Using Your Open-Source Contributions To Land a Full-Time Job

Nerval's Lobster writes So you've worked on an open-source project, and you want to leverage that experience to move your career forward. In theory, there's no reason an employer should shun your experience, just because you did the project from home on your own time. But how can you actually leverage that project contribution into a full-time gig (assuming you want one, of course)? Developer Jeff Cogswell offers some tips: First, make sure that any project you present on your resume is a good one; pointy-haired bosses have a nasty habit of attribute the less-than-stellar elements of a project to you, even if you weren't responsible for them. Second, be prepped to talk about deadlines, bug reports and fixes just as if the project were something you'd done for a job instead of just the pleasure of contributing to something cool. Those are just a few of the ways to use open source to your advantage, but others abound.

Comments

Job Training

[jelwell]

I got a job working at Netscape (Now Mozilla) because I spent my free time contributing reduced test cases to bugs through bugzilla. Asa Dotzler, volunteered his time managing people like me, and picked up a job similarly. I referred Blake Ross to Netscape shortly after I joined because he was working with us, helping with bugs. The key for all of us, was that contributing allowed us to get job training - training that Netscape wouldn't have to provide. It's tough for a hiring manager to determine if someone is skillful based on their resume, but it's easy to see how someone will fit in your organization when they're already contributing to it.
Joseph Elwell.