Seeking Advice for Transitioning from OCaml to Broader Tech Roles
In one of Taro's courses, Alex teaches building side projects as a practice during the job search, and he is right (IMHO). Since I have a strong background in OCaml open source, I initially felt frustrated to keep building side projects in OCaml yet OCaml jobs are scarce. When I asked in the Taro premium Slack channel, Josh Lindsay offered some insights into switching to promising languages.
Following Josh's guidance, I translated my project idea to TypeScript and React Native, which has allowed me to build skills aligned with more job opportunities. Again, Many thanks to Josh for the encouragement and insights!
Currently, I’m progressing on this project in a private GitHub repo, but it is far from pleasing. I'm kindly seeking advice on enhancing my resume to be competitive for non-OCaml roles. I've attached a link to my resume and would greatly appreciate any feedback.
Discussion
(2 comments)- 213 days agoPrimary author of Beyond Cracking the Coding Interview, Ex-Google
First off, it's a good start! Welcome to the closed-source community. 😂
Here are some thoughts based on what I see:If you have a LinkedIn profile, be sure to include it, and consider linking to your GitHub as well.
I really appreciate your GitHub; it clearly showcases your hard work and commitment to engineering. Your contributions to open-source projects are impressive and can attract attention from those who may not delve into your resume. To maximize visibility, consider adding a direct link to your GitHub and elaborating on your open-source work.
Additionally, some of your descriptions are a bit too technical and could benefit from clarification. For instance, terms like "refactored code" should include details about the codebase's size and the challenges you faced. Metrics can also significantly enhance your resume; while I understand they can be difficult to gather, even rough estimates can be useful. For example, if you gave a talk, mention how many people attended and whether it was well-received. Lastly, clarify phrases like "enabled mapping referenced content to correct URLs"—was this part of a web application? I'm not sure what this means.
Best of luck my friend!
- 012 days agoEntry-Level Software Engineer [OP]Unemployed
Haha, thanks for inviting me to the closed-source community 🙂. Much of closed source depends on open source, so it would be unfair to forget about open source. (Jokes aside)
I appreciate the time you put into replying to my post with such nice insights. I shall refine it to "show, and not tell".
Many thanks, friend 🙂!
