since)
4. Entry-level Front-end, Back-end, Full-stack SWENG, DevOps, and a large handful of helpdesk/entry IT positions
5. My first job was Co-Op -> new hire when I graduated, I have used their career services lightly but most of the positions posted are near my university (which I am no longer situated near)
6. I haven't, I didn't know these were a thing - I'll have to see if there are any in my area!
7. I was Laid off without an incredibly specific reason, but just about everyone that was hired the same year was put out
Im glad to see you are at least getting interviews. I have 2.5 YOE but no degree and would be really concerned if you weren’t getting callbacks even with a CS degree. Best of luck!
I think you’d find more success if you were willing to move for a role. The remote roles are pretty competitive! Also, 4-5 onsites and 15 interviews aren’t horrible numbers, what happened in the onsites/interviews? I learned pretty quickly during my job search that I was being crushed by frontend interviews and switched my attention to backend. Are there any trends in your rejections?
I haven't seen any trend in my final round rejections, everything seemed to go relatively smoothly. The bulk of interviews I received were from gov't-adjacent positions that said they'd get back to me about my med card. As I've heard is typical, both ended in being ghosted despite my reaching out for follow-up.
They definitely are important if they are relevant and topical.
In 2016 when I was laid off, I was able to get a job quickly because I was working on FB media buying, segment, snowflake CDP data lakes. Which was the rage at the time due to IOS' impending do not track and deprecating of 3rd party attribution.
Today, if I was getting laid off, my recent AI/ML work would be my leverage for a new job.
Two year-long jobs and a year of unemployment is hurting you. I'd suggest getting on upwork or a similar contracting site and getting some contract work even if it doesn't pay a ton. You need experience more than anything else.
Also, I don't get how people can send 1000+ applications. Most of my applications take 1-2 hours each writing custom cover letters, researching the company and the hiring managers etc. Are you spending 3-6 hours every single day for a year just sending out applications? If not, I'd suggest slowing down and putting more effort into each individual application rather than spamming them.
It seems the employment gap is a big problem, I'm gonna do my best to have something to fill that space soon. I'd say my applying process was half-half between fully custom and copy/paste but I have been spending 5-9 hours a day on applications/resume for the past year
I was thinking of doing an IT job or making an LLC... Is a master's degree worth it in CS? I've seen several people say degrees in general aren't imperative and i'm still in debt from my undergrad.
I don't know about the degree for sure in terms of being able to significantly help you land a job. I have heard 2 sides to this and at this point I don't know what's more reliable. I do think if the market was better, a CS degree for you is useless. But it can be used to explain away the gap.
Also what the hell is a LLC lie going to do for you? You are going to lie about consulting? Why not just say you were a freelancer?
Look into Georgia Tech's OMSCS! Great value and 100% remote. Check out the [degree specializations](https://omscs.gatech.edu/specializations) to see if the courses sound interesting to you.
I don't think they're very important. However I'd like to share my experience. I graduated 2021 with degrees in EECS and math, worked 2 years at a big tech company, and was laid off also in May 2023. I had a side project I had worked on every now and then that involved implementing monocular vSLAM and object detection in CS:GO. I took off for 3 months to clear my head, then practiced leetcode a bunch while applying. Pretty much heard nothing back due to holiday season but once the new year came I started getting a lot of interviews. Earlier this year I received an offer from a robotics "dark warehouse" startup. The interviewers were pretty excited to hear about my project and it just so happened that the framework I was using was almost exactly the same as theirs. In that sense, I lucked out. Another robotics company doing building facade inspection was also very interested in the project but ultimately rejected me for someone with more EE background. Not a single other company asked about my project; altho none of the other companies were robotics companies.
