How to write the CV you're proud of

I’ve spent the past eight years mostly looking at other people’s CVs. More precisely, I looked at them to find the link to their portfolio, GitHub, or anything that allowed me to see past the corporate-language descriptions of work experience:

• Worked with clients to understand their business needs and provided technical solutions to meet those needs.

• Fostered a culture of innovation and continuous improvement within the software development team.

Read: I build apps that solve real problems. I know what’s happening in my field, and I’m happy to teach others.

Sadly, these were the lines from my CV, so I thought it was time to cut the BS because I wouldn’t hire myself based on stuff like this.

Disclaimer: I wrote this newsletter in February while looking for my next position. After my edits, I knew my CV was great and it would help me land the job I wanted. ABBYY hired me in May, and my probation period has just ended successfully, so I believe I’m qualified to post this now. :)

Also, welcome to the 363 new subscribers who joined us in July – you keep this newsletter rolling 🙇‍♂️

So here’s how this went.

When I read my CV, I laughed.

It reminded me of Enterprise Java, where you had to create a

IteratorStateMapperDescriptorAspectProccesor

to get from A to B.

I successfully masked my 11 years of solid software development experience in corporate jargon, partially written by my new best friend, ChatGPT.

So it began.

The Purge

If you think simple, it’s way harder to mess things up.

So, the top priorities when cleaning up my dusty CV were:

• using plain English

• cutting anything I wouldn’t say in person

Here are a couple of “translations” I made.

The old version for my position from 2012 to 2016 looked like this:

Designing and building a cloud-based workflow automation software.

• Understanding business problems and translating them into technical solutions
• Building end-to-end products with Javascript (Backbone, Angular, Node.js) and Java (Dropwizard, JBPM, Java EE)
• Instrumenting, testing, and deploying code to production
• Working on product design to define feature specifications
• Working on operations and infrastructure to build and scale our applications
• Training and mentoring Junior Java and JavaScript developers

All this tells me is that I can build and host an app using these technologies while working with a team. I keep the code in good shape and teach others to do the same.

I rephrased the above into this:

Built the first production version of a cloud-based workflow automation software from the ground up.

Visited clients on-site and helped them implement their workflows with this tool.

Training and mentoring of Junior Java and JavaScript developers.

Technologies: Backbone.js, Angular, Node.js, Java, Dropwizard, JBPM, Java EE.

I’d consider the first sentence a hook – a strong opening that grabs your attention.

For real, I built an app from 0 that was some multithreaded Java monstrosity where you could design flows in a visual editor, and they executed apps on remote machines, called APIs and whatnot.

And I literally traveled to clients and showed them how to use it.

This communicates my value to any company far better than the previous version.

The Pet Projects

My wife keeps telling me that my differentiator is that I write a lot.

Read: I can’t shut up on the internet. Even if I try, it lasts only a couple of weeks. 😅

As much as I like writing my blog and telling people about it, promoting writing, and building stuff to become better programmers and learners, this position has no place in my CV.

Don’t get me wrong. It is super nice if you care about other developers, but consider how relevant it is for a company besides your actual real experience.

You want bangers in your CV.

Mic-drops all the way.

Only the good stuff.

The Ego

The more I write about how long I’ve been doing web development, the more awkward it is. But I’ve put 20 years into this.

I got my first computer when I was 15, and it was all downhill from there.

From a professional standpoint, it’s probably irrelevant that I might have been already selling websites before the legal age.

I left behind the 20 years of HTML programming and focused only on the “professional” experience.

That’s 11 years. We’re getting better, but this is certainly not the best hook:

11 years of professional experience in web development.

Instead, I tried starting with what I’ve been doing recently for businesses and hiding that decade in the last sentence. Followed up by hints on my most recent involvement:

As a full-stack engineer, I have experience building software from the ground up in e-commerce, civil engineering, gaming, business process management, and automation. Currently, I work primarily with TypeScript, React, Node.js, and GraphQL, but over the past 11 years of web development, I have worked with many tools and technologies.

I have over 7 years of experience working remotely with companies of various sizes in the US – from solo founders on tight budgets to teams with hundreds of engineers working on the #1 Online Payroll and HR Solutions software in the US.

Numbers are super important. Use numbers where you can. I don’t know why, but they stand out.

What do you think about my approach?

Maybe I’m completely off here because I’m not writing for engineers, and something like a CV should feel at least somewhat corporate.

📰 Weekly shoutout

1. 7 Techniques for Database Performance & Scaling by

   Saurabh Dashora

2. Keep is Simple, Software Engineer (KISS) by

   Hemant Pandey

3. 5 reasons why your best developers will quit - and how can you postpone it by

   Anton Zaides

📣 Share

There’s no easier way to help this newsletter grow than by sharing it with the world. If you liked it, found something helpful, or you know someone who knows someone to whom this could be helpful, share it:

🏆 Subscribe

There’s one easier thing you can do to grow and help grow: subscribe to this newsletter. I’ll keep putting in the work and distilling what I learn/learned as a software engineer/consultant. Simply sign up here: