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Ask HN: Would you hire me (passionate hobbyist programmer) to a dev position?
11–20 of 105 posts
Re: Ask HN: Would you hire me (passionate hobbyist programmer) to a dev position?
#12Since you present your resume in code, I would have to take that into consideration. Your front-end skills are a good start, but I wouldn't hire you based on them alone. I honestly think you're putting yourself at risk but giving a potential employer the code of your resume to judge you by. The outcome is not as pretty as if you just created a standard resume, and I don't know that most people hiring would get that.
Piggy backing off of this, I have an invite to https://careers.stackoverflow.com/ if you'd like to set up your resume there. I set up mine there and it's gotten me a lot of interviews.
Re: Ask HN: Would you hire me (passionate hobbyist programmer) to a dev position?
#13I would suggest some changes to your resume, mainly to bring out your programming skills and expertise and then to highlight that you have significant work experience with system engineering so you are not a neophyte and can actually add something "else" to your team.
Starting with the Summary, I would change from "Expert Systems Engineer with a passion for programming seeking an entry level development position in a fast paced environment that will leverage my existing self-taught skills and provide and opporunity to grow as a developer." to
"Passinate programmer with a history of custom software development and systems engineering ...etc"
Good luck!
Re: Ask HN: Would you hire me (passionate hobbyist programmer) to a dev position?
#14Yes
Re: Ask HN: Would you hire me (passionate hobbyist programmer) to a dev position?
#15The company I work for isn't set up to incorporate remote workers, so no.
That reasoning is pretty much entirely about my companies position, and not your strength as a job candidate. Similar reasoning happens at tons of other companies. I'd recommend sending out 100-200 applications to see if you can find a company that's in a position to hire someone like you. It's a fairly cheap way of getting information.
Re: Ask HN: Would you hire me (passionate hobbyist programmer) to a dev position?
#16Honestly, it has an amateurish/outdated look to me. I think you'd be better off creating a nicely formatted, simple PDF. Either that or just make the page look more modern.
Also, keep information short but impressive.
Startup founders and HR people tend to be very short on time and will most certainly not go through a wall of text just to figure out if you're good or not.
Your resume should make people interested in your skills and curious how you got there.
Once you have an interview you can still tell them all your additional information.
Furthermore: there's a cool open source project called json-resume that separates your resume data from design: https://jsonresume.org/themes/
Re: Ask HN: Would you hire me (passionate hobbyist programmer) to a dev position?
#17Since you present your resume in code, I would have to take that into consideration. Your front-end skills are a good start, but I wouldn't hire you based on them alone. I honestly think you're putting yourself at risk but giving a potential employer the code of your resume to judge you by. The outcome is not as pretty as if you just created a standard resume, and I don't know that most people hiring would get that.
To put it more bluntly, this resume is really just not very visually pleasing. I definitely wouldn't recommend drawing so much attention to your HTML/CSS skills unless they're really outstanding. And even then, going through Codepen is unnecessary because anybody who's going to be evaluating your front end code knows how to open the console and look at your code anyway.
isn't there a distinction to be made between design skills and coding ability though?
Re: Ask HN: Would you hire me (passionate hobbyist programmer) to a dev position?
#18Honestly, it has an amateurish/outdated look to me. I think you'd be better off creating a nicely formatted, simple PDF. Either that or just make the page look more modern.
Also, keep information short but impressive. Startup founders and HR people tend to be very short on time and will most certainly not go through a wall of text just to figure out if you're good or not. Your resume should make people interested in your skills and curious how you got there. Once you have an interview you can still tell them all your additional information. Furthermore: there's a cool open source projec…
>Your resume should make people interested in your skills and curious how you got there.
this is a great point. I actually tried to accomplish this with the skills highlight section, but since you mention it maybe i did not.
edit: thanks for the link. I'll check that out.
Re: Ask HN: Would you hire me (passionate hobbyist programmer) to a dev position?
#19Would I? No, there's a few too many typos. Exempting them, it'd be the sort of resume I'd accept for filling an intern or temporary single project position, potentially leading to full-time.
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Re: Ask HN: Would you hire me (passionate hobbyist programmer) to a dev position?
#20You'd have to look for an opporunity elsewhere :(