CV for a hobbyist

[Systemtek]

Hi,

I hope you all deem this the be the right section to post this thread in.

I was given a business card by a well known oscilloscope manufactures recruitment officer at the request of the MD of the company who I met both of at a party(at which I was managing the bar staff).

They said they "have had hobbyists come and join them" in the past and that I should send over a CV.

What the hell do it put in it?

It would be my first electronic engineering job. I'm not getting my hopes up but what can do to maximize my chances? What sort of things should I mention?

I can produce little other than waffle by saying anything about my work.

I appreciate you guys know nothing about my knowledge so please ask questions if it will help you give an answer.

Thanks :-)

Han

[Systemtek]

I meant my current job when I said my work

[rhb]

Tell them what you've done in a manner that conveys what you have learned.  Success in your projects doesn't matter if you can clearly articulate why you failed and why you abandoned the project.

Read Jim Williams' "Max Wien, Mr. Hewlett and a Rainy Sunday Afternoon".  It's unlikley you're another Jim Williams, but that's what they are looking for.  These guys are *not* PHBs.

In the oil industry, abandoned projects are called "dry holes".  Anyone who is good at finding oil has plenty of dry holes.  In fact,  *most* exploration wells are dry holes.

You've got a lottery ticket. Don't throw it away.  PM me if you want to discuss in private.

[Mr. Scram]

Show that you are passionate and show that you get things done.

[tggzzz]

Demonstrate that you're doing it because you enjoy it, not because you have been told to do it.
That you can choose a difficult realistic objective, for a defined purpose.
That you can complete the objective, or if not, why not. (Some failures are honourable and acceptable)
That you can analyse your performance, and define what you will do better next time.

All that is valid for either professional or hobbyist experience and jobs.

[ezalys]

A resume is good for providing a chain of trust to prove that you have a certain set of skills. You say you have skills x, y, and z, and you prove that you have these skills by saying you did A, B, and C and some company, and contacts at that company can if need be verify that you did these things. At the beginning of your career, this rests on your education and transcript to show you've taken a certain set of classes and done well in them and therefore are likely to possess the required skills.

As a hobbyist, you don't really have this chain. You only have what you've built. The best thing you can do is have really excellent documentation of what you've done. Pictures, plots, explanations, a coherent story behind your projects. If you interview and your projects are small enough, you might bring one in your backpack or something.

You might have a "personal projects" section on your CV. "Designed narrowband varactor-tunable microwave VCO with XX dBc phase noise at 10 KHz offset" or whatever, and next to it a (hopefully short) URL that links to a page which documents how you measured and achieved such performance, or alternatively a youtube video that documents the design decisions and your measurements, mistakes, and how you recovered. Make the documentation comprehensive enough that there's no doubt that you built such a thing and achieved such-and-such level of performance.

Indeed all this is easy for software developers... you just link to your github. Then you can just read the code, test it, look at the quality, etc. This is why so many programmers come from hobbyist backgrounds. It's very easy to verify a person's skill. For EE it's harder. What you have are schematics, data, layouts, etc. If an interviewer goes through there and your work all adds up to the final product you claim, you're golden.

[Systemtek]

Hey guys,

sorry about the delay. This company enthusiastically asked for my CV and never replied to me at all. I thought the advice I recieved here on such a strange question was excellent.

Many thanks

[sokoloff]

sorry about the delay. This company enthusiastically asked for my CV and never replied to me at all. I thought the advice I recieved here on such a strange question was excellent.

Sorry to hear about that. I'm guessing that the MD was less in touch with what was going on in his org as it pertains to budgets and open reqs than he might have telegraphed to you at the party.

[rhb]

Did you send it to the person who asked for it or to HR?  If you sent it to HR, send it again to the person who asked for it with a note explaining that you sent it and never heard from them. In fact, send it again with a note that you sent it and never heard back.  I bought a pickup truck on credit from Toyota.  I sent the first payment on time.  A while later I got a nasty note that I was late.  I drove over and gave them another check.  A few days later my wife got an envelope containing  fragment of a check she had sent to pay a credit card bill.  My check to Toyota just disappeared.

[Systemtek]

I am not sure how to get in touch with the MD but I think its most likely they were just checking if I was a very advanced hobbyist.

Thanks for all the replies everyone