14 ms·

Ask HN: How do I write a resume after five years of a startup?

• otoburb 10y ago
  Do not fixate on job title progression alone; your co-founder titles are impressive enough. Outline your area(s) of responsibility on each project, especially if you all rotated roles once in a while. Focus on growth of both top and bottom lines, and highlight margin improvements over the 4 years and 4 projects. Try to quantify your accomplishments in dollar figures since they stand out more. Statements such as "Grew revenues 50% YoY from $0 to $X million over 36 months" will quickly catch anybody's attention. Throw in some specific, targeted technical phrases that are keyword friendly and you'll easily be an outstanding candidate. Be prepared to explain why you'd want to join the target company and not stay at your current company. TLDR: Hiring managers hone in on results, not only titles. Quantify your business impacts and list your technical accomplishments. EDIT: Regarding my comment about quantifying your margin impact, for those that don't know, "margin" and "markup" are not equivalent[1]. Thankfully it's really easy for technically inclined folks to grasp this insanely useful financial concept. [1] http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/102714/whats-difference-between-profit-margin-and-markup.asp http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/102714/whats-differe...
  • hashkb 10y ago
    > Hiring managers hone in on results, not only titles. A lot of them kind of don't, but you don't want to work at those places anyway. This is good advice.
  • chaostheory 10y ago
    Looks like I'm 11 hours late to the party =( Totally agree with otoburb and I'd like to add to the conversation. boxcardavin, you bring up a common problem: traditional resumes and LinkedIn are mainly all about focusing on your tenure: the company you worked for and your job title. As you mentioned, it doesn't cater to your work history. What if we make your work front and center and push the job titles to the side? Instead of just typing, I'd like to show you what I mean: http://www.theymadethat.com/people/p04ubn/david-hansen http://www.theymadethat.com/people/p04ubn/david-hansen boxcardavin, feel free to give me feedback. If you have a lot feedback, we can take this outside of HN.
• lloyd-christmas 10y ago
  > So, how does one communicate that they are hirable after running a semi-successful startup for years The fact that you've held a job for more than just 6 month stints is enough to push you all the way to the front of the line. Most applicants we see just do 6 months here and there. I refuse to hire anyone that hasn't stayed at a company at least 2 years (excluding new grads). 4 years is pretty much a unicorn nowadays.
  • quantumhobbit 10y ago
    I've seen two types who fit the six month pattern: 1 Devs who simply can't code and get fired/managed out/not contract renewed 2 Unlucky people who don't put up with crappy work environments The first groups should be easy to weed out with decent interviews. The second are a goldmine as long as your company isn't as dysfunctional as the companies that drove them away previously.
    • amyjess 10y ago
      Or, for that matter: 3 Unlucky people who have a tendency to get hired just before the company changes course and begins laying people off That was the case with my last employer. Right after I was hired, our revenue sources began to dry up, and we couldn't stop the bleeding, so eventually a third of the company, including me, got laid off. I lasted 15 months before the axe fell, and I was worried when applying for new positions that my resume would be thrown out because I was there less than two years.
      • derefr 10y ago
        As just this sort of person, I get the sense that I'm probably looking for new employment the wrong way, because I only start hearing about opportunities at startups when those startups are fait-accompli dead-in-the-water. My hypothesis: most startups don't bother advertising openings publicly while they can get by using private word-of-mouth in their network. Since I'm not well-enough-connected, none of the private word-of-mouth ever reaches me; so I only ever hear about these companies once their well of private leads has run dry—which really should be taken as a vote-of-no-confidence from their network.
• beachstartup 10y ago
  personally i don't think it's that big of a deal. on my resume i just call myself a co-founder of my company, X years. i don't even put a title on my linked in because i don't want people to try to pitch to me. otherwise, give yourself a different title for different periods of time, and list your co-founders or customers as references.
• gorbachev 10y ago
  Do you know your shit? If yes, you have nothing to worry about. If no, work on that. There're so many unqualified job candidates out there, you can rise above the crowd just by being good at what you do.
