For programmers: what elements of a CV negatively affect the perception of your candidacy?

Every specialist, without exception, sells. Despite the fact that you are a developer of a specific technology specialized in a narrow area, many times, sometimes automatically and unconsciously, you are forced to sell. You may not be selling directly, but you sell yourself from time to time by applying to another company.
 

Unfortunately, in most cases, candidates' CVs do not look good. Their experience can be stifled by a few "small" nuances. Employers, especially those with extensive technical knowledge and experience, can make choices without the slightest qualms. Thanks to this, they provide high-quality services, pay the highest rates, and candidates want to work for them, mainly because of the great development opportunities.
 

At Talentica, we have repeatedly encountered situations where the client rejected the candidate because certain elements of his CV were not as they should be. What are these elements, I will try to bring you closer in this article.

Working as a freelancer
 

There is nothing wrong with doing work as a freelancer, working (often remotely) for various companies. However, if your experience is largely based on freelancing, there is a high probability that you have not had the opportunity or willingness to learn from other team members, work in a group and gain advanced knowledge, e.g. related to high-quality code production. As a freelancer, you often do not have the opportunity to develop, even despite your willingness, because the company does not care about investing in your development, and the only thing that matters to it is the end result of your work, for which you get paid. Naturally, you act mainly for financial gain, you treat development as something natural, not as a priority. For example, when you get to a large product company where the main emphasis is on elements such as code quality, you have no choice but to try to keep your team at the right level from the very beginning, and the company wants you to be better and better at what you do.
 

Experience in agencies
 

Let's be honest - working in a software house or marketing agency where software is produced for a specific customer order is not the highest quality work. Of course, not always, but very often. Why is this happening? Mainly because the development process in this type of organization is characterized by a crazy pace of work, which means that quality and such elements as legacy code, security, maintenance issues, etc. are completely ignored, and the only point of reference is the deadline. Managers and project managers are guided by the principle "it doesn't matter how, it matters when". Of course, this is not the fault of either the programmer or the project manager responsible for delivering the project. This is just the nature of this type of business. In addition, it is worth noting that such thinking makes the code that comes out of the programmer's hands very underdeveloped, and any attempt to refactor it is Sisyphean work.

Position: Webmaster
 

This word has been misjudged many times by our customers. Most of them claimed that the experience of the person who entered the position of Webmaster in their CV is theoretically ignorable. A person who calls himself a Webmaster most likely has not dealt with advanced development during his career in this position (of course, as always, there are exceptions). It is therefore worth considering whether it is a good idea to enter the word webmaster in your experience or maybe it is worth replacing it with a similar word, but having a completely different perception, e.g. "Webdeveloper"? I leave this point for you to ponder.
 

Inaccurate dates
 

Many people completely forget that an important aspect when constructing an experience section is to include the exact dates of both the start and end of a given job. Especially young programmers, in order to reduce the impression of a lack of relevant experience, use a date range in the form of "2016 - 2017", instead of a full date including a specific month, e.g. "11.2016 - 01-2017". By giving an incomplete date, the candidate hopes that the employer will think that he is more experienced. Nothing could be more wrong. The issue of such actions on the part of an inexperienced (or unaware) candidate will be quickly verified during the first interview with the candidate. As long as it comes at all.
 

To sum up: we have collected the most important aspects that negatively affect the reception of a CV by a potential employer. These are the conclusions that come from our experience with various clients. Of course, it doesn't have to be a rule, there are definitely clients who would never reject a candidate who worked most of his life as a freelancer or gave inaccurate dates, so don't treat this article as an oracle - some employers completely ignore the aspects contained in the The above text, and the article itself is only to outline how some employers think and what you can do to make your candidacy more likely to defend itself in the future.