Write the resume you wish you had

In programming, there is this thing called Test Driven Development where you Write tests for the code you wish you had …

But wait, how’s this related to Resumes ?

Well let’s back up a little bit, If you just graduated from grad school (or about to graduate), you’ll be probably looking for job opportunities pretty soon, and if you’re like a lot of us, you don’t even know what to include in your resume besides your name & phone number, maybe few good internships and the usual boring Education section, … and obviously your hobbies, probably too much hobbies. These things may get you a job, but not the job you really would like to get.

The good news is … there an app for that! Um … a solution I mean!

Introducing :

Write the resume you wish you had, Then get those skills*.

The only catch is, you need to write that resume few months before you start applying for jobs, maybe even a year or two, that way you have enough time to acquire the specific skills you need, and most importantly build an app or two using those newly acquired skills.

But again, how do you write such a resume when you don’t even know what’s out there, and what skills are really important ?

Well once again, there is a solution for everything.

You could go to a job search website (e.g indeed.com), search for the job you want (for me it was iOS developer), then click on as much links as your browser can handle, maybe add few filters, even specify the salary you wish you had.

Next, for every page you opened, check the “Requirements” section of the job posting, write them down somewhere, and finally find the 5 most common specific skills companies asks for.

Obviously the next tricky part is learning those skills, and making sure you’re learning them the right way, and also using them in a project or two so you can prove that you can really know to use X or Y technology.

But hey, it’s all about the journey, so make sure you do something that you love, that way work feels less like hard work!