Ask HN: Lots of non-traditional work exp – Pimp my CV? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Lots of non-traditional work exp – Pimp my CV?

5 pointswayn36 comments

CV: http://justus-moeller.rhcloud.com/

I'm doing a pretty bad job of presenting my experience here. I have been "self-employed" my whole life. I simply don't know how to write this in a way that doesn't scream "loser". The question is: How do I improve my CV?

Hidden in my CV are, essentially, roughly 10 years of software development ranging from low level C (and the occasional messing with Assembler) all the way to front-end web dev.

On top of that, we are looking at at least 7 years of data science, some of which predates the very name.

The formal Math/Physics education.

A successful, albeit low, start-up exit.

Please help me pimp my CV.

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At the top, remove the large photo (or make it smaller).

Then write: "10 years of software development experience ranging from low level C all the way to front-end web dev. 7 years of data science experience. Startup founder."

Then write a sentence of the type of work you're looking for. (startup? freelance?)

Then list your experience, with dates, going back those 10 years of experience. Remove rates. (the 80$)

Also, you should put this on LinkedIn (regardless of how much you hate it.)

What brotchie and petervandijck said, also:

* Put some effort into the design. Writing plain HTML while also indicating you have run a website and have front-end experience might seem contradictory to a potential employer. A nice font, simple layout and basic responsiveness would go a long way.

* A startup exit, even if small, is a considerable achievement. Consider adding "Acquired by $COMPANY", or if not at liberty to disclose the company name, something like "Acquired by large German corporation".

* Add contact information. If I were to stumble upon your CV online and be interested in hiring you, I should not have to spend time Googling for some way to contact you. Listing your email in the footer is sufficient.

* I assume not getting your degree yet is because of a few pending courses - no need to mention this here. You did the majority of the work and actually completed a thesis project. When you are invited to an interview, disclose it there.

* Some of the stuff you list (machine learning libraries, contributions to poker theory) sound really interesting. Is there anything you could link to here? Blog post, Github, etc.

edit: typo

Thanks for the response:

- This is not meant to be found by potential employers. I just chose the form to show it off here because it seemed to be the easiest way to me. The content is what matters. Additionally, I'd rather not work on front-end anyway :P

- I got bought out by my partner for a decent sum because it was better for us to part ways.

- Sure

- Not getting the degree yet is actually because my health insurance is tied to me being enrolled in university. If I finished the degree, I would be without insurance while requiring treatment, which seemed unfortunate for the time being. All the coursework is done, receiving the degree is practically a formality.

- Not particularly. Github was obviously not a thing back then and I've lost most of it on past computers. I haven't touched poker in almost 7(?) years.

When listing experience, it's best to follow the pattern:

I accomplished X, relative to Y, by doing Z.

For example for SocialInsight.io:

- Instead of "Instagram Analytics": Helped X customers increase their Instagram revenue / engagement / etc by Y% by building an Instagram analytics Software-as-a-Service.

- Instead of "Big Data on a small server": Enabled fast in-memory Instagram stream processing by develping an optimized in-memory storage format that brought the per-post in-memory size from 300kb to 30kb. (I have no idea what you did, but actually frame the technical achievement that made it possible.)

What'd I'd like to know if I were assessing your CV as a potential hire:

SocialInsight.io: Is it just you, or a team? How many customers? How much revenue? Did you individually do all the design, coding, marketing? or did you have co-founders / other employees.

Freelance Data Mining: What was the most impressive job that you worked on? How many jobs have you done? I'd drop the $80/hr, and don't mention Upwork. Could get away with replacing Freelance Data Mining with "Data Mining Consultant."

Affiliate Marketing, need things like:

- Built a successful direct response affiliate marketing business that funnelled insurance leads to brokerages.

- Developed a custom analytics suite which allowed me to increase conversion rates from x% to x% and decrease traffic acquisition costs by x%.

Professional Online Poker: This is super interesting.

- Funded my university study through playing Limit Hold'Em poker online.

- Contributed "blah" to modern poker theory.

- Ran analytics on opponent data to gain an edge, etc.

Things to remove:

- Note about girlfriend's death

- "Machine Learning before it was cool" makes you sound like somebody I wouldn't want to work with. Better to say "Pioneered the application of machine learning to blah aspect of online poker. Built out custom machine learning libraries to implement methods blah."

- "I believe that inbound communication should come to me. I should not have to hunt for it" Wording of this is a red flag for me. Also, no real idea of what Zophoz is.

Echoing petervandijck: Definitely create a LinkedIn profile and create (or list) your Github account.

If it's not on LinkedIn, you might even consider this site as your own personal hobby html page. No one will find it, no one will read it. Such is life, make use of professional CV sites to find employment. Put in that one day of effort it takes to make it real good, then relax and watch the interview requests flow like spice.

Thanks for the response. This was not meant to be found by anyone though. Just to show it to HN.

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