Can anyone comment on my Site and Resume?
rwgast_logicdesign
Posts: 1,464
I quickly whipped up a web site today to feature some work that I had pictures of, etc... and a "skill" based resume, if you read any of y past threads you know i do electrical and am trying to switch to something more hi-tech I was wondering if you guys in the industry could give me some tips... I plan to run a job application marathon tomorrow from LA to San Francisco.
Resume Unformatted
Web Site
I would also appreciate any tips on tying the site and resume together a little better.
Resume Unformatted
Web Site
I would also appreciate any tips on tying the site and resume together a little better.
Comments
BTW: On our earlier conversation, via PM, I didn't understand your experience level. Yes, do charge them for a quick look, and go with your fee.
The nice thing about a small diagnostic charge is it will help qualify activities for you. They will make a judgement right away that will filter out a lot of unproductive work for you. Your gigs per quote metrics will go up, and so will your success / gig metrics, along with your time commits going down as you center in on things you can get done quick 'n easy.
One thing you might consider on your resume' is what your efforts ended up doing for the business, or more generally, why did it make sense to do, business or not.
Estimate this, if you can. It doesn't have to be exact, just plausible and reasonable. Too much info is a breech of trust. You want just enough to spark the right kind of conversations and no more. It can help to avoid linking it to company names, etc... just to be safe.
eg: "Wrote proprietary POS Software..." Resulting in?
Did it offer a feature they wanted, but could not find out there? What did that mean for the business? etc... Why was this worth it, and what value did you add to the whole thing? Did you do it to gain experience? What did you learn and why does it matter?
Here's an example from an old, manufacturing related resume where I was applying for a director / manager type position. I was moving up, and had done that kind of work, but didn't have the title, and this is how I got around the "self-taught" problem:
Collected and analyzed job cost metrics to justify purchase of $250K industrial laser system, with optical locator. After I installed and integrated this laser into the manufacturing process, the results were: reduction in material costs, reduction in run time and setup costs, increase in new work, both production and prototype, with a machine pay off in 2 years.
And another one:
Optimized workflow from "art to part" on CAD / CAM system. This included network setup, phase out of paper tape, write utility programs to automate laborious and error prone estimates and common setup computations, along with user training on the CAD / CAM system. This project improved quality with significantly reduced "first run" programming and planning error rates, reduced new project lead times, and improved production cycle times through more efficient use of material and better optimized CNC tool paths. The shorter lead-times also improved on the overall number of projects possible to complete per year.
The message on both of those was simple: Hire me, I will fund myself nicely and quickly, and it's pure profit from there. And it was too. Has been in almost every case in my life so far. This is true for a lot of technical people, but few of them will frame it up and leave all nice and easy to see.
If you can cite a couple of those, and only a few are really needed tops, they tend to be powerful statements. Self-taught people often can make a great impact on an organization, but they also can have trouble presenting and making that case. This is one way to nail that down. They know what they are gonna get, and once they understand that, the little stuff, like skills lists aren't such a qualifier anymore. And when you get an offer, it's very highly likely to be a better fit, and interesting work too.
If they see one of those, and it's resonant with them, you are nearly always going to get a conversation about it. This is what you want. Sell yourself from there, making damn sure to under promise and over deliver.
Title this "Professional Results", and it will all fit into the format you've got cooking so far.
**The trick on these is to frame them to trigger just the conversation you want to have. In those cases, I was done with production, and wanted to move up to factory automation / optimization and take on higher level tasks. Dry run them on somebody you trust and see what it leads them to think and ask.
On another one, I was wanting to make the jump from a tech to a pre-sales type role. I wrote them differently so I could get the conversation where it needed to be. You get a little control over the interview content by doing this. Use it. Not many people do. Though more may now that it's out there.
Think of it this way: The school of hard knocks is a perfectly fine school, but you might need to show the scars.
My interview for that one centered on a couple of those. They asked for detail, at which point, I asked for a tour. During that tour, I totally saw some real good I could do and flat out told 'em. In my life, I've done this a few times now. Pays off.
