What should a self-taught/no experience programmer's resume look like?

Question

I asked a question a while back about knowing when you're ready to look for a job and got positive replies. Now I'm working on writing up a resume to begin my job search.

The title pretty much sums up the question, what should a self-taught programmer who has nothing but personal project experience put in a resume?

PS. What I really want to ask is for someone to take a quick look at my resume(draft) but I know that's too specific here. Is there a place where I can ask this type of question?

EDIT: Thanks to everyone for the feedback. I've finished a RC version and will hopefully be entering the job market soon.

Answer 1

Your resume is your resume. You can search the internet for styles/templates or you can even use Microsoft Word's resume templates.

Frankly, I hate seeing the same resume template over and over again and enjoy resume's where the applicant took the time to create their own resume.

More or less though you want to include the following:

• contact information
  • Make sure this is current, name/email/phone, address if you want but I do not think address is needed.
• experience
  • If you are self taught you probably do not have job experience. Personal projects or open source project contributions could be listed here if any.
• qualifications/skills
  • This for a self taught might overlap, be the same as experience section.
• education/certifications
  • Any education relevant cannot hurt.

Cover letter - Cover letter explanation cannot hurt to explain your situation and lack of formal work experience.

Answer 2

The most sensible approach in this situation would be to cite project you have finished. That will communicate an image of you being doer. Therefore put focus on things you've accomplished as opposed to what you have started, tried then abandoned. You can extract skills you obtained through "tried" projects and put in a separate "skills" section without mentioning those projects themselves.

If you have no accomplished projects then, well, it is a problem then.

Answer 3

this question is likely to be closed as too localized soon, so here's a quick impression -

get rid of the blog headers and menus and footers - "pointless programming" is a cute blog name, but a terrible title for a resume. Don't give the reader anywhere else to go to but your resume (aka make it a "landing page")

for each project, personal or otherwise, state the benefit that it created - with specific numbers whenever possible. saved $X. 27.3% faster. decreased processing time by 50%. half the code of the leading brand. whatever. This makes it more real and shows that you know how to add value to a business.

if you mention your blog in the same breath as your programming projects, include traffic stats. a blog with 200 pages that no one reads is less impressive than one with 10,000 unique visitors per month [and if you have that, sell your visitors something they need!]. If your blog has no readers and no traffic, move it to a Technical Writing skill section instead. it's valuable - good communication is extremely valuable - but it's not programming per se

instead of self-employed, put "Owner". Sounds more serious

good luck!

Answer 4

I suggest writing a 'Profile' paragraph at the top of your resumé that explains who you are and what you're about, in actual sentences. The rest of the document is evidence to back that up, keywords for recruiters, and talking points for the interview. To make space for the profile you can collapse all the business skills bullet points into a comma separated list. I also suggest moving the tech SKILLS more to the forefront, list your projects after. I think you're resumé's actually pretty impressive, just slightly confusing initially.

Incidentally, from reading your blog I notice you have a section called 'What in the hell...' series... funny, I was planning to put exactly the same thing on my personal homepage, even called the same thing. Hope you get some good feedback for that section.

Answer 5

It's obvious from your comments here and from a brief perusal of your blog and code that your value proposition isn't being fully delivered by your resume. You should include a brief synopsis that describes your experience and interests. You should describe challenges overcome and goals delivered wherever possible: previous work experience, open source, personal projects.

If it's acceptable for me to link it here (mods or others, please edit this paragraph out if not), you may want to look at my resume as an example: http://reinh.github.com. Quirky formatting aside, I think it does a reasonable job of presenting my value proposition and may suggest ways you could improve yours. (Please note that I'm not looking for a job. :)

Also keep in mind that for a junior software developer with a short resume, the best thing you can do IMO is build your personal brand in your relevant communities (local and online) by giving talks, contributing to open source, and offering assistance in forums, irc and sites like SE.

Last but not least: at this point in your career, networking is very important. Your best chance of getting a good job is to do so through word of mouth, where the resume itself becomes something of a formality.

Answer 6

Maybe this isn't the most honest answer (as far as the employer would be concerned) but if you can construe a project that you've worked on as having been for someone else, even if it was just a family friend (business owner, professional such as doctor, lawyer, etc) then that may look better and you can list it as a contract. Maybe you have someone like this you know who you could do a small project for, even if you don't want to charge, just write up a contract outlining what you will do and its technically a contract then. I think giving the impression that you've worked for someone, no matter how small, still helps more than not having that on there.

Answer 7

I know I keep repeating this, but if your project is out there in the wild, there is no better reference than that. Say you claim to be a mongodb developer and you can provide a link to your checkins, this will get you jobs faster than any fancy formatting you can add to your resume.

Join a OSS project and do it the hard way! This will improve your communication/coding/testing/cr skills as well as a bonus.

Answer 8

Above the project work, put a short list of skills. Put the strongest skills first. Do not list skills you'd hate using for a job.

Unless you're applying for a management job, absolutely do not put "business skills" above "technical skills", and absolutely do list things like "Python" in technical skills.

Your skills section isn't so hot. It doesn't have focus, and includes things that aren't quite novel; remove those. What's currently there should go at the bottom of a resume, if at all; the missing things (Python, Scheme, Tk) should go in a list at the very top.

And just got to the bottom; move the technologies section to the very top. Move the skills section to the bottom, so it reads:

"Technologies" "Projects", to justify those technologies and show I know 'em. "Work Experience", to show I can hold a job. "Skills", to fill things out and let me tell them things my experience doesn't necessary should. Consider integrating this into the other sections, and simply let the projects and work experience have bullet points for what skills I used on that job.