Being Marketable Shifting from DoD to Commercial
I'm looking to shift from a DoD software role (vue/node) to something commercial with public consumers, in the full stack web app field. (3 YoE, CS bachelors).
I've had a tough time making myself marketable on my resume or interviews. A lot of companies want to know about scaling and the amount of users I've supported. I've studied system design and know the basics for an interview, but have not needed to implement anything like that, as I'm not supporting a large user base. Additionally, I have not used or needed to use any large cloud tools, except AWS S3.
I paid KantaHQ for a resume revision, but am not seeing much of a difference in response.
I can't necessarily provide too many details on the projects I have been working on in my resume or interviews. Interviewers tend to understand when I tell them I cannot be too detailed on a project, but that does seem to give other candidates an advantage over me.
I also struggle to provide decent metrics on my resume. I'm not supporting 1M users, not single handedly increasing revenue by 200%, and honestly don't know where most engineers get these metrics from.
I've completed side projects to fill some gaps in my resume, but interviewers seem to focus on what I do at work. These projects also do not need to be built for scale.
I'm curious if anyone has made this shift, and if you have any tips.
Posted Mar 12, 2025, 8:08 PM UTC