WBA is right. That page took 40 seconds to load here. Most people will have hit the back button after the first second. Your images are not so big so they can be reduced in size a lot.
If you open your browser dev tools "inspect element" you will see a bunch of errors. "cast_sender.js", whatever that is, does not load.
Scripts are blocked all the time for me so I'm probably missing things.
BTW I am in Southern California about an hour out side of LA right next to Palm Springs.
I'm not looking to be negative here, but I feel compelled to comment....
I'm sure you are wanting to portay a positive professional image. And in that regard I'd sure upgrade the pictures you have of your workspace. Baby high chairs and coffee tables do not lend a lot of confidence to a serious, professional operation. It may be the only space you have, but crop those kind of items out of your photos.
Just my two cents...
Cheers,
Peter (pjv)
Resume, not on drop Box
lowlevel-logicdesign.com
Ok I will look at what I can do about cropping things out... I had not even thought about that, although it may be hard in some pictures.
It sounds like you're applying to two fairly different jobs - which is great! But, it means you should probably have two different resumes. I've read of people that even create a customized resume for every single application. I think there's a happy middle ground
Specifically, for applications that are more software focused, your resume gets boring quick. I have to skim past five unrelated skills before I find the first software skill - and even that one is quite vague. At very least - have a software-oriented and hardware-oriented resume with your skills organized appropriately.
I thought about posting this comment a couple hours ago, but decided not to because I didn't think you were interested in a software job after skimming your resume. It wasn't until I read "Im not necessarily just shooting for embedded jobs" that I realized my mistake :P
I have been told that one should tailor ones CV to the position one is applying for. Which kind of makes sense, any prospective employer only want's to see what is useful to them, not a ton of other history.
Perhaps your personal web page should be about you and what you find interesting. Where is your passion? I have made a hit at job interviews, on occasion, by talking about anything but the job in hand.
In the past I kept an old fashioned CV that listed every company I have ever worked for and every project and every keyword for languages, operating sytems, etc, etc. It just got so long winded that nobody would want to read it. And most of the old stuff was obsolete and irrelevant anyway.
One of the best CVs I have ever read was written by a guy being made redundant from the old Marconi Radar company, many years ago. It read:
In the past 15 years I have designed every radar signal processor the Marconi Company has ever produced.
Short and sweet.
I don't know. You will get so much advice about CV writing and promoting yourself in general. Who knows what will work for you?
I always wondered this too, until now. Here's what Google had to say:
I would say my general interest more lies towards hardware, Im in no shape to to get a job doing 100% code nor do I want that... I have been on a bit of paternal leave from everything for quite a while, so as far as code goes Im a bit rusty and no wear near competitive as someone who is souley focused on coding. I guess Im just trying to look well rounded kind of what they call "full stack" these days. Just because im not a code jockey doesn't mean I cant write software, I prefer to work on a much lower level when I do though... Im not an RTOS or even by any means a windows programmer these days, I do have the ability to learn what is needed. I think my biggest whole in the hardware side of the embedded world is lack of ever learning an EDA package.. besides to drop some schematics really quick. I also wish I could put a hardware description language up there, but that is something new im trying to learn on a small scale with the PSOC and work my way up, I understand it takes years to be good with a HDL.
Seconded. I very highly recommend this when you have time and the information to do it.
If you really want to land something specific, then do a little research about the company. Seek out a problem and make an effort towards a solution and bring it to the table during the interview. You might have to re-invent yourself a little, but I would use some caution. Being the jack of all trades is good ONLY if you can deliver, which means you need to know more than just enough to get by <--- Do your homework and teach yourself. Being the master of one specific task is not the best answer either because it severely limits your prospective target job audience.
chj.tbe.taleo.net/chj03/ats/careers/requisition.jsp?org=PROACTIVETECHLLC&cws=1&rid=228&source=Indeed.com
For instance i think my resume etc, is geared towards the job above. Would anyone say that im going about getting a job like this the wrong way? Ive also applied for some instrumentation jobs that require and FCC license for some reason, Im guessing there sensors or radios must operate on HAM bands... unless the FCC issues another technicians license im unaware of.
