Volunteer Resource - Andrew Barret’s CV Review Protips

We asked Summer of Tech volunteer and CV reviewer, Andrew Barrett, a Principal Engineer at WiseAlpha, for some top tips on acing your CV and advice for future CV reviewers.

Please share a bit about you (your role, your tech superpowers, and why you are volunteering with Summer of Tech)

I work as a Principal Engineer for a London-based FinTech firm called WiseAlpha. I’ve been developing for ages across a variety of industries/languages etc and have done a bunch of hiring and management, so I think I can give some decent advice on how to make a decent CV. I’m volunteering because I think I could have done with some advice back when I was a graduate, so this seems like a good chance to help out.

What are the common CV mistakes that you observed throughout the years?

The biggest problem is the CV being too lengthy/too cluttered. You often end up getting a lot of CVs to go through - and honestly, it’s a pain in the ass if you get 8 pages of dense text to wade through. I’ve been working as a programmer for about 20 years, and my CV is about 2 pages long.

The second biggest problem is people not giving a bit of space in their CV to express themselves a bit as humans. I know this varies a bit from industry to industry - but tech isn’t so formal, and I think letting people know a bit about your hobbies and what you’re passionate about can make the CV a lot more memorable.

It’s also really useful to have some links to code/live-demos of things you’ve done. It’s not necessary - but I’ll usually go through and look at any repos linked and if I can see the candidate is authoring good-quality code it’s hugely helpful.

How do you advise students in the following situation? How can they tell their story to employers? 

No prior work experience

If it’s a graduate role then there is no need to worry about this - the employer should be hiring into a position that will build you up. If it’s not a graduate role you’re going to have to convince the employer that you have experience working on projects independently and probably point to something in somewhere like GitHub where you can show this.

Career switchers from a different industry

I would condense your previous career down in your CV and focus mostly on the transferable skills. So things like, “Worked with clients to find solutions to meet their needs” and “Was responsible for the delivery of a project involving 20 people across several teams”.

There will be lots of important transferable skills in whatever industry you were in - so it should be seen as a hugely positive thing (and cast like that in your CV).

Migrants/international students

One big thing is being clear about your right to work in NZ - you don’t want to be disqualified because the employer isn’t clear about that. It doesn’t need to be a resident visa or anything like that - a post-study work visa is fine.

The second thing is making sure to have a native English speaker review your CV to make sure there aren’t any obvious grammatical errors. Honestly, I don’t mind a few errors, but I’ve worked with people who will bin a CV on encountering one.

Generally though, I think being a migrant/international student will generally be seen in a really positive light; it takes a lot of motivation to move from your home country to unknown shores, and you can subtly point this out in your CV.

Those who do not have 100% clarity on the role they're looking for (e.g. any internship in tech)

For an internship this would be okay - you can just say something like you’ve just completed your second year at X and you’re super excited to explore all areas of tech. You should be focusing on your enthusiasm rather than your skills.

If it’s not an internship and you’re applying for a specific role, then you should probably at least fake a bit of clarity and focus on what you bring to the role you’re applying for rather than by saying you’re not clear what you want to do! The interview process isn’t the place you want to be soliciting career advice!

What are the questions candidates asked you during 1:1 CV review session? How do you handle them?

Most often people won’t have specific questions, they’re just asking for a general impression and advice. Or they’re worrying if they’ve said too much here, not enough here. I’ll generally open the CV in a screenshare and go through it giving my impressions as I go.

I just try to answer as honestly as possible, without being cruel of course! If it’s clear they need a lot of work then I think it’s best to tell them that.

How can CV review volunteer(s) help students create a more compelling CV? What should volunteers look out for?

Keep in mind that when recruiting for a role, sometimes you’ll get 50-100+ CVs, especially for more junior roles. You should review CVs in that light - the CV should make it easier for the hiring manager to come to the decision to get to the phone screen stage. That means removing any obvious red flags and clearly highlighting the candidate's strengths so they can be seen in a quick read.

Thank you for sharing your top CV review tips with us, Andrew!