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).

Definitely include hobby projects. That's all you've got, and it's your best way to sell yourself until you get real-world experience. Convey the fact that you code a lot in your spare time, that you're passionate about coding. If the project was big, that should be clear without mentioning LOCs.

Basically, you want to convey that:

1) you're smart

2) you're passionate

3) you're a programming geek

If you tick those 3 boxes, any smart hiring manager will call you in for an interview.

I like your introductory statement, but its not clear how clients should address you. This is an easy fix. For example: Reach out to (Kamran) at..... This adds a bit more personality to your page. I wrote an in-depth article on developer resumes and portfolios not too long ago, maybe you will find it useful. https://www.codementor.io/blog/Software-engineer-resume-2ouy...

Any examples of what would be an impressive junior developer resume? I think I'm lacking a lot of content which is why I added so much filler.

1) I'd separate "Languages" and "Computer skills" 2) A couple of English spelling/punctuation errors 3) Write something concrete like "started with Slackware in 200x" instead of "interested in computers for as long as I can remember" -- cliche, overused phrase.

Hope this helps.

My suggestions - Include a paragraph summarising your philosophy to programming and the way your approach achieves success. - Say outright what makes your ideal client. I would be worried in hiring this guy, that he's too advanced for what we need and too experienced for my little project. - Add more narrative at the top and tell a story. Sure you've done many things and are a generalist, but why hire you, boil down all this info into what it means I'll get from you. Words like these make good headings. Who I am My approach What Im committed to

Boil down the essence of all this experience is my recommendation.

1. Remove the objective section.

2. Remove unnecessary new lines and spaces.

3. Make the education section short. I don't think you need to add specific topics that you read in your courses.

4. List what you did on your job and projects as bullet points instead of a paragraph.

5. Create a Github account and upload your code there. Then provide a link to your Github account in your resume.

6. Create a Linkedin account and add it to your resume.

7. I always add a Hobbies section. Not sure if it's necessary or not.

8. Also if you have a personal website, add it to your resume.

I would suggest you to use any sample CV template. Take a look at http://www.careercup.com/resume. Hope it helps.

I had to look at it three or four times before I could get past the presentation to actually read the resume.

The codepen presentation shows me that you are able to write basic HTML and CSS. These are useful skills, but not enough to get you in any door that I might be operating. If the design was good, this method of presenting might work to your advantage, but it's neither pretty nor easy to read and it shows mainly that you have not yet developed valuable design sense or taste. There are lots of jobs (development and otherwise) you can have without those, but it hurts your resume to draw attention to your probably-irrelevant weak points.

Alternatively, if you'd written it all in JavaScript using some trendy framework, I would at least see you as a programmer. If the code was clever or elegant, I would be interested even if the output wasn't very pretty.

I had to look back yet again to get past the experience section. The experience section made me think of you only as a sysadmin/network admin. I've looked at this five or six times now before I got to anything that would make me think of you as a possible developer.

It's also not uncommon to put a link to a blog in a resume. ;-)

You want to tailor a resume like this. Indeed don't mention essentially obsolete things like DOS or AIX unless they help you get the job you're applying for. I don't mention that stuff at all now.

"Reason for leaving" isn't necessary.

I also like to see metrics. "I did X, Y and Z and we got Q fewer support calls" or something like that.

I'd also like to see some evidence of teamwork ("worked with Frobozz group and got Z shipped with important feature F").

A bit of empathy can go a long way. That might be the tenth resume your interviewer will read today, anything to make their life easier will help.

I'm not sold on the list of technologies at the top of the resume for two reasons: The first is it gets repeated when you go through the roles, the second is it doesn't tell me when you had that experience.

Did you just have two years of experience in nodejs recently, or was it two years ten years ago?

Add English to your list of fluent languages. Normally, you don't need to since you are at a US school. In your case, due to your extensive International experience, people might incorrectly assume you don't speak English. I was hesitant to make this suggestion since it is not politically correct. But I'd rather help you than risk not being PC.

Put your technical skills at the very front. The first project you have talks about some theoretical work. Minimize the technical jargon. I work in research but even I thought you were "one of those math people". I realized you had programming chops when I saw Python and that you implemented a board game in Java. Those should be up front and highlighted.

If you can become a committer on a famous open source project that would really help. This is a lot of work so don't worry if you can't do this.

Basic HTML and PHP can be learned in a weekend. Frankly, I assume every tech person knows these things at a basic level or can learn them fast.

Maybe talk about SQL/Database knowledge. Learn if you don't have those skills. Mention git or some other source code control system.

Best of luck! Keep at it ... you are a contender!

What of the general content of my resume?

Good luck, by the way!

Are any of your projects visible on the web? The best projects are ones where I as a reviewer can click a link and start instantly interacting with your software. Projects like this are directly responsible for at least 3 people I know who graduated last year getting their jobs (based on feedback from interviewers who reviewed their resumes, they did not have referrals).

It's hard to critique your resume without seeing it but in general:

- Your resume should be submitted as a .pdf file, nothing else is acceptable

- Your resume should contain your name and contact info as well as links to github/linked in at the top

- Your resume should contain a skills section with a list of technologies you know, this will get you past keyword filters

- Your experience section should be broken up by project, and each project should have bullet points outlining the task you accomplished and any technologies you used to to accomplish it.

By the time i finish reading about your experience I should want to know more. Or at least know enough to take you into consideration.

Since you don't have the traditional "worked at X for Y time and made Z" experience you really want to tell a story here.

For example, the first two items have a lot of redundancy and can be combined and speak about how you built a bank application using all of those technologies. If you can put a link to github repositories of these projects thats even better.

Some of the stuff listed is very basic, and thats ok since you don't have the experience yet. But why even put it? Use those precious lines to expand on meaningful stuff you've done and proud to show off. The line about Tor Isolation Proxy is great, the one about CLI Books management is tiresome.

Is there a particular internship you're targeting? Do you have a side project you can work on in case that doesn't work out, or as additional experience towards a related internship?

I wouldn't advice you do that, I myself am maintaining a resume that I write with Org-mode and some TeX, not because that's how it should be done but because I make most of my documents that way, but still, a resume is about content, above all. A nice and short bio, and then some lists. Due care to details like nice typography and accurate ortography. And no needless ornaments or details that make it too complicated or long to read.

I wouldn't think too much about what recruiters specifically look at really. They probably behave like everybody anyways: skim a document to see if worth reading, check the abstract if available, then read if looks like worth reading.

If you don't have a lot of freelancing experience at the moment, perhaps consider to set a lower rate to get a few jobs under your belt to help build up your profile and reputation.

Other than that, best of luck!