Re:Ask HN: Lots of non-traditional work exp – Pimp my CV?
by brotchie on Thursday May 19, 2016 @01:52AM
(#11728285)
When listing experience, it's best to follow the pattern:
I accomplished X, relative to Y, by doing Z.
For example for SocialInsight.io:
- Instead of "Instagram Analytics": Helped X customers increase their Instagram revenue / engagement / etc by Y% by building an Instagram analytics Software-as-a-Service.
- Instead of "Big Data on a small server": Enabled fast in-memory Instagram stream processing by develping an optimized in-memory storage format that brought the per-post in-memory size from 300kb to 30kb. (I have no idea what you did, but actually frame the technical achievement that made it possible.)
What'd I'd like to know if I were assessing your CV as a potential hire:
SocialInsight.io: Is it just you, or a team? How many customers? How much revenue? Did you individually do all the design, coding, marketing? or did you have co-founders / other employees.
Freelance Data Mining: What was the most impressive job that you worked on? How many jobs have you done? I'd drop the $80/hr, and don't mention Upwork. Could get away with replacing Freelance Data Mining with "Data Mining Consultant."
Affiliate Marketing, need things like:
- Built a successful direct response affiliate marketing business that funnelled insurance leads to brokerages.
- Developed a custom analytics suite which allowed me to increase conversion rates from x% to x% and decrease traffic acquisition costs by x%.
Professional Online Poker: This is super interesting.
- Funded my university study through playing Limit Hold'Em poker online.
- Contributed "blah" to modern poker theory.
- Ran analytics on opponent data to gain an edge, etc.
Things to remove:
- Note about girlfriend's death
- "Machine Learning before it was cool" makes you sound like somebody I wouldn't want to work with. Better to say "Pioneered the application of machine learning to blah aspect of online poker. Built out custom machine learning libraries to implement methods blah."
- "I believe that inbound communication should come to me. I should not have to hunt for it" Wording of this is a red flag for me. Also, no real idea of what Zophoz is.
Echoing petervandijck: Definitely create a LinkedIn profile and create (or list) your Github account.
I accomplished X, relative to Y, by doing Z.
For example for SocialInsight.io:
- Instead of "Instagram Analytics": Helped X customers increase their Instagram revenue / engagement / etc by Y% by building an Instagram analytics Software-as-a-Service.
- Instead of "Big Data on a small server": Enabled fast in-memory Instagram stream processing by develping an optimized in-memory storage format that brought the per-post in-memory size from 300kb to 30kb. (I have no idea what you did, but actually frame the technical achievement that made it possible.)
What'd I'd like to know if I were assessing your CV as a potential hire:
SocialInsight.io: Is it just you, or a team? How many customers? How much revenue? Did you individually do all the design, coding, marketing? or did you have co-founders / other employees.
Freelance Data Mining: What was the most impressive job that you worked on? How many jobs have you done? I'd drop the $80/hr, and don't mention Upwork. Could get away with replacing Freelance Data Mining with "Data Mining Consultant."
Affiliate Marketing, need things like:
- Built a successful direct response affiliate marketing business that funnelled insurance leads to brokerages.
- Developed a custom analytics suite which allowed me to increase conversion rates from x% to x% and decrease traffic acquisition costs by x%.
Professional Online Poker: This is super interesting.
- Funded my university study through playing Limit Hold'Em poker online.
- Contributed "blah" to modern poker theory.
- Ran analytics on opponent data to gain an edge, etc.
Things to remove:
- Note about girlfriend's death
- "Machine Learning before it was cool" makes you sound like somebody I wouldn't want to work with. Better to say "Pioneered the application of machine learning to blah aspect of online poker. Built out custom machine learning libraries to implement methods blah."
- "I believe that inbound communication should come to me. I should not have to hunt for it" Wording of this is a red flag for me. Also, no real idea of what Zophoz is.
Echoing petervandijck: Definitely create a LinkedIn profile and create (or list) your Github account.