This may apply more to people who are earlier in their career, but I’m interested to hear opinions on this.
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Yes I did. I applied for an entry level security researcher role and I had zero security experience and def put my home labs on there. I had an Active Directory lab for pentesting as well as Docker containers running vulnerable web apps. They said my passion and drive demonstrated by the home labs and my blog is what got me the job
Years ago when getting into IT after a career change, listing my home lab impressed my CIO and ICT manager. It displayed knowledge and demonstrated an understanding of the technologies. They asked me a few questions about the lab which I was able to speak to and I got a call with a job offer an hour after leaving .
My advice as someone who is in a hiring position is to elude to it in your cv but don’t get to into detail then when asked about it in the interview talk about it enthusiasticly. I personally will hire a person with a good homelab story ahead of someone with huge educational experience
NO.
But I have slipped in references to it in the interviews. In at least one case I know it was a key factor in getting the job.
Be ready with links during an interview in case the opportunity arises.
It’s not on my resume but I recently did a Teams preliminary interview that was over webcam. I made sure my rack was visible in my background.
Saaaameeeeeeeee, got hired too
damn. I spent all this time putting my rack in my basement turns out that was a bad idea lol.
jk I actually made a 3d corner office in Blender and took a picture of the empty desk chair I use that as my Teams background.
Saaaameeeeeeeee, got hired too
Resume? no.
In the interview? Every time.
Yeah, this 200%! It’s helped, but it seems weird on a resume.
Definitely. My boss was a bit stunned that I have a homelab. I’m in a small team of five and I’m the only one with a homelab.
I only dabble in Linux but at work any script related questions always come to me, even though I don’t know the answer. Kick started me into learning some python.
This is the way.
I’m a software engineering student and put it in my resume as a side project. Every interview it was talked about in a very positive way. It’s really useful to know Networking/Security, Virtualization and Containerization with hands on experience. In addition, with a homelab we gain a really valuable skill, being able to Google and fix problems.
Absolutely. I stood up a HA k8s cluster from scratch, and had it all working with ingress, SSL, etc… plus I can transition the conversation from k8s to microservices architecture
I didn’t put it on my resume but my setup did come up in a recent interview. I’d like to think it helped seeing as they called me less than 24 hours later to offer me the job.
As someone who hires IT staff, ABSOLUTELY put it on your resume. Don’t go crazy, just a one-liner, as a talking point for your interview.
I read a lot of mixed things about putting it on my resume or not. I decided to make a hobbies section on in and put a few things on there. To my surprise it came up in every interview and I believe helped me land my current role.
As a hiring manager I would love to see it. It tells me you’re passionate about IT outside of work and how you’re constantly learning.
I hire in software development but I would concur; it means you’re “into it” and those people are almost always a cut-above the unwashed masses.
We sort resumes based on things like this and these go to the top and get called first.
I would say it’s a lot more important if you have limited experience and if you are looking to make a change and get into a new area that you lack direct experience with.
Also we are a small, private company so the hiring is done a lot more directly than in a large one.I wouldn’t elaborate in any detail on your resume about it - whatever you write is going to be out-of-date anyway right? - but as a bullet point at the end of personal projects is nice to see.
If you confident in the technologies used mention then in the resume
I would not mention it on my resume, but during the interview, I would say it’s a must. If you can remotely log in to your lab and perform a demo during the interview even better.
Yes.