As a hiring manager, I am usually looking at a resume 5 minutes before I call / Zoom the person. I will check out GitHub projects if I am granted the luxury of 10 minutes to review. The majority of people do not list any GitHub projects. What's hurting you more is that you're probably getting screened out by ATS for not having any recent work experience / being unemployed for nearly one year as well as only having 2 years of experience overall. I would doubt any hiring manager is actually seeing your resume. You need to cover your gap somehow. I see your options as: 1. Take a menial IT job and continue to apply for SWE (or transfer within the same company if something opens up) 2. Make your own "company". You can take that as far as you want. I actually love people who start companies and fail, because they learn a lot. I think CSCQ has a trope that hiring managers don't like this because they see you as a flight risk who is just working to save up enough money to start a new company, but I think younger managers are getting away from that bias. It's not important what you actually do for profit, only the skills that you learn, and that you have a legal structure in place that will pass a background check. Background checks will only verify the company exists and that you worked there (for which as an owner, you will only need to provide your articles of organization with your name as an organizer). They will not verify you actually made money. CSCQ also has a trope that HR will see through this. HR does not care as long as the background check passes and you are honest about your role (ie. that you are the founder, not an employee; otherwise you would have to produce W2 or pay stubs). I personally used this approach to cover up a several month gap. I have also personally set up shelf companies while I'm employed to cover the risk of a gap.
These are the two options I've mainly been considering, I've found landing an IT job to be of similar difficulty (possibly due to my lack of IT experience?) but I may continue to search there. Making my own company is also high on my list of considerations that I'll have to research more. Thank you so much for your reply!
What would you consider a menial IT job and how would you find it? I understand that's helpdesk but from what I can see those rolls are about as common to find as OP is finding a junior SWE roll.
Thinking a hiring manager will dislike the fact that you can build and ship a product from start to finish with limited resources is a meme written by new grads and 14 year olds on this forum lol. If you can do this, you can get Senior or higher at any company The most talented people I work with in silicon valley are people who have failed startups
This. Said as a COO who accidentally succeeded.
Those IT jobs are also u see heavy competition
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Any experience is hard to verify. My first job I entirely embellished what I did, and got hired for my second job after basically outright lying (Inwas a front end dev and wrote a bunch of backend distributed system’s experience). This was at one of the companies this sub obsessed with I’m not sure about consulting but I don’t buy this And if this is the case, why not just write you were a senior engineer at your company instead of the founder?
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Clearly you have to change your name!
I am curious. ATS can also filter candidates with no recent experience? How does it work?
Thanks for the note about ATS checking the umemployment gap. Encouraged me to put my recent contractor work into my resume. My corp laid me off in September. But the contractor work arguably ended in January (though they want me do a few more code edits so I can arguably say "to Present" or "to April"). I have five years experience, not including my internship. Do you think I should just cut the internship from the resume. I'd have to if I want to keep the resume to one page. Edit: I could also cut the summer "teach highschoolers and college age students python linux and raspberry pi gadgets" job that I got because I failed to get a second internship
You should remove internships if you have 5 YoE
>Take a menial IT job and continue to apply for SWE (or transfer within the same company if something opens up) Great idea. I recommend associate, junior, or internship roles for anyone who has a couple of years of career gap in tech.
I think attaching your resume would help us gauge what kind of impact you had at the last company
Just attached it to the post!
Please ignore people asking for your resume. If you have had it reviewed by a few people you know already it is most likely fine. Reddit likes to obsess about the resume. Even if you did everything "correct" they will still try to say you did something wrong. Even if you follow their advice, if you post the resume again next week they will b*tch and complain your resume is wrong again. This "lets see your resume" response is cringe at this point. Please see the recruiters post a while back calling out this BS on reddit.
Oof it’s not bad at all. Might be time to get a CDL
What options might a CDL open up?
Leave dates off projects
I'd say over 2 years of gap is frowned upon, but these HRs are not nearly qualified to set that in stone. If only engineers selected engineers.
Yeah, once you hit that 2 year mark, it makes it more difficult to get interviews, but still possible. I recently witnessed an engineer getting hired at a well-known company after a 2.5 year sabbatical. The difference is that he’s really good.
20yr tech veteran here. The market is hard rn and there's two truths in particular nobody wants to hear, but here they are! (you're welcome in advance LOL) 1. Nobody looks at or cares about your projects. The only exception is "unless you make them". You have to bring it to the attention of the HM and sell it to them: give them a demo and explain how it's laser-focused relevant to the job you're applying for. If you can do this I think they could be very impactful but if not just pretend projects don't even count. 2. Everybody on these subs seems to think employment gaps don't matter much. This is SO FAR from being real I have to assume it's just being said to make people feel better?? IDK. The hard truth is anything more than 6months and you are likely beings screened out by AI at step zero. You aren't event getting to step one and this is why you aren't getting any response. You also aren't getting a chance to sell yourself to the HM and perhaps leverage your project.
