Experience Section

If you've never worked in programming before, that's okay! You should still list your past roles so that hiring managers can at least see that:

• You have a history of being employed
• You have a history of being responsible and reliable
• You have a history of working with others

It's a lot better than nothing, and at some point every professional programmer has to get their first programming job, so don't sweat it.

If you have experience in QA, product management, IT Ops, or anything that's at least related to software development, update the descriptions of each of your past positions to emphasize any part of your job that was related to software development. For example, for an IT Ops job, don't say this:

• Managed production environment upgrades
• Installed databases
• Analyzed logs to troubleshoot issues

Say this instead:

• Worked closely with the development team to ensure that the software was deployed and running smoothly.
• Wrote custom code to automate deployments.
• Built a SlackBot to provide real-time updates on the status of the production environment.

No matter what, try to make every line of text you publish (whether it's on LinkedIn, GitHub, or your resume) interesting and specific. It will attract more attention, garner follow-up questions, and generally just make you a more interesting person to work with. So don't say this:

• Worked on a backend REST API
• Worked on a collaborative team and practiced leadership skills
• Used Python and JavaScript to build an app that tracks data

Say this instead:

• I built a media uploading service using Kubernetes, Docker and Go that handled 1,000 files per second. It replaced the old service that struggled to handle 100 files per second.
• I led an initiative on my team to develop a plan to streamline our QA process for our React Native mobile app. We reduced the average turnaround time for a pull request approval by 50%.
• I built a full-stack Django app that pulls weather data in real-time and sends alerts to subscribed users in geographic areas at risk of severe weather.

Fill out your LinkedIn experience section.

Also, go update your experience section on your resume to match if you made some meaningful improvements.