For software engineers, even all the extracurricular software activities is useless! Its like sure maybe have a public github, but the only endgame from actually contributing to a project is just an imagination that you'll stand out for a recruiter to actually say hello. It doesn't give you a leg up on any hiring manager decision, you have to solve the silly algorithm problems, system design and behavior interview just like everyone else!
The recruiter was already open to saying hello just because you said you can code for other people.
Not sure I agree with this one. Over the last few years, I've had tons of consulting work purely from my activity in the OSS ecosystem. I also got my last two jobs because of my activity in the OSS ecosystem. "... I saw your GH profile and noticed you have significant contributions to XXX, we'd love to have you join the team". I didn't have to do any algorithm questions for those organizations.
> I didn't have to do any algorithm questions for those organizations.
okay. many organizations would not make that exception. and there are many stewards of key open source dependencies that have talked about how they couldn't pass interviews to places that heavily use their software.
> even all the extracurricular software activities is useless!
I'm one of the jerks who does a coding interview; but for the people who do interviews on what you've done, having something on your resume that you can talk about is a good thing. Interviewers want to hear that you've got deep experience in something and can explain what you did at a high level and in detail. If you've got that from work experience, great; if not, something you did independently is nice too; otherwise it's got to be coming from classwork, which is ok, but kind of iffy. Ideally, two, maybe three projects you can talk about is good to touch on in the resume.
The recruiter was already open to saying hello just because you said you can code for other people.