Showing posts with label cv. Show all posts

Turn your GitHub Page into a Personalised Resume

A little while ago, I decided I wanted to update my CV, and figured given I was in tech it made sense for my CV to be online.  I was aware of GitHub Pages - which give you a nice looking URL which seemed like a perfect location for my tech CV.


http://robhinds.github.io/


Once I had it looking pretty decent, and updated to modern Bootstrap styling so it was fully responsive, I thought I would stick it on GitHub, as a GitHub page.  GitHub provides support for everyone to have a free hosted page with normal HTML/JS resources etc (which is pretty nice of them!) and gives you a nice, share-able URL like http://{username}.github.io.

Whilst I was reading about GitHub pages, I noticed that they have native support for Jekyll - which is a static HTML generator tool for building websites - which is when I had my second realisation of the day - I could make my CV open-source-able by making it a configurable Jekyll projects that lets users just update some config in their GitHub account and hey-presto, have a nicely styled, personalised tech CV!

So I started porting it over to Jekyll: which just involved moving the configurable, user specific items into a config file (_config.yml) and then breaking the HTML sections into fragments to make it more manageable to understand what is going on.  The idea of Jekyll is pretty straight forward - its just a simple tokenised/template approach to putting together static HTML output, but it does work well and I really didn't find myself wanting for anything in the process.  The GitHub native support was also really nice, all I needed to do was just upload the source of the project to my GitHub account and GitHub handled the build and serving of the site out of the box!

And that's all the configuration it takes! The YAML format is pretty readable - it largely just works with indenting, and hopefully taking a look over the nested sections of data, its fairly easy to understand how you can modify parts to make it customise-able.


You can see my GitHub CV page here robhinds.github.io - Out of the box you can configure lots of aspects: custom text blocks, key skills, blogs, apps, github projects, stackoverflow, etc.

How can you have a custom GitHub CV?

It really is super simple to get your own GitHub CV:
  1. Create a Github account (if you don't already have one)

  2. Go to the project repository and fork the repository

  3. Change the name of the repository (in the settings menu) to {{yourusername}}.github.io

  4. Edit the /_config.yml file in your repository - it should be pretty straight forward as to what the links/details are that you need to add.

  5. Visit your new profile page: {{yourusername}}.github.io and start sharing it!
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GitHub as a CV (GaaC)

Over the recent year or so, as it has become more popular throughout the tech industry, there has been a growing amount of discussion around the idea of "GitHub as a CV" - the idea of using your online tech footprint, primarily for most people in the form of your GitHub profile, as a CV and a better representation of a potential employees ability/preference/mindset etc. There has even been a GitHub project that can automatically create a CV for you based on your profile: http://resume.github.io/ (here is mine - depressing that Coldfusion features so highly in the stats though!).  Over at NerdAbility we have really taken that idea forward (incorporating other sites like BitBucket, GoogleCode, Coursera, LinkedIn, StackOverflow, etc) and is obviously something that we think is a good idea.

But its a bad idea..

A big argument against it is that it furthers the already engrained bias towards white men. If you look at the demographic of the most active GitHub profiles there is no denying the common pattern.

I agree completely - that using GitHub as a filtering mechanism or pre-requisite for a candidate sucks. You really shouldn't do that. I have had conversations with agents where they have told me that a client only wants to see candidates who contribute to OSS, and I have declined. It doesn't qualify a candidate as being half-way competent and rules out lots of very competent people who don't have spare time to work on OSS (multiple jobs, family responsibility).


Just another data point..

I guess this is really the point here. You shouldn't rule out candidates because they don't have GitHub accounts, just like you shouldn't rule out a candidate for not having a degree etc.  I think we can all agree tech recruiting is hard, and its really hard to assess whether someone is actually a good developer and not just blagging it - so a computer scientist, I'm grateful for as much data to help with this decision as possible.

It's not that a candidate with an active GitHub profile trumps one without, but it means that its another point in an interview that we can try and use to tease out  a little bit more of an insight into the candidates skills, interests, passions.

GitHub is another point on your CV (if you are fortunate enough to have the time to setup and contribute to a GitHub profile) - just like your academic achievements and career history or anything else you choose to put on there.  If you have an interesting project it can be a talking point for an interview, in much the same way an interesting role on your CV would be.  From my point of view, I love going into interviews and hearing that the interviewer has checked out my projects on GitHub, and when the inevitable "tell us about an interesting/challenging/etc project/problem you have had" comes up, it's great to be able to talk about projects on GitHub that they have seen - not just because I know the project well, but also it will inevitably be a project that I am passionate about (otherwise I wouldn't be doing it in my spare time!).


We shouldn't be demanding OSS contributions, or set online profiles, or StackOverflow credibility - but we probably shouldn't be dismissing it as irrelevant.
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Essential Resources to Become a Life Long Learner (in tech)

Is one of your New Year Resolutions to re-skill? Thinking about re-training for a new career (or even just a new hobby) in tech? Then you're in luck! 

