Guest Speaker: Jenavieve Dance, Career Advisor & Community Manager at Treehouse

At a recent WV Coding Club meeting we had the pleasure of a great speaker, Jenavieve Dance, Career Advisor & Community Manager at Treehouse.

Jenavieve has an interesting background that led her to work for Praxis (discoverpraxis.com) and then to Treehouse. Her background is primarily business focused with skills in career advising, Sales, Marketing, Customer Success and Operations. Building her network of fellow professionals helped her connect to the opportunity at Treehouse.

Treehouse’s Mission (https://teamtreehouse.com/): To diversify the tech industry through accessible education, unlocking the door to opportunity, and empowering people to achieve their dreams.

Treehouse was founded in 2011 with the purpose of making tech more accessible through affordable and engaging online tech education. Over the course of the following decade, we’ve taught over 1.2 million people how to code and design. Today, Treehouse is the educational platform of choice for thousands of students, schools, libraries, non-profits, and corporations around the globe.

Jenavieve presented to the students how to present themselves through resume, personal website, LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com) GitHub (GitHub.com). 

She shared resume templates that were designed in Canva (www.canva.com) and help to incorporate Coding Projects.

Key Elements of a Modern Resume

  1. Contact information

  2. Professional summary or objective statement

  3. Work experience

  4. Hard & soft skills

  5. Education

  6. Projects 

  7. Certifications 

  8. Visual appeal 

Customize Your Experience

  1. Align your skills and experiences with the job requirements

  2. Use keywords from the job description to make your resume more relevant to the role

Build a professional website: 

  1. Create a personal website to showcase your portfolio, projects, and achievements. 

  2. Ensure it is visually appealing, easy to navigate, and mobile-friendly.

Jenavieve also provided the following advice:

  1. Some businesses use applicant tracking systems so Keywords are Key!

  2. Build a Personal Website to highlight yourself and your projects / experience. Also set up a GitHub account for your coding projects.

  3. Become an expert communicator! People will want to work with you if they like and trust you.

  4. Be engaging, ask a question, interact

  5. Build a LinkedIn profile

  6. Develop leadership / teamwork skills

“Jenavieve provided significantly valuable information to our WV Coding Club students. Her insights will help them to better present their experiences and projects to stand out and increase their opportunities in the world., explained Dan McElroy, President of the WV Coding Club. He also shared,”Thank you Jenavieve for your time and expertise!”

We appreciate Jenavieve and her valuable advice to our WV Coding Club students. Thank you, Jenavieve!

Keep Coding!