How I tweaked my CV and Had Interviews with some top companies and other things
when I started Android development in 2015, it wasn't all juicy after I started applying for jobs. I am someone who is not the smartest but going for the best or what others fear most is what I do. I always wondered why I had so many rejections given that I had the required skills, especially Android development. I applied to more than 400 jobs between 2017 and 2022 and most of the time, I got rejections(90% rejections). I heard people talk a lot how your CV/Resume mattered but I didn’’t really take time to check my CV for improvements as I believed it was Okay.
Among these companies were the big names like Facebook, Twitter(they rejected me more than 5 times.),Google and the rest. I always liked the work culture of these companies but my CV did not make any sense I guess.
Where I went Wrong
After taking sometime at a later stage to arrange my CV properly, I noted the flaws of my CV.
- I had a CV with a lot of unnecessary roles added. Applying for an Android role and adding a Python experience I had at a previous company or personal learning but I did each time. Don’t do this except the role requires the skill.
- My CV was not arranged in chronological order. I just mixed experiences in any order without caring. Please do not do this ever. Make sure you arrange your experience section from the most recent role you had. I am sure the recruiters did not take me serious with this.
- I did not quantify my contributions in my experience section.Ensure thst you quantify your achievements.It makes more sense to say “Converted the codebase from Java to Kotlin leading to 55% reduction in the lines of code” rather than just saying “Converted code to Kotlin”.Other examples can be,”Wrote unit tests to cover 90% of the code”, “Modified the Proof generation module to using WorkManager leading to the app startup time dropping from 4 to 2 seconds” etc.
- I did not bother ever writing any cover letter. Most roles say cover letters are optional but always try to write one. I believe recruiters put a lot of consideration into who sends a cover letter along.Write a cover letter even when it is optional.
- Avoid unnecessay short experiences on your CV. Working for a company for a very short time period and including it in your CV can hurt you.It doesn’t speak well for you. It is better to exclude these short experiences except it was a contractual role.
I think if you take time to make these tweaks to your CV, you can have a shit at some roles. On this note,you might want to know the companies I got the chance to interview with. Gotten a call from Google 3 times after more than 6 rejections for different Android roles at Google and I got to interview with Backbase as well. I even had a role with The Guardian Project, one of the biggest open source organizations out here without even an interview 😁😁 and most recently, I joined Rocket.chat as a technical writer, one of the most interesting fields I have been eager to dive into.
It is still a big step for me. I will update how far I will go/went with these companies.
Not to forget, here is a link to my Android dev CV if you want to have a look,https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jVkCOSH5pSztaF1BYLRK9unrdGkvHHIDUv7V2rRdOrk/edit?usp=drivesdk .
