This article seems to have an assumption that companies have this huge pool of qualified candidates applying for jobs and you, as an applicant, just need to show that little extra initiative to beat out the other applicants. As someone who has reviewed mountains of resumes for a large company, this assumption doesn't match my experience.
In my experience there is this huge pool of unqualified applicants applying for every job no matter what the actual job requirements are. The applicants that got a call for an interview 1) looked at the technologies listed in the job requirements and 2) put their experience with these technologies on their resume.
Also important, once you get called in for an interview make sure you can answer the most basic questions about what is on your resume. If you put Linux experience on your resume make sure you can explain how to list the contents of a directory from the command line. If you put MySQL experience on your resume make sure you can explain how to get a count of the total number of rows in a table.
Are there really companies out there where the difference between getting an offer and not getting an offer is spending a few hours making a bespoke "please hire me" website?
In my experience there is this huge pool of unqualified applicants applying for every job no matter what the actual job requirements are. The applicants that got a call for an interview 1) looked at the technologies listed in the job requirements and 2) put their experience with these technologies on their resume.
Also important, once you get called in for an interview make sure you can answer the most basic questions about what is on your resume. If you put Linux experience on your resume make sure you can explain how to list the contents of a directory from the command line. If you put MySQL experience on your resume make sure you can explain how to get a count of the total number of rows in a table.
Are there really companies out there where the difference between getting an offer and not getting an offer is spending a few hours making a bespoke "please hire me" website?