  • jmtulloss 10y ago
    As a former hiring manager at a company that got way more resumes than qualified candidates (Rdio), I totally disagree with this. Candidates have to be able to communicate why they are good at what they do concisely, otherwise their resume won't even make it to the hiring managers inboxes at most companies. This is pretty similar to the elevator pitch for a startup. I'm amazed that anybody has a hard time keeping their resume to a single page when any founder can describe their startup in a paragraph. In both cases, you're just trying to get a meeting, not tell your life story. It's not enough to be good, you have to be able to say why you're good.
    • caseymarquis 10y ago
      "[Keep your resume to a single page]; you're just trying to get a meeting, not tell your life story." I like that.
    • raverbashing 10y ago
      > has a hard time keeping their resume to a single page Last time I did that I got complaints that my CV was not detailed enough
      • dpark 10y ago
        I am not clear why people think a resume needs to be one page. I tend to prefer about two pages. That's enough room to list where you worked along with the highlights. One page normally means just a list of employers and almost no detail. Three pages typically feels rambling or padded. I don't consider a resume and a CV to be equivalent, though. A CV is generally a lot more exhaustive than a resume. I would put together a CV if and only if applying for a research or academic position.
• sharemywin 10y ago
  You can also break out job titles under the company. So, if you worked on one project as the tech lead and program manager as another. or break out responsibilities under job titles. Hiring managers could respond to this but seems like: Awesome Great Company I started: 2014 - Present CEO/HR - I was responsible for ... CEO/VP Sales - I successfully sold 4 large projects which resulted in ... sales ... CTO/Tech Lead - I designed, built, tested ... Also, created a complete automated test suite... using NoSQL, Android...
• Taylor_OD 10y ago
  I'd be happy to spend ten minutes giving you pointers. I've a tech recruiter in Chicago and I've worked with a number of CTO's from 1871 (local co working space/tech incubator) to transition from their startup to a new role. But like many have said here if you write on your resume what you have actually been building over the last couple years you should be fine. Being able to clearly talk about your experience is more important.
  • radley 10y ago
    I'm open to such advice as well (going through similar experience). Feel free to ping me at radley@cloud.tv
• santiagobasulto 10y ago
  Are you behind snap2print.me? Looks super cool. A good idea for sure.
  • boxcardavin 10y ago
    Yep, it is pretty cool but the decision-makers at most of our client companies are slow to approve budgets for Snapchat. It has been fun to work on, it's our first big push into hardware so I've had a ball. We'd like to push our prices way down to hit weddings but our hardware needs to be overbuilt as all hell to handle the rigors of being shipped and handled by half-drunk wedding photographers :P
    • xophishox 10y ago
      We shipped our hardware in Pelican Cases. They are indestructible, and they come with foam liners that can pretty much be custom molded or "plucked" to fit the object your are shipping. I could almost guarantee what we were shipping was more fragile than your printers, (not a pissing contest) but it was precision instrumentation that needed to not get jittered around. Pelicans worked great for us. http://www.pelican.com/us/en/ http://www.pelican.com/us/en/ And they arent even that expensive.
      • boxcardavin 10y ago
        Oh yes, I love our Pelican's, we use them for our printers as well. The problem was the first few iterations of our printer were fragile once outside the protective cocoon of the pelican and in the hands of live-event people. As a result, we've beefed up our gear but it's expensive to do as such a small scale (dozens not thousands).
        • antoniuschan99 10y ago
          Have you reached out to snapchat about your product? Anything come out of that? Product looks really cool!
  • 10y ago
• moondev 10y ago
  I don't think it matters as much as you think. If anything it shows that you are a more stable employee that won't jump ship. Put all 4 projects on there and try to sell them as technically as possible. I was at an unknown company (nationally) for 7 years before I left. I had no issues whatsoever getting interviews.
• bsbechtel 10y ago
  Tell the hiring manager that companies aren't built to show career progression/build a resume, they're built to fill a customer need. You prefer to spend your time thinking about how to better fulfill your customer's needs than checking off boxes for your resume.
• Silhouette 10y ago
  For what it's worth, I think your experience is a strong point to have on your resume. You have collectively demonstrated an ability to run profitable projects, over an extended period, doing everything that is necessary between you since there was no-one else to hide behind. That is more than many people in our business will achieve in their entire career. As long as you were all contributing substantially and can show that, just to avoid any perception that your team was actually built around one key person or anything along those lines, I expect you'll do just fine. As an aside, not everyone is on LinkedIn, and those of us who aren't apparently can't see the profile you linked. Also, full disclosure, it sounds like I'm a bit older than you but my background is somewhat similar, so my views here may be biased. But having sat on the hiring side of the table in various roles, I'd take demonstrated ability to get things done and build successful projects over some random progression of short term jobs with increasingly impressive-sounding job titles any day of the week.
• nilram 10y ago
  Are you guys all agreeing to disband? I have heard that selling yourselves as a qualified, functional team can bring a higher value than each person solo. I guess acqui-hires are an example of that; maybe some of the recruiter types that have responded here have thoughts about how to initiate that dance.
  • boxcardavin 10y ago
    I think we're going to apply for Stripes Bring Your Own Team where they hire functional teams. Haven't decided to disband yet, we based it on time and revenue requirements for ourselves.
• matco11 10y ago
  the definition of impressive resume depends on the purpose you want to achieve. There is not such a thing as THE impressive resume. If you are looking for a certain job, you don't want a resume with a bunch of empty titles. You need a strong resume addressing the specific requirements of that particular job, in terms of skills and relevant experience. Large organizations need both people that take care of the "ordinary business" and people that take care of "special projects", that are the doers, that figure things out by themselves: your startup experience automatically qualifies you for all the activities that require this second type of people.
• bwooceli 10y ago
  Just do a "functional" resume. instead of titles "from 2010-2016", do "Selected Accomplishments" and categorize them. Technical * Implemented xyz process to reduce pdq by x% Leadership * Developed market strategy for team of y teams to improve market share by z% in 3 months etc
• highCs 10y ago
  I've been there, and this is a real concern. My cofounder and I both didn't succeed to get our experience really recognised and we both got to start again with entry level jobs. However, we've found that we got up in the ladder quickly. My cofounder is almost CTO again now after only 4-5 years.
  • 77pt77 10y ago
    How old were you when you switched?
    • highCs 10y ago
      28
      • 77pt77 10y ago
        That's still rather young. Thanks for answering.
• jdoliner 10y ago
  I have a very small company / startup mindset but to me co-founder is really as impressive as titles get. I'd just focus your resume on what you did there. To me that experience counts for a ton since founders have so much less supporting them.
  • onion2k 10y ago
    I strongly suspect most people here on HN have a startup mindset. HN's direct and obvious connection to YC filters for it. When my startup failed and I was looking for a new role most hiring managers I spoke to were impressed enough with my resume but also had reservations about hiring me as they thought I'd get bored and want to do another startup within a year or two. Playing up the co-founder title might not be such a good idea. Everything else is spot on though - experience is far more important than anything else.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• LargeCompanies 10y ago
  If your a developer with a good amount of experience and stuff/projects to show then you have nothing to worry about. If you didn't pick up any coding or tech skills during running your start-ups you may or may not have issues. For me my start-ups were like going to school to pick up a new/in-demand skill that I could fall back on if my startup dreams fell flat.
• jchrisa 10y ago
  Do some marketing of your brand, if technical team members are excited about you the titles and stuff don't matter as much.
• gwbas1c 10y ago
  I think this is very desirable. 5 years of solid engineering under the same title / company is desirable when looking for a mature developer.
• hartator 10y ago
  I've noticed given absolute numbers works great also. Like "Built a back end for a video game that was doing ~5M active players"
• jest3r1 10y ago
  I went through this a few years ago. Ran a semi-successful web / mobile app development company. We were a small team of four, hitting early to mid thirties. From the outside anyone would have thought our company was successful. Good brand recognition in our geographic region, finding clients was easy. They found us. We paid ourselves decent salaries, paid the bills on our dev infrastructure, we all worked in the trenches, at our own pace, and we all generally loved what we were doing. However, after about five years we got that itch. In a way we were too comfortable. Our finances looked the same year after year. We purposely weren't growing. Or maybe we just didn't want to take that risk. I guess we peaked early and got comfortable staying there. At first no one really talked about it. You could feel it though. As we got older. Being so close to the business administration became a chore. Planning summer vacations with a small team became a chore. Riding out December became a chore. Maintaining apps over a five+ year lifecycle became a chore. Dealing with dev infrastructure maintenance became a chore. Wearing too many hats became a chore. Life outside of work becomes more important as you get older. Family and that sort of thing. So we decided to shut it down. Lots of emotion, soul searching, panic, joy. Anyhow ... I personally had the same feeling you did. Does co-founder look good on a resume? What the hell did I do for the past five years? Will I fit in with corporate culture? How do I transfer my skills to the corporate world? What I learned is that you've got nothing to worry about. Working on a small team, and staying profitable, and paying the bills means that you understand the value of money. You wear multiple hats. You're skilled at sticking to a budget and meeting deadlines. You had to "show up" every day. You worked the trenches and enjoyed getting your hands dirty. You worked twice as hard and twice as fast. You stayed the course for four years. You're loyal. You're reliable. You understand the entire lifecycle of building something from start to finish. And you've done it successfully multiple times over. You understand failure too, and know how to bounce back. You have an amazing combination of business savvy and technical smarts that's difficult to find. You're entrepreneurial. You've got vision. You're an ideas person. You've got real-world experience. And a track record of success. Most startups crash and burn early, you didn't, and you're leaving it on your own terms. Knowing when to exit is an extraordinary skill in itself. You understand how it all works. You haven't lost touch. Don't scare potential employers with big fake C-level job titles. In a company of four you never really had a specific job title anyways. Use that to your advantage. Custom tailor your resume for different roles. You've got so much to offer your challenge will be figuring out what to "leave out". You've got volumes of specific examples and accomplishments to draw from, which you can talk about for hours. You're still young. In fact you're in your prime. You'll be a massive positive addition to any team. Look for a larger (than yours) company that hasn't lost their entrepreneurial spirit. You'll be right at home. Don't settle and don't be surprised if five or six years from now you get the itch to embark on another startup. It's all good.
• fecak 10y ago
  I'm someone who has recruited mostly for startups for almost 20 years, and two years ago I launched a resume review and writing service (resumeraiders.com). My focus is on tech resumes, and I've done work for at least a few HN readers. You don't need to show a ton of progression. You just need to know how to market the skills and experience that you have. If you've been profitable and are getting paid well, and have four substantial projects over four years, you're marketable. Feel free to inquire if you'd like professional help.
• ashwinaj 10y ago
  It depends on where you are located? I've found recruiters/HR in silicon valley being cognizant about the fact that titles do not really matter if you are in a startup.
• barnacs 10y ago
  Just skip the resume. They're worthless anyways. If you find a position you like, send an email. Tell them why you're interested, what you could bring to the table. You can mention your history if it's relevant, casually, just like you wrote it up here. If they don't like it, fck them, their loss, try a different company. edit: Just to be clear, i'm not suggesting you skip the resume because of your specific history, rather because the whole concept of presenting resumes is utterly inhumane and counter-productive.
  • MyNameIsFred 10y ago
    I can only speak for myself, but as someone who interviews developers for a small-medium company (<20 in my office, ~100 total), I have to say that this is bad advice if applying to a place like mine. I need some formalized experience document, even if your resume just looks like bullet points. It gives me discrete items/events/projects/education/skills that I can consider and discuss with you. If I don't have that as a reference point when talking with you, all I can say is "So, tell me why you're awesome", which is not useful. If I'm not starting out with some idea of what we can drill down into, some table of contents, I have too little to work with and I'm not going to bother. Perhaps more relevantly, HR probably won't even bring you to my attention.
    • robinson_k 10y ago
      have you thought about your hiring process in general? you don't you have something to talk about with people applying, coming from the same industry?
    • barnacs 10y ago
      I'm not suggesting that the applicant should withhold any relevant information. Obviously, the whole point of the application process is to get to know each other. I believe if I see your job posting, research your company a bit and get in touch describing why I'm interested in that specific position and what I think I could bring to the table, that's a better starting point for a discussion than me sending a generic list of buzzwords, positions, qualities, etc. trying to sell myself. And maybe the next step could be grabbing a coffee rather than an overly formal interview where we're both trying to see through each other's distortion of reality. We're human after all.
• AustinBGibbons 10y ago
  Hey! I'm an engineer involved in recruiting at Periscope Data. We see resumes/LI from people who've been doing startup things all the time. It's definitely not an issue, usually the opposite - I love talking to people with less structured backgrounds, they usually have interesting stories to tell. We recently hired someone who had been "technical co-founder" of a successful startup for the past six years. He wanted to join a larger team, and we were totally comfortable with him having been in a more jack-of-all trades scenario because he is very obviously brilliant. Shamelessly, don't hesitate to reach out if you might be interested - we're hiring in all areas, and I would especially love to chat if you or your co-founders are looking for engineering, PM, or marketing roles :)
• amorphid 10y ago
  Figure out the intersection of what you want to do, and what you can do, and emphasize that. So, for an experienced technical founder at a successful company, think about... - this job for which I'm applying, what do they REALLY need, and which 3 to 5 bullet points capture my competence and accomplishment in this area - how is this company like mine, and how can I communicate the similarities to my experience working w/ others, building a certain type of product, applying domain expertise, etc. - what story will I tell if/when they ask, "So do why do you want a job when you've been your own boss for so long?" Maybe something like "You know, what I really like to do is make an impact doing X, and that's something I get to do in any position with responsibilities A, B, and C." And my generic resume writing advice is... try writing your resume without adjectives. It forces you to focus on highlighting what you've really done. Let your awesomeness sell itself. Calling yourself awesome doesn't do much for you.
• lintiwen 10y ago
  You don't need that. Anyone with basic understanding of how business works will know that you have far more profound experiences than most corporate ladder climbers.
  • curiouslurker 10y ago
    Not true. To most corporate recruiters 'doing a startup' for a couple of years is almost the same as being unemployed. I faced this myself after years of slogging away at an unsuccessful project and then trying to get back into the job market.
    • riskneural 10y ago
      I have heard it referred to as being in a band. Things that people in start ups don't know: getting technical things done in complex environments. I would focus my CV on showing interaction with corporates outside the firm - show you have some game.
    • eru 10y ago
      Depends which country/place the recruiter is in. Eg in SF Bay Area they would probably not treat you as equivalent to unemployed. Or where are you?
• withdavidli 10y ago
  recruiter/sourcer, 4 years exp. - don't worry about inflated job title, especially in the bay area. - resumes are targeted to its audience. - know what you want to do (engineering, product management, etc). - reach out to managers at companies that you'd like to work at. ask them what they need (don't go by job postings, too generic most of the time). fill resume with relevant info if you have them. - communicating that you're a desirable hire is done in the interview stage. resume is a tool to get you the interview if you have zero connection inside that company (don't blow it off though, since it's usually shown to a hiring board for final decisions).
• blhack 10y ago
  I guess I'm really naive. Isn't 5 years at a startup doing [presumably] technical work pretty much the best thing you could possibly put on a resume? I guess if you were a bizdev-type, then maybe the negative here is: why was still a startup after 5 years? 5 years at a startup, for a technical person, sounds awesome.
• danenania 10y ago
  I built a project-focused résumé builder geared toward exactly this problem. Perhaps it can help out! https://makerslate.io https://makerslate.io
• ecesena 10y ago
  I had a similar experience. My suggestions are: - have a clear, simple story to answer "why are you (single person) leaving the startup". You'll be asked at every interview (and if multiple people apply to the same company, you want a coherent answer). Include that you all are leaving if this is the case -- the risk is that you (single person) are seen as one giving up - list down 4-5 main achievements. Make sure there are 1-2 which are not co-done, but you can state "this was mostly my own achievement". This is the hardest part, but if you're still working together you can easily agree on how to split - make sure to clearly tell 1 story, which doesn't need to be the one of the startup, but the one for which you're seeking the new job position -- if I'm looking for a position as data scientist I'll focus on my research experience, if I'm looking for devops I'll focus on security, etc. - in linkedin specifically, if it applies, link some press or some blog post, or anything I could spend time digging in to get to know you more -- if you feel that the list of jobs is not enough, help me finding more info about you From the other side of the table, when I look for people to source/interview, I look at the total working experience. Wether it's 4y in a single company or 2+2 it doesn't make any difference. I personally (I see others can disagree, but this is me) see as a yellow flag a 1+1+1+1 experience, simply because I fear you'll leave my company after a sole year. (If you'd like to chat more feel free to ping me via email.)
• kriro 10y ago
  """we have done 4 major projects""" + """We've been profitable the entire time""" Just communicate that and you should be fine.
• granula 10y ago
  Just keep banging on about the startup, as usual. They'll get the hint.
• dvcrn 10y ago
  It's weird, my experiences were more the opposite to what most people wrote. I only did my own gig (2-3 people) for a bit more than a year but until now it affects my career to that level that I want to exclude it from my resume, or at least make it look like a normal company. When people talk to me about what I did they think it's impressive and love the technical challenges I tell them about, but most of the times the rejection happens only because of fear that I will create my startup again after a short time of working at company x. I got this confirmed multiple times after asking about the reason. I'm living in Asia and it might be a thing here but it is very frustrating.
• known 10y ago
  Customize your resume to the relevant opening;
• tapanmittal 10y ago
  I was in the same boat 1 year back. I had very diverse work experience across my 10 yr career, none very deep, none very relevant to my desired target industry (ecommerce)- I had worked majorly in manufacturing and finance. In my 30's, family and toddler to support, bootstrapped hardware startup failed after 2 yrs. For the resume I focused on the journey's small wins, just bulleted. I had no revenue numbers to share, so just highlighted what was achieved in what time. It was very hard, but what I figured quickly was that the resume mattered way less than the people i pushed it to. What worked: 1. Sent linkedIn connects to a crazy number of startup founders (50-100 daily), apart from the usual HR connects. side note : i bought linkedIn premium subscription at about $40 a month to cover my search limits. 2. Whoever connected back (10-15%), I shot them a crisp email telling them I'd like to meet for startup advice and/or opportunities with a one liner. 3. Whoever responded with 'No', I politely asked if they could recommend someone they knew who'd like to connect. 4. Whoever responded with maybe/Yes (5-10% of the connects), immediately tried to set up a time within the next 2/3 days. Could be a call/meeting/skype/anything. Note: the eMail always a) had a touch of personalisation. b) was no more than 3 lines c) included my product snapshot as an attachment d) ofc, had resume attached and contacts+linked in profile link included in signature. Met great people along the way, will surely help in future. And met one of the best founders in my country - he made me join his company Nearbuy (Groupon India). The hunt took me 6 months, partly because I had 2 hard filters a) not going to wear a suit to office..so consulting/finance was out b) no politics..so most corporate jobs were out. Takeaways: Seek help like crazy. Your passion and hardwork at your startup is your resume, nothing else will matter.
• TempleOSV409 10y ago
  The nigger brain cannot understand what a random number is. God says... mailbox's locker's nodal roué mission's lymphoma ophthalmology's boughs academic Mamet abraded toughest wit Montenegrin lipreading ninny scrutinize tyrant shanties this plunderers vantages entice sample's Vazquez's Kaifeng resulting Balder's canyon em unbelievably gesturing
• somberi 10y ago
  I have started startups before and now, am in a senior role in a large corporate. My gentle suggestion is that don't sweat it and just reflect what you have built in your resume. Your work will speak for you, and discerning employers will find you. More and more large corporates value what you have, and in cases, are willing to pay a premium for startup skills. They are also sophisticated enough to separate the company's failure from your skill. Really, don't sweat it. All the best.
• codecamper 10y ago
  I'd say you make it very short, but be sure to study up on algorithms, algorithms, and more algorithms.