Keep Moving Forward | X-Team Magazine

6 Ways to Drastically Improve Your X-Team Profile

Written by X-Team | Jun 22, 2021 4:00:00 AM

At any given point in time, X-Team has hundreds of exciting, fully remote developer jobs available. Any developer can apply for these jobs. All you need to do is create an X-Team Profile, where you tell us about yourself and your work experience. Once you've created your Profile, applying for an X-Team job takes only a click.

Because X-Team recruiters scan all the Profiles that apply for an open role, it's in your best interests to make your Profile as good as can be. That's why we've compiled 6 ways you can improve your Profile with little work. Read this together with How to Make Your X-Team Profile Stand Out and you'll significantly improve your chances of being selected for one of our open roles.

Tell Us Your Story

The About section is where you can be creative. It gives you 250 characters to tell us about your passions, achievements, specializations, and, most importantly, what you're excited about when it comes to work. Don't let this space go to waste. Choose your words carefully and try to make them as engaging and specific as possible.

For example, don't say I like running. Say I run to relax after work. Recently ran a marathon in 3h47 and currently training for a 3h30 marathon.

Similarly, don't say Blockchain enthusiast, but say Active Ethereum core developer with almost 1,000 commits. I believe blockchain has the potential to change the world.

Provide Relevant Information

You're only given a certain amount of space to tell us about yourself. Give us as much relevant information as possible. Use action verbs: maintained, developed, refactored, implemented, etc. These verbs are powerful and specific. Include the tools you used too, as well as the results you achieved.

For example, which of these two sentences do you think is better?

  • I worked on a database to improve its performance.
  • Used Liquibase to refactor a MySQL database. Improved its performance by 12%.

Additionally, talk about the industries you've worked in. The partners we work with much prefer developers who have experience in their specific industry. So highlight your industry experience.

Organize Your Profile

Make sure your Profile looks clean and organized. This is particularly true for the highlights section of your work experience. You're given 1,000 characters, but don't create one long block of text. Split things up into small paragraphs or, even better, bulleted lists that are fast and easy to read.

Don't say you have experience programming in Go, Python, JavaScript, and C#, when you can equally say you have experience programming in:

  • Go
  • Python
  • JavaScript
  • C#

Don't Be Ambiguous

Ambiguity helps no one. Don't make us guess. Sentences such as Developed different apps or Worked on features for the main platform say very little. Instead, go with Developed several healthcare apps in Kotlin that tracked patients and appointments. You're given 1,000 characters in the highlights section. Provide us with enough context to remove all ambiguity.

Numbers Are Your Friends

If you have numbers to back up your experience, use them. How many concurrent users does your app have? By what percentage did you improve performance? In how many days did you program your website? Use numbers to your advantage. Just don't make them up. We can tell.

Which of these two sentences is your eye more drawn to?

  • Built an app that has lots of users.
  • Lead Developer for a fintech app with 50,000+ monthly active users.

What Are You Proud of?

Your Profile needs to shine. It's okay to brag. So please tell us about your awards, distinctions, promotions, etc. If you were employee of the month two times in half a year because you helped out other employees, let us know in your Profile. Don't hold back. For example:

  • Promoted to Team Lead after six months as a Senior Engineer because of mentoring teammates when they struggled with their code, developing the team onboarding process, hosting monthly lightning talks among the team, and helping to lead all releases. During two years as Team Lead, our team was recognized several times by senior leadership as being critical to the company's growth and success.

These 6 tips can drastically improve the quality of your profile. This, in turn, will improve the chances an X-Team Recruiter contacts you after you applied for an open job. Once that happens, you have your foot in the door. You're one step closer to landing an incredible remote developer job.