8
edits
Changes
→Experience: - edit for Zak; feel free to revert
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.
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.
You should have a "Top Accomplishment" section for each position held, which tells a short story about something great that you did in that position. E.g. explain that you tracked down and fixed a critical bug which was blocking a release, and give a link to the bug report itself.
Resumes typically assign a job title to each chunk of relevant experience. Unfortunately, most FLOSS projects don't give people job titles. Instead, use a two or three word summary of what your role is. It may be worth discussing with the project lead what appropriate and accurate title you could use when listing your experience on that project. Position the title so it's credible and relevant to the job you are applying for. Shy away from vague terms like "volunteer" where more specific and credible terms (like "developer" or "author") are available, and get specific where appropriate- i.e., don't just say "volunteer", say "QA volunteer" or better (if accurate) "QA team member".
==References==
