Ask HN: Should you put your freelance experience on your resume if you work FT?

2 points by major 7 years ago | 3 comments

I’m wondering if or where it would be beneficial for a developer to mention freelance work they’ve done while working full-time. My understanding is that some employers own their employees’ IP, so how do they view a potential employee who regularly does freelance work outside of their 9-5? If the freelance work is related to your FT position, is it a net positive or negative?

lsiunsuex 7 years ago |

I've never had a problem with freelance work on my resume. If nothing else, it's helped me get day jobs; employers / recruiters have usually been more interested in work I've done on the side, then at a 9-5.

It's helped me so much, I've now broken it out into it's own section on my resume in a resume re-write this week (it was getting a little "feature creep")

major 7 years ago | |

Was there a particular type of company that you were applying to? Was your freelancing work on the front- or back-end?

lsiunsuex 7 years ago | | |

I've worked for small mom and pop shops to national banks to everything in between - and my freelance is full stack (back, front, + server)

Everyone appreciated the time spent outside of the day job and most always found those projects more interesting then what I was hired to do - as they usually are - corporate work can be boring most of the time; freelance is where i can "show off"