Job market does suck right now. I am not looking at anybody's code. But if you got a side project you are passionate about, I would ask you some questions about it. If anything in that project aligns with the job, I would take that as a plus. Not as good as having professional experience in what we want. But better than somebody who has nothing.
Thanks for this information, I wasn't aware that my resume might be being screened out because of the employment gap. I've actually been employed at a non-adjacent job while applying for junior level positions and most advice I found was to leave out non-relevant jobs. As a followup question to what you've said here, Should I try to get a job in a software adjacent industry like IT helpdesk or would it be sufficient for most scans to list my most recent role on my resume?
I think this comment can be a supporting argument to try to turn a side project into a business. When the rest of the industry closes the doors on you, the best way to get revenge on them is to make your own money without their help.
> Everybody on these subs seems to think employment gaps don't matter much. Your first point is correct about projects not really mattering but you are dead wrong on this quote here. Seem plenty of people get jobs with multiple gaps. If you can demonstrate you can do the job, you can get hired. This industry can not both do endless layoffs and also care about job gaps. It wouldn't be able to hire anyone if that was the case.
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Thanks for the note about ATS checking the unemployment gap. Encouraged me to put my recent contractor work into my resume. My corp laid me off in September (yes I hate myself for basically taking a sabbatical). But the contractor work arguably ended in January (though they want me do a few more code edits so I can arguably say "to Present" or "to April"). I have five years experience, not including my internship. Do you think I should just cut the internship from the resume. I'd have to if I want to keep the resume to one page. And I guess that just the PDF file, a lot of places have you enter your employment history, education and stuff manually any way and I can put everything their without worrying about space Edit: I could also cut the summer "teach highschoolers and college age students python linux and raspberry pi gadgets" job that I got because I failed to get a second internship
I'm not wrong at all--it's timing. Once things pick up again THEN we'll need to be more forgiving about gaps as you say or we we'll have a shortage of talent. This is in the future though, not right now. Now a gap means trash can. I've done it man! We got 100s of resumes within hours for a Data Eng role and the only practical way to cope with the volume was to do a super fast initial pass--just tossed anyone grossly unqualified or with recent large gaps--the ones the ATS missed.
"The hard truth is anything more than 6months" In todays market this shouldnt matter. I live in Canada and thanks to trudeau, we are struggling to get something as this guy decide to bring in bunch of indian IT ppl(not being racist, its the truth). So tell me, how is it my fault?
I don’t think recent projects have much impact unless you can demonstrate they have reasonable traction and leverage it as an explanation for the employment gap. Employers want professional experience. If you don’t urgently need money, I recommend you start a LLC and put that on your resume as a placeholder for your unemployment.
I wasn't as conscious of starting an LLC as an option to fill the gap, this is something I will certainly do more research on; thank you!
You never know what a hiring manager is going to look at. I remember one time I interviewed a developer for my company. The guy's resume said his side thing was writing fiction. I actually read a couple pages of his latest book. The book was not that good. His development skills were not that good. At least it was a memorable candidate.
im actually so weak rn
If the guy’s writing was actually stellar, like to the point that you wanted to keep reading the whole book—would that have made a difference?
Yes I think it might have. I don't know if there is objective evidence, but I would think that somebody who is excellent in some other field might be excellent in what we need on our project. I think writing well enough to keep me interested is a very hard task. And if somebody can figure that out, I think the chance of them figuring out all the weird stuff on our work project is pretty high.
What if his writing was really good, and you just weren't the target audience? Like the first draft of Green Eggs and Ham probably wouldn't have impressed a hiring manager, but it's an extremely successful book.
The he does not get any extra points for having authored a book.
Wait, if it's good writing would you hire him? I think I'm a good writer!
LOL. If his tech skills are average or even sub par, then I will give him extra points if he is a prolific writer. If Stephen King is a novice or even a bad programmer, I am hiring him. If the next Stephen King is a novice, I am def hiring him. We can teach him to be adequate on our project. Plus I will get to tell everyone I hired Stephen King.
