After looking at more than a hundred profiles, most people could dramatically improve their chances of getting hired, or at least getting a foot in the door. This is a numbers game. The more companies they apply to, the higher chance they get selected. By putting a bit more effort into an application, I am confident that they would stand above most people.
This is not by any stretch a comprehensive list, but some pointers that do help:
Full-Stack role
and Backend role
. You can keep your CV intact and draw attention in the application email, why you would be great for the role. Same for the Backend. What work have you done in the backend? What sort of scale have you dealt with? Sell yourself!Shiped features
, Fixed bugs
, Maintained the codebase
is a filler. It’s uninteresting and boring. Any feature you have done, no matter how “simple and tedious”, can be seen as an amazing accomplishment. Make it look like so.The role
, The company
, The future co-workers
, The culture
, The Tech
, Who are the users
, How does the company make money
. It’s easy to spot when someone is making up things on the spot to ask, and who is genuinely curious. In a meeting of 30 minutes with me, I usually leave 10 to 15 minutes of questions, but I have in the past prolonged the interview to 1 hour. My favourite candidates are the ones that don’t just ask, but challenge certain things we do: I saw you this X thing, but how exactly does that work?
or Why did you do X thing in your repo
(part of our work is OSS). These are the people that standout.