On Facebook, in groups dedicated to beginning programmers, I often see questions about how to improve one’s CV to increase the chances of being hired.

In my 12-year career, I went from the junior to the technology director and never got a job thanks to my CV. It’s not like I didn’t try. I just never got a job sending my CV.

I worked in four companies, and a couple of months ago I set up the fifth one by myself (Shuffle.dev).

I have to tell you my secret. This secret will give you a significant advantage over other candidates. The recruiters will hate me!

What is this secret?

My first job (2007–2009):

In 2007, during studies (finance and banking), I started to create a bot operating in the Gadu-Gadu network. At that time it was the largest Polish instant messenger. In 2007 Gadu-Gadu was bought by Naspers for $154 million.

My bot was a simple solution. It reacted to commands (e.g. weather), checked data in various services and returned them to the communicator. It was written in the TCL language.

This project interested Gadu-Gadu. I was invited to a meeting in Warsaw, quite good money (for a beginner) was offered for the project’s rights and I was offered a job.

Of course I agreed and earned my first money!

I found the first job (actually the job found me!) because someone saw potential in my project done in my free time and / or in me!

Nobody asked for the CV.

My second job (2009–2010):

In 2009, Facebook was becoming more and more popular in Poland. I began to wonder how to use their API, I did some tests and started to create the seed of the project that would use their API.

As I didn’t have experience in creating SaaS (I was 23 years old), I wrote to a person I knew was a specialist in creating Internet businesses (I knew it from blogs/articles/interviews). I wrote an e-mail to Rafał Agnieszczak, the CEO of Fotka.pl, at that time the largest social networking site in Poland, with a proposal for cooperation.

After one meeting, we agreed I would join his company as a programmer.

I found the second job thanks to the fact that I wrote to the right person with the right idea at the right time (Facebook has just started to acquire a significant number of users in Poland). There was no need to prepare a CV either.

My third job (2010–2017):

The project with Rafał did not work out. We had a lot of technological problems. I don’t remember why, but we forced the users to give us their passwords (!?) to social networking sites. Perhaps the Facebook API and other websites did not share all the data we wanted to collect. Unfortunately, it didn’t work well.

However, I didn’t give up interest in Facebook and its API.

I started to create a StreamPublish project. It was a tool that allowed posting on Facebook and the appropriate formatting of posts (today it is not possible anymore, but one day you could add various options in the post through the API).

StreamPublish.com (2010)

In 2010, Rafał (the guy in whose company I worked) interviewed Łukasz Misiukanis (YouTube shows 2012 year, but it is re-upload). Łukasz told in that interview that he is setting up a Social Media agency and wants to get with it to the TOP 3 of this category in Poland (at the time of the interview he had only one co-worker, namely Agnieszka).

I decided to write to Łukasz if he would be interested in developing StreamPublish.

We met and so I found the third job. I was the third employee in Socializer (the company that Łukasz founded). Łukasz did not ask for my CV.

The company has grown to more than 200 people, was bought for $8 million by Dentsu Aegis Network, and after the acquisition for three years I was a technology director with a team of about 30 programmers.