Kari Karlsbjerg's "Canadian Employment Culture" column reports every Wednesday (local time) in the Korea IT Times.
1. What to Expect: Job Hunting in Canada
2. Preparing a Canadian Style Resume
3. Cover Letters Canadian Style
4. Show Don’t Tell: Provide examples of your work
Show, don’t Tell: Provide examples of your work
There is nothing more convincing than being able to show a prospective employer examples of your technical expertise instead of having to describe them. For IT people this often poses a challenge because their contributions to previous work projects are hidden from public view. Typically, they exist only as part of the proprietary source code for a software product, as implementation and documentation of the network topology in a data center, etc.
Fortunately, for many IT professions, it is possible to go beyond just the traditional cover letter and resume package and present samples of development or design work to help them stand out from the competition.
While you can’t share proprietary source code from your previous projects, you can often find screenshots, demo versions, manuals, or other documents that are already publicly available online to use in your resume or portfolio website.
And if you contribute to technical projects or communities outside of work, this is an ideal opportunity to show off your skills to prospective employers. You can link directly to the live project, or if you’ve received peer recognition for your contributions online programming forums like Stack Overflow or technical subreddits, you can link to your profile on those sites. And if you’ve contributed to open source projects, or even created some of your own, you can link to your GitHub profile.
The hiring process for IT people often involves a practical skills test, such as live whiteboard “coding” during the interview or a “small” take-home programming or design assignment. Fortunately, some employers will waive these skill tests if they can readily see examples of your programming or design skills on GitHub or elsewhere.
Lastly, working on technical projects outside of work can also be a great way to learn new technologies that you’re interested in but have not had the opportunity to use at work, such as a new JavaScript framework or programming technique, or even a new programming language. And perhaps most importantly, technical hobby projects show prospective employers your interest in technology and initiative in learning new skills!
Kari Karlsbjerg and Elaine Chu are authors of the best-selling bilingual guidebook, Everyday Vancouver, which contains all the practical cultural information and resources Korean newcomers need for life in Vancouver, Canada.
