Feedback on my CV please?

I'd still go two to three pages. Everything important should be on the front page. But you should include a job history and academic transcript on the next two. Its kind of counter intuitive, but highly experienced people can get away with writing less. CEO at company X, Manager at company Y, Advanced degree Z is very impactful, especially if your target is aware of the companies your have worked for.

Assuming is the same thing the HR manager will do if you don't explicitly tell them otherwise. It was my assumption reading the CV that you hadn't done anything useful outside of university. Your biggest non technical achievement was getting nominated to the student council back at high school. Put details in of other things you have done. Show yourself as well rounded and capable.

And spelling and grammar. A programmer should be able to appreciate the beauty and need of perfect syntax. Practice it everywhere, you never know, your next employer might be lurking on the forums today.

 

Out of curiosity, what's the feedback you've got on this CV from employers so far? These are the real people that can tell you, especially if you call back a day or two after you send in the CV.

 

All very good points. actually it makes a lot of sense why my CV must be longer than someone with a lot of experience.
and yes, there is no reason for the HR manager to not assume things.

 

i still haven't sent it to anyone. you mean i can call them back and ask them about what they thought of my CV?

 

Why not? It's a good idea to get feedback on anything you do. This is no exception. Don't be surprised if some don't help too much though. As said before, some recruiters go through hundreds of applications, it may be that they don't remember yours. That said, that's also feedback in a way.

 

I see.

 

also i have added my twitter handle to the first post

 

so do you guys think i should add work experiences such as Clarks (shoe shop) and the like to my resume too as Azmar mentioned?

 

I would strongly advise against 2+ pages if you have no work experience.

Just take what you have, clip out some of the bad grammar, try to mention some of the stuff you actually did and send it out. At this point, you're definitely over thinking it.

Fix the grammar.
Try to mention some detail in the game related stuff.
Take out detail in less relevant stuff.

Send it out to some recruiters or hr.
Follow up with them, don't be afraid to ask for direct advice on the resume after you've sent it in (especially if dealing with a recruiter). Understand that peoples opinions on resumes vary (and this includes hiring managers or recruiters as well).


EDIT - no, do not mention irrelevant work experience. You are a recent college grad. That's fine for what it is. Highlight the friggin game more. At least mention the language you wrote it in.

EDIT 2: here is the first link from "recent graduate resume 2 pages" google search: http://www.quintcareers.com/resume_length.html - it goes into length about how recent grads should stick to one page. If this is the standard, stick with it.

 

Why?

 

I disagree since you can have a degree in Math and it looks like you have no other skills. But if you also have A-levels in art and music then that is very important. Anyway, everyone knows A-levels are much harder than degrees.

Looks like everyone likes to comment on people's CVs. We all like to add our spices to the dish™ (This saying is trademarked by me August 2015).

 

I would add work experience you have had, regardless of relevancy. At the moment it looks like you are being hired for your very first job. A graduate who has done a degree is useful. A graduate who has done a degree and worked and been actively involved in the community is more valuable. My first employer was impressed by the fact that I had worked the end of the line in a cannery.

I would also send it out. The primary purpose of a CV is to get you in the door for job interviews. If it does that job, then screw every bodies advice. If it doesn't do the job, keep rewriting it until it does.

Also call and talk to a human after every CV you send out.

 

Would you really prefer a programming candidate that had a shoe sales job listed on his resume - even if he was a recent grad?

 

Yes. You have two options to present, a grad that did a degree and nothing else. Or a grad that did a degree and worked in a shoe shop. Given both CVs on the table with nothing else to distinguish between them, I'd take the grad that had a demonstrated track record of hard work and initiative.

Its worth noting that I've only ever reviewed CVs for engineering/manufacturing roles, not for programming roles. The industry may have totally different attitudes to what I would expect.

Lets face it, hiring a grad is an investment. It takes six months to a year to start getting real value out of a grad. The faster an employer thinks they can recoup that investment the better.

 

Ok I get that - I see it as "knows how to use formatting etc". I'm a big fan of using whitespace/structure to guide the reader which is probably why I made it so long, but I can understand why it could be a negative.
Just went through it, noticed that the last page is not work experience but unnecessary fluff, so I'll remove that.. I mean, do I really need to state that I am "Computer Literate"?

I should also point out that my CV was written with the help of a recruiter around 10 years ago, as my original one was full of junk. It was probably around 3 pages back then and I've just added to it since.

