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Comment by coreymaass | Hacker News Reader

Since 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.

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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?

To some degree, yes. When you're talking about CSS skills, the distinction is somewhat blurred, because getting things to look right is a big part of front-end programming. Creating things that look bad reads as sloppiness. When you're working for a client and faithfully implementing the client's designs, this is particularly unfair, but it's still the case even then.

At any rate, the ability to make a rudimentary web page with HTML and CSS is not exactly impressive. I assume that's why jchendy said "… unless they're really impressive." Like, cool tech demos with HTML and CSS probably would help get you hired, but making a '90s-tastic resume is not even in the same neighborhood.

Yes, but the problem is you hit that no-mans-land between "I'm going to just format text in a readable way" and "I'm going to try to make this look nice", and missed both.

If you're going to start styling it (and in resumes, once background color enters into the picture, that's styling it), you really need to clean it up and make it look nice. Otherwise, going for a simple resume that's just text is probably going to serve you better.

I'd admittedly probably toss this resume as-is.

(Also, what about a DL for your experience rather than header/list?)

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.

Does it matter how many rep points you have on SO network to get interview calls?

I haven't heard anyone mention it to me explicitly. Can't hurt though!

thanks. Front end skills are obviously not my highlight as can be seen from the content of the resume, but I wanted to demonstrate that I have at least good coding style/organization and have some front end chops to complement my other skills.

What of the general content of my resume?

The content honestly isn't great. It looks like you have some experience, but you haven't told a potential employer about any of your projects or accomplishments.

Your bullet points read like job descriptions, and anyone else who submits a resume that has had a job remotely similar to yours will sound about the same. Focus on your projects and accomplishments while employed, and make it look less like a job post.

I know you aren't emphasizing the front end skills, but leaving them out in the open if you aren't great, and aren't up to date with your front-end skills (tables, adding classes to make paragraphs look like headings - just use headings) can make any semi-critical resume reviewer cry "eek!.." Showcase what you are best at, and don't try to justify your hiring with things you "kind of, sort of" know how to do.

As others have said, tailor your bullet points to the job you are applying for. I don't care about your systems engineer work if you're applying to be a junior dev. Talk about your internal tools and app development. Those should be your bullet points - not that you "started and completed projects" or "were a member of a team".

Focus on your strengths and your goals!

>but you haven't told a potential employer about any of your projects or accomplishments.

did you not read the whole resume? tons of coding projects i've done are listed.

At the same time showing off your chops can be a liability this early in the game. In the interest of full transparency, the first typo colored the rest of the read for me - I also noticed and got a bad taste from the inconsistent spacing and indenting in your code.

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