At any given point in time, X-Team has dozens of fully remote developer jobs available. To apply for one of these jobs, all you need to do is create an X-Team profile. Your profile is where you tell us a little about yourself, your job preferences, and your experience by uploading your software engineer resume. Once you’ve completed your profile, applying for an X-Team job takes only a click.
Because X-Team recruiters scan all the profiles that apply for a job, it’s in your best interests to make your profile stand out as much as possible. Use the do’s and don’ts in this blog post to significantly improve your X-Team profile and increase your chances of being selected for an interview.
Do This
Upload a CV
Your X-Team profile is only complete when you upload your CV. So don’t forget to upload it. It’s hard for us to understand who you are and what you’ve done without a CV.
If you don’t have a CV, there are many ways to generate a CV that's good enough to apply with. For example, LinkedIn allows you to save your profile as a PDF. If you have an updated LinkedIn profile, that can serve as a baseline CV. Otherwise, here's a blog post on how to create an amazing software engineer resume.
If you have multiple CVs, create one comprehensive CV that lists your skills, work history, and education, and upload that one to your X-Team profile. While you can only upload one CV for your X-Team profile, we will create a custom X-Team profile once you’ve passed the first few stages of the application process. Your custom profile will present you in the best possible light for any interviews that arise with our partners.
Put Your Skills in Work History
Skills are extremely valuable keywords that X-Team recruiters use to find the right candidates for a job. If we’re looking for a React developer, we filter for CVs that have the React keyword. So list all the skills you’ve used for a particular job and put those skills underneath your work history descriptions. It’s what allows our parser to connect what skills you used for what job and for long you’ve been practicing these skills.
Additionally, always make sure you write the full names of your skills. So don’t write Go but write Golang. Don’t write ML but write machine learning. Go over your CV and make sure that anything that could cause confusion is clarified.
Which of these work history descriptions do you think is better?
- Rebuilt an old SaaS application.
- Used React and Redux to rebuild an old SaaS application.
On your CV and in the About section of your X-Team profile, you're only given a certain amount of space to tell us about yourself. Give as much relevant information as possible. Use action verbs: maintained, developed, refactored, implemented, etc. These verbs are powerful and specific. Include the technologies you have used too, as well as the results you achieved.
Which of these two sentences do you think is better?
- Worked on a database to improve its performance.
- Used Liquibase to refactor a MySQL database and improved performance by 12%.
Use Numbers
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.
Don’t Do This
Don’t Use Columns in Your CV
Have you ever applied for a job that required you to first upload your CV and then retype all your CV’s information in separate forms? Chances are that you have. Companies do it so they can easily organize and search for information. We even did it at some point. But it’s a really painful process for the applicant.
We decided to be better and no longer ask you to do this. Instead, we use an electronic parser that scans your CV and puts everything in the right place automatically. However, CVs come in all shapes and sizes, and no technology is perfect. Because parsers tend to read tables column-first or add unnecessary empty lines, you shouldn’t use columns in your CV. So don’t do this:
Jan 2018 - May 2020 Substack, Frontend Developer
Jun 2020 - Present Apple, Full Stack Developer
Chances are that the parser will misinterpret this and read it as Jan 2018 - May 2020 Jun 2020 - Present Substack, Backend Developer Apple, Full Stack Developer. It reads the left column first. Instead of columns, use tabs, so the parser cannot misinterpret anything. Like so:
Jan 2018 - May 2020
Substack, Frontend Developer
Jun 2020 - Present
Apple, Full Stack Developer
Never Omit Dates in Work History
Never omit dates in your work history. They confuse the parser and generally give the impression that you’re trying to hide something. So don’t write:
Feb 2015 -
Microsoft, Web Developer
Instead, just write out both start and end dates, even if that means showing a long stretch of unemployment between jobs. We never hold periods of unemployment against anyone. There are a million reasons why someone might not have worked for a while and it would be stupid to disqualify anyone on that basis. So just clearly put the start and finish date for every job on your CV. And if you’re currently still employed, just write [Start date] - Present. That works too.
Don't Use Graphic Design Software
Using design software such as Photoshop to design or beautify your CV is generally not a good idea. Because these tools are meant for image manipulation, chances are high that they will either flatten your exported CV to an image or add stylistic formatting that parsers will determine as data corruption and struggle to read.
So a PDF exported with Photoshop or even Adobe Acrobat may look great, but will pose problems for any CV parser. Instead, use text-based software such as Google Docs or Microsoft Word to build and design your CV. Don't worry too much about making it look pretty. As long as it looks clean, you'll be just fine.
To Conclude
These tips will drastically improve the quality of your X-Team profile. This, in turn, will improve the chances of standing out to X-Team Recruiters. Once they like what they see and contact you for an interview, you have your foot in the door. You're one step closer to landing what we believe is an exciting and worthwhile remote developer job in the best-loved company for software engineers.