I can probably remove my earlier jobs (since they're not that relevant anymore), but I've always wondered if that would work against me. If I say I have 12 years experience - can I show just 6 years worth of work experience without raising eyebrows?
They also gave me my first opportunities (with no qualifications), so having them listed on my CV means it feels like I still appreciate what they did for me (to me at least).

 

Yes that's true, I should have been more specific. The line I included for GCSE's should be there for A-Levels too. They are only irrelevant if in the same field.
If you have a degree in Maths and an A-Level in Maths, and you apply for a Maths related job, there's zero point in saying you have an A-Level in Maths.

 

Someone that finally understands everything.

Also not putting it makes you look like the 300+ people you just graduated with that also have a "robot" on their resume. Here in Canada a big percentage of people do not get any jobs from University and I always wondered why. Now after reading this thread I have a bit more understanding on how clueless people are. It scares me if the majority of people have done NOTHING ( like seriously not even a job) for the 19-22 years of their entire life, get a degree and only write down projects they done from school ( that they were forced to do) and EXPECT a job or even worthy of a job. Shows why a huge percentage of people never get hired...

Also grades matter less here, with all the immigrants you have oriental people that take the classes before they come and after they enter our University and leave with 97+ averages. Employers are starting to catch on, and care drastically more about if you can actually do the work or have work experience.

Out of all those years and after you graduate and you don't have any work experience, that's failure on your part. School is NOT something that holds you back and does not allow you to get a job in your field, during summer or as part time job. It's only excuses people create for themselves if they were not intelligent to find a job in their field while at school. Heck if they couldn't even manage a mundane / trivial job while at school, it shows maybe they have troubles of handling the fundamentals of life. How could they handle a real job with track records like that? These are question's any employer would be asking.

 

Someone woke up on the wrong side of bed today.

Side-stepping all the racism and hate in that post for a second...
You seem to be under the impression that jobs just grow on trees, now that may be the case in Canada, but don't assume it is everywhere. Especially getting a job in 'their field while at school', how are you to know that the very little spare time a student has could be enough to get a job in whatever their field might be?
Especially for programming, I don't know many/any places that would take a novice undergraduate on part time. Most students only have the odd hour free in normal work hours(mon-fri 9-6), completely impractical to actually work at a company.

As for non-relevant jobs, up until very recently there have been huge job shortages due to the economic crisis that make it tough for anyone to get even menial jobs. Even if they had gotten a job in a coffee shop or whatever, what do you really think that contributes to a CV? If you think it means more than a good portfolio then I have to question your thought process.

It begs the question, have you been to university? And have you worked in software development?

 

My degree was in engineering. To meet the Washington Accord (international standards for engineering degrees) we had to do 800 hours of paid engineering experience over the summer breaks. Some of the science degrees went even further, the four year science degree included 12 months of paid experience in your field. Employers loved it, it was cheap skilled labor. Students loved it, we got paid for our summers.

Needless to say the job rate within six months out of the degree was something crazy like 97%. A good proportion of the students went back to work with the same companies they had done summer work with. Everyone had a decent couple of references. And practical work experience with actual accomplishments. I even went on to supervise a couple of these summer engineers in my first couple of years at work, adding to my management skill set.

Anyway not sure what my point is here. But more and more degrees in my home country are switching to the model of requiring students to have industry work experience as part of the degree.

In general part time work should be part of a good degree. I turned up at 6am and ground rocks in an analytical chemistry lab while studying. Boring, yes, menial, yes. Right next to qualified chemists, yes. There is a ton of low level work in programming that can be handed off to a junior. Failing that you can always be the guy that brings the devs their coffee. And failing that you still can do sports or volunteer or a ton of other stuff outside of Uni.

I guess the relevant question to ask the OP at the moment is "What else did you do while you were studying?" and "What did you do over the summer?". Both questions I've been asked in recent interviews. If the answer is nothing, then there is no point discussing it further. If there is other stuff, its at least worth considering making a line item.

My general experience with employers is they don't like unexplained gaps in CVs. Having some story tell about summer is a good idea.

 

That would be one of my questions in the interview too. The problem with just rejecting a CV over gaps is that there may be explainable reasons (personal issue, financials etc) as to why they are there. You don't get to know those until an interview stage though.

Our process is :
- Whittle down CV's
- Provide technical test (this is a small unity project with a challenge to complete)
- Phone/Face-to-face Interview (though we've only ever had face-to-face interviews for this department, I'm actually unsure how I'd go about a phone interview, I like to give on-the-spot fizz-buzz tests and the like)

So you see, if someone didn't work a summer because a family member died or something, you could have gotten rid of a perfectly good candidate for a really silly reason. I usually let the technical test do most of the slimming down, it's surprising how much it tells you about a candidate (also, takes zero effort from you, just email the project and instructions, then wait! ).

