Very nice job. I like the feeling you are going for and the illustrations. I've marked-up this image ( http://i.imgur.com/HWiw7.jpg ) with some suggestions and things I would cleanup. Notes transcribed below. Hope these help!
1) Center the headshot vertically with the bubble.
2) Don't use an image to round corners, use CSS3 property border-radius instead.
3) This font is unique to this callout, use the Amethysta font face used on the rest of the page.
4) This isn't centered on my screen. Use font-align to center this text, not a static margin.
5) Using a large typeface for the first line/paragraph of text works well to call attention to detail. Make the following paragraphs the same font size.
6) The background colors of the images and the box they sit in are all slightly different.
7) I wasn't sure if this title was supposed to be sitting on the right margin. Centering it would work better I think.
8) These are links, but do no look like links. Use color to show they are clickable.
Thank you, great suggestions. Point by point:
1) Why is this better?
2) Started out using CSS3, but found this easier to accommodate older browsers. Maybe I should do both?
3) Tried to make it look like the Google Map bubble, that's why it's different.
4) OK, will test.
5) Second paragraph is somewhat of a subtext to come to the conclusion in the third paragraph, but you're right in that it screws up rhythm.
6) Yep, that's a non-designer trying design for ya.
7) It has the same left-margin as the other headers and most paragraphs, but the leading dots give a somewhat false illusion, I think.
8) Thanks, good suggestion, will do.
Responding to 2) in my experience as a web developer divs are generally no longer used to round corners because the market share of the browsers which don't support css3 rounded corners is increasingly negligible.
Personally I prefer CSS3 rounded corners because they do a better job of decoupling design, functionality and content (which in a perfect world would each fit completely into css, js and html respectively).
EDIT: Looks like rounded corners only got added to ie9 so Google's ie7 stuff is irrelevant, my guess: a degraded experience on ie8 is generally taken as acceptable.
For a fluid layout with rounded corners I would have probably gone with CSS3 (versus corner divs), but since the block is fixed-size I could just suffice with one bubble.png as the background to upgrade the ie8 experience. And left it at that, being pragmatic and all.
Putting your Myers-Briggs personality type in your CV suggests to me that you probably believe in horoscopes, too. At the very least, you think it's relevant somehow and reflects positively on you (or why would you include it?). It's twee, self-indulgent, and pseudo-science - I want more from my developers.
Wow, it's great to be so confident. You must be correct then. /sarcasm
If you dig a little deeper into the foundation of analytical psychology, you might be surprised. Carl Jung popularized the terms Extravert and Introvert, and there have been at least 2 studies (that I know of) in neuroscience showing that dichotomy to exist, physically in the brain.
I'm hyperrational, started 2 successful companies, majored in CS, atheist, don't believe in horoscopes, or any bullshit for that matter, but do believe not all brains process information in the same way.
Now to say the MBTI test does not have some validity issues, would be delusional. But on the other hand, only an arrogant fool, would conclude that therefore there is a fundamental problem with the theory.
For example, if I construct a test that asks 500 people (assuming highly randomized sample) if they like sugar. And 250 people say "yes". One cannot conclude 50% of people like sugar.
The best you can hope to conclude is that 50% of people, self report as "liking sugar".
So what this means is that the test makes some flawed assumptions: eg
1. people are honest (consciously and/or subconsciously)
2. people know themselves enough, to give accurate responses
There may be more, but those appear to be the major flaws accounting for validity and reliability issues (engineering synonyms are, accuracy and precision). It is also plausible, that these challenges are not insurmountable.
Putting your Myers-Briggs personality type in your CV suggests to me that you probably believe in horoscopes, too. At the very least, you think it's relevant somehow and reflects positively on you (or why would you include it?). It's twee, self-indulgent, and pseudo-science - I want more from my developers.
This poster is not saying, "everyone processes information the exact same way." Rather the poster is saying, "The Meyer Briggs type inventory (as currently administered) is extremely flawed. Therefore, putting your type on your resume is akin to putting your horoscope."
In that regard, the original commenter is correct - the description of INTP is not useful as the test itself is fundamentally flawed. While there is a whole lot of science that says, "We are all different," MBTI doesn't do a very good job of quantifying these differences.
>the description of INTP is not useful as the test itself is fundamentally flawed.
