Tech Interviews: The CV

At YOOX NET-A-PORTER GROUP we see a lot of CVs for technical roles and no two are the same. Getting your CV right is a bit of a balancing act and it’s really easy to undersell yourself, so this post will introduce you to some thoughts on writing an effective technical CV.

The aim is to make the process of writing a CV a little easier by giving you some questions to ask yourself as you draft.

TL;DR is at the bottom.

Profile

The profile section of your CV is usually the first thing people will read, so it’s a good idea to have something short and punchy. Avoid using words like “passionate” and “enthusiastic” as these have become extremely overused in the industry and won’t help you to stand out from the crowd.

Open with a short sentence about yourself, then move onto the things that are important to you and your values as an engineer. Focus on you in this section and avoid listing technologies, processes, etc.

Some good questions to ask yourself when drafting your profile are: “is this an impactful statement about me? Does it communicate what I’m about as an engineer?”

Technologies

One of the most important things to remember when listing technologies on your CV is to be honest about what you’ve used and your proficiency. Friends or tech recruiters may try to convince you to draw attention to technologies that you’re not really comfortable with, or you may be tempted to tailor your CV towards a job spec, but this is almost always the wrong thing to do.

A question to ask yourself when adding a technology to your CV is “would I be comfortable answering questions on this in an interview?” If the answer is no, then it’s a good idea not to include it.

If you find that you’re a bit of a polyglot and your list of technologies is extensive, group them together by domain and then trim them down to a sensible amount. For example, group the different languages, frameworks and platforms into separate lists and then put them in order of your proficiency. Also try putting the technologies you’ve used alongside each role of your work experience to paint a better picture of your journey.

Pro tip: a good rule of thumb is to list technologies on a single line of the page and if they overflow onto the next line then there’s probably too many.

Work experience

When writing about your past experience, focus on your achievements rather than the makeup of your teams or ways of working as this will have much more impact and show the reader what you’re all about.

Avoid the temptation to include irrelevant experience in order to pad out your CV. If you’re worried that it’s looking bare, list more achievements from relevant experience or perhaps list side-projects that you worked on in the role.

Ask yourself “does this point demonstrate something that I achieved, or show my contribution towards a success?” If it doesn’t, try seeing what your CV looks like without it.

Also remember to slim down the details of your historic roles as time goes on, they’re probably not relevant and take up valuable CV real estate!

Portfolios and open source

This is probably the most contentious part of writing a technical CV. People can have quite strong opinions over candidates who don’t have an active GitHub profile. My view is that it can’t hurt to include a link to your GitHub if you’ve got some pet projects that people might find interesting. The most important thing to keep in mind is that it really doesn’t matter if your project is finished, you should always make it public. Interviewers are rarely going to be critical of code that you make public on GitHub, and if they are then you should really ask yourself whether that company is right for you.

If you’re going to have a portfolio on your CV or website, make sure that you only link to resources that you’ve made a significant contribution to. For example, if you were part of a team that built the login features for a website, don’t link to the main homepage as this can be misleading. In my view a portfolio can add unnecessary overhead and raise more questions than they answer, so personally I avoid having one.

Style

Style really only matters for a CV in terms of how much information can be communicated, so avoid flashy or colourful templates as they won’t add any value. Use a standard font, slim down the margins of the page and keep your paragraph text justified. One way to test if you’re making good use of the space on a page is to zoom out and see if it looks bare.

You should also take some time to look at the tone of your CV to ensure that it’s matter-of-fact and not too chatty or wacky.

Closing thoughts

The bottom line when writing your CV is that honesty is the best policy. When you paint an accurate picture of yourself, there won’t be any surprises and you’re much more likely to find somewhere that’s a great fit for you.

Finally, remember to keep your CV short and to-the-point. This doesn’t mean that it has to all fit on one page, but make sure that you challenge yourself on the content. Ask yourself “is this point or sentence as impactful as the others?” If not, be ruthless and try removing it—sometimes the best way to add is to take away!

Pro tip: try versioning your CV in a folder or git so that you can experiment and rollback easily.

Next up

Stay tuned for the next post in this series: The Telephone Interview…

TL;DR

• Keep your profile short and punchy. Avoid overused words like “enthusiastic” and “passionate” when describing yourself
• Be honest about the technologies you’re comfortable with and your proficiency. Don’t list anything you wouldn’t want to be questioned on
• Focus on your achievements from your work experience and avoid digressing into the makeup of your teams or your ways of working
• Slim down historic roles and don’t include irrelevant experience
• Keep your projects on GitHub open, even if they’re not finished
• Avoid putting links in your portfolio to things that you haven’t made a significant contribution to
• Avoid using colourful or flashy templates. Don’t be chatty and keep the tone matter-of-fact
• Honesty is the best policy

Credits

Many thanks to Frances Szweda for the awesome illustration!