I need a job asap, so im just kind of applying to anything that looks interesting... but I am mostly shooting for somewhere I get to use test tools and work on hardware, I figure that is a good start in and I can hone my coding chops in the mean time and hopefully move up. I think being "full stack" on toys would be fairly easy but I cant find a lot of toy companies in my area. I would say neither the code nor the hardware in a toy is even complicated enough to bust out an MSO.
Part of my problem right now is I have been spoiled by high union wages, but have chose to leave do to a paternal leave along with some internal politics in the Union making jobs much less stable for higher payed employees, and much more available for someone off the street. Im finding non Union companies pay much less for the same work and a lot less rights.... Theres a lot of money out there if im willing to take a job with long blocks of travel time but this isn't a great option right now as far as my daughter goes.
...extensive twenty five years of professional and self taught high tech skills working with computers and electronics
Here's the thing. By my math you're about 31 years of age (inferred from your graduation date of 2002). Twenty-five years experience puts you at 6 years of age when you started. I'm not saying it's not true, but a prospective employer may call shenanigans.
Ability to work with mixed signal analog and digital electronics including proper layouC sscsst
I'm uncertain of the the end of this line. I don't know if it's intentional or dozing off at the keyboard (I've been there!).
Community Colleague at Copper Mountain Colleague, CS and Math
Did you mean College instead of Colleague?
Been thinking about how to organize your work experience. While tailoring your work experience on the resume to the job you're applying for is nice, you don't have that many items of work experience. Leaving off ones that don't necessarily apply to the job leaves gaps in the work timeline. That can be a red flag. You may want to consider two sections, or list list the relevant items first, followed by the less relevant ones. This keeps your work timeline intact and the relevant items to the forefront. Putting it into two sections can further separate the wheat from the chaff, as it were. Shorten the non-relevant items to a short one-liner. "Learned leadership and team-building skills in a retail environment." would an example. The relevant ones, maybe a two-liner: "Contracted to write proprietary POS software using Visual Basic/ASP and MS SQL Server. Excellent pre-high school graduation experience.". Or something like that. Avoid too much editorializing.
The work you did for Local 440 could be one item, even though it spans two different times.
The average time an employer looks at a resume is six seconds. That means your resume should be like a mini-skirt: long enough to cover the basics, yet short enough to keep their attention.
EDIT: corrected my own grammar...
Also noticed the link to the job I was asking about was broken, now fixed
Hey, I am also a Sparky and started my business back in 1987. By 1989 I was turning over close to $1M with only one employee besides myself.
It was all an accident (for want of a better word), really as I was a business visitor to the US at the time and suddenly found myself with a marketable product. I couldn't start a US company because of my US visitor status so I opted to open an offshore company on the Isle Of Man. I had 17 full-time US employees before I took steps to become legit.
So, over many years, I have employed hundreds of people and interviewed every single one of them personally. Here are my thoughts:
Website:
Lose the pictures! A circuit breaker with two wire-nuts (I refuse to use those awful connectors) is not $30/hr expertise.
If you must use the FrankBot video, I would re-word the title, get rid of the word "done".
"I have done consultation jobs..." would be better "provided consultancy services...." (or similar)
What is the purpose of the link to the review? If it's to demonstrate your technical writing ability then I would say lose it.
Resume:
I would lose the reference to conduit bending
"Use of 8 and 32 bit microcontrollers to solve problems AVR, Cypress, STM32, Parallax". Poor wording and says nothing. Regarding Parallax, it would have more of an impact if you mention "eight core parallel processing microcontroller"....describe the technology instead of listing manufacturers.
Work History:
Once you have the sub heading, there is no need for "worked for"
I would lose the delivery driver bit and simplify it to "various management positions at a fast food establishment"
For me, your résumé would have gone straight to the round file cabinet for the simple mention of "union".
If you show initiative and have drive and ambition along with a desire to continuously improve, the rewards will come. Many of my Detroit employees came complete with the union mentality (I want more for doing less). They didn't last long. OTOH, a guy who started out as a machine degreaser/disassembler with nothing more than a high-school education, became VP within seven years, making six figures. How? Because he made it his business to learn as much as possible and became almost indispensible.