Another logical fallacy. The test and a person's test result, are irrelevant to a persons actual personality type. It may or may not correlate. That is all we can say.
For example a person could test as an ESFJ, whilst in reality actually uses the cognitive functions, Fi Se Ni Te which correlates with an ISFP personality type.
And anyone that thinks everyone has the same personality type or thinks the same way, or that different personalities do not exist, is simply delusional.
It's not like myers-briggs is administered under anything resembling controlled conditions. It really is useless except for self-identifying that you like the myers-briggs categorization scheme and which of the 16 boxes you think that you are in.
Also, if you're going to cite scientific studies to rebut someone else's point, it goes much further to making your case when you actually dig up references or links to them.
Neuroanatomical Correlates of Extraversion and Neuroticism
Christopher I. Wright, Danielle Williams1 et al, Oxford JournalsLife Sciences & Medicine Cerebral Cortex (2006)
http://cercor.oxfordjournals.org/content/16/12/1809.full
It's a beachhead. It does not increase the perceived validity or precision of the test, but it does help support the claim that the theory and model, may have a basis in reality.
That is the foundation of science, models and theories describing reality.
There are also plenty of new theories being created today that have yet to be empirically evidenced. But that in itself, does not make that theory unscientific.
Thus, "What is science?" This is actually an extremely thorny question and perhaps better suited for another time. Although I should add philosophy of science and epistemology happen to be two passions of mine.
Falsificationism is a pretty good start if you are interested. It is by no means not contentious (as is probably any position in contemporary philosophy - but that is another matter)
Many engineering types with a brief flirtation with the philosophy of science, tend to like Popper's idea of a theory being solid, if in theory it is able to be shown to be false.
That is the major reason why the MBTI is not at all like horoscopes. Horoscopic predictions cannot be shown to be false (because they are too vague), but the MBTI test can be.
For example, I have never ever met a single person that has said or thinks that "all 16 types fit a person equally".
> It really is useless except for self-identifying that you like the myers-briggs categorization scheme and which of the 16 boxes you think that you are in.
That's about the gist of the MBTI reference when I included it in the page.
For some reason, there's a popular myth that Myers-Briggs has any scientific basis. It doesn't. Please don't use it and thereby perpetuate this insult to the genuine social science research that is done.
MBTI and the MBTI test are two different things although often confused as one.
If you want to be scientific, then a more accurate statement is:
The MBTI test, may have weak validity and precision across all it's dichotomies.
Albeit even this matter seems to be contended.
"CPP Inc., the publisher of the MBTI instrument, calls it "the world's most widely used personality assessment",with as many as two million assessments administered annually. The CPP and other proponents state that the indicator meets or exceeds the reliability of other psychological instruments and cite reports of individual behavior. Some studies have found strong support for construct validity, internal consistency, and test-retest reliability, although variation was observed. However, some academic psychologists have criticized the MBTI instrument, claiming that it "lacks convincing validity data". Some studies have shown the statistical validity and reliability to be low. The use of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator as a predictor of job success has not been supported in studies,[15][16] and its use for this purpose is expressly discouraged in the Manual.[17]"
That's not entirely true, some of the factors and some of the profiles do have empirical backing. E.g. I think the INTP type has been found to underperform in school relative to IQ, and both introversion and extraversion have been validated as well.
Putting your Myers-Briggs personality type in your CV suggests to me that you probably believe in horoscopes, too.
That was harshly said, but the OP appeared to be looking for constructive criticism, so that comment is warranted. The unvalidated Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® is no more useful to employers than horoscopes, and likely to expose employers who use it to legal liability. Here are some standard references on the subject:
"Overall, the review committee concluded that the MBTI has not demonstrated adequate validity although its popularity and use has been steadily increasing. The National Academy of Sciences review committee concluded that: ‘at this time, there is not sufficient, well-designed research to justify the use of the MBTI in career counseling programs’, the very thing that it is most often used for."
The problem with including the MBTI on your resume has nothing to do with its accuracy, precision, or scientific basis. It's about relevance.
Flip the problem around: If your interviewer asked you for your MBTI type, would you think that was a good sign? Is that the kind of company that you want to work for, the kind that spends valuable interview time quizzing you about being an INTP? Let me venture to guess that the answer is "no". So why provide such detail?
