Talk about my personal website

Script

Hi all, curious minds!

Last time I was showcasing a bit of my personal website. But I never talked about why I made it in the first time.

I work in the IT, but my last contract ended. So I was square one on the job market once again. Every week I receive many messages on LinkedIn about whether I am interested in a job opportunity.

Most of the time, they are not real opportunities I’m interested in. The hiring process typically looks something like this:

  1. The recruiter or someone on the project must find me somehow
  2. They may want to have a look at my portfolio.
  3. They may try to contact me and get a copy of my CV
  4. If my work or CV impressed them, then we may find a suitable time we get to know each other
  5. I may or may not need to solve a test
  6. Talk with the team or with someone at the company
  7. Legal stuff about how we can work together

The first couple of times, it was exciting, but now it feels like a wasted effort sometimes. This is why I tried to improve this process on my side. I’m not an expert in this field, but this is called personal marketing or branding.

So let’s get to my first issue. I don’t like writing CV-s. Every company and recruiter has their own preference. Some like it in MS word, some in pdf, some except simple text.

Some like shorter ones, some detailed, some like to see the candidate’s face, and some do not. Some like to see job-related details in the CV others can accept a wider range of experience.

So let’s have a look at my own current CV. I should make it up to date. But it is huge already, and I had to remove a couple of things already. And I should create alternative versions from it, own boy. To be honest, I do not want to reduce it, I would like to expand it further. But here’s the catch I’m still limited to 2-5 pages.

  • What tools and languages have I used in the past?
  • It can fill my whole resume.
  • What are you interested in?
  • I’m a geek. Is it IT? Tell me about it.

This is why I thought I should start a blog where I could write about them and a YouTube channel where I could talk about them. So my plan for the future is to find time and energy to create more content about what I find exciting and put it on my blog… And have links to those blog posts or videos on my resume. This way, we may get to know each other before meeting.

Ok, I talked about my content plans. But what about automating my CV?

As you can see, it’s available on my website, but it’s even better! You can print it. And I will show you how.

What about the links to content?

My site uses Markdown and Hugo. Hugo enables me to add tags to my content, and I can filter content by these tags.

What about security?

Well, this is a tough question. I don’t like the idea of sharing my email address or any other personal information. But I found an interesting solution that may help. You can find it on Stack Overflow

Can we change how the print view looks?

I’m not good in frontend stuff, but I found a topic about it on w3schools

I have many more plans for my website and for helping the open-source community, but I think this video is already too long for one shot.

If you heard any useful information consider hitting a like or subscribe to this channel.

If you are interested more about the topic, Gerald Auger, founder of Simply Cyber, has an interesting book called Cybersecurity Career Master Plan.

I will leave links to his channel in the description below.

And I can also recommend Eddie Jaoude, founder of EddieHub, who helps the open-source community members stand out on the market.

Also, see the links in the description.

I was Zoltan Toma, and this is my channel about my shiny objects. See you next time.

Thoughts

Today I was thinking, ok, I will just press the record button and talk about how easy not to get my CV from my website. But all other branding features and some issues took my time. I should have had a coffee or a little break before starting. Maybe next time.

The video is available if you are interested :)

And I should also add the links here as well.

Other good sources where you can learn: Dr. Gerald Auger:

Eddie Jaoude: