Category: © EmberLabs (PD)

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Writing a CV?

So, you are writing a CV?

.. and you want it to look good, be easily readable and well-received?

As someone who has read many CV’s, I know what I would like to see and what I really don’t like, and I believe this is commonly shared with many recruiters and hiring managers.
For example, the EuroPass CV format is frowned upon by almost anyone recruiting, so please stay away from these, as it is long, often unsrtuctured CV’s where you have to read multiple pages to get an idea of the skills of the person, their experience and history. Also, unless you are a graphics designer, don’t go overboard with being creative – keep it clean and easily readable, but be free to stick a personal design touch to the header or the side of the page, but keep the reading area clean.

The readability is really important, giving the recipient an easy way to assess the important information quickly, and it is also very important that the information is grouped and organized well.
This, as the recruiters has limited time to look at your CV, and you have one chance to make it through that first screening. The very job of your CV, is to get you past that first hurdle – landing you that interview.
The CV, is your personal representative in this first stage, and it has to be just as neat, clean and well-dressed as you would have to be when going for the interview.

Also, please do remember to keep your CV updated at regular intervals!

This gets us to the base rules of a good CV:

Page 1 – About half a page, which is the cover letter, containing a short summary of your strengths, highlights, character and visions.
Please note that this cover letter is not always required, and if not, exclude it from the CV. Just keep it ready and up to date for if/when it’s needed. It also serves as an example of your ability to express yoruself in free text.

Page 2 – A single page containing your contact details and personal info, skills and a summary work history and other summary details.

Page 3 and forward, is the extended work history, starting with most recent. Here, you get to explain the highlights, work and responsibilities in more detail for each job. Let the title be the work period (y-m to y-m), position and company. 

  • Always spellcheck the CV.
  • Keep your social media work timelines correct and in line with the CV – They will likely be crosschecked.

What about using AI like ChatGPT, Gemini and others in CV’s?

A few words of caution is in place here.
If you DO use AI, please rewrite what was suggested in your own words, as overly hyped and polished resume language instead of naturally flowing language can be seen as a red flag.

Employers’ perspectives on using ChatGPT to assist with your resume may vary; some may appreciate that you’re embracing new technology, while others might wonder if you lack the basic skills needed to do the job, and you relying on the AI to be able to do it?

Do companies check your resume for AI?

Yes, many companies do check resumes for AI-generated content. They use Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) to scan for specific keywords and flag generic language while hiring managers look for inconsistencies and overly polished phrases. It’s essential to review and customize your AI-assisted resume to ensure it accurately reflects your experience and skills.

Avoid the “buzzword bingo!”

While it is perfectly expected and even wanted that you name relevant skills, technologies and similar things by their proper names, please do avoid making it a  “buzzword bingo” by overly including cliche’s such as: “team player” , “organizational skills”, “detail oriented”, “hard-working”, “passion for”, “results-focused”, “fast-paced movement/environment”, “quick learner” and so on.
Keep the language as factual as you can, keep it short, but do express what you did, and what you have achieved.

Buzzword cramming a CV is a good way to get it rejected, as the cv stops making sense and it all just becomes a pile of words/phrases stacked upon each other.

Having said this, the occasional use, where it is warranted and proper, is absolutely fine, especially if you can show a sample of that quick learning of a new skill that solved the issue.

Download the free [ CV-Template ] (docx format)

Feel free to use / modify as you wish!
Good luck in your job hunt!

 

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Auto-update your Go?

So you want to keep your golang up to date at all times?

Add this to  /bin/go-update, and stick it in your crontab as a daily job, and you will always be up to date.
Rework as needed for your favourite Linux/os distro..

#!/bin/bash
cd /tmp
CVERSION="$(curl -s https://go.dev/VERSION?m=text | grep -o 'go[0-9.]*')"
wget "https://go.dev/dl/${CVERSION}.linux-amd64.tar.gz"
rm -rf /usr/local/go
tar -C /usr/local -xzf "${CVERSION}.linux-amd64.tar.gz"
rm "${CVERSION}.linux-amd64.tar.gz"
go version

Njoy!!