(If the answer is "but I would never want to work for someone who doesn't know, and care, that I identify as an INTP", then I withdraw my observation. Good luck to you.)
My more general advice is: A resume isn't a dossier that summarizes one's entire life. You're not trying to adopt a child. You're trying to score a six-month gig. Focus, focus, focus.
> Flip the problem around: If your interviewer asked you for your MBTI type, would you think that was a good sign?
No, that would not be a good sign, point taken, although I'm not sure it's that bad when you mention it as an applicant. The relevance for me was describing what kind of guy I think I am (somewhat of an introvert), but maybe I should downplay it or leave it out completely.
The risk I see with hiring someone who lists their MBTI on their CV so prominently is that one day I'm going to ask them to do something, or work with someone, or communicate in a certain way about something, and they'll claim they can't or won't, based on that.
MB is not magic. It does not produce new information out of thin air like horoscopes. You give it your psychological traits in pretty much clear text, and all it does is reduce these to a few categories. Strictly scientific? Probably not. But neither are a lot of useful things in psychology. Anecdotally accurate? Check. Has a reasonable model? Check. Works for me.
I know, there's probably a crazy cult about MB somewhere, but such things are around pretty much anything remotely interesting.
> Anecdotally accurate? Check. Has a reasonable model? Check.
To the former part: horoscopes are also anecdotally accurate, and hence the comparison. Good horoscopes and other forms of cold reading are specifically designed to offer people given situations they can relate to: "sometimes you feel like you're the life and soul of the party, but it's interesting, because you represent a contradiction - there are times when really you just want to be alone" (source: I just made that up)... Compare and contrast to: "As an INTP, your primary mode of living is focused internally, where you deal with things rationally and logically. Your secondary mode is external, where you take things in primarily via your intuition." (source: first line of first result for INTP on Google) You mean ... INTPs are sometimes rational and logic, and sometimes intuitive? ;-)
To the latter part: the model is a big part of the problem. It polarizes personality traits that are necessarily context-dependent, mood-influenced, and exist on a scale in to binary Yes/No. If you're not Introverted, you're Extraverted. Not: "you're in the middle, and occasionally tend to one or the other" - simply: "you are x".
One thing I am realizing is that they put ISTJs/ESTJs in the interviewer seat. Your liked minded INTPs are all developing, not interviewing.
They don't find certain fluffy things as impressive. They like concrete, palpable information.
That's why you have to take it off to increase your chances...you'll be with your other INTPs after your hired...just have to make it through those SJs...
As a designer (which I know you are not) this resume is a bit of a visual mess. Font sizes are all over the place, color blocking is sloppy and unclear and the visuals overlap the text in several places. It also doesn't adapt to mobile devices well.
Pick 2 or three font sizes and cascade them.
Pick one serif and one san serif font.
Pick a base text color one accent color for your section headers.
Clearly separate your text from your visuals.
Use some bold within body text.
Break longer text up.
Shorten the entire resume to focus on only your best work, provide an appendix at the end for your full list.
I built a clear and simple adaptive resume I made a few years back here:
Hi Chris, thanks for the comments. I agree it's a bit of a visual mess compared to yours, kudos there. Although yours renders as a blank page in my Firefox (v12.0).
You seem like a cool guy. I would definitely consider having you as a co-founder.
Smart and humble (may even too much so ;)
FWIW I thought the design is great, because it comes across authentic and interesting, without being a riot of colors.
Sure it could be tightened up slightly, but for a personal website, you did a great job.
As for Chris, your site looks a bit crappy to me, and perhaps I'd think twice about using that as a reference on the slickness-o-meter. ;) PS your points may well be valid though.
Your resume neglects to mention which City/Country you live in. You list a phone number and email so I assume you want people who don't know you to contact you, but where are you?
You're a mental mess if you're going to pick on those things in an awesome resume that's solely using the idea of visual expression to better articulate itself. Find another thread to pick on pal...
His resume is otherwise very good. I was providing feedback he can choose to use or not from a design prospective. I would be very happy to have someone who has expertise i do not provide feedback on my work.
Yes you're comments are "helpful" but, you should be shedding that advice on a project that is looking for it. My comment is indirectly helpful by attempting to have people avoid leave comments like yours on great work that has no place for irrelevant points.
Yes its a visual resume, but unless he's specifically in the design field, the time you took to point all those things out could have been put to better use elsewhere.
