At ruby50 we interview and vet a large number of candidates for different roles, from interns, to freelancers to CTO’s. Are you finding difficulty in getting the jobs you are looking for? It could be down to your CV. Here are some tips to creating the ultimate application:
1. CV layout:
- Try to keep your CV under two pages long.
- Include experience relevant to the job you are applying for. This is especially relevant to developers with little or no commercial Rails experience. For example, if you have worked on a pet project, created a plugin, written a gem or contributed to an open source project, include this as this counts for relevant experience and shows your interest is not just work related.
- If you have a higher education qualification at degree level or other, there is no need to include GCSE results.
2. Cover letter / email
Make sure you include a CV or cover letter that is relevant to the job you are applying for. Include details such as:
- Your github url (follow projects you are interested in and use this to showcase your work). If you are still using SVN, start using git!
- Your experience with BDD and RSpec, machinist, Cucumber etc… If you have no experience in BDD, start reading up on it.
- List your total years commercial experience with rails.
- If the position involves pair programming, mention your experience with this (if any).
Another thing worth mentioning is to provide your CV in pdf format for an application as this is the most universally favoured option and you know exactly how it is going to look for the company. If you are using a recruiter, it may be worth also sending it over in rtf or doc format as they sometimes put the CV into their standard CV format.