I agree with another poster regarding the 'not very compelling' and that I would classify you in the junior range of experience.
Honest feedback coming up..
Initial advice:-
- Remove 'professional' from the experience subtitle, it immediately frames your resume to me that there will be non-professional experience later on and therefore you might not have much professional experience.
- Remove the professional and personal experiences programming languages/tools parts,
merge them into one. Rank them in order of your overall experience, splitting them makes it look amateurish.
- If you've been unemployed for 2 years, then I would expect your github profile to be way more active if you're really looking and planning to get a job.
- A lot of your experience descriptions don't really mention much tech and come across as vague; reading your resume fills me with doubtful questions about you rather than answers that make me picture you clearly in your head and what your capabilities are.
i.e. 'Migration of [startup's] corporate websites and blogs to a new host' - what tech were they running on?, what tech did you move them to?
'Addressed the needs of dozens of business and non-profit clients to improve their online presence via CMS websites' - what does this even mean? You made some wordpress sites? You wrote your own framework?
- Have you been practising for interviews? (phone and onsite), P.S. This advice is given based on the variable state of interviews that are given.....buy a whiteboard and pen and practise coding and explaining your thoughts whilst writing, revise for the interview ('Cracking the coding interview' etc).
Regarding interviews I hardly get any algorithm questions that are found in CTCI.
Most of the technical interviews ask me practical knowledge on languages or tools, like how would I write a query for some problem, build a simple splash page with X set of features, etc.
It may be more of a west coast thing to ask CTCI questions. Interview styles might be like hip hop or food styles...it probably varies by reason. Local companies don't ask them much. The only companies that asked me those are Amazon and TripleByte.
I don't know of any resources for mock interviews.. my friends and family aren't familiar enough with my work to do a proper one. There doesn't seem to be much of a market for professionals to do mock interviews, which I find interesting.
Also, looking into the future, when I get my next job, what can I do on the job that will keep my interview skills fresh?
So I'm going to be honest. Your resume is not very compelling. The impression I get is that you've got perhaps an internship or two worth of actual experience on there. The short stints are not helping your case and are in stark contrast to how you started this post: "I'm an experienced web developer". Just based on reading your resume, I just don't see that statement being qualified.
Even the details of the short stints are not compelling. Things like "Documented over a hundred logical and syntax errors for the storefront's legacy PHP framework" or "Assisted in improving UX workflow for a new storefront design, collaborating with a QA tester" just feels like empty experience.
So I think you need to lower your targets a bit and get real, consistent experience. You need to prioritize career growth over all else in your new job search. That means you need a position where you can make significant contributions over a long period of time (~2 years or so). That will allow you to have some meaty experience to go off of for future job search and hopefully get you out of the career rut that you're in now.
Others here have offered some good advice. Reach out to them and take them up on their offers to chat. It's going to be a grind but you also need to be honest with yourself about where you are and realize it's going to take some work to get to where you want to be. Just cold applying with that resume isn't going to cut it.
Also FYI, a link to your github is in your resume which links to your full name. I believe you were trying to obfuscate that so you should rip that out.
As far as experience goes, I call myself experienced only in the sense that I held a few paid jobs in this career. It would be splitting hairs to redefine "experienced" in some other way.
The oldest job in my resume was indeed a hard one to put much detail in it, given my short time there. I wasn't even allowed to write code in that job at the time I was working there. It literally was just look over these source code files, document possible errors in Excel- all without having to run the code- and send it over to the team lead. (code analyst would be a better title, then?)
The second job was mostly CMS/WordPress type setup of websites, and occasional custom backend work like the essay reviewing system and the CRM application for the cleaning company. These applications were for my company's clients, and did not directly contribute money for the company. It's a web dev agency, and in these places, it's the salespeople that make the company money, not the programmers.
Most of my career has been job hopping from small company to small company with little mentorship or guidance for good development practices. Lowering my targets would invariably lower the quality of companies I'd be able to go at, or can it not be that way? I need to improve myself by positioning myself as a junior hire, and surrounding myself by employees much better than me.
So work at a place where I can experience better career growth, while juggling the task of lowering my target. I think that is where you're referring to, when you said go some place where I can make significant contributions.
So looks like a reset in my career is in order then. Would it be fine removing my oldest job from the resume?
As far as my name on Github goes, I'm okay with it showing up, just didn't want to post a very direct connection to personal info.
Honest feedback coming up..
Initial advice:-
- Remove 'professional' from the experience subtitle, it immediately frames your resume to me that there will be non-professional experience later on and therefore you might not have much professional experience.
- Remove the professional and personal experiences programming languages/tools parts, merge them into one. Rank them in order of your overall experience, splitting them makes it look amateurish.
- If you've been unemployed for 2 years, then I would expect your github profile to be way more active if you're really looking and planning to get a job.
- A lot of your experience descriptions don't really mention much tech and come across as vague; reading your resume fills me with doubtful questions about you rather than answers that make me picture you clearly in your head and what your capabilities are.
i.e. 'Migration of [startup's] corporate websites and blogs to a new host' - what tech were they running on?, what tech did you move them to?
'Addressed the needs of dozens of business and non-profit clients to improve their online presence via CMS websites' - what does this even mean? You made some wordpress sites? You wrote your own framework?
- Have you been practising for interviews? (phone and onsite), P.S. This advice is given based on the variable state of interviews that are given.....buy a whiteboard and pen and practise coding and explaining your thoughts whilst writing, revise for the interview ('Cracking the coding interview' etc).