And this response can apply to all the others that left attack-esque "advice" ...
This is a bit wordy. If you are looking for a freelance gig
or business op then you really should be building a business
front. As a freelancer, you aren't sending out resumes, you
are a business selling a service. Your business is very
similar to hundreds of others, but yet none of the top
providers in your space would even consider using a site like
this as a sales tool. So, you need to figure out what you are
really trying to accomplish here, are you trying to get a job
or are you trying to start a business?
Don't mention on Hacker News that you are running out of
money. Any potential partner or consumer of your services
could be put off by that info. If you are running out of
money, then what happens when your business goes completely
broke while you are working on my project? Does my project
take a back seat? Do you disappear while my project goes
off the Rails? If you fail to deliver a single piece of value
then will you be able to refund any of my money?
Ultimately, this will probably do the trick as a lot of people
out there aren't really picky. However, perception is
important. If you look like a world class provider, then
clients won't blink when you hand then a world class quote. ;)
ETA: I see you do have a link to your company, which is a web development service provider. Why not point people there rather than the location you posted here?
Thanks for commenting! I'm looking for a freelance gig for 6 months, to build up some cash to bootstrap the SaaS application (which will be the business front), so I'll need just 1 good project, not hundreds of clients. It's a different model than that of the top providers in this space.
The money part concerns my SaaS project I'm bootstrapping in 6 months from now, the 'current business' (me paying my rent and food) is in no way in danger (and hasn't been in 15 years).
The model isn't different Most development service providers are probably one man shops just like you and they can only handle one full time client at a time (or multiple part time clients.) Making the sale is basically the same for each client. You aren't selling something which can be mass produced. Just saying, you already have a business presence that you have already put some work into, why not dust that off and put it to work? Once you get that one client you are looking for, then put up the "all booked up" sign until you need to raise more cash.
Thank you for your insights. I thought about this, and try to promote 'me' as a product first (given time constraints) versus the 'web design solutions' all the other freelance shops are doing already. If this doesn't work out I'll probably do both.
> ETA: I see you do have a link to your company, which is a web development service provider. Why not point people there rather than the location you posted here?
Here, 'I' am the product. On the company website, 'web business solutions' is the product. It's a different approach to the same end: me finding people to create nice things for.
Hi, I've spent my career looking at thousands of resumes so I hope you'll take my opinion seriously on this.
I appreciate the idea of trying to break out of the fold. People will use new fonts, new structure, diagrams, etc. I understand why people do it, and why they think it's a good idea. That said, it's not a good idea. As the guy looking at resumes, I just want to know what you're doing, what you've done and what education you have in as little time as possible.
A few specific points:
- Your latest project is waaay down at the bottom. It should be at the top. What you've done most recently is the most relevant, right? Put it right in my face.
- The first two sections are vaguely written in the third person which IMO doesn't help me figure out anything about you.
- I can't figure out if you have any formal higher education. If not, that's cool, but because the resume is in a strange format, I can't tell either way.
People don't read resumes like they read a book, they scan them, then might drill into some details. Changing the standard structure is like when Facebook changed to the Timeline.
To be honest, I've grown so tired of resumes in general that I just go to people's LinkedIn. It has standard formatting that is easy to scan and figure out what they've done and what they're currently doing.
You bring up education a few times. Given the length of his work history, is it even important at this point? Why are you so interested in it?
I ask because a lot of people claim that education only really matters for your first job. After that you let your experience speak for itself. So I'm interested in hearing you perspective.
> You bring up education a few times. Given the length of his work history, is it even important at this point? Why are you so interested in it?
Education is (we hope) the rigorous, dedicated, examined and measured study of some subject. On Peter's resume, he mentions that he is an expert Perl programmer. I have no way to measure this without giving him a coding question. However, if he had he has a such-and-such GPA in the CS program at Stanford, then I have some way of measuring his expertise in the curriculum there (BTW - I go so far as to review curricula of various programs when it comes time of the year to do college grad interviews)
I fully admit that not all people need degrees. It's like saying that everyone in the factory must have a mechanical engineering degree. They don't need it... but if they do, I'd like to know quickly.
