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=How To Put Free Software and Open Source Experience On Your Resumé=
This document recommends best practice for putting free software and open source (FLOSS) experience on your resumé. It is primarily aimed at college students or people who have not yet had a first job in software and who are focused on computer programming.
If you are a college student without extensive Open Source FLOSS experience, your primary "experience" is education. So list it first and prominently, and only then list open source FLOSS or other experience. In the absence of other experience, employers are looking for good educational pedigree first.
Having said that, it's good to participate in free and open source FLOSS development because (among many other reasons) it will lead to further opportunities. Experience starts to trump college the older you get. After your first job or two, people care much less about your college grades. (Hopefully this will give you a sense of perspective about them.)
Unless you are fortunate enough to be applying for a job working on the same open source FLOSS project you contribute to, the primary value of your open source FLOSS experience to an employer is:
# acquired <b>skills</b> using a set of tools;
In larger organizations, the first person to likely review your resumé will be someone in HR (Human Resources). HR staff may not be intimately familiar with the skills related to the position you are applying for and may not be able to infer that, for example, having Mercurial experience means that you have experience with revision control systems. So when you are putting your resumé together, it's useful to list out relevant skills, even if you don't think of them as "skills". What source control systems have you used? What IDEs? What languages are you familiar with? Give your proficiency with each. It helps to tailor the list for whatever job you are applying for; it should be apparent from the job description whether to emphasize that you're good with git or with mercurial. Give your skills a heading that makes sense to someone who plugs terms into Wikipedia (e.g. "Version Control").
Here are some skills you may well have picked up while working on open source FLOSS which you may not have thought of adding:
* Experienced at talking to people from different countries and cultures
* Ability to work with and motivate volunteers
* Focus on writing real-world, long-term-maintainable software* Experience working as a part of a globally distributed team
==Experience==
There are things you can do even while you are contributing to increase the usefulness of your contribution in helping you get a job. For example, make sure your contribution is documented somewhere so you can point potential employers, HR people, or technical reviewers to a full description of what you did. Then later you can say "I QAed 7 packages according to these guidelines", and then point to the guidelines. You get bonus points for documenting your own processes and work because it shows you can do documentation.
Most Open Source FLOSS projects don't give people job titles. However, a job title is just a two or three word summary of what your job is. So it may be worth discussing with the project lead what appropriate and accurate title you could use when listing your experience on that project. "Contributor" sounds like you just hung out ("I fixed a typo in the documentation - that's a contribution"). In some cases, you may wish to avoid the word "Volunteer" entirely. Something like "Quality Assurance Technician" is better. Suggest a title to the project lead, and see what he says. Position the title so it's credible and relevant to the job you are applying for.
Statistics on your contributions can help lend additional context and credibility to your credentials. The more lines of code contributed, packages maintained, and releases touched you can list, the more impressed HR will be. It may also be appropriate to list some statistics about the project and the impact of your work.
An interview is just as much about you trying to work out whether this opportunity/job/career path is for you, as it is for a potential employer to assess you. So come prepared with questions about the work and the environment so you know if and when you accept, you'll be doing something you are excited about. Useful questions to ask:
* What is your company's view on employers contributing to OSSFLOSS? Is it done on my own time or company time? * Will continuing to contribute to OSS FLOSS during employment cause a problem?
It is much, much easier to do this during the interview than on your first day, and it shows someone who understands OSS that you know about and care about making a significant ongoing contribution, and being part of the community. Asking these questions actually helps sell your skills. You are a fun and engaging human being to work with because you are excited about what you are doing.
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<small>Document by Gervase Markham with edits by Zak Greant, with thanks . Thanks to Leslie Hawthorn for most many of the ideas.</small>
