Hi! I’m Emily Dunham, and I’m here to talk about those pieces of paper you have to submit when you’re following up with a company who’s hiring. My current job, which I am super fond of, is being the infrastructure engineer for the Rust and Servo projects. My resume is a piece of code that helped me get into this awesome job. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ We’re fortunate to work in a field that often has more jobs than qualified candidates, but who here has ever had a DevOps role that you disliked? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ When you find yourself in a job you’d rather get out of, the best solution is to ask around about who’s hiring, but sometimes you just have to throw a resume into a pile. Who here hates having to update your resume? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ A one-off document that’s rarely useful is as miserable to work with as an unmaintained server or an abandoned code base – but fortunately, we have the technology to improve that! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ What does it mean to DevOps anything? On the technical side, FrvOps is characterized by building and reusing tools that make our tasks easier. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Socially, DevOps is about charging past the bureacracy of silos to work directly with the people who use your software and services. What’s this got to do with your resume? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The first goal of treating your resume as code is to let you use the same tools that help you maintain code quality. But a resume isn’t judged on the same metrics as code. Readability and content are still important, ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ but the aesthetics of its typesetting also contribute to the first impression that it makes on your behalf. My favorite tool for treating a resume as a single code file is LaTeX. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ LaTeX lets you write a single source file that describes everything about your document's typesetting, then render it to a PDF with a single command. You can write macros to ensure style consistency between sections. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Once your resume is a file of source code, you can use your favorite version control tooling to track its changes! Use separate branches to track the variants of your resume that correspond to different hats you wear, or emphasize certain skills. As well as letting you develop features in parallel with each other, version control is a time travel technology. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Want to know what your resume looked like on a certain date, or undo removing a section? Just `git checkout` the right commit! Now that your resume is a file of code that’s kept in version control, you can think about testing it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ You can automatically spell check every change, or verify that it still renders without errors into a single page. And once you’re automatically catching obvious errors like spelling issues, ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The tools you already use to get feedback on your code can accelerate the process of having a peer or mentor review changes to your resume’s content! You should use whatever tools you’re comfortable with, but I’d suggest preferring Free/Libre technologies for a long-lived project like your resume. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Otherwise, you’re in for a lot of work if a vendor discontinues their proprietary offering! That’s how to DevOps your resume, but what do you put in it? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ One of a DevOp’s most important tasks is to identify and communicate with your software and services' users. You can use these skills to make your resume more useful to its readers. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Consider that your resume’s readers will often be pressed for time. Meet their needs by * prioritizing the most relevant content * keeping sentences short or replacing them with bulleted lists * and only including information that tells them things they need to know. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Scrutinize your resume from its reader’s perspective and see what kind of potential colleague or employee it makes you look like. And if you have too much content, remove any technology that it would make you sad to work with every day. Once you’ve put all this work into developing your resume’s content, the last step is to recycle it! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Put it in your LinkedIn profile if you like getting contacted by recruiters, and use your resume’s content to keep the “about me” page of your personal web site up to date. Maintaining your resume like any other piece of code can help it benefit from the very skills that it showcases. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Your reward for investing care and attention in this process is a resume that’s ready when you need it, instead of an out-of-date document whose overdue updates deter you from pursuing great career opportunities. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ But remember, talking to other humans is still the best way to make sure you’re applying for a role that’ll meet your goals. When you tell people that you’re job hunting, let them know what you’ve loved about your best jobs and hated about your worst. Reach out to me if you have resume questions or just want to chat! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ My own resume and a bunch of resources are available at https://github.com/edunham/resume Want to work at Mozilla? Check out https://careers.mozilla.org/listings/ and reach out, edunham@mozilla.com.