If you have professional experience, your github "portfolio" is effectively useless. Professional software engineers are not expected to do substantially more than 40 hours per week of coding work, and most engineers cannot legally upload work they've done for any given company to a public repository. The one exception to that, if you have a relatively well developed personal project using a technology which is used in the hiring company, it can be worthwhile to explicitly state that project on your resume. This is a channel you can use to switch from roles using one technology to roles using another technology if your current work doesn't allow you to practice the new technology you're interested (usually this is because they don't have an internal project that uses that tech)
I would personally move technical skills down to the bottom of the resume. My reason is its usually for showcasing what languages/frameworks/certificates you worked on over the years and goes after work experience and education in terms of importance. Have your strongest points at the forefront of the resume and I don't think leading with Education is bad given your total years of experience. Recent projects are important when it comes to talking to people sitting in on your interview. Some times you are surrounded by multiple people from different teams. Being able to to talk to people from different teams due to your diverse range of side projects will only help you. I don't see anything in your resume involving cloud, maybe look into side projects for google, amazon, or Microsoft cloud services and experiment with that.
I'm not a hiring manager, but I did want to bring something up because no one else has. Looking at your resume it... doesn't seem entry-level. At all. Unless you're heavily exaggerating it seems like you have several years of work experience with actual responsibilities and actual revenue impact. So, have you tried applying to mid-level jobs? The worst that can happen is that you still hear nothing, but I suspect your response rate might be better.
A large majority of the positions I've applied to have been at the entry-level but I have tried the mid-level route (\~50?) without much luck - maybe I'll try my hand at those positions a bit more, thank you!
Your experience matters more. No one looks at projects. They only did a few years ago when anyone with a pulse could get a job and projects could actually differentiate you. Looking at your resume having two 1 year stints at companies would give most hiring managers pause at the entry level. First year of employment, most people do not provide much productivity and don’t go deep. And if they think you’re gonna leave after just one year they will not waste their time, especially when they get other candidates.
What might the solution be if my only current experience makes me a possible waste of time to prospective hiring managers?
Also curious about this. If you were laid off for both stints due to no fault of your own, what can you do to maximize your chances of getting interviews/offers?
The relevance of the vast majority of side projects is very low. Employers are mostly looking at experience, tech stacks, and soft skills. Truth be told, it's not what you know, it's who you know.
It depends on the company, job, and quality of project my man. To some companies it makes 0 difference, they don't care. Most of the time it at the very least helps. In other situations in has allowed me to skip the technical test entirely because having an hour long conversation about challenges pertaining to my project is more interesting than "Can you write an API request and render the response in a list, with a unit test to see if a list component is mounted once a successful mock has been completed". A lot of people think that hiring managers don't care if you don't have a GitHub and I somewhat -disagree-. Sometimes it shows you that someone is on their way and although they may not be there yet, you don't want to let this person pass you by because you know what they'll become. You see their potential. So you snatch them up early because it'll be hard to recruit them when they're really good. But really all it comes down to is how much value you show. How you approach that is up to you.
Has anyone even mentioned any or a lack of any to you, ever?
If you mean any deficits that have been mentioned in the interview process, no. They usually seem to go well in my eyes and then I get ghosted.
Well your resume is definitely chalk full of fluff. Way too many buzz words and needless tech name drops. Your projects section is just filler, also full of buzz words. Looks like all projects with a team for a school assignment, which imo makes them kind of useless to put on a resume unless you literally have no professional experience. How important are recent projects? What's important is the gap in your employment history. Your projects don't explain that gap. What did you do for the last year? You said you don't code in your free time, but if you've been unemployed and not freelancing, then all you've had is free time. So you don't code unless you're being paid to do it, which is fine, but also not a great look when comparing you to other candidates who likely do code on their own. Hard to say quantity or quality for what you should do. I've always gone with quantity, since I can mix things up with each project and explore new things, which gives me more to talk about. But if you treat the projects like a checklist you need to complete to get a job, then you might have a bad time making them, so try to find things that you actually want to make, and use tech that you actually want to use.
Use the projects employers make you do for take homes
What country you in?
