What are the most cost effective ways of increasing your marketability to employers

Question

There's a difference between becoming a better developer and showing you're a better developer to potential employers or to your current employer (ie. raises and such). I'm wondering what the most cost effective ways of doing that are. By cost effective, I don't just mean how much money said developer going to have to put out. Most commonly these are money and time. The latter is often more significant.

For instance: Having your own blog can really develop you as a programmer, but it may not be seen as a big deal to your current or future developers, and is potentially a lot of work, whereas some certs can go a long way with some employers and is much less work than building up a lot of quality content in a blog or developing a personal/OS project - even if the latter may be more fun.

Assuming you're in the .NET space, what are the more cost effective ways that you can increase your marketability to your current or future employers? In an ideal world, we/I would do them all, but for the purpose of prioritizing, one should/could tackle the higher marketability/cost ones first before moving on to the others.

Answer 1

• Write programs in your spare time, to improve your skills.
• Create an open-source project, to demonstrate your skills.
• Contribute to other open-source projects, to show your team work.
• Maintain a very well-written blog, to illustrate your skills.

All of these are essentially free (money-wise).

Answer 2

Having done a good bit of hiring, I would take someone much more seriously if he blogs or writes articles or books or gives presentations at conferences than I would he if had a certification. In fact I would not consider the certifications helpful in the slightest. I'm not interested in people who are all about the quick fix of do a little memorization of obscure facts and pass a test and then forget all I learned.

But the best way to be more marketable is to have actual accomplishments. To have actually succesfully developed something. To have met deadlines and gotten the project in under budget. To have solved a difficult problem.

There is no quick fix for a lack of experience.

Answer 3

If you're going to an interview, then show potential employers that you've taken the time to investigate their market place and give examples of how your skills might assist them in being more successful. Don't tell them how to do their business but show areas in which your experience may be beneficial to them. The only thing you need to spend is your time.

How to get interviews? In most cases potential employers will ask their existing staff to cast their eyes over a CV. Just make sure your CV is clear and is tailored to their market, again showing your experience in that area. If nothing else, it shows you made the effort. At this stage however, nothing beats a personal recommendation. Probably the easiest way to do this is attend developer led conferences and participate in any developments groups that may be local to you. These are normally either cheap or free. In doing so you'll meet like minded people - they are making the effort of going! Over time you can build a network of new friends and in the process learn new things and improve your own ability to communicate your knowledge. Whilst these people may not be your employer, they could be potential colleagues or introduction to a new role (and vice versa).

Answer 4

I think @Robert Harvey assembled a nice list of things that you can do. But there's a reason why to do those things: it shows that you are serious/passionate about your career and that you are trying to do whatever you can to be better at it.

I also would like to add some things that can help you improve your marketability:

• If you are a software developer, contributing to stackoveflow.com is a form of contributing to the open-source community (and a good way to make new professional contacts). If you do that, make sure you have a Stackoverflow Careers profile;
• Do freelance work to show that you can get things done! But be careful: this may be a bad idea depending on your company policy. But if you are allowed to, always make sure you do not get involved in freelance work that are in the same area of development that you do for your company. Remember that NDA ou signed?!? If you've done interesting freelance projects there is no reason why you shouldn't add it to your resume.

By the way, I do share my SO profile in my resume and it has worked well for my advantage so far.

Answer 5

The fastest way to get proof you know something is to get certified.

Find out what is the most respected certification in the line of work you want to do (.NET/Java/whatever), and take one or more of these. This will most likely be non-trivial to pass, but I don't think you can get anything faster.

If you have plenty of money, take time off to study. If you have plenty of time, prioritize your daily work higher and learn all you can from using the skills you learn in your certification training.

Also be aware that to get the most out of it, you need to use it afterwards...