I believed in paragraphs in forms so much that I even made this the rule in PayPal’s coding standards. And because of this, I have had a very long-standing argument with colleagues and friends, like Steve Ganz. (Mark Trammell, Shimone Samuel, and Jeff Harrell come to mind, too.)

I’ve been working on a writing assignment with Christopher Schmitt (a chapter on HTML5 forms for the upcoming HTML5 Cookbook) and he suggested that I include an explanation as to why I’m using paragraphs in my form examples, because, as Christopher said, “You know someone’s going to be coming out for us on that one.”

So, direct from the HTML5 spec, here’s my new justification for using paragraphs in forms [Emphasis mine.]:

Any form starts with a form element, inside which are placed the controls. Most controls are represented by the input element, which by default provides a one-line text field. To label a control, the label element is used; the label text and the control itself go inside the label element. Each part of a form is considered a paragraph, and is typically separated from other parts using p elements.

There you go. I was right all along. I should’ve bet money on it.

Resume Format and Structure

Your resume format should work to highlight your strengths. The chronological resume, perhaps the most traditional format, fails in this regard. A functional resume does a much better job of highlighting your experience in a specific role, but most web developers are good at more than one thing. I suggest mixing aspects of the two formats, organizing them in a way that makes sense for you and your strengths — then you’ll have a resume that stands out.

Here are the general sections found in a great web developer resume. With the exception of the first two, the rest can be ordered and/or further broken out according to your needs.

• Objective: If you’re searching for a job, you ought to know what you’re seeking! Customize your objective, as needed, when replying to job postings. (Note: If you’re not actively seeking a job, but still want to have a resume posted online, it’s okay to omit this section.)
• Summary of Qualifications: It’s a cheesy headline, perhaps, and all too often the summary is filled with buzzwords — but I have read really compelling summaries that made me want to know more about a candidate. Focus on describing your strengths and what you contribute to an organization.
• Skills: This is where the keywords and buzzwords will start showing up. That’s okay: you’ll back them up with evidence in the other sections. You can subdivide this section in any number of ways: Technical vs. Soft Skills, Front-End vs. Back-End Skills, Design vs. Development Skills, etc.
• Professional Accomplishments: Here you can include project accomplishments, awards, public speaking engagements, publishing credits, or descriptions of really awesome things you’ve accomplished. Like the Skills section, you can also break these out separately.
• Work Experience: If you’ve done any combination of full-time work, freelancing, and volunteering, this is the most generic title you can use for your work history. Some people like to break out their professional experience from other work, but I think that can undermine the importance of having taken on freelance or volunteer work. If you list accomplishments for each job in this section, don’t repeat them elsewhere, and vice versa.
• Education: I don’t like to see this section missing from a resume. Haven’t gone to college? That’s okay. Be proud of what schooling you have made it through and list it here. Oh, and that includes training programs, conferences — anything you’ve forked out money for that you’ve learned something from!

Required Information

If your resume were to consist of only two things, it should be these:

• Contact Information: You’d think this would be a no-brainer, but I have seen resumes where developers didn’t list a phone number, email address, or personal web site (more on that below). In my opinion, it’s a waste of space to display your full home address, especially if you are looking to relocate. No one’s going to snail-mail you an invitation to interview, so city and state will suffice. HR will collect the rest of your contact information later.
• URLs: I wish I could tell you exactly how many of those ~500 resumes didn’t include a single URL… but my gut says that at least half didn’t feature even a personal web site URL. Seriously? If you’re a web developer, you should have some URLs to share. If you’re brand-new to the field, put some of your school projects online. If you’ve only ever done intranet-type work, get permission to copy parts of the code and make it available, or create other projects of your own to demonstrate your skills. If you’re serious about getting a web development job, you need this.

On the flip side, don’t waste space on these bits of information: references (or the phrase, “References available upon request”), GPA, salary requirements, or personal information (except if you have hobbies that would be of interest to another geek and would increase the likelihood of getting invited in for an interview).