It also is not saying that someone cannot learn these things on their own. It's also not saying that someone without that study can be smarter and more capable than someone with those years of study. Both happen, a lot. And also a lot of dropouts I've known are more capable than their graduating counterparts. [OT: all of this is why I've been advocating apprenticeships out of high school for some time now, especially in games, which I used to work on.]
Back to the original question, going to the extreme end of the spectrum, would you take a Ph.D. seriously on someone's resume, or not? I do. Even years later, it means they dedicated years of time to the study of that subject.
I agree with your analysis, in principle. However, my formal university education is twenty years ago, and much less relevant to the self-educated Perl programming that I've been doing since. And this format allows me to highlight this relative relevance, so I just mentioned "Business Administration" in the resume icon. I'm hoping people can assess my coding skills by looking at the source code of my open-source projects.
Developer here. I feel there's too much info there. I read 2 or 3 titles, skimmed over the wall of text, looked at the pretty pictures for a full 2 seconds and then got bored. I suggest either extracting 5 sentences that would represent you best and focus on communicating those. If you still insist that all the info there is relevant, at least hide it under expandable sections. My 2c. Good luck!
The issue is real as far as I can see, but expandable sections is like cheating in this context. You should work on better typography hierarchy. Create a better organization for content and reduce a little (not too much) the size of font. It's not a problem of "too much" content, but about "too aggressive layout", difficult to scan.
Wow we have lots in common, except your resume reads like a grown up version of mine!
"I'm a small business owner, programmer, biker and overall nice and knowledgeable guy. I love creating beautiful code and simple interfaces."
I may be still a university student, and my "freelancing business" is worth only $10k a year, but I'm also a biker (started this year), a nice and knowledgeable guy, and the passion of mine in software is beautiful code and simple interfaces. You're an independent contractor, and... I guess, me too.
I too am involved in development of the entire website - backend, frontend, database, the whole thing, but the number of technologies I know is around a third of yours. Maybe I can describe myself as "I am an aspiring FULL STACK developer"?
I'm going to assume those programming traits are shared by all programmers because I have those too.
At least your list of projects is completely different to mine (and much bigger)... And of your list of 6 techniques & best-practices I only actively employ three.
Definitely a grown-up version of my resume alright.
Thanks. Don't worry about the number of technolgies, just make sure you do one stack (one server-side language, HTML, JavaScript and CSS) well, and call yourself a full stack developer.
One little tidbit, you might want to fix up that image of your "full" stack. It looks like you grabbed a bunch of images off Google Images and threw it together in MS Paint (it doesn't help that GIF is messing up the colour palette).
As some one who has stared at a couple of resumes and been annoyed when a resume looks weird it may help a little bit.
Thanks. That's exactly what I did (in Photoshop, not paint) when I created the first concept. I thought I could pass it of as 'design' so I didn't clean it up, but maybe I should.
A note for readers who might think this type of resume could help land a job in a traditional company (AMZN, GOOG, MSFT, and any other software company, large and small, who employs recruiters).
Know your customer. Your customer is the recruiter.
A typical recruiter spends less than a minute looking at a resume. Much less than a minute in some cases. This presentation makes it impossible for the reader to skim and get the salient point of why you might match the requirements of a particular position.
The only reason a recruiter would actually read this type of resume is if you were a referral. Otherwise, the recruiter will skip to the next resume on their stack.
I'm a recruiter. I also used to be a programmer, so perhaps I'm not entirely typical, but I actually really enjoyed this format, in general (though I agree with another commenter about how it's a bit harder to scan for salient information than ye olde LinkedIn profile).
Anyway, the reason I enjoyed this format is that I look at huge stacks of resumes on a regular basis, and most of them are completely soulless piles of keywords/buzzwords. Anything that breaks up the monotony and screams, "I am passionate about something" is going to stand out.
This resume doesn't look to be angling for traditional companies so probably not an issue for the author. However you have a point. I'd say though that catering to recruiters, an industry that seems to add nearly negligible value to the recruitment process, would not be all that well advised even in general.
I'm aiming for the second step with this: after I've sent a recruiter my MS-Word curriculum vitae in Dutch, per specifications, and they're including it in their selection to the prospective client, I'ld like the potential client to consider me for an interview based on the online version.