Today, more than ever, the barrier to entry for starting to learn a new technology or programming language is all but nonexistent, all you really need is a computer (or even a mobile device) and a web connection and you are pretty much good to go - just choose your preferred technology, an IDE and get started.  Almost everything is open source or at least free to use for a single developer just out to learn and there is a wealth of blogs, articles and Q'n'A sites ready to help you with tutorials, walk-through's and helpful advice - many of these backed with ready and running code bases on GitHub free for you to play with and generally work out what is going on.

However, with all these resources it can sometimes be a bit daunting with so much content. Once you have chosen a language how do you know where to start? Here are some of our favourite sites and resources that we have discovered and found useful in learning new skills:

  • iTunes U - a lesser known category on iTunes is their academic section, iTunes U(niversity) featuring loads of podcasts and lectures from a range of academic organisations, and some of this stuff is serious! Several large universities have uploaded full lecture series there, and by and large they are free to download (yes, you have to install iTunes, which sucks, we know).  Want to take the full term of Stanford university's iOS course? Its up there. Want to learn AI for chess playing from Cambridge uni? Yep, got that too. And for free.
  • MIT OpenWare - MIT have been one of the strongest advocates of open sourced education. A lot of there lecture series are online (can also be found on iTunes, but can be avoided).  Is it just us who thinks its amazing that anyone around the world with a web connection can get educated by the most prestigious academic organisations around?
  • Khan Academy - there is a lot of hype around this one, well funded with some pretty big names supporting it (jQuery creator John Resig is a Dean there), a not-for-profit aiming at providing free education for everyone. The academy provides lots of video based courses as well as interactive challenges and detailed stats on how you are doing.
  • Udacity - this is another recent, well-funded startup trying to tackle free higher education for all. Founded my three robotocists it is slowly building a very respectable catalogue of uni level courses ranging from CS101 to AI for robotics. As with the Khan academy, the lectures are purely for the web so the videos are clear and designed for remote learning (different from the filmed university lectures which are targeting classroom based learning).  We have recently created and Open Sourced the Spring-Social implementation of the Khan Academy API - so if you are working with the JVM and want to have a play with the Khan Academy API then check it out on GitHub
  • CodeAcademy - we have mentioned before we are fans of code academy, code academy is an in-browser development environment that walks you through programming exercises to help you learn with your hands - currently supporting JavaScript, HTML, Ruby and Python
  • Free eBooks - there are loads of great free eBooks available online, so many there is no point listing them, instead I will just point you here. Which leads nicely on to the next point..
  • StackOverflow - what really needs to be said about SO? It is the definitive q'n'a site for tech. If you are just starting learning head over and sign up, the help from the incredibly active community over there will be invaluable (although be sure to read the posting guides, they can be a little unforgiving at times!).
  • Coursera - Another massively popular online learning resource, this one recently generated a lot of interest with its recent Scala course taught by the original creator of the language!  We are currently working on some secret integration with Coursera at NerdAbility, and you will soon be able to integrate your Coursera account and show off which courses you have completed!

Hopefully the above resources help on your path to re-skilling.  In reality, getting your hands dirty with code and trying to solve problems and fix errors is the best way to learn, so don't forget to get stuck in - and maybe when you are more confident try answering questions on StackOverflow!

Of course, with these new found skills you will want to show them off, so we'd recommend heading to NerdAbility and registering (if you haven't as already) and update your skills, add your StackOverflow profile and even add a custom section talking about what you are learning (employers always love to know that candidates are proactive and motivated when it comes to learning new things and keeping up with technology). 

 Leave your comments with any other tools and resources you have found useful in your journey of becoming a life long learner.
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Looking for a new job? with an awesome high-tech/startup?







I have just been involved in launching a new site called http://nerdability.com

The site is a new place that allows us decent, hardworking tech folks to build real, representative resumes to help cut through the endless crap that is so often the tech recruiting process.

No one is really at fault with the problems in the current recruitment process. We know it's really tough to hire tech people, as its a specialist skill blended with a touch of creativity and art, so how in the world can a potential employer/recruiter realistically asses whether we can actually do what we claim?  Enter NerdAbility. NerdAbility is online resume builder that allows users to sign up, and then connect their resume with their blog, stackOverflow profile, GitHub account, etc - the end result being you have a living CV, everytime you get up-voted on StackOverflow, or commit to an open source project you are working on in GitHub, it gets reflected in your resume. So now, you can share a resume (all users have a publicly facing url that they can tweet/facebook/email to recruiters) that really shows what you have achieved, and employers can go ahead and see your code you have commited, or see how you solve problems by your answers on StackOverflow.


There are of course plans to continue building the product, including further code repository integration, but also an opportunity for companies to make profiles and start pitching to you why you should want to go work for them (plus of course, they will be able to list job openings).

It is open to everyone worldwide (y'all know how the internet works) - but being as we are based in London, we will be first targeting the UK and Europe to get wicked-cool startups and hi-tech companies on board.


All in all, we think its pretty ace.

So come on over and join the party

http://nerdability.com 
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