Frequently Asked Questions

Does my resume have to fit on to one or two pages? No, I don’t think that it does. However, I think it’s nice if a resume is so well edited and structured that, when printed, it fits to exactly one or two pages (one page if you’re young, recently out of school, or switching careers; otherwise two pages). However, if you truly have so much awesomeness to report, then, by all means, go on! If you’re really that super-duper, I’m sure I’ll want to know all about it.

Does one resume fit all jobs? NO! Don’t be afraid to tweak your resume format or content to the job you’re applying for. In fact, if you have diverse enough skills and interests (design vs. development) you should probably have completely separate resumes for these purposes.

I am graduating soon and don’t have much web development experience. What can I do to beef-up my resume? Use the “Objective” area to make it clear that you’re looking for an entry-level position. Highlight your strengths in the “Summary of Qualifications” area and place the “Education” section next, so it’s clear you’re just coming out of school. List your technical skills, as well as any soft skills that you can support with extra-curricular or volunteer work. If you have been active in a tech community or have attended technical or web conferences, list those.

I’m switching careers. I’ve taken some web design and development courses and done some small projects. How do I reflect all of this in my resume? First, don’t hide the fact that you’re switching careers! Your prior experience, even if in a completely different industry, has (hopefully) taught you how to deal with people and has helped you understand your strengths. Start your resume with an “Objective” statement that spells out your desire to move into web development. Then list your skills, training and experience with the web so far before providing your employment history and other educational details. Highlight any experience that translates across industries, but otherwise keep the non-web details short.

I hope the above helps you create an awesome resume. Remember, your resume (supported with at least one awesome URL) helps get you in the door for an interview, so take some time to craft one that truly reflects you!

If you have questions I haven’t addressed above, I’m happy to accept them in the comments below.

Since my last real post here, over four months ago, I’ve been asked countless times why I don’t blog more. I’ve received numerous emails from people who’ve thanked me for the advice I’ve offered here, and I can tell from the stats that people are still visiting. Don’t worry — I haven’t given up on the blog, and I get that you’re still interested in what I have to say. To which I can only say, thank you! I will get back to posting soon. But let me update you on some changes in my world.

Last month I transitioned into a new role at CIM: that of senior software architect, focused on web front-end engineering. It’s exciting and it’s scary, as any change is. I’ve put a lot of time and effort into developing my management and leadership skills and changing some bad behaviors, but I don’t think any of that will go to waste in this new role. One becomes a software architect, in part, because of one’s leadership skills, and having experienced managing some of the people I’ll continue to work with only gives me greater insight into their talents and strengths, so I can help them accomplish more. From a technical skills perspective, while I’ve kept up on HTML, CSS, and browsers, there are a whole host of languages and technologies I need to brush up on or get acquainted with. I don’t need to be the expert on everything, but I do need to hold my own in conversations with Java programmers, system administrators, and even other front-end developers. Most importantly, though, I need to buckle down and write more, so that my thoughts, research, ideas, and questions are available both to myself and others. As you, dear reader, can probably tell, sitting down and making myself write out my thoughts is not one of my strengths!

I will also be busy these next few months teaching a web application design and development class at Bryn Mawr College. I first had the opportunity to teach this “recent topics” computer science class at the end of 2008, and it was popular enough that the students asked the department chair to bring me back! I’m honored that every space in the class is full, and I hope to challenge both the students and myself by looking more into creating single web experiences which adapt nicely to the mobile environment. I am still thinking about whether I will re-present or make available the course materials to a broader audience, online.

I’m also preparing to present at some conferences this year and I’m working on a few other projects. I joked, on Twitter, that my theme word for 2011 should be “over-committed” and that’s definitely true. So the mantra I’m repeating to myself is one I recently got in a fortune cookie:

You cannot be anything if you want to be everything.

A good reminder to all of us. Happy new year!