That's really great, some UK courses have this, like teaching or nursing, but the computer science area has no such thing unfortunately. It would be a really great initiative though.

 

One more comment on the CV I just noticed. You should totally call out being bilingual. I'm not sure how much demand there is for Persian speakers, but it is a skill that makes you a unique candidate. Over here you can pretty much walk into a job if you have English and Mandarin. The fact that I didn't notice this unique skill the first dozen times I read your CV means the document isn't doing its job.

Totally valid point. Spending all of your spare time at uni working on a portfolio would leave you with a strong CV. And you could forget about listing part time work. You could forget about doing part time work for that matter.

But the OP doesn't have a strong portfolio. If there was a good portfolio, then great. But there isn't anything that would add up to six months of experience with Unity. Or 18 months with C++. Or any of the other things listed at the top of the CV. Not unless there is a patent or brand name or research paper for the surgical robot. But nothing else on the list impresses me.

Tune Escapist wasn't fun, nor was it technically challenging to build, its just a bunch of cubes moving in a pattern with collision detection thrown on top. It doesn't show any understanding of game design, nor does it show off any particularly impressive coding. It might be impressive underneath if it can detect beats in the sound and respond dynamically. But it might just be timed through brute force. There is no way to tell.

Poker bots is a standard AI challenge. Nothing that won't be on every graduates CV.

The cameras cool, but it reads like it was a typical navel gazing academic project. There is a huge difference between academic projects and real world ones. (At least in engineering, I assume its the same in computer science). If the project went beyond the classroom it would be cool. If not then its not that impressive.

Ball robots and line robots are also fairly standard university projects. Again on every graduates CV.

 

Yeah, technical tests are one thing that we don't have in engineering. Our degrees are audited under international treaties, so its assumed that if you graduated you have the skills you profess to. So for us the interview process is more about cultural fit for the company and personality fit for the job.

I was kind of shocked the first time I put in an application for a coding job and got an email back within minutes saying "We like your CV, please complete this eight hour coding test". My CV at the time had less of a portfolio then the OP. My intention was to try and get to the phone interview stage and charm them over with my winning personality. In hindsight I'm coming to realize that the coding test was pretty much an auto reply. I don't think my CV was even looked at.

There is a depressing thought for the OP. Its entirely possible that no one actually looks at the CV. That's why I suggested before to just start sending it out and see what happens. A CV that gets employers to contact you is doing its job, regardless of what strangers on an internet forum think.

 

Yes I do agree, I was more talking in general at that point. Focussing on the OP, the better idea would be to talk about the things learned almost like rattling off bullet points "I learned how to work effectively in a team", "I managed a group of x to do y" (you worked as a damn project manager and barely say anything about it!), "I took on the responsibility of x".

Well, if you get to interview stage, it will definitely have been read, and you'll probably have related questions coming at you. I'd ask a ton of questions about CV items anyway, I feel like you get to know more about the person that way. I've had interviews where they ask about things like "what do you see as your weakest aspect?" and still wonder what they really want from that question. There are better ways to judge personality than to paint them into a corner to see how they react.

 

I have asked that question before, and had to answer it dozens of times. I've finally settled on straight up honesty. I think the point of the question is to see how you react in a corner. The best repose is to refuse to acknowledge there is a corner.

My favorite way to get to understand peoples fit and personality is to take them on a tour of the workplace. They should be able to observe whats going on around them and ask sensible questions. Introducing them to key people, especially cantankerous ones, gives you a better picture of how they interact with others then any behavioral based questioning will. A computer programming environment is not as interesting as a chemical plant, but I'm curious if the same technique could be used.

 

For that question I normally say something really ridiculous like "I'm a perfectionist", a really mean interviewer will rip you to shreds if you do that though. That said, I used that line to get this job haha.

Yeah we normally do a tour round the office, it's never been met with more than awkward silence though, you are correct that it isn't very interesting

 

Yeah, my winning interview comment of "This site is located on the ocean, prevailing winds must bring in a lot of salt, what programmes do you have in place to keep corrosion down?" doesn't really have an equivalent in computer science. Unless you pulled up some code and took them on a quick tour of the structure of the game? Evoking something like "Why did you use design pattern x instead of y?" from successful candidates.

For a while I was using 'I struggle to say no, this means I sometimes take on more responsibility then I should'. Those double negatives can be quite useful when you are starting out.

