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How To List FOSS Experience On Your Resume
maximus1 writes "If you're selling skills gained in an open source project, you have additional opportunities to shine, say experts in this ITWorld article. But what is the best way to explain your FOSS experience? 'Someone stands out because of how they talk about the project, says Zack Grossbart, author of The One Minute Commute. His advice is to describe the project and discuss your contributions in detail: 'If you were a committer, what did you do to earn that status? What features did you work on? Did you design new areas, or just implement predefined functions? Did you lead meetings? Define new architecture? Set the project direction?' If the FOSS experience is part of your background but not a shining beacon or job equivalent, it's common to list it under 'other experience.' Andy Lester, author of Land The Tech Job You Love, says: 'Think of each project as a freelance job that you've worked on. Just as different freelance gigs have varying sizes and scopes, so too does each project to which you contribute. The key is to not lump all your projects under one "open source work" heading.' Good examples are worth a thousand words. Grossbart offers up his resume as a sound but not perfect example (PDF) that includes open source experience. (His article on how to format your resume might also be of interest.)"
> Did you lead meetings?
What are these "meetings" you speak of?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Aside for the formatting of skill lists and stuff, its pretty good, which means one thing, in my opinion: he is another victim of the "YOUR RESUME MUST BE ONE PAGE REGARDLESS OF YOUR EXPERIENCE!!!!!111!" school of thought.
The one page resume rule: hurting professionals everywhere since....well, ever.
> Is not "worry about the content, not the presentation" the mantra around
> here? If we are supposed to follow that for the web-pages we produce, why
> should the resumes be different?
Resumes have to get past HR drones and PHBs in order to reach anyone who can comprehend the content.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Perhaps a better way to express it is: Your resume can be as long as you think is necessary to describe your experience. But you should be aware that very few hiring managers will read past the first page. So the first page should list the experiences that you would like managers to know about when they're deciding whether to hire you.
The rest of your resume may be read (or skimmed) by lower-level managers (and your friends), and it may be searched for keywords by HR's software, but it usually won't contribute significantly to any hiring decisions.
This may all be disregarded if you know that the company's hiring managers are intelligent and knowledgeable in the company's field. Such people do tend to read entire resumes, and even understand them. This mostly applies to the smallest companies, since in large companies hiring is done by professional managers, not by people knowledgeable in their subject area.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
opinion? Blah blah blah, try 30 different fonts. Blah blah blah, try 20 different text editors. And HR will still want a copy in word format or plain text format, ignore any formatting, and keyword scan.
My resume is done in latex. Better font, better justification, better appearance.
This guy is so good at writing resumes that he tells the rest of us how to write them as a job; what more proof do you need that he must have an excellent resume?
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
I agree that one page isn't enough for people with lots of experience, but his solution is not the best to address this either. --WAY-- too much to read.
Note. I actually see the reason for keeping resumes under one page; most people that think they need two usually don't. I think it's only appropriate if the position is really important, since the pool for those positions are smaller and, thus, those who make the hiring decisions can (and will) spend more time on the person's merits and personality.
The methodology my school uses for resume writing is that people should list three key responsibilites for each job listing, in list format. This can make keeping a resume within to a single page even more difficult because many people have had numerous interesting experiences at their previous workplaces that may or may not be able to get listed on there. Then again, if that person does claim to have many of those experiences, they should be able to list a few which will grab an employer's attention fairly quickly.
After hearing of several interviews in my co-ops and speaking to a few managers about this, the logic behind this makes a lot of sense. Even though HR uses a bland filter to separate the "wheat" from the "chaff" (or, more appropriately, the ones who know the system and the ones who don't), those resumes still need to be passed down to management, as the decision is ultimately up to them. What this means is that they look at TONS of resumes, sometimes on a daily basis. Most of those resumes are ill-formatted, poorly written and are eyesores to look at. Additionally, they usually want to spend less than a minute looking at one before deciding whether to yay or nay a second interview (the nays don't get saved; they get binned).
It's for this reason that having a resume in list format helps so much; hiring managers or others with decision power don't have to think as much when looking at one. They can sift through the list and see if they make the cut (for an interview, that is).
You are so right... except for the font. Humans read a serif font about 20% faster and with less errors than a sans serif font so use Times instead of Helvetica (which btw. is not available on a std.Windows PC... Arial, Tahoma or Verdana are not good substitutes for Helvetica).