[kaisdavisOR]

Nothing matters more to employers than seeing that you actually have a passion for building things

This is as true outside of technical fields. I've been giving talks at Career Centers about communicating passion to find a job after college, and the thing that is most attractive to employers is creating something or communicating passion.

And Feross? Outstanding. In the next talk I give, you're in the spotlight. Congratulations!

[blhack]

If you don't mind my asking, how do you get this type of thing across on a resume?

Some people have told me to wrap my personal projects up as a "company" and say that I am employed by myself, basically list it as a job.

[mkramlich]

The fact that you have to even ask this question (I've been in same boat) is evidence that traditional resumes and hiring mindsets are broken and archaic. The "X years of experience in Y" concept being probably the poster boy. Because what does X mean? Is X years by Bob equivalent to X years by Steve? What if X years in Y yields greater mastery than A years in B, because the former occurred later in their career, or because B was more difficult?

For example, I wrote a lot of C code in the 90's, but never "professionally" and so I periodically encounter recruiters whose brain just implodes at that concept. How could I possibly know C if I never did it for a paycheck? Is he lying? Talk about an insane world view.

[natrius]

I'd prefer seeing it under a "Personal Projects" section. It's more impressive when you do cool stuff without a paycheck attached. If there isn't enough space to get everything across, list one or two projects and link to a web page that shows the rest. Here's the portfolio page of someone I actually ended up hiring: http://crccheck.com/portfolio