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Crontab cheat sheet

For all the Linux admins out there – Add this to the header of all your crontabs.
… and it becomes a lot clearer to anyone reading them…

# *   *   *   *   *      command_to_be_executed
# -   -   -   -   -
# |   |   |   |   |
# |   |   |   |   +----- day of the week (0 - 6) (Sunday=0)
# |   |   |   +--------- month (1 - 12)
# |   |   +------------- day of the month (1 - 31)
# |   +----------------- hour (0 - 23)
# +--------------------- min (0 - 59)
#
# Asterisk    (*)  any value
# Comma       (,)  value list separator (0,20,30,45)
# Dash        (-)  range of values (8-17)
# Slash       (/)  steps values (*/20)
#
# @reboot     Run once, at startup
# @yearly     Run once a year,       "0 0 1 1 *"
# @annually   Same as @yearly
# @monthly    Run once a month,      "0 0 1 * *"
# @weekly     Run once a week,       "0 0 * * 0"
# @daily      Run once a day,        "0 0 * * *"
# @hourly     Run once an hour,      "0 * * * *"

Njoy!

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Tinypng script

Using the service from https://tinypng.com makes it easy to mass-shrink your PNG images to more palatable sizes, and it comes with a neat 500 free use transcodes per month, and it’s quite cheap after that.

Here’s a little script to help you with the work a bit.

Prerequisites:
bash, jq and curl.

Save the file as “tinify” and do a chmod 755 tinify

Flags:
-k <key> = API key for tinypng.com – can be omitted if specified in the environment variable by export TINIFY_API ="<api_key>"
-f <file> = Filename to compress
-r = Replace the original file with the compressed file. If not specified, the output file will be named tiny-<filename>
-v = verbose output
-s = Show compression statistics (1 line per file)

#!/bin/env bash
# (C) EmberLabs / Chris Sprucefield 2023.
# License: CC BY.

key=''
file=''
r_flag=false
v_flag=false
s_flag=false
s_arg="-s"

if [ "${TINIFY_API}" != "" ]
then
    if [ "${v_flag}" == true ] ; then echo "Using API key from env." ; fi
    key="${TINIFY_API}"
fi

while getopts 'rk:f:vsh?' flag; do
case "${flag}" in
    r) r_flag=true ;;
    k) key="${OPTARG}" ;;
    f) file="${OPTARG}" ;;
    v) v_flag=true
       s_arg="" ;;
    s) s_flag=true ;;
    *)
        echo "<cmd> -? | -h This help text"
        echo " -r Replace the original file with tinified file."
        echo " -k <apikey> The API key for tinify (or from \$TINIFY_API environment variable if set)"
        echo " -f <filename> The filename to encode (and replace if -r is specified)"
        echo " -v Verbose output"
        echo " -s Show compression statistics"
        exit 1
        ;;
    esac
done

if [ "${v_flag}" == true ] ; then echo "Processing ${file}" ; fi
JSON="$(curl ${s_arg} --user "api:${key}" --data-binary "@${file}" -i https://api.tinify.com/shrink | tail -1)"
URL="$(echo "${JSON}" | jq '.output.url' | sed 's/\"//g')"
ISIZE="$(echo "${JSON}" | jq '.input.size')"
OSIZE="$(echo "${JSON}" | jq '.output.size')"
RATIO="$(echo "${JSON}" | jq '.output.ratio')"
W="$(echo "${JSON}" | jq '.output.width')"
H="$(echo "${JSON}" | jq '.output.height')"

if [ "${ISIZE}" == "${OSIZE}" ]
then
    if [ "${v_flag}" == true ] ; then echo "No compression on ${file} - skipped." ; fi
    exit 0
fi

if [ "${URL}" != "null" ]
then
    if [ "${v_flag}" == true ] ; then echo "Fetching ${URL}" ; fi
    curl ${s_arg} "${URL}" -o "tiny-${file}"

    if [ "${r_flag}" == true ]
    then
        if [ "${v_flag}" == true ] ; then echo "Replacing original file" ; fi
        mv -f "tiny-${file}" "${file}"
    fi
    if [ "${s_flag}" == true ]
    then
        printf "%-40s %5d x %-5d In: %8d Out: %8d Ratio: %2.5f\n" "${file}" "${W}" "${H}" "${ISIZE}" "${OSIZE}" "${RATIO}"
    fi
else
    echo "Invalid response. (incorrect API key?)"
    exit 1
fi