117 What Are Some Resume Tips For A C# Developer?

What are some tips on how to make your resume better as a C# developer? How do I make my resume more attractive as a software developer? Are there certain things I should add to my resume? Or should I cut content from my resume to make it more spartan?  These are the questions we are going to answer in today's episode of Dev Questions.

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Dev Questions Podcast with Tim Corey. Join us each episode as we tackle the questions you are asking about a career in software development, understanding the industry, and new technology. If you're just starting out or you want to grow stronger as a developer, this is the place to get your questions answered. Now, here's your host, expert developer and online educator, Tim Corey.

SPEAKER_02 0:25

What are some resume tips for a C sharp developer? How do I get my C sharp resume to really stand out among the crowd? That's the question we're going to address in today's episode of DevQuesti. Now, this question actually came from the suggestion site. And if you have a question you'd like to see answered, go to suggestions.imtimcorey.com and enter your suggestion. There, hopefully you'll see it in a future episode of DevQuestions. Now, I'm going to give you my five tips for making your resume stand out as a C sharp developer. And the first one is let's talk about basics. This is the basics that you need to have for resume. One page, not multiple pages. No one's got time for that. One page. It needs to be scannable, no big paragraphs. So try bullet points. Make sure things stand out. You may say, well, Tim, I've got so much stuff to cram into it. It's important that I communicate all this stuff. I cannot cut it. Well, if you can't cut it, it's not getting read. So is it really that important? Because if you want to die on that mountain, go ahead, but you're going to actually reduce your chances that people will see your resume and really spend any time on it. I know I have seen resumes that are multiple pages, they have big blocks of text. And by default, my eyes just kind of glaze over and I kind of miss the context of what they're saying because I just don't have time for that. When I'm reading 300 resumes in a day, I don't have time to spend 10, 20, 30 minutes reading through your paragraphs, understand what they mean, understand what you're trying to communicate and how that applies to you and all the rest. Make it simple for the person reviewing. So break it down, make it one page, put the most important things there. My resume. After over two decades in the field, in doing consulting and doing as an IT director, as a teacher, and so many other jobs that I've had, my resume is one page. Now, I haven't opted my resume in probably four years because I don't need to anymore. But it's still gonna be one page. I would still boil it down to one page worth of content. So that's just the basics. That's tip number one. Keep it simple. If you try and put too much stuff there, it's just gonna do the opposite of what you were hoping for. It's going to not be as well viewed. And really what you're talking about with resumes is you're talking about percentages. There's nothing that gets you 100% guaranteed to be the best possible resume for every given situation. There'll be people that only get three resumes across a desk. They'll read the full paragraph. That will resonate with some people. Some people will like that and they will look to go on the next step with you because of those large paragraphs with multiple pages of your resume. However, that's a small percentage of the jobs. Most will skip right over that and potentially not read anything. So we're talking about the odds here, making them as good as possible for the broadest audience possible. So number one, the basics, one page scannable. Number two is let's focus not just on one type of review. There is the automated review where there is a tool that goes through and compares the job listing to your resume and looking for keywords. And so you want to focus on making sure that it fits that. For example, if they list something like C sharp and you put.net everywhere, that's the same thing or can be the same thing, but it doesn't match the keyword on the job listing. Or maybe the other way around. Maybe they say.NET and you see C sharp everywhere. Well, yes, it's the same thing because C sharp is a part of.NET. And therefore, if they ask for.NET and you have C sharp, then you're good from a manual review perspective, but from an automated review perspective, you probably won't be. So try and match up the keywords to make sure those automated systems are tracking with your resume and seeing that repetition. So that's one thing, but then also don't forget to also optimize your resume for the manual review. So if it was just an automated review, you could just cram keywords in there over and over and over again, just cram them in and let the machine figure it out. That's not gonna work well when it comes across the desk of a real person. So at that point, it needs a readable, it needs a understandable, logical, it needs to have a flow to it. So you need to optimize for both. Well, how do you do that well? First of all, repeat the keywords in multiple spots. So if they ask for a.NET developer, you could say, maybe in your opening little blurb, I want to call a paragraph, it should be about two to three sentences max. But you could say, I have been a.NET developer, not C sharp developer,.NET developer, maybe using C sharp for the past 20 years. Then under your skills, you should list.NET slash C sharp. And then on your experience, you should probably have an entry or two that says, built an application in.NET or something similar. So that's how you kind of pep those keywords in while at the same time making it logical for the person reading your resume. Remember, your resume isn't going to be everything about you. It gets you in the door. So you can talk more about yourself in the interview. So it doesn't have to encompass everything you've ever done and list everything. And these are the most important things that are focused on the job you're looking for. So also focus on bullet points, not paragraphs, because in bullet points, it's much more easy to pep those keywords in where it makes sense. So built a.NET slash C sharp application is easy to have one line as opposed to trying to string that together with other thoughts. So the next line could be built a.NET web application. I'm making these things up. But trying to connect the first one to the second one in a paragraph is harder. You have to have the English connecting words. You have to have some reason to get from the first sentence to the next sentence. With bullet points, you don't. With bullet points, you can also be shorter in your description. Instead of a full sentence, you can just have the relevant information. That way it's easier to scan. It also still works for the automated system. It picks up those keywords. So therefore, it works for both systems. So number two is be