CV specific examples

CV specific examples

I discussed here ways of standing out when applying to a role. Specifically, one should be precise on what they have achieved in a role. For example:

Managed a team of 5 engineers in squad X. • < next item >

This tells me the role, but doesn’t tell me what one has accomplished. A much better description could be:

While leading 5 engineers in squad X, improved conversion in feature Y by 0.5%. We achieved this by making the flow simpler and reducing drop-offs during checkout.

This tells me a couple of things:

  1. The person understands how the business works.
  2. The person values metrics. They understand how to measure the success of a feature.

It sometimes can be difficult to recall what one did, when updating a CV. I highly recommend keeping a work diary and writing once every week. This is an example of something I wrote some time ago:

### **Week 2**

- Together with my Product Manager, we agreed that engineers should write their own tickets. We will keep the product spec up-to-date with the **why** and the **acceptance criteria,** from which tickets can be derived. The engineers were quite receptive to this change. We extended this to analytics, so we keep a data spec alongside the product spec.
- I initiated a proposal to change the way engineers go about Pull Requests. Some parts of the proposal are controversial, and I am getting a strong push-back (e.g. automatic reviewers assignment). The proposal, is generally speaking, poorly written for two reasons:
    1. It tries to do too much. It provides solutions to too many problems. Some of these might not even be problems at all.
    2. Readers assume that they either accept everything, or nothing.

    **This is my first mistake. Assuming that something that worked in the past, will work again in a different context and people**.

- I finally had my first 1:1s with my direct reports. They are great!
- I start looking at our estimation skills, as a squad, and the ability to focus on planned work. In particular, trying to avoid working on too many unplanned/not prioritised pieces.

It doesn’t need to be fancy and it’s a nice way to contrast where we were to where we are.