2

Often times in interviews they want to see samples of what you have done in the past. I'm a huge movie buff, and when I was a student I made a website of all of my favorite movies. Each movie had a review written by me. I put a lot of effort into it and I'm happy to show it off.

My only problem is, in some reviews I talk about things that may make people uncomfortable. Examples below.

The Death of Stalin: The scene in the Gulag. Not a bad thing by itself but there is a humorous element to it which my be taken the wrong way.

American History X: The Nazi rape scene. Extremely powerful and important to the movie, but I can see how the topic may make some people uncomfortable.

Oldboy: The hammer scene. Again a very important scene in the movie, but not the topic you want to discuss for job interview.

There are easily another couple of dozen topics in my reviews that might be considered taboo. Should I just not show this website during job interviews, or alternatively make a sanitized PG version of it? Seems like a shame since that would eliminate almost half my reviews.

jjanderson
  • 29
  • 2
  • 2
    Does this answer your question? Displaying Adult Site on a Resume – gnat Feb 16 '20 at 06:39
  • 3
    It sounds like a static site that is only authored by you. If the only effort you had is to write contents then it's a bad idea to show that. It would be different if you had setup a login system for anyone else and whatever other logic behind. Have you? – puck Feb 16 '20 at 07:24
  • 8
    Are you looking for a job as a movie critic? Otherwise, I don't see how it would be relevant, and given the content, I would not share that. The fact that you have to ask is usually a good indicator that it's not interviewing friendly things to share. If you do link it, be ready for bits of it to get brought up during the interview, and be ready to explain it. – Aida Paul Feb 16 '20 at 09:27
  • 2
    Are you applying as a web designer, or why do you think this would be relevant for the job? – Llewellyn Feb 16 '20 at 18:32

2 Answers2

6

The best strategy when you want to showcase yourself in a professional light is to have a clean piece that can be analysed.

Things that you did for yourself often don't make the grade, precisely for the reasons you think, sometimes a bit of laziness, humour or bias thats not particularly PC is all it takes to get you filtered out of a list. And also because they're not tailored toward the specific goal of showing off your skills.

You can still use it and see what happens, but it's far better to have something professional to show.

Kilisi
  • 222,118
  • 122
  • 486
  • 793
1

If this website you developed has some thing that is technologically worth showing in an interview, create a separate version of it with non-offensive text. You can even use the world famous lorem ipsum, if you wish to be completely neutral.

undefined
  • 5,413
  • 5
  • 21
  • 28