Okay, this is my first post on LinkedIn. And I have to admit, I absolutely have no clue what is typically expected to be written. But, I figured that’s a bigger problem for folks who may actually have followers or even anyone remotely interested in reading what is being written. Given that there are no such expectations from me, and further, given the very likely possibility that this post might be read by none other than I, it gives me some comfort. A lot of comfort, actually.

And if you made your way thus far, maybe you have a few more minutes to read the rest of what I am going to write. And as to the nature of the content, your guess is as good as mine at this point. So, my apologies if this ends up being an entirely arbitrary ramble. It is just that I’ve started to look for contracts and the next thing to do, and in between that and umpteen other things that are part of what has now become a predictable schedule,  I felt I could use something that refreshes my mind even if it was at the cost of someone’s online minutes.

As I have been trying to sell my services over the years, it became rather evident that I was repeating myself during the interview process. So, over the years, I’ve taken small but progressive steps towards making life a tad easier for me and more importantly, for someone who reaches out to me to find out what I am capable of doing. A resume is a necessary evil, at best, but I’ve always felt that it was more like my wedding video. My wife and I haven’t seen it even once and unsurprisingly so, as it isn’t quite engaging like Mr. Nolan’s movies. Needless to mention, not anywhere near it despite the fact that it was, is and will be my only shot at being a lead actor. Okay, back to my issue with resumes. They are plain and simply boring to look at, read or review. Anytime I look at mine, I hope to see something new, different and exciting and I don’t quite get that feeling even when I was reading through projects that I’ve absolutely enjoyed working on.

So, I tried my hand at coming up with creative variations of my resume. A mind map, a profile on Trello, an Infographic and so on. I have to admit, it isn’t quite as boring as a resume but it still says a lot of things that the reader has to simply believe. I would like to go a step further and make it quantitative. And here’s my take on some of that and it would be awesome to get some feedback from everyone or anyone who reads this post. And for that selfish reason, I hope someone stumbles upon this and to extend that greed, I really hope they didn’t give up on the post after the first few words. But, if they did, I am to blame as I had little idea what even the image at the beginning of the post should be and hence, I simply took a screenshot of my company’s website. Yeah, that’s the best I could come up with.

Enough digression, back to some of my thoughts and questions on how I can successfully corroborate the work I’ve done over the years.

• Would creating random repositories on GitHub or Bitbucket make a significant difference? I have a bunch but most of them were created without a pressing need or haven’t been kept up to date with the changing version numbers and stuff. And I am not convinced, they actually speak to my skills as a decent coder, architect and problem solver given how much time I had spent on them in the grand scheme of things.
• Would creating sample applications that use a similar technology stack as some of the recent projects I may have done make sense? If yes, what does this really prove? That a software engineer who has been doing this for over 17 years knows how to create Java/JEE/Ruby/JavaScript applications? I mean, how is it even possible that one who has done this for a while wouldn’t even know these things?
• Would standing up LIVE applications with links on the company website give a bigger sense of confidence? I’ve always liked this idea and took some steps but to create an application that even did anything remotely meaningful meant that it had to be in lieu of something else I really needed to be doing – working on making progress with a product that I’ve been trying to complete and launch for a bit.

Anyways, that’s a whole lot more than what I thought I would end up writing but I’ve not been known for brevity. To be honest, I’ve not been known for much but the hope that there would be such a day is what has kept me going. That, and the unconditional love for software development and architecture.

Thanks for reading. And yes, that’s me encouraging myself and believing there would be a reader. Some reader!

— krish @ http://www.snowpal.software