Now I say 'I'm not particularly good at long term project management. My strengths lie in short term initiatives. I deal with this by pairing myself up with someone strong at project management.' If this genuine weakness is a deal breaker for potential employers then I consider myself lucky. I've just dodged a bullet. Doing a job as a project manager will generally make me miserable, and the strong push to get into project management was one of the reasons I left from my last job.

Of course as a graduate you really have no idea what part of the job you are going to love or hate. So just gun for a specific position that's available. My biggest mistake as a graduate was to approach companies with the line 'I love you guys and want to work for you', they responded with 'what do you want to do?', and I said 'whatever, I just want a job with your awesome company'. Eventually I switched this around to 'I want to do job x at your company'. This got me the job. Turns out I hate job x, and after a year at the company I switched to a different role. But I couldn't discover that until I had actually tried.

 

We do show them bits here and there, but our programs are so complicated, if anyone managed to ask a relevant question I'd probably be so stunned I'd hire them on the spot. It's mostly just silent nodding. We get a lot of silent nodding, and "mhmm".

I hear that, I've been pushed into a team management role over the years and it's very different, I'm unsure how I feel about it anymore.
I do sometimes wish I could be a graduate again, that excitement when you start your first job, learning the ropes and trying to make something of yourself is quite enjoyable. Then you get grumpy, jaded and tired of being taken for granted. (Oh my god I've become my mentor)
But that's life eh...

Good luck OP!

 

thanks guys, really. i'm silent but am absorbing all the tips and advices hopefully one day i will be coming here and GIVE people advice with all that experince under my belt

 

Good stuff, keep us updated, happy to help where I can.

 

first of all and once again i truly thank you guys and girls for all your help, i certainly didn't expect so much help. so i have revised my CV for a final time and it would be lovely if someone can read it and see if there is any serious errors on the language side of things. I am gonna keep the link up for as long as I can, in case other people want to look at it, after all a lot of good advice has gone into it

 

I don't know if input from the Unity forum has actually helped your resume at all (it might have hurt it).

Try reaching out to an IT recruiter in your region discuss it with them. If a professional in the field of resumes that deals with businesses in your region and industry thinks it's good, then cool, if not, then not.

The advice in this thread is all over the place, super subjective, and perhaps overly specialized to our very different backgrounds.

 

I haven't looked at it again, so I can't say, but it is indeed quite possible that too many cooks can spoil the broth. Trying to please everyone often results in something too watered down to be useful to anyone.

 

yes true, but I think that's not the case here and the CV has actually got better. enough to get me a paid job or even an internship? most likely not. but at least now i can tell myself I tried, before jumping to my second game.

 

Ok, let's take a final crack at this.
It does appear that too much advice has made your CV a little muddled, not much of the advice has had the intended effect.

You really need an introductory paragraph about you. Considering you are going for entry level graduate roles, the personality fit is the most important thing. Write 2-3 lines as a personal statement (you must have done something similar to apply to Kings College, do a new one), put it right at the top.

Your technical skills now that they don't have any times on them, don't suggest which you are most proficient in. As such it suggests you aren't an expert at any. You need to show you have spent most of your time with C++ and that you have a decent enough understanding of C# and Unity (god, please don't use 'decent enough' though...). Maybe to show this you need to write more than 1 word in a bullet point, that's fine, just try to keep it neat.

Your experience really really really needs to be extrapolated into the key learning points you got from those projects.
How you do this is up to you, there are lots of ways to write a CV. Currently though, there's a lot of text that doesn't tell the reader enough. Who are they going to get if they hire you?
As others have mentioned, everyone has done university projects, the specifics matter very little. What you learnt from the experience is the thing an employer will want to hear about.

I'm afraid to say that with the new changes, your CV has gained more text and gotten less effective. Focus on the skills you learned while working in a team and as a team leader, these are super useful skills that directly translate to a real work environment. A reader could easily skip over the fact you were a team leader, even if they did read it they have no idea if you were effective/what you did to organise the team. Being able to be a good team member is also something an employer wants to know you have done before.


As @frosted says, you might be best off going to a recruiter for the field you wish to work in. It seems like you are in the UK so maybe look for a recruitment agency near you, ask if they have anyone that works specifically in IT fields and ask if you can schedule an appointment to talk about your CV. Getting face to face advice might be better than the scattergun approach of an internet forum, and they'll probably help you tailor your CV to specific job applications.

This a boring topic I know, but honestly the way you represent yourself will affect your entire career, so it's important to be able to do so effectively.

Also, this isn't a new thing, CV writing is an age-old problem, as such there is a ton of info on the internet about it.
http://www.reed.co.uk/career-advice/blog/2012/september/how-to-write-a-cover-letter
http://www.reed.co.uk/career-advice/blog/2013/march/how-to-explain-a-gap-in-your-cv
http://www.reed.co.uk/career-advice/blog/2015/march/four-ways-to-follow-up-after-an-application
etc etc.

 

Want some tips? Resumes still follow the story formula. Grab 'em early, with one strong statement. In mine, it's "When I believe in something, I become unstoppable. It’s how I evolved from ...". Then, I use a 10 point font, list things on one line like, "Technical: Unity, C#, C++, Java, ...". I'm also succinct, "Led the requirements, design, implementation, and delivery of dozens of game projects and generated tens of thousands of lines of code in a variety of languages (C++, C#, Java) and game engines (Unity, Delta3D, VBS2, and Unreal)". That's a LOT of stuff, in very few words.

With 20 years of experience, my resume fits on one page. The (optional) second page lists my publications, books, and presentations.

Gigi

 

thanks

 

You're hired. You start on Monday.

 

well i just got an internship from a company in this small island nation called malta. I am super stoked and kind nervous at the same time since I dont know what to expect. after all it is 2000 miles away from where I currently live! (i live in london). i will perhaps be updating you guys as to what happens with the job. thats if you wanna know

 

By ilk what do you mean? Professional interests? Common background? It's not a word typically used in a positive connotation in English in modern times. It sounds very archaic and prejudicial. However, it's pretty clear from the grammatical structures and mistakes in the resume you are perfectly capable of speaking, reading, and writing perfect English but chose to be lazy.

I'd threw out your resume the same way I threw out the resumes of people I'd personally met and felt were nice friendly people except their resumes were similarly poorly written to yours, although your resume has problems you wouldn't expect to see on a resume.

Your high level A levels grades are for entry level courses so that's not impressive as you've been led to think.

Having spoken about religion in your resume is as inappropriate as a person talking about their promiscuous sex life on a resume. It's not appropriate. There are laws that rule the land and you'll get no special favors for being either conservative or promiscuous. Obeying the laws of the jurisdiction you live in is a requirement and a prerequisite to employment and your own freedom. That's the only logic one might guess that might lead one to include such information on a resume. You take a job and you do that job to the best of your ability to help others regardless of their ilk.

 

Is this internship paid by hourly rate? What type of job will you be doing?

 

Congrats, (I think). Keep us posted on how it goes.

 

well actually I have never used that word before even though I leaned it a long time ago. don't really know why I used it!
I had a feeling that its an archaic word and I actually used it since it was an odd word. but I didn't know it has a negative connotation to it.

Nobody "led" me to believe that way. I came to that conclusion by myself.

you don't need to go to such length to make a point.
and no my English is not perfect.
but all in all thanks for your input. I really appreciate it

 

nope. but I was told that I would most likely get a paid position between 3 to 6 months. sometimes I wonder if it would be better for me to team up with other people and make our own game, and keep doing so until I have enough experience to get a paid job rather than travelling for 2000 miles. but the island is very safe and very beautiful. a lot of British pensioners live there, and it's definitely the shorter path to a paid position if they employ me after 3 to 6 months.

 

Thanks.I will

 

oh and I would be working on VR games, something similar to my own first game. also they are making some educational games too which they probably want me to be involved in.

 

That's bold moving half way around the world for a maybe. I'd suggest keeping enough funds handy to cut and run if it doesn't work out.

 

"Bold move" doesn't do it justice! but I am just being optimistic and hoping it pays off. and since it's part of the European Union, I am hoping that I wont be screwed over that bad if the company did turn out to be dodgy in some way. not that the EU is a white knight or any country that is a member of it, but that's how I feel.

 

Congrats! Good luck,
Gigi

 

I really think that you may be a pretty good candidate for a job. If this is the one you want, go for it! But don't accept a job that requires a 2000 mile move just because it's the first job that said "yes". Remember, there will be others that will give you a shot.

That said, I've heard that Malta is reaally beautiful, so if you can afford to cover your expenses (or if they'll help you out with some of that) - then hell, it could be a seriously awesome experience for a recent grad.

 

thanks Gigi

It is really beautiful. both in terms of beaches and the architecture. It would be nice to get some sunshine for a change! I think i have seen enough clouds for a life time and TBH I actually prefer an internship in malta over london. as it's much cheaper to live there even taking into account the flight (which is about £90 including baggages and everything!).