In my last post, Understand and Leverage Your Strengths, I wrote about focusing on your strengths to make yourself (and your team) happier and more successful.

But a former direct report of mine wrote to remind me that, even when one understands and leverages his or her strengths, it’s still possible to have a weakness or skill deficit that makes true success difficult to attain. What does one do in this type of situation? If this is something that’s weighing greatly on you, here’s my advice.

First, get specific about the weakness. Don’t just summarize it as, for example, “I’m not a good communicator.” What is it that you’re not good at or comfortable with? Is it that your written communications lack structure or suffer due to poor spelling and grammar? Are you terrified of speaking before a crowd and thus get tongue-tied whenever you must do so? You want have a focused statement that spells out what you’re addressing; for a bit of positive reinforcement, you might even specify what related skill you have that you’re good at. Using the earlier example, you might be able to make the following statement: “While I am able to clearly summarize and deliver my thoughts verbally to one person or a few people in a regular team meeting, I get very nervous about speaking before larger groups or people I don’t know well, to the point where my delivery of prepared statements can be very awkward.”

Next, determine how much you need to grow to be successful — and this means getting specific about what success means to you. Let’s say that you’re a web designer and you want to start doing some consulting work where you deliver design and front-end code for clients. You are already a decent HTML and CSS coder, so you have that covered, but you don’t know any JavaScript and anticipate having to write some every so often. Rather than give up on your consulting business idea because you think it will be too hard to learn JavaScript, you may want to think about finding someone you could outsource that work to. Or you can work with some developer friends to create a small suite of scripts that you rely on. Or maybe you really should buckle down and try to learn JavaScript before you assume that you can’t!

Once you’ve figured out the above you can create a development plan. Take out a sheet of paper. On the left, write down where you are today; on the right, write down where you want to be. Then identify the steps you need to take to get from one to the other and write those out in between. Assign some dates to each step, et voilà, you’ve got yourself a plan!

Does that sound too easy? It might, especially if the idea of addressing this weakness fills you with dread or fear. To that end, I strongly suggest that you seek feedback throughout this entire process. You may be surprised to learn that others don’t view your weakness the same way you do — this can be a really great perspective to consider. By talking about your weakness, you may come to terms with it. Or, you may be able to identify someone who could mentor you as you work through your development plan.

So, what’s your weakness? Leave a comment and you just might find someone who can help you as you help yourself!

My strengths are: Command, Deliberative, Significance, Strategic, and Learner.

My favorite self-assessment is one that many people don’t know about: StrengthsFinder 2.0. StrengthsFinder is both a book and a test: the book includes an introduction to StrengthsFinder, a code for accessing an online assessment tool, and an explanation of the 34 strengths (or “themes”). The assessment results in a customized report which will help you understand your strengths and how you can use them to be more effective in both your work and your personal life.

Personally, StrengthsFinder has really helped me embrace my strengths. For example, I used to think of myself as “bossy” (because that’s how people described me) and I looked for ways of toning down this “weakness”. But learning that my number one strength was Command made me feel different — it helped me understand that being the boss is a natural position for me and that people look to me to lead them. It made me realize that having formal management and leadership responsibilities would make me a happier, more productive person, rather than a cranky and bossy individual contributor.

You may already see why, as a manager, I love StrengthsFinder. We can’t all verbalize what we’re good at or what kind of work we love to do. For a while, I’ve asked everyone on my teams to take the test and share their results with me. Once I know what strengths a person has, I can better leverage their skills to make them — and the team — more successful.

For example, in the software development community, most programmers have one of the rational temperaments (ENTJ, INTJ, ENTP, or INTP). But if you manage a team of programmers, you can’t just look at them as a a bunch of INTJs (a very common type for programmers, though a very small percentage of the overall population) — you need to see them as individuals. INTJs are introverts and can be brutally honest, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t be persuasive communicators to large groups. StrengthsFinder gives me far more specific information about a person than a behavior or personality test can tell me.