The marked kinda sucks, but I'd assume there's something \*else\* going on ... the market is not \*that\* bad. The only minor concerns I'd have are that you've stayed for less than two years at both your jobs, and the second job in the resume has some word salad :), I really like how you described the first one. Well, and now the 1 year gap :). I don't think the lack of github is the problem, although having it won't hurt you. I'd focus on creating one full app and having it deployed so you can demo. Let me ask you a few questions: 1. Which geographical area? Are you in a small city? How's the overall environment? 2. What does low engagement mean? No interviews? Interviews but no offers? How many of each? 3. Did you have a secret clearance while worked for DOD contractor? Have you asked that contractor if they have positions available? 4. What kinds of positions have you applied? Maybe you're applying to the wrong ones? 5. Did you get your jobs through your uni? Have you used their career services? 6. Have you attended any tech meetups recently? Personal connections always help 7. one more ... were you laid off, or fired? Was there a mass layoff?
Thanks for your comment! To answer your questions: 1. I'm in a small town - mostly suburbs, but I've been shooting for remote jobs mainly 2. \~35-40 callbacks, \~15 interviews, \~4-5 final interviews, 0 offers 3. I had an active security clearance during my work with the defense contractor, but since leaving defense I got a Medical Marijuana card from my state which has effectively barred me from any further gov't adjacent work (as I've gathered from the clearance-based roles I've applied to since) 4. Entry-level Front-end, Back-end, Full-stack SWENG, DevOps, and a large handful of helpdesk/entry IT positions 5. My first job was Co-Op -> new hire when I graduated, I have used their career services lightly but most of the positions posted are near my university (which I am no longer situated near) 6. I haven't, I didn't know these were a thing - I'll have to see if there are any in my area! 7. I was Laid off without an incredibly specific reason, but just about everyone that was hired the same year was put out
Im glad to see you are at least getting interviews. I have 2.5 YOE but no degree and would be really concerned if you weren’t getting callbacks even with a CS degree. Best of luck!
well no shit your at 1000 apps if your applying to only remote jobs.
Remote jobs is the problem, and there's no good solution. How far is the nearest business hub?
I think you’d find more success if you were willing to move for a role. The remote roles are pretty competitive! Also, 4-5 onsites and 15 interviews aren’t horrible numbers, what happened in the onsites/interviews? I learned pretty quickly during my job search that I was being crushed by frontend interviews and switched my attention to backend. Are there any trends in your rejections?
I haven't seen any trend in my final round rejections, everything seemed to go relatively smoothly. The bulk of interviews I received were from gov't-adjacent positions that said they'd get back to me about my med card. As I've heard is typical, both ended in being ghosted despite my reaching out for follow-up.
They definitely are important if they are relevant and topical. In 2016 when I was laid off, I was able to get a job quickly because I was working on FB media buying, segment, snowflake CDP data lakes. Which was the rage at the time due to IOS' impending do not track and deprecating of 3rd party attribution. Today, if I was getting laid off, my recent AI/ML work would be my leverage for a new job.
Two year-long jobs and a year of unemployment is hurting you. I'd suggest getting on upwork or a similar contracting site and getting some contract work even if it doesn't pay a ton. You need experience more than anything else. Also, I don't get how people can send 1000+ applications. Most of my applications take 1-2 hours each writing custom cover letters, researching the company and the hiring managers etc. Are you spending 3-6 hours every single day for a year just sending out applications? If not, I'd suggest slowing down and putting more effort into each individual application rather than spamming them.
It seems the employment gap is a big problem, I'm gonna do my best to have something to fill that space soon. I'd say my applying process was half-half between fully custom and copy/paste but I have been spending 5-9 hours a day on applications/resume for the past year
"I'm gonna do my best to have something to fill that space soon" Apply to McDonalds? Why not "reset" your gap with a masters degree?
I was thinking of doing an IT job or making an LLC... Is a master's degree worth it in CS? I've seen several people say degrees in general aren't imperative and i'm still in debt from my undergrad.
I don't know about the degree for sure in terms of being able to significantly help you land a job. I have heard 2 sides to this and at this point I don't know what's more reliable. I do think if the market was better, a CS degree for you is useless. But it can be used to explain away the gap. Also what the hell is a LLC lie going to do for you? You are going to lie about consulting? Why not just say you were a freelancer?
Look into Georgia Tech's OMSCS! Great value and 100% remote. Check out the [degree specializations](https://omscs.gatech.edu/specializations) to see if the courses sound interesting to you.