I am likely not revealing anything new to you (nor I know much about hiring), but:
Taking a look at your CV, I notice that you have a lot of very short work stints, averaging at about a position per year.
This is probably just the nature of contracting, but I can see this putting off most companies that are looking for someone to dive deeply in the business domain and work on supporting a project long-term.
I also feel a lot of those "we need someone with experience on X technology to onboard us or fix some urgent problem" jobs are on a downtrend, given the rise of XaaS solutions, convergence of development stacks, more documentation, stuff like ChatGPT, etc.
Thank you for taking the time to look at it and commenting.
It is indeed the nature of contracting and project work. Note that there are 3 times where I have done contracts back to back for 4 or 5 years for the same company, which should show that I don't just jump ship all the time and am able to commit for a long time.
It made more sense to highlight each project individually in an economy with a lot of need for contractors for short stints, but point taken, I'll see if I can highlight the fact that 2, or 3, or 4 consequent contracts are for the same company. Maybe even just bold the company names.
I reviewed your CV as well. I am a former programmer/analyst/architect, now an IT director. I have reviewed a lot of CVs as a hiring manager. I agree with the feedback you have already received. Here are some additional thoughts.
You have listed a lot of experience, mainly focusing on technical skills. When I review a CV I focus more on the last 5 or 10 years than roles from 30 years ago (unless I'm looking for someone to do COBOL maintenance). I suggest providing more information about experience in the last 5 or 10 years. I wouldn't worry too much about listing specific projects/assignments before that.
Your CV emphasizes your technical skills, but doesn't provide much insight into other skills. Perhaps for some of your recent projects you could highlight other ways in which you contributed to a successful outcome. Were you the lead developer? Did you interact with users - maybe in an agile process? What aspects of the software development life cycle were you responsible for?
So, based on your current CV, I might suggest a some entries like these:
Subtlety Communications, April 2022 - December 2022
- Vulnerability Mitigation Project
Lead developer responsible for analyzing vulnerability reports, identifying appropriate mitigation, implementing and testing mitigation. Reported to CISO. Javascript, React.
- Live Chat Application
Senior member of agile application development team responsible for front-end development. Automated generation of Docker config files to improve CI/CD processes. Docker, Typescript, React.
> I have done contracts back to back for 4 or 5 years for the same company, which should show that I don't just jump ship all the time and am able to commit for a long time.
The harsh reality is right now, there are a lot of applicants were for many recent years hiring meant active recruiting so resumes aren't getting the attention that they once did. People aren't going deep dive your history unless you seem like the perfect candidate.
So short stints even mixed with a few long stints aren't going to balance out as you are suggesting in many situations.
What I can recommend to try and soften this, is be more generic, don't list ever single job, but something along the lines of "Various contract based projects from yyyy to yyyy" and bullet point detail the more juicier bits of the contacts.
but admittedly I base this solely on my own experience, so take it with a grain of salt.
Appreciated, I wish I could help more. There's for sure a way to highlight that you can work on long stints, as well as quickly jump into diverse projects across the full stack.
Unfortunately I can't help much on it, as on my short career I always chained jobs on the good times and never had to work much on my CV or marketing myself.
Taking a look at your CV, I notice that you have a lot of very short work stints, averaging at about a position per year.
This is probably just the nature of contracting, but I can see this putting off most companies that are looking for someone to dive deeply in the business domain and work on supporting a project long-term.
I also feel a lot of those "we need someone with experience on X technology to onboard us or fix some urgent problem" jobs are on a downtrend, given the rise of XaaS solutions, convergence of development stacks, more documentation, stuff like ChatGPT, etc.