This page collects a few observations we have made after reviewing hundreds of applications for software positions. Not all of this advice applies to all situations, and certainly some of it is specific to how we at Innolitics review applications.
We want everyone on our team to be motivated by our mission. Sometimes we receive applications that are focused entirely on the technologies we use. For example, they will say “I love using Python and C++, and I can’t wait to work with Tensorflow.” We are passionate about the technologies, but ultimately, we view technologies as tools to achieve a goal, and not ends in-and-of-themselves. If you are motivated only by technologies, then chances are you will become discouraged when you need to use one that you are less than excited about. Also, we have found that technological interest is a less stable source of job-satisfaction than interest in our domain area and belief in our mission.
We want to know that you are interested in Innolitics, and the position at Innolitics, in particular. It is usually easy to tell if someone is applying to many jobs and modifying the first or last sentence. An excellent way to differentiate yourself from other candidates is to spend time reading through our website and demonstrate that you have done your research in your cover letter or initial email.
Most of us are busy. Still, as much as possible, respond to emails quickly. We notice when candidates take half a day or longer to reply to an email. If you are going to be out of town over a weekend, mention this in your correspondence. We are a service organization, and if you are unable to respond to emails promptly while you are applying, it seems unlikely that you will respond promptly to our clients if we were to bring you on the team.
We meet with our clients on video calls, therefore, we require our team members to wear professional cloths and to have a distraction free, quiet, professional place to take calls. We expect interviewing candidates to follow similar protocol.
When we post a position online, we often receive a steady stream of candidates for several weeks. If Alexa applies on the first day, and Siri applies three weeks later, then even if candidate Alex has a great application we may decide to offer the position to Alexa. We have limited time to interview candidates and sometimes we need to hire some to feel an urgently needed role.
We try to respect our candidate’s time. Thus, we often will close our applications before making an offer if we have had enough good candidates that we don’t expect to need any more.
If you are interested in working as a software developer when you graduate, it is a good idea to set up a GitHub account to push your code to your account. GitHub is often seen as your portfolio, so it is good to link to it in your resume.
Split your code changes into small, logical commits, and to write good commit messages. Many of the applicants we see have GitHub accounts that are filled with empty repositories and repositories with one or two massive commits. Repositories like this are less useful when reviewing a job application because it is difficult to distinguish between code that you wrote from code that was copied in from other sources (e.g. from a class project’s starter files).
We recommend pushing up all or most of the code that you write, including class projects, notes, or your editor configuration files.
We don’t usually pay attention to GPAs for more senior candidates (unless it is a 3.9 or higher from a competitive university). But, for younger candidates with fewer metrics for us to observe, we do look at GPAs.
If you do not include your GPA on your resume, we assume the worst. If you have a poor overall GPA, but good grades for core classes you have taken, then we recommend that you list the grades for these classes along with the GPA.