I’m a software engineer in Nigeria with about 4 years of experience working for companies remotely. Could anyone help go through my list of documents and candidly drop their feedback or suggestions on how it can be improved?
3 LORs
- 1 from my current CEO
- 2 from CTOs I’ve worked with
Mandatory criteria
- A certification from Google in Web Development as an Internationally recognized award
- Speaking at a Google DevFest 2019 event with about 2500+ attendees, including my email of talk acceptance, presentation slides and a reference letter from the event organizers.
- A reference letter from my current CTO highlighting my contributions to the team and the product
Optional criteria 1 (OC 2)
- Mentorship in Andela Learning Community, a non-charity initiative in collaboration with Google, Udacity and Pluralsight that has trained thousands of software engineers in Nigeria. Evidence includes photos of me speaking at these events, a certificate of being recognized as a community mentor, screenshots of congratulatory emails, a reference letter from the organizers.
- Youtube sessions with 1000+ views I’ve had mentoring beginners in tech
- A Google documentary which I was featured in. (There were just two of us in the documentary)
- A tech article on Medium I have written with over 7k+ views and 3k+ reads
Optional criteria 2 (OC 3)
- Employment contract with salary information (Though I don’t think the salary is high by UK standards, although it’s pretty high here in Nigeria)
- Another reference letter from my CTO (Or should I omit this, since I have already included a letter from my CTO under the mandatory criteria)
- Screenshots of my commits, PR conversations, reviews to show my contributions to the team and product.
I’m pretty new here, but I’ve seen that @Shreeniwas_Iyer and @Francisca_Chiedu have been quite supportive and candid in their reviews.
I’m not limiting the reviews as I’m open to any and every feedback and suggestion.
Thanks
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I think your profile looks good for an exceptional promise. You don’t seem to have external recommendation letters, all your recommendation letters are coming from your employers. I have seen some feedback suggesting that a candidate recommendation that came only from an employer is not sufficient, get external validation from other experts in your sector who know your work. You need to also check that those writing your LOR are known experts, preferably those working for product-led digital technology companies. Are they visible online?
As for your mandatory criteria, a certification from Google is not an award or prize. This obviously doesn’t count.
A reference letter from DeveFest organizer is good but do you have pictures or video of you speaking. not sure you have enough space to show your presentation as each piece of evidence should not be more than three pages.
Optional criteria 2: I would move the Google documentary to mandatory criteria, It may be better suited there. And put an explanatory note on why you were featured.
Your medium post may not be suitable as “LinkedIn or Medium are not considered sufficient as evidence”
Optional criteria 3- I think you need the reference letter from the CTO, he should write about your significant contribution and the impact of your work.
Employment contract, I think you should use Glassdoor or payscale to show how much software developers earn in your country. This may eventually prove that it is considered high earning in your home country.
As for your Commits, is your Github account active? Also, add explanatory notes to show you played a leading role and the impact of your work. Don’t forget to demonstrate impact. Good luck!
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Thanks for the feedback and suggestions @Francisca_Chiedu. Yes, my Github account is active.
As long as it shows substantial amount of work. " * GitHub account that contains lines of code clearly showing your continuing contribution".
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