focused on both the automated and manual review. Number three, prove what you can do. There are so many people that make huge claims in their resume. I've got 20 years of C sharp experience. Great. How do I know if that's valuable or not? Because honestly, I have met C Sharp developers who have a lot of experience in years. They have years of experience. But when it comes to actual doing the job, they focus on one little area and they kind of just were in their own little world doing their own little bit of work and not really growing as a C Sharp developer. They're more like three to five years of practical experience as opposed to their full 15 or 20. So knowing how to evaluate those people is hard as a hiring manager. So prove it. Show off your code in some way, have a portfolio. I said it before, I'll say it again. Portfolios are key. You can point to them from your resume and just say, hey, here is that code. Or here is the last three practice projects I've done or the last three portfolio projects that I've completed. But that way they can go there and look at your code. Will they do it right away? No. Will the automated systems do it? No. But when it comes to diving deeper and comparing one person to the other, if both people say the same thing, they both say, I have 20 years C sharp experience. Well, I have C sharp experience for the last two decades. Same thing. Well, how do I know which person is the better C sharp developer? Because on paper they appear equal. They're not. We all know this. Not every developer is like every other developer at the same year in time. So prove it in some way. Show off your code that will increase your chances of being picked if it comes down to one or the other. Also, with that portfolio, being able to prove what you can do allows the person to say, hey, these are the things, the techniques they've learned. In that portfolio, it will be important, though, to make sure that you have at least one portfolio item that fits roughly in the genre of what they're looking for. Yes, you can get by that out this, but we're talking about expanding those odds, making the opportunities larger when you're applying for a job. So if you're applying to a manufacturing facility, maybe create a small portfolio item that would fit in a manufacturing environment, or fit into a business environment in general, at least. Don't just have game samples or samples that are web samples when you're applying for a desktop position. Create something small but functional that shows off that you can fit into their environment. Because when they look at it, they're going to look at it and say, oh, I can see them doing the job they actually are going to be hired to do because they've been doing it already. If you, the farther that gap is between what you show off and what you'll be doing, the harder it is to make that mental leap to say, yes, they could do the job. So the closer it is, the higher the percentage is that they will say, yes, I can see this person doing a job, let's talk further. So prove it. Have some kind of links to a portfolio or other work items to show off what you can do in code. Number four is focus on experience over education. Now, if you are brand new to the field, if you have never worked in C Sharp before, if you're just starting out, or if you've only got a few years' experience, then maybe you have a bigger section about your education. But as you progress, especially after you've had your first job or two in C Sharp, I would encourage you to focus on your experience over your education. Because your education just proves you went through school, just proves you went through a boot camp or did this training. It doesn't really prove what you can do, just that you went through and checked some boxes. You got good enough grades to continue. What you want to show is I can get the job done. And the way I show that is by saying, I got the job done here and here and here. And here's how I got it done. So you focus on that experience because that's what an employer really is looking for. Can this potential employee get the job done? That's really the question you have to answer. So if your resume can answer that question, clearly you will put yourself ahead of others. And then finally, use measurable examples. So when you say I worked at Acme Corp and I built an application that saved us money, okay, great. You built an application, it saved the company money. How much money? $10, $5, $1, 50 cents? What did it save you? But if you say I built an application that I built a C sharp application, more specific, that saved the company $50,000 per year. That's measurable. It immediately draws their mind to, oh wow, I would love for them to do that for me. So if you can measure it in some way, try to do so. I built a C Sharp desktop application that serves 575 clients. I built a web API that has a traffic throughput of a thousand people an hour. Okay. Try to have some type of measurable number that you can put on it. Now, you won't know exact specifics in most cases. Try to estimate, don't exaggerate, but try to estimate in a way that does make sense favorably for you. So let's just say an API, you get 100 people per hour. Well, 100 people out per hour doesn't sound huge, but maybe you can say 2,400 people per day. Or maybe you multiply it out 10,000 people per week. You see those numbers sound better, even though it's the same number, just in a different scale. So you can do that where you know, saving the company $10 a day may be okay, but what if you save the company $3,500 a year? You know, like it's the same amount, but it's a different scale. So you can kind of tweak those things to be in your favor, just don't exaggerate. But that way you can show off what you did with measurable results. All right. Measurable results. Those are the things that are important. All right. So those are the five things that I'd recommend, those five tips to make your C sharp resume stand out among the crowd. Remember, you're trying to increase your percentages of getting to the next step in the interview process. So there are some things that maybe, yeah, it will work in one situation, but what you're looking for is the broadest potential of working. Okay. So that's what we're trying to do is improve your odds of getting to that next step. These five tips will help you improve in those areas. So thanks for the question. If you have any other questions, remember go to suggestions.imtimcorey.com. Thanks for listening. And as always, I am Tim Corey.

SPEAKER_00 16:09

Thank you for joining us for this episode of Deaf Questions. Tim is committed to making it easier for you to become a developer. If you would like to help make more content like this possible, please like, subscribe, rate, and share Deaf Questions. You can also send your questions to questions at IamTimcore.com. Until next time, remember, you are too smart and your time too valuable to waste it making all the mistakes Tim did. When you're ready to learn to think and code like a professional developer, head over to imtimcore.com and enroll in a course.