How to do "great" work for stellar resume?
In the resume course, Alex mentioned doing great work is a prerequisite to having a great resume. I would like to see some examples of great work.
Let's say my domain is frontend web development. What would be considered "great" work -
a) in side projects
b) in my internship/job
One obvious one is a high number of users using the product. What are some other examples?
Would also appreciate if you could include some low effort, high ROI examples as well (if they exist).
Thanks!
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Discussion
(3 comments)- 2
6 months agoEngineer @ RobinhoodFor a side project:
- Build a real time online marketplace for popular MMPORG, supporting X thousand daily transactors.
- Monetized website with Google ads, allowing website to profit Y dollars yearly (after server costs)
For an internship:
- Built X feature that rolled out to XXX thousand users, increasing Y key metric by Z %
- Worked with design and product to clarify requirements & update designs to reduce engineer lift by a week
- Worked with a data analyst to define a logging spec for the feature, allowing us to properly capture metrics
- 1
6 months agoTech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course HeroAs a frontend web dev, the bar for great work is quite simple: Make awesome web apps/features that have lots of users.
There is no low-hanging fruit here as all great, high-quality software takes time to build. And for side projects, getting users takes time (unless you build the next Facebook or something).
On frontend, we have a large advantage as our work is very shareable (i.e. recruiters can potentially click into our live deployments and be impressed). Web is at a disadvantage though compared to mobile as it doesn't show metrics like user counts (installs) and ratings automatically.
Anyways, my advice overall for you is to make an effort to understand the impact of your work. This will put you way above 99% of other interns who are just coding things up and aren't even worrying about metrics.
- For side projects: Follow the advice here to add logging to your side projects - "I build a side project, then what?"
- For your internship: Talk to your coworkers and see how you can add logging to whatever intern project you have.
Here's another great thread on the topic: "What high-impact achievements should a full-stack engineering intern target for a stronger resume?"
- 16 months agoTech Lead/Manager at Meta, Pinterest, Kosei
I'll add something different: teach something and have numbers to prove that it's helped a bunch of people.
If you're able to take a complicated topic and break it down in simple terms (e.g. a YouTube video, Substack article, or brownbag), that immediately becomes impressive.