Once a group of people complete their StrengthsFinder assessments, you can chart their results to determine overall group themes. I’ve done this with three teams of employees at different companies and the results are always enlightening. For example, about half of my present team has the “Adaptability” strength — this is perfect for our team because our product strategy has shifted around quite a bit in recent months, so we have people who can roll with those changes. We also have about 50% “Input” and “Learner”: both are crucial to the way we operate. Where we have only one or two people exhibiting a certain strength, I see how I can use those individuals to encourage the overall team, to ask important questions, or to sustain us when the sh*t hits the fan (a necessary evil).

What are you waiting for? Learn more or buy StrengthsFinder 2.0 now and take the test. Learn about yourself. Share the results with your family and team. Encourage others to take it and share their results. At the very least, it should confirm what you already know about yourself — but I’ll bet you’ll learn something new, too.

Have you already taken StrengthsFinder? What are your Top 5? What have you learned about yourself or others?

I’ve interviewed a fair number of web developer candidates recently, and many have followed up with me afterwards for feedback. The number one question I get? What else should I have known or said during the interview to land the job?

This is a pretty easy question for me to answer, so let me give all of you some insight into what I’m looking for, as a hiring manager and interviewer:

• Have an opinion. This doesn’t sound too tricky, right? But in order to have an opinion, you have to have some knowledge and/or experience. For example, if I ask someone what their favorite browser is and why, it’s going to be easy for the person to come back with a response — likely based on what they use everyday. So why is it so difficult to tell me what doctype you prefer to code against, or whether you like or dislike reset CSS? To me, not having an answer means that you either don’t know what these things are or don’t have experience with them. Oh wait, you do have experience, but you don’t want to voice an opinion that would be contrary to my own? Your interview is not a time to be timid! State your case and let me at least know that you know what you’re talking about. I certainly won’t judge you negatively for that.
• Know some HTML5 and CSS3. There are lots of HTML5 jobs opening up, and even those employers that don’t presently advertise the need will want these skills in the future. What, you haven’t learned any HTML5 or CSS3? You’re a professional, right? The excuse that your current job doesn’t support you trying these things doesn’t fly. There are plenty of websites and new publications out now to help you get up to speed in your own time. Plenty of shops are currently looking at switching to HTML5 and adding CSS3 features, and they want people who are able to contribute to these efforts from day one. Believe me, you don’t need a lot of time to pick up some knowledge — in just a few hours you can learn quite a lot!
• Admit that you don’t know. Sometimes interviewers will throw you curveball questions designed just to get you to say one thing — “I don’t know.” Yes, it can be mean, but it does have a purpose: are you someone who will bullshit your way through an interview, and then possibly a job? Or are you willing to admit that you don’t know something — and in that case, are you the kind of person who shuts down, the kind who asks for help understanding, the kind who says “I’ll go learn about that and follow up”? It should come as no surprise that I like the latter kind of person. But there’s an even more practical reason for this: you may misunderstand a question, or the interviewer may not ask the question in a clear manner, or you may not be able to give a direct answer to a question but you could speak about something related. Saying you don’t know, but that you’re going to try to answer the question in the way you understand it, shows patience and diligence — and may just expose some additional skills or knowledge. Don’t hesitate to say it.

Want some more interviewing tips? Back in May, I ran a session at WebVisions called Speed Interviews. In it, I gave some tips to help the audience have a great interview experience, and then I conducted a number of 2-3 minute interviews on stage. It was a fun but challenging experience for me! My slides are online and I welcome your questions about interviewing. Good luck!

Looking to learn more about HTML5?

• View source on this site!
• Read Dive Into HTML5 (online manuscript, free!) by Mark Pilgrim
• HTML5 Doctor by Bruce Lawson and friends reduces HTML5 into easy to read chunks
• HTML5 Now: A Step-by-Step Video Tutorial for Getting Started Today by Tantek Çelik is an awesome 2.5 hour introduction (and at $30 on Amazon, the cheapest personal instruction you can get)