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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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
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.
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.
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 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 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.
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
Yes.
Talk about it through the lens of deploying on-prem business services for SMBs and it feels more like professional experience to the interviewer.
Hey guys, I’m a hiring manager and owner of an IT company. I would absolutely encourage you to make some sort of mention on your résumé that you have a home lab though I wouldn’t go into extensive detail. I had one gentleman who said I have a home lab and I would love to talk with you about what I do, and that peaked my interest because that told me that even at home he was learning and playing around with the same technology for the position he was applying for.
My homelab got me my last 2 jobs and the one I’m switching to for significantly more money.
I gave it a passing mention in my resume and a couple of sentences in a cover letter. It got brought up in interview and I was able to talk through all the tech I had experience with, which sold them on me and got me an offer. Job I’m moving to, we only had a casual interview where I discussed my lab, and it turned out 90% of what they use, I’ve played with at home. Got an offer the same week.
It’s not on my resume but I always bring it up in interviews. I actually ask candidates I’m interviewing what their home network looks like. It gives me an idea if they have any passion for tech or not.