Other comments:
Regarding software, I would always use designed/developed as opposed to write/wrote.
Jordan's suggestion of "Learned leadership and team-building skills in a retail environment.":
I would use "acquired" rather than "learned"
I had more but I'm out of time...Good luck!
I built the machine that produces the chassis for the Corvette (fabbed in Detroit before shipping to Bowling Green KY).
What takes 3 days to install elsewhere, took more than a month at GM due to having our hands tied by the unions.
After just referring to the Corvette chassis making machine, I seem to remember a comment made by yourself in another thread that you had "wasted" your time with VB(?)
The above, 8-axis CNC Tube Bender plus automatic debundling, loading and off-loading of material, runs 99% off VB.
Same thing for every Harley built since Y2K.
If you ever watch the documentary regarding the "V-Rod" development, they mention that it was made possible by a new tube forming process. Mine was the company developing it but although HD was an established customer, they used a 3rd party to make us believe that we *could* be working on a military project. Thanks to being able to run VB in the IDE, we had the process developed in no time at all.....Didn't receive any credit on the HD documentary, though LOL.
Same thing for every Polaris Victory since 1997.
Every single Polaris RZR is made on my 17 CNC axes machines.....all programmed using BASIC.
As for the resume, I think your comments are spot on.
I personally do not have any serious resume, because I worked most of my life in Germany and none of them places I studied or worked for ring any bell for a American H&R guy. Bilingual helps, but they usually just expect me to speak Spanish not German.
I even offered to work 2 weeks for free to decide if they want to hire me while being interviewed. That one worked good.
As for proud to be a BASIC programmer: I started out with BASIC first. On a WANG 2000, later TRS80 and ATARI's.
After doing COBOL for a while, I went thru different languages. By now I am quite language agnostic. Coding something down in whatever language is just one part of it. Doing it so that it confirms and fits into the existing codebase, naming conventions and all that other stuff is way more important then C# vs. BASIC.
Sure - the problem to solve sometimes dictate or rule out a language. Writing CNC code in COBOL is not a smart move, I guess.
Enjoy!
Mike
Thank you for the tips..
I do have some questions though, that was 8 guage wire what would you recommend I use, On every job I have ever had I used wire nuts or wago's, but I dont think there are wagos that big and if so i don't recall seeing them in a home depot, I mean this was a residential side job involving repair of the circuit board etc, but I ran that whole 220 line out of the panel, I guess I was trying to show I can easily add sub panels etc... and that I dont leave my wiring looking like sh*t. Im not disagrreing with your view on wire nuts Im actually curious what you would have used, some sort of hex lug? Ive done government jobs to casinos and 90% of make up was done with wire nuts unless the EE specified wagos. The only other way I would think to tie those wires together would be some sort of lug?
Secondly does union turn people off that bad? Iv'e worked for some contractors who were pretty sly and drove us hard. I only left like I said because I.B.E.W is turning in to Smile, hiring people off the streets they don't have to educate for 12 dollars an hour. Im not sure about other states but every single linesman in CA is union and they bust there Smile, also another division of I.B.E.W. In reality I am not trying to get a job as a sparky, some of that stuff is there becuase I already got some side buissness repairing welders and I wanted to make sure these guys knew I could install 220, Im also working on wrapping a 50amp 220 step up transformer I had planned on putting up.
I think most of what you said was good advice, im just curious about those two aspects. As for wasting my time with VB, it just seems to me that it has pretty much been dumped to the side as far as a RAD platform and C# has taken over, when I started with vb4 though it was a different story. It is nice to write a quick tool on the PC side though, I don't think its a bad language or anything. I just think learning any language for the PC at this point that is not C/C++ C# or Java and maybe python isn't a good investment unless you work for someone who doesn't have any requirements for the tools you use to write your software. The sad thing is in 10 years all the language I listed above except C/C++ will have just been another fad that passed the software world by.
Lastly though I really replied again because I wondered why you think I should drop the writing links, I have no issue with this I am once again just curious, as an employer what is it you see wrong with the links?