Top CV Tips For Developers

Jack Such our Senior Technology Recruiter gives his tips on how IT Developers can write the best CV to help them get their next IT Developer role!

Check out these great tips below!

Detailed Information On Technical Skills

Every day, our Tech recruitment team are reviewing countless CVs from candidates who are searching for a new opportunity. In a competitive field such as Software or Development, where strong experience or knowledge in one particularly language or framework can be the difference between you securing your dream job, it’s never been more important to clearly outline your technical skills. All too often, our team are asked for CV feedback and upon review, a major issue is the lack of clarity when defining your technical skills. Despite what you would expect, including every language or framework you have ever read up on actually creates a negative opinion in the eyes of a hiring manager. Specific detail should be the core framework for how you build your CV.

Let me demonstrate with a brief example…

*Weaker Technical Profile*

Technical Skills

Front End -          HTML, CSS, JavaScript (& Frameworks)

Back End -           C#, .Net

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 

*Stronger Technical Profile*

Technical Skills

Front End -          HTML (5 years exp), CSS (5 years exp), JavaScript (5 years experience) with React (2 years exp) & Angular (1 years exp)

Back End -           C# (10 years exp), .Net (10 years exp)

Through the application of a small tweak and including the physical years of experience to a technical skillset, your CV immediately becomes a stronger profile and representation of you. Listing pages and pages of technical languages, methodologies, cloud tech and more without hands on, commercial experience often works against the candidate.

Concise and accurate information in your CV will always be the way to stand out from the crowd.

An Honest & Passionate Profile or Personal Statement

As much as your CV needs to sell yourself, it needs to be honest and true to what you as an individual are passionate about. The process of finding a new role is as much about finding where you see your career heading, what is important culturally for you and finding a business which encompasses these. With the cultural aspect of a business and your long term aspirations being such a major part in your search for a new role, it’s a surprise to see so little profiles or personal statements in CVs offer any insight into this.

Let’s say you’re a Senior Software Engineer and you see yourself moving into a Technical Lead role in which you will offer your expertise to manage a team. This must be included in your opening profile to ensure you are demonstrating your aspirations. An example being,

‘It has always been my goal to combine my technical ability with my managerial bias to transition into a Technical Lead position’.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s likely you will have this conversation with your recruiter or as part of the interview process, but why give yourself the opportunity to not sell yourself and your ambition?

A common example is often seen when recruiting Full Stack Developers. As part of our recruitment process, we will always have open conversations with our candidates to discover what they see as their strongest technical stance. Often, this conversation results in the candidate revealing they have a particular bias towards either Front or Back End development. Considering the creation of your CV is based around securing your ideal next role, inclusion of such detail in your profile would allow you to ensure that any potential interview with a business is true to what you expect and allows you to progress into a role which embodies all for which you are passionate about.

Real Life Implications To YOUR Coding

Do not fall into the trap of focusing on the end team result. That may sound a strange comment to make, and I’m certainly not saying to discredit the end project results, but a direct way to stand out from the crowd when searching for your next development role is to focus on the core of what YOU have done and what YOU have achieved. Long paragraphs explaining what the business does as opposed to what languages you work on and what you have achieved will not set you apart.

Instead, focus on:

The key word to all the above, YOU.

Ask For Feedback On Your CV From Friends & Colleagues

Despite all the advice you can find on CV writing, the hard truth is that CVs are entirely subjective. Yes; you can organise your CV into a strong, fluent structure with well worded and accurate descriptions, but there will always be a hiring manager out in the world who disagrees with the way you’ve arranged your CV. With this in mind, utilise your network of friends and family to ask for their opinions. Reach out to your chosen recruiter and ask for advice – here at The Candidate, we will always support our candidates and give our honest advice. It’s completely understandable that often, candidates have to throw a CV together as quickly as possible due to many reasons (redundancy, change in circumstances, finding their dream role advertised), but a rushed CV is rarely a stand out CV. Ensuring you’ve had several people review your CV gives you the jump above the competition in that you will have already had the opportunity to make tweaks to suit the personalities and styles of potential readers.

Remember, building a strong CV is all about showcasing yourself and giving yourself the best opportunity to secure your dream role. Take all the opportunities that are given to you in order to help stand out your CV when you apply for your next Development job.