I've done my share of recruiting and here is some brutally honest but hopefully helpful feedback:
1) The caricature of yourself is the first thing I noticed and it put me off. It's a bad drawing and triggered a negative responsive - I now have to make a mental effort to screen it out and avoid referring to you as "the dev with the sh*tty drawing". I'd just stick to your photo, which looks much better and gives me the impression that you're a pleasant chap to work with.
2) Your CV is a visual mess - serif font with varying sizes and styles... I felt lost.
3) Too much waffle, i.e. too many words. Focus on your recent achievements, major obstacles you've encountered and how you overcame those etc. something to peek my interest.
4) Horrible color-scheme (might be the texture and the poor gradient further down), reminds me of old battle-ship gray Windows 95 apps. If you want to use gray, see how Apple's website is using it.
5) I'd avoid words like "cool" or "mad skillz".
In short, keep it simple and stick to what recruiters are used to seeing. Some examples of nicely formatted and easy to scan resumes are:
Very helpful feedback, thank you. Did you know you can create your own (less sh*tty) caricature at my homepage (peterdevos.com)? The first resume you link to is based on a standard resume template featuring C'thulhu (http://css-tricks.com/one-page-resume-site/), I wanted a more personal approach but I guess I pushed it too far for your taste.
Tried it and it made me smile - you're much prettier than me, so I take my comment back referring to your drawing as sh*tty. Just wanted to illustrate what was happening in my head. I know it's very subjective anyway, so please don't take it personal.
Regarding my first link, I didn't know it was based on a template and I doubt many recruiters will know as well. Just thought it's one example of an easy to scan resume.
Thank you for the kudos. I experimented with the order a bit, but myself and a friend that looked at it found the flow of information a bit weird when starting with the specifics.
I'm bootstrapping a SaaS business but running out of cash and resources, so I'm open to business propositions or freelance gigs for the next six months or so. This is how I try to promote myself. What do you think?
Maybe it's a cunning plan to avoid being contacted by certain people, but I've known plenty of people who would be put off by seeing "laziness" listed as one of your traits.
Laziness is one of the three great virtues of a programmer according to Larry Wall. "Laziness" was used in the context of all three virtues: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?LazinessImpatienceHubris
Not necessarily. The right kind of laziness in a software engineer can facilitate the creation of a lot of automation and very simple code that doesn't cause a lot of work. In the right context, laziness can be a great quality.
I didn't say it was a bad thing - though personally I think that while the whole "if you have a difficult task give it to a lazy man" logic is flawed, there are people out there who aren't lazy but still capable of being efficient - just that there are some people out there who could well base a hiring decision on it.
It's a pun (and link to) threevirtues.com, I was hoping to connect should people recognize this, but you might be right in that it's too negative a trait.
Ah, didn't get the reference, nor notice the link.
I'm not saying it's definitely something to avoid, maybe you only want to be hired to people who get the reference, or maybe you only want to be hired by people who, without getting the reference, don't instantly think "lazy = terrible!" (I fall into the latter camp).
I really like it. Sure there is scope for improvement (the graphics and typography) but there is enough here to make interested people pick up the phone or send you email. I'd put a carefully worded synopsis at the head to enable everyone to get the gist and to motivate interested people to read on.
I'll bet this inspires lots of people to make their own version.
Curiosity is misspelt and para 2 of "full stack" is in the wrong font (Firefox/OS X).
FWIW, your layout is completely broken for me in Firefox on Windows XP, and the web font looks terrible on this platform (sorry).
I agree with much of the other constructive criticism you've received. In case it's helpful, your 20 seconds of attention on a first look over a CV would go something like this if I were the reviewer:
1. Made an effort to produce a distinctive on-line CV. Good.
2. Layout at top of page is broken and chose an unusual and poorly rendered web font. Bad.
3. What does he actually do? Generic terms like "building web systems" and "creating beautiful code" don't tell me very much. Neutral (but wasting time).
4. Ah, OK, he's a full stack guy, with a variety of modern tools listed. Better.
5. But despite talking about HTML5, CSS3, and other modern front-end technologies, the layout is completely broken again around that diagram, and neither the typography nor graphics are well done generally. Bad.
6. Despite claiming many years of experience, the practical skills and attention to detail aren't up to professional standards.
7. No hire.
I am left with the impression of a Jack of all trades but master of none. I did read on to the end of your CV after I recorded the above, and to be brutally honest, it reinforces that impression.
