10

I currently work for start up company. My current designation is of Developer. However I have been involved in the company in various capacity:

  1. Hiring(Conducting technical interviews).
  2. Things like Setting/Maintaining various tools that we use.Git/ Mantis and BugZilla. Help in aquiring new hardware etc.
  3. Attend meetings/ presentation trying to win projects

My question is:

  1. Do this things matter to the employers if I am applying for developers role ?
  2. If yes then how should I put it in my resume ?
2
  • I am new to this site, but could this question possibly be too localized? - Nevertheless I am interested in the answers, too :)
    – mafu
    Mar 10, 2014 at 18:20
  • Feel free to edit the question Mar 11, 2014 at 3:44

3 Answers 3

13

How typical is it that developers do this in your organization?

That would be my guideline - the things you mention can easily be considered "part of the job" in some cases and not in others. Example:

  • Helping with interviewing - often developers are called on to do "peer reviews" of candidates. That's not unusual, and I wouldn't include it - unless you showed such great judgement and skill at this that you were asked far more often than other developers.

  • At the same time, if you were given serious ownership over the corporate culture and team building, then the work is becoming much more like a team lead and if you are gunning for a leadership position, saying "took on some of the duties of team leadership and staffing decisions" may be reasonable.

Do include meaningful work at your level:

Setting up development tools is something developers typically do. It's not that you are doing an extra job, it's that you have a small group and someone has to do this. With that said, it's a meaningful project, worth noting with a sentence or bullet in the description of this company or role.

As an aside, particularly with large tools or processes, it's nice to note the scope of people/teams using them. Setting up a source control system for 1 person is different than 5, which is different than 50 people on 8 different teams with different branches, releases, etc.

Attending vs. Contributing or Driving Meetings

"Attending" implies that you are fairly passive. You're there to answer questions, or take notes and figure out the next steps after the deal is closed. If that's the case, I'd skip it.

If, however, you contribute to the presentations, give part of it, and/or are called on for key input or decisions (for example, effort estimates, project risks, etc) - then you are taking on some pretty senior work and it's worth noting that you "contributed" to key proposals relating to obtaining new work.

Again - it's something of a frequency thing - if you're that guy that they can't live without, because you have an awesome understanding of your role and you are very good at describing the work to non-developers, then you want to highlight these awesome add-on skills you have.

But if this is something that everyone does, I'd skip it.

Startup vs. Large Organizations

I'll say that when I look at a resume, I do look at the size of the company and my expectations are somewhat correlated to the company type. A small startup has much wider responsibilities within each role, a large company has more specialization and lack of wider responsiblity may simply mean less opportunity to step up. Having a sense of the size of the company usually gives me an indication on whether the person had to be a jack of all trades and I suit my interview to verifying accordingly in light of what skills I'm looking for.

In focusing on the resume - I want to see what work you did, and what you want to do. If you didn't like doing some of these things - skip them. And if the ancillary tasks take precious real estate away from the reviewer reading about your core work - skip 'em.

Summary story

I happened to read a resume today that as presented spanned at least 3 pages. I say "at least" because I really didn't get past page 2. The first page was a very long list of bullets of all the soft qualities that were great about the candidate, then a 3-5 line set of technologies he'd worked with, then a 1/2+ page of job experience that spanned 5+ years, then more pages with more experience. I read 3 opening bullets, the technology list, and the descriptions of work on the previous job. By that point, I had made my decision and I had run out of time to read, learn and think about it.

In deciding what extra stuff to put in the resume, keep in mind a manager like myself. I have 10-20 minutes to read your resume and get something out of it. Make sure that what I get is what you want me to get. If you want a solid developer job, make your resume be about that. If you want a team lead, project proposal, dev environment building job - make your resume be about that.

1
  • Thank you for taking the time to write such a detailed answer. Can't up vote since i don't have the required reputation Mar 10, 2014 at 17:29
7

Do this things matter to the employers if I am applying for developers role ?

It matters to your current company. It will similarly matter if you apply to a similar (perhaps startup) company.

If yes then how should I put it in my resume ?

I usually put this sort of thing with the other bullet points that describe my role, and I see the same on resumes I review.

"Developer" means something different to each company. Clearly in your current role, you have additional responsibilities. Include them all, as it helps you stand out as "more than just a coder".

2
  • I was confused because these things other than git are fairly straight forward. Any body can follow the how to guide and set it up. Will i sound naive if i put theses on my resume ? Mar 10, 2014 at 16:07
  • The responsibility can be just as important as the technology. I don't think it would be naive to add them. Installing is just the first step, making it work in your organization and taking responsibility for that can be very worthwhile and challenging.
    – cdkMoose
    Mar 10, 2014 at 16:26
4

Your job title may be "Developer", but rarely will you find a job where your only duties are title-oriented.

As a "Developer", you may be called upon to do various things - writing up documentation for your code, explaining the functionality to clients, designing interfaces for users - and all of these things are related to your job, even if they are not directly related to your title.

For your three specific items:

1.Hiring(Conducting technical interviews). - This may not be directly related to your job, but it shows an aptitude for hiring and managing, which is definitely a skill you can include on your resume.

2.Things like Setting/Maintaining various tools that we use.Git/ Mantis and BugZilla. Help in aquiring new hardware etc. - That sounds like it directly relates to your skill as a developer. Finding the tools to do your job is essential, and I would put it right up there with your Developer skills.

3.Attend meetings/ presentation trying to win projects - You can definitely hype your ability to present projects and win contracts from users.

More importantly, you were called upon to do these things at your previous job, so clearly as a Developer you were at some point expected to do them, and any good prospective employer will ask you what duties you took on at your previous job - so it definitely helps to include the duties of that job on your resume, and trump up any success you have had in these duties.

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .