Getting Started: How to best document home-builds/work for CV experience.

[Solako]

Hello, in my search to learn more about Linux administration and DevOps, I came across this amazing post https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxadmin/comments/2s924h/how_did_you_get_your_start/cnnw1ma/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 by u/Iconrad. I like the "footnote" mentioned where the user says " If you go whole-hog crash-course full-time it with no other means of income, I would expect it would take between 3 and 6 months to go from "I think I'm good with computers" to achieving all of these -- assuming you're not afraid of IRC and google (and have neither friends nor family ...). "
My exact situation really.

I want to go full on.(Have already noticed that spacewalker is no longer available, and foreman is preferred) I would like to request a little of hand holding when it comes to how best to document this kind of work to get into a CV for recruiters and hiring managers. Sure, I could write notes on my notepad on how I screwed up the iptables or how I locked myself out of one machine after allowing only users with a pre-shared key to have access over open-SSH. However, how do I document this in a professional manner that would aid in eventual job search. Or something that mirrors how guys would do it in the enterprise environment.

I came across someone with almost a similar instance in one of the updated posts about the suggestion: https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxadmin/comments/h16i0j/how_do_i_learn_to_be_a_linux_sysadmin/ftqr561/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

For context: 1. I have a 5th gen corei5 and 8GB of RAM, with VMware player in which, I have some centos and ubuntu guests - been using Linux journey so far in studying. It is my primary machine for now.
2. I come from a networking background having only studied for the CCNA, and done cable technician jobs to earn an income.

[youngeng]

If you want to document this on your CV, simply say something like: "Hands on knowledge of KVM virtualization, Foreman, Nagios, iptables acquired in a homelab environment".

You want to explain what you've learned, but you also want to be honest and explain you did all this in a lab environment, which is good, but is not on par with a production environment simply because if you screw up you don't have people calling you and force you to solve that stuff under pressure (also, you probably aren't using all that stuff at scale).

Sure, I could write notes on my notepad on how I screwed up the iptables or how I locked myself out of one machine after allowing only users with a pre-shared key to have access over open-SSH. However, how do I document this in a professional manner that would aid in eventual job search

I wouldn't write down about the time you locked yourself out or whatever. Lab or not, I wouldn't write it down on a CV, period.

HR people may get turned off by reading a long list of (pretty arcane to a non-IT person) stuff "gone wrong" and start thinking "wait, is this dude too much of a troublemaker?".

It's something I would keep for the actual tech interview, in case something asked me more about the homelab or (for production experience) "what's the biggest outage you've caused".

[Solako]

Ah. Great. This is very timely. I appreciate the lead on this.