You're a contractor and keen to learn new technologies, which suggests that while buzzword-compliant you don't necessarily have much depth behind any of the technologies you mention throughout the CV, and nothing you say anywhere really counters that impression with hard data about years of experience with each tool, how many projects you've done with each tool and what kind of scale they were on, etc.
You're a UX designer, but your CV isn't optimised for scannability at all.
You adapt to change, yet the reason your layout is broken right at the top of the CV is that you're using a static background image to create a bubble that doesn't quite fit the text you wanted to show in it, instead of gracefully degrading CSS3 that would have expanded automatically to fit that text.
You believe in lots of testing and continuous integration, yet you've failed basic cross-browser compatibility on several counts, all of which would be common knowledge to a good web designer/developer.
OK, enough with the negativity. I figure that usually being brutally honest on these occasions is more helpful in the long run than sugar-coating stuff that is bad, but please don't take any of this personally or think I'm just having a dig.
If I were you, I would either spend a bit of time polishing up my front-end skills to get the design into shape or acknowledge the limitation (both personally and by toning down the related content in the CV) and get help from someone who is an expert in that particular area. I would also get help from a professional careers advisor or other CV-writing expert on how to organise your content for the way real people are going to read that CV. You do have a lot of potentially interesting material in there, and I totally respect that you've made the effort to present it nicely, but the rookie mistakes in the design and lack of scannability are letting you down right now.
Thank you for your brutal honesty, I really appreciate it. Regarding some your points:
2. How's the layout broken? I'm on Firefox on Windows XP as well, and regarding fonts, this was one of the few Google fonts that actually rendered nicely on my screens in different browsers. Some are utter crap, I really thought I had found one that isn't. Maybe specifying absolute font sizes would fix things.
5. Ouch. Although I'm not sure the layout is completely broken, the graphics could use some more TLC. The 'full stack' image is supposed to convey some mosaic-like design (with the shades of grey) instead of a 'clean' version, but I'm aware a failed miserably in this regard. Will redo the image.
7. No problem.
> I am left with the impression of a Jack of all trades but master of none.
> you don't necessarily have much depth behind any of the technologies
I figured the industry experience covered some of this
> You're a UX designer, but your CV isn't optimised for scannability at all.
Well, I've played the role of UX designer, not the same thing. I focused more on story-telling than scannability here, good suggestion though.
> you're using a static background image .. instead of gracefully degrading CSS3
> you've failed basic cross-browser compatibility
> polishing up my front-end skills to get the design into shape
Good points, thanks. Please consider this version 0.1.
> how to organise your content for the way real people are going to read that CV
If by 'real people' you mean recruiters, that's not my primary target audience, I have an utterly boring, scannable MS-Word document for them if needed. Also, the page doubles as an 'about me' page for peterdevos.com and my resume, this may have been a bad decision to begin with.
> rookie mistakes in the design and lack of scannability are letting you down right now
Agree to some extent. That's what this 'Show HN' post was for, to get initial feedback. Again, thank you, much appreciated.
I assume the layout breaks on my setup because I have set the default browser font size to 18px and you're using em's (which are relative to the base font) to define all your font sizes.
Using relative font sizing isn't necessarily bad, but you should make sure that the whole layout is flexible enough. For example, you have set a static pixel height for the speech bubble and "full stack" containers. With a slightly different font setup that can cause the text to overflow (as can be seen in the screenshot above).
Great work this far, I'll bet you can make this a lot better by reading all the feedback in these comments.
For 2 and 5, I'm guessing it's the same issue that juriga mentioned, as I also have my default font size a little larger. I see the same effect as in juriga's screenshot at the top, and in Firefox I also see a lot of overlapping text in the area alongside the full stack graphic. My defaults are font size 18px, monospace 16px, minimum 10px; maybe that will help you to reproduce the problem.
As for the graphic itself and the accompanying text, as with much of the document, I think the idea could probably work but I'm not wild about the current execution. I won't repeat things others have already said in detail, but FWIW I agree with the people who have suggested that the graphics lack a common visual style and the text sizes lack a clear hierarchy.
I figured the industry experience covered some of this
Yes and no. If it's me, and maybe I've got past the initial scan and now I'm looking for more details to prepare for an interview, I'd like at least a rough idea of your level with any relevant skills you're claiming. That means, broadly speaking, how much experience in total and how recently you used that skill.
