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You're being harsh - graduate CVs are tough because almost no-one has done anything useful. Yes it all looks rubbish but I'd rather someone who had made an effo

You're being harsh - graduate CVs are tough because almost no-one has done anything useful. Yes it all looks rubbish but I'd rather someone who had made an effort to sell themselves and had shown they had the ability to pitch up to a job on a regular basis.

gedrap 12y ago
But in our industry, it's easy to stand out. Spend a weekend or two, make some web app, Android app, or whatever. Maybe make a commit to some open source project, if you are struggling with ideas (in that case, you are capable to work with code written by other people, amazing!). And you are ahead of majority because you demonstrated that you can make something practical, real world.
- philbarr 12y ago
  Absolutely do this. Having interviewed 50+ candidates for various positions myself, it's amazing how much you can stand out just by upping your online profile a little bit. Some examples: - one guy I interviewed for a junior position had put his CV and projects online on his own website. It wasn't loads but he was the only one out of that bunch of grad inverviewees to do it. I had a look through it before his interview, and when he came in I said, "that HTML looks remarkably clean! Did you tidy all that up just before you posted for the job?" We both laughed because it was obvious he had. Rest of the interview was nice and easy after establishing the "we are developer friends" bit. - one guy had no degree, no A levels to speak of, but his contribution to open source was immense. We got him in for interview and he could speak clearly and with authority on each of the huge projects he was involved in. We offered him the job but he refused us to go somewhere bigger. So go get yourself a GitHub account, buy a domain name for very little/year, point it at a GitHub Page and put anything you can think of on there. Congrats, you are now better than 90% of candidates out there.
- Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
  That may be true but almost no-one does it.
ruswick 12y ago
I don't think that's true. In my experience, development experience is relatively easy for students to obtain while in school. Internships are abundant (obviously not everyone is going to come out of school having worked for Google or Microsoft but most people who want to get development experience during college can find it). Personal projects are another way of doing something "useful" that have effectively zero barrier to entry. It isn't too hard to do something "useful" as developer in college, if one has the motivation...
- Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
  I'm not saying it's hard to do, I'm saying people don't do it. You'd have to ask them why.

gedrap 12y ago

But in our industry, it's easy to stand out. Spend a weekend or two, make some web app, Android app, or whatever. Maybe make a commit to some open source project, if you are struggling with ideas (in that case, you are capable to work with code written by other people, amazing!). And you are ahead of majority because you demonstrated that you can make something practical, real world.

philbarr 12y ago
Absolutely do this. Having interviewed 50+ candidates for various positions myself, it's amazing how much you can stand out just by upping your online profile a little bit. Some examples: - one guy I interviewed for a junior position had put his CV and projects online on his own website. It wasn't loads but he was the only one out of that bunch of grad inverviewees to do it. I had a look through it before his interview, and when he came in I said, "that HTML looks remarkably clean! Did you tidy all that up just before you posted for the job?" We both laughed because it was obvious he had. Rest of the interview was nice and easy after establishing the "we are developer friends" bit. - one guy had no degree, no A levels to speak of, but his contribution to open source was immense. We got him in for interview and he could speak clearly and with authority on each of the huge projects he was involved in. We offered him the job but he refused us to go somewhere bigger. So go get yourself a GitHub account, buy a domain name for very little/year, point it at a GitHub Page and put anything you can think of on there. Congrats, you are now better than 90% of candidates out there.
Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
That may be true but almost no-one does it.

ruswick 12y ago

I don't think that's true. In my experience, development experience is relatively easy for students to obtain while in school. Internships are abundant (obviously not everyone is going to come out of school having worked for Google or Microsoft but most people who want to get development experience during college can find it). Personal projects are another way of doing something "useful" that have effectively zero barrier to entry. It isn't too hard to do something "useful" as developer in college, if one has the motivation...

Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
I'm not saying it's hard to do, I'm saying people don't do it. You'd have to ask them why.