develpreneur podcast
Posted on Mastering Your Career

Conferences As Professional Experience – A Full Resume

There countless things we do during our careers that are easy to forget yet make us better.  In this episode, we look at counting conferences as professional experience.  We can easily overlook these valuable times spent in an immersive few days.  However, that would be a mistake on our part.  Here are some things to consider as you add conference attendance to your resume or brand. A Known Quantity The value in certifications and degrees is that there is a minimum of information we get from them.  These set a bar of our knowledge or experience.  A conference can do the same thing.  We will at least be exposed to the ideas covered in presentations, and those have a cumulative... Read more

develpreneur podcast
Posted on Mastering Your Career

Your Personal Portfolio – Work and References On Your Branding Site

We talked about a personal brand website.  In this episode, we focus on the personal portfolio.  This content is work examples, deliverables, and possibly even applications.  The bonus for this form of delivery is that your reader can experience the content rather than read it.  Let’s look at some ways to make this content sing and avoid hitting sour notes. Keep Their Attention We need to start with a warning.  It is easy to provide tons of links in your content on the web.  These may take the user to a website you built or documents they can read.  Whatever the goal, keep the main problem we are solving in mind.  You should keep the reader in the context of... Read more

develpreneur podcast
Posted on Mastering Your Career

Your Personal Branding Website – Advertise Yourself On The Web

All of us should have a personal branding website of some sort.  This goal can be achieved through a blog site, a web site that displays our portfolio, or a page on LinkedIn.  Whichever approach we take, there is the information we should include the stuff we can avoid.  This site tells our story and should do so in the way we want to tell it.  When you create this material, do not be shy or humble.  This content should impress all who read it.  Your career may depend on it. Theft Is The Highest Form Of Flattery The Internet is full of stolen ideas.  Take a look at popular sites, and you will see the same designs over and... Read more

develpreneur podcast
Posted on Mastering Your Career

Work Examples, Portfolios, And Showing Off Your Deliverables

A frustrating part of my education was a need to show my work.  I always wanted to get to the answer, and showing work slowed me down.  However, work examples are an important part of our application process for a job or project.  Potential employers can learn a lot from the deliverables we have produced.  Therefore, we must present that content in a way that is easy to read and promotes our personal brand Show Off Your Skills The first thing to consider in building portfolio material is what you want to say.  There is a story around your career, so own that narrative.  Select complex problems solved and the technologies you enjoy to craft that story.  We produce a... Read more

develpreneur podcast
Posted on Mastering Your Career

Expired Certifications And Stale Resume Items

Our continued drive to become a better developer will eventually lead to certifications.  Therefore, it will lead to those certifications expiring.  While some authorities do not expire their certs, there is a useful lifespan for any technology.  In this episode, we look at how to handle those expired certifications on a resume or when applying for a position. Expired Certifications Have Value The quick answer would be to drop those expired certifications and ancient skills from your current list.  However, that would be a short-sighted step to take.  The mere fact that you studied for and passed an exam shows value to an employer.  It is proof that you took the initiative to improve yourself as well as showing a... Read more

Why Integration Testing Should Not Be Overlooked
Posted on Integrate Testing Into Your Development Flow Testing

Why Integration Testing Should Not Be Overlooked

Welcome to the next episode in our new series “Integrating testing into your development flow”. Today we are going to be looking at “Why Integration Testing Should Not Be Overlooked”. In our last presentation, we took our tests to the next level by using Selenium with TestNG. For the purpose of creating tests that can interact with web pages using the Selenium WebDriver. Including discussions on, what Selenium is, what tools it offers, and how to set up your environment to use Selenium. Then we walked through using the Selenium IDE to record tests interactively in a browser. Next, we looked at how to convert these recordings into actual TestNG tests. After we had our recorded tests running in TestNG,... Read more