A list of buzzwords and a list of projects but no matching between them doesn't tell me which are your relatively strong skills. Unfortunately, I'm going to assume by default that none of them are particularly strong, simply because in my experience most people who list lots of skills on a CV/resume but don't highlight their particular strengths among those skills usually aren't very strong at anything.
If you do have relatively strong areas, particularly those that are relevant to specific job, then failing to highlight them means at best you're missing a chance to direct the interview in a way that is going to make you look good. At worst, you're going to get asked about your weaker skills and if you get caught out on the technical questions/programming test/whatever the interviewers are going to assume your other skills are all of that level.
If by 'real people' you mean recruiters, that's not my primary target audience, I have an utterly boring, scannable MS-Word document for them if needed.
I guess in that case my question is: who is your primary target audience for this document? If it's technical/management guys who are going to be conducting an interview once you're past the recruiters, I'd still say scannability is essential. It's totally unfair that people who are going to make decisions that could have a major effect on your life aren't necessarily going to read the whole document you've spent so much time and care preparing, but in the real world, that's often going to be the case, so you might as well play by the same rules as everyone else!
It's a refreshing take on the standard developer white-dress-shirt-no-tie-and-slacks resume, but I abhor the phrase "clean code". It's self-important and utterly meaningless given that code you write will be picked over by multiple people throughout the lifetime of the software. Instead, I personally value developers who understand effective abstraction.
Mentioning 'clean code' is surely a message that the OP understands that his code will 'be picked over by multiple people throughout the lifetime of the software'?
I'll take clean domain level clear and concise coding even if it under-delivers on the abstractions occasionally. Code will always be read and maintained more often than it is aggressively extended.
Well, the purpose of constructing an abstraction is at least as much about DRY and SRP as about providing extensible base classes in an object-oriented language.
I think we tend to agree given that you prefer 'concise coding' which I'll take to mean DRY and 'straightforward' rather than 'clever'.
But by 'picked over', I literally meant 'changed to meet changing requirements' rather than 'read for comprehension'. In that sense, the fact that one guy on the team considers the code he writes to be 'clean' is rather meaningless when many hands might work in that pathway. Composable approaches tend to be more resilient to regressions, well, in my experience anyway, YMMV.
I guess my problem with 'clean code' is that it's too open to interpretation. What do you specifically do that makes your code better than the other guys?
> What do you specifically do that makes your code better than the other guys?
Nothing specific, I'm just saying I value my code well-structured and readable, as well as DRY and straightforward. The proof is in the pudding (my open-source software), of course.
One thought - one of the first things I do is search for GitHub on these pages. I see that your 'programmer' link points to your GitHub account, but you might want to add the keyword there too.
It has some nice points, but I quickly hit tl;dr mode. Resumes or resume analogues should be concise unless they're actually portfolio demos, in which case they should still be concise.
I'm not certain I understand what you're trying to say here. Are you saying that you would prefer to work with a less 'serious' company that doesn't care about the $ in Micro$oft?
That plus, even though it is valid work experience, I have had enough of setting IIS, Exchange, Microsoft CRM, bad .NET accounting apps that use mdb as a DBMS, that I would prefer not to be on the position where I have to deal with that again.
If the company I am applying to bases their solutions on Microsoft products, odds are I am not the right fit for their open position, and somewhere on HR or in my task to find a job there has been an error.
One of the things in mind (as I am not a designer) is that this would make more sense in html, css and svg (it's already on svg), making the graphic talk about your own skills.
I think the same about your site. It's good, but you would take more of it by applying some css and javascript magic to all the images that include text (and then, exclude the text from the image).
1) Center the headshot vertically with the bubble.
2) Don't use an image to round corners, use CSS3 property border-radius instead.
3) This font is unique to this callout, use the Amethysta font face used on the rest of the page.
4) This isn't centered on my screen. Use font-align to center this text, not a static margin.
5) Using a large typeface for the first line/paragraph of text works well to call attention to detail. Make the following paragraphs the same font size.
6) The background colors of the images and the box they sit in are all slightly different.
7) I wasn't sure if this title was supposed to be sitting on the right margin. Centering it would work better I think.
8) These are links, but do no look like links. Use color to show they are clickable.
edit: spelling, grammer.