Lately, I've been spending a good deal of time evaluating résumés, poring over code samples, and interviewing potential candidates for front-end web development jobs. There is a huge variety of skill, experience, and craftsmanship out there. Most of what gets to my inbox ends up being mediocre, some of it is awful, a small subset is good.
Résumés are deceptive. I put very little trust in them. You can't ride your résumé into any tech job worth having. Far too often I see front-end developers with impressive-looking résumés loaded to the brim with abbreviations and acronyms but code samples which are lazy, incomplete, full of beginner's mistakes, and sloppy. In many cases, the more stuff on a résumé, the less impressive the candidate in reality.
Code samples are the real deciding factor as to whether or not to bring a person in for a face-to-face. Code samples determine if your résumé is really as impressive as it seems. I am routinely shocked at how little effort people put into their code samples. The list of offenses goes on and on: invalid HTML, missing doctypes, uncommented JavaScript, code clearly copied and pasted from a Google search.
With that in mind, what gets you a job as a front-end developer is not just having the code chops or job experience. Craftsmanship is a combination of having both the skills needed and the desire to do the best work possible.
The word connotes an activity that transcends mere work. Work is something you do because you need to eat and pay rent. A craft is something you nuture - you have to care about your craft.