Keeping track of experience

I’ve recently discovered article on Scott Hanselman’s blog questioning why we still list apps on our CV’s. On further reading it appears Scott was not just complaining about listing apps on your CV but asking why do we not contextualise our experience properly?

This got me thinking, am I properly keeping track of all the things I have done or learnt? The answer is almost a resounding no. I know I’ve blogged a little in the past, but really have I kept it up to date with what I’m learning or with what I’m working on? No. And it’s the same with my CV, I don’t think I’ve even bothered to keep it up to date since I got my job over a year ago. And more importantly, do I know in which project I gained specific experience? The answer to that is also no. To that end, I’ve spent most of my week off sorting out projects I’ve worked on in the past and putting them onto GitHub for all the world to see and, taking up Scott’s invite to join careers.stackoverflow.com, I’ve created myself an online CV.

You might ask why go to the bother of creating an online CV? Why not just keep your actual CV up to date? Well, two reasons. Firstly, StackOverflow Careers is different from a normal CV. To quote Scott Hanselman

I like what StackOverflow Careers is doing in this space in that a listing emphasizes not just what you’ve done, but also what you’ve written and what you’ve read.

Not only that but it links to things like your GitHub or Codeplex accounts, so you can see what projects you have been involved in.  Secondly, I am quite proud to say I managed to teach myself to code, but that does have it’s drawbacks. My university course was in engineering not computer science, and this can make it difficult when applying for jobs. Many places look solely at the qualifications to filter out candidates, and normally I wouldn’t fit the grade but with StackOverflow Careers this actually can play to my benefit.

Now I don’t pretend that I’ve finished getting my StackOverflow Careers profile up to scratch yet, but it can be found at http://careers.stackoverflow.com/jamestoyer, if anyone is interested. As mentioned, I’ve also uploaded some old projects I wrote to GitHub, and they can be found on my GitHub profile. I hope to open up another project I’m working on soon, but more details about that will be in a future post.