Relevance (Fit)
How well does the CV fit the job description applied for?
Tips
- Job titles are important, adapting your CV to fit the job description without lying or exaggerating is supercritical.
- Telling a story with how you present your experience and your skill set will also help keep your reviewer engaged and interested.
- Note that it’s not compulsory to meet all the requirements 100% but you should at least meet 70% of this.
- Watch out for requirements that are emphasized (boldened, underlined and so on), sometimes these may be the deal-breakers so try to access your application against those yardsticks.
Previous Companies (Type of product, Industry, Scale and Complexity)
Depending on the recruiter use case (i.e the company he/she is hiring for), they may prefer:
- People coming from product-based companies versus people coming from services/consultancy based companies.
- People from similar industries (e-commerce to e-commerce, fintech to fintech and so on)
- Scale and complexity of operations (this is not something you can control, it’s basically based on how the complexity of the product you are working on, the no of end-users you are serving and the company brand)
Tip
Before deciding to join a company, consider the overall value of having them on your cv. Sometimes accepting a ‘lower offer’ of 2-5k difference in a complex set-up may do more for your career than going to work in a ‘5k more’ set-up that is not as complex).
Career Progression (Retrospectively)
How often do you change companies? Roles and focus areas?
Tips:
- The market tends to favour specialists (subject matter experts) over generalists particularly when you are just beginning to build your career as an individual contributor with little or no leadership or management experience.
- It’s important to master ‘something’ even if do full-stack development, be intentional about charting your course. You can learn as many technologies as you want (that’s always a bonus) but ensure that you develop exceptionally strong skills in some specific ones. This comes by consistently using the technologies over time.
- Candidates who have taken the time to horn their skills in some specific technologies, tend to do better than candidates who present themselves as having the ability to work with 10 programming languages.
- Don’t allow companies to fit you into a mould, irrespective of where you work at the moment (except you have no plans to change jobs), it’s important to work on your tasks with your future in mind.
The decisions you make today are building a narrative for your tomorrow, so be intentional about the steps you take.
