3 ms·

>Or perhaps by actually reading resumes instead of keyword-filtering them This one is a two-way street. I launched a resume writing side-business a couple year

by fecak 10y ago

>Or perhaps by actually reading resumes instead of keyword-filtering them This one is a two-way street. I launched a resume writing side-business a couple years ago (resumeraiders.com) because I saw how poor many developer resumes were and how they were getting ripped off by resume writers who had no experience in hiring or in tech. Most were just failed writers. If you expect a recruiter to read a poorly-written 5 page resume when the yes/no interview decision could have easily been made based on a summary and a few decent bullet points, that's not on the recruiter. If you think the 5 page resume is some kind of anomaly, ask the recruiters at your company how common they are.

kafkaesq 10y ago
By all means -- skim the resumes first, and pull out all 5-pagers and other immediate fail cases (which are generally easy to spot). And save your reading skills for the 15% or so which might have something worth your time. That's what I meant.
ACow_Adonis 10y ago
This is fascinating to me. I recently did a resume swap with an American lady I know (I'm Australian). We're both around mid thirties. She's in SF. Her resume was 1 page. It's the first time I've ever seen a 1 page resume in my life except for someone out of highschool with no history or experience. Mine is 4 pages. I've worked really hard to cut it down to that while including relevant things and nice formatting/readability/white space. Compared to some of the 10 to 15 page resumes we get here for people who have done so little, it's positively succinct. We had a chat, and we just had to agree that it was a cultural difference. But still, I admit, if anyone asked me here, I'd say "you can't have a one page resume, unless you are literally applying for McDonald's and have done nothing with your life, this isn't twitter"
- flamedoge 10y ago
  wtf... do ppl write essays on resumes? even 4 pages is too long nowadays. need to tl;dr.
  - ACow_Adonis 10y ago
    Well, understand that it is not uncommon where I live to draft a cover letter at least. For government jobs it's even worse, there you basically do have to write essays against the "selection criteria" (don't get me started on what it actually achieves, again, I'm not trying to advocate). The general rationale is often on several grounds: -to create a "merit" based document trail - to create a basic barrier to entry that has to be crossed for all but the most basic positions. Think of it like a spam filter/ensuring candidates who want THAT job as opposed to just A job. The very thing you don't want is to have hundreds of 1 page dot point resumes coming in. How would you possibly find the time to go through them? You want to stop people applying just by sending in a generic summary resume and clicking a button. You want people who are willing to put a bit of work in to apply specifically to the job you're advertising. It is not uncommon for me, for instance, to write a cover letter for each job, and craft a specific version of my resume for each position, emphasising and exposing those parts of my experience most applicable to that particular position. You can only really do one or two of these well per week, but that's kinda the point.
- morgante 10y ago
  Honestly, I'm incredibly skeptical that you need 4 pages. Almost anyone can fit their entire experience onto a single page. You don't need to write an essay for each position—just highlight a few bullet points.
  - ACow_Adonis 10y ago
    To this and some other comments saying essentially "you can cut it down". Oh sure! I can cut it down to 1 word if I want: awesome :p One of my points is, I have literally not seen a 1 page resume before outside of fast food/janitorial work. Before chatting with her, I would have advised her to fix that up, because no one will take her seriously with a dot point resume that looks like it was put together to hit some automated text search and no natural human reading. I admit after some discussion, I fell back to "wow...they're not even pretending they're nothing but a keyword search meat grinder", because I do respect her so I thought she was telling the truth. And now I've got additional corroboration from HN. I think there are arguments for longer/shorter resumes. In my, and my jobs/culture defence, I need to see you can write in plain English, have some sense of aesthetics, prioritisation, presentation. By that age I expect you've worked in several jobs (about which your summary might be my first impression/knowledge) and dot points aren't going to cut it, because your job titles, product names and keywords are meaningless noise to me: I joke my grandmother is an entrepreneur/CEO and has worked with everything. Your dot point resume looks like an indian from mechanical Turk put it together by amalgamation of keywords from job ads and pop culture. I want personal details, but summaries, on your projects, products, papers, in plain communicable error free English. 1 page screams kid/unprofessional to me. 2 - 4 pages unless you're 50 - 60 and have written 100 books, done something truly remarkable. Now I'm not saying its right, I'm just saying that's my world.
    - morgante 10y ago
      Honestly, your comment is extremely rude and offensive. I'm willing to chalk up your preference for longer resumes to cultural differences, but then you come out with bullshit like this: > Your dot point resume looks like an indian from mechanical Turk put it together by amalgamation of keywords from job ads and pop culture. > 1 page screams kid/unprofessional to me. Your 4-page resume is unprofessional, overlong, self-centered, arrogant, and naive. You apparently are so bad at English that you can't even write concise summaries. A long resume screams that you have an overinflated ego and have no sense of professional decency. A short resume doesn't imply a lack of aesthetics or English. I certainly paid attention to the design of mine. [0] [0] https://www.morgante.net/resume.pdf https://www.morgante.net/resume.pdf
- fecak 10y ago
  There is a cultural element, and I've worked with candidates using longer form CVs to shorten them to the preferred US length. It's part formatting, part redundancy, and usually just sharing more information than is necessary. The resume doesn't need to include everything you did. It's a highlight reel, not a bio. You don't need to list every responsibility or even every accomplishment. If I forced you to tell me your background in one page, you'd be able to do it if you have any sense as to what is most impressive, what is important, and what isn't. The reason your resume is four pages is that it's acceptable where you are. I once reduced a 26 page resume to a couple pages for a non-US client. It's usually just triage and deleting, some sentence "refactoring", and formatting. Not too tough, as long as my client doesn't have too much emotional attachment to every detail from their career.

by fecak 10y ago

kafkaesq 10y ago

By all means -- skim the resumes first, and pull out all 5-pagers and other immediate fail cases (which are generally easy to spot). And save your reading skills for the 15% or so which might have something worth your time. That's what I meant.

ACow_Adonis 10y ago

This is fascinating to me. I recently did a resume swap with an American lady I know (I'm Australian). We're both around mid thirties. She's in SF. Her resume was 1 page. It's the first time I've ever seen a 1 page resume in my life except for someone out of highschool with no history or experience. Mine is 4 pages. I've worked really hard to cut it down to that while including relevant things and nice formatting/readability/white space. Compared to some of the 10 to 15 page resumes we get here for people who have done so little, it's positively succinct. We had a chat, and we just had to agree that it was a cultural difference. But still, I admit, if anyone asked me here, I'd say "you can't have a one page resume, unless you are literally applying for McDonald's and have done nothing with your life, this isn't twitter"

flamedoge 10y ago
wtf... do ppl write essays on resumes? even 4 pages is too long nowadays. need to tl;dr.
- ACow_Adonis 10y ago
  Well, understand that it is not uncommon where I live to draft a cover letter at least. For government jobs it's even worse, there you basically do have to write essays against the "selection criteria" (don't get me started on what it actually achieves, again, I'm not trying to advocate). The general rationale is often on several grounds: -to create a "merit" based document trail - to create a basic barrier to entry that has to be crossed for all but the most basic positions. Think of it like a spam filter/ensuring candidates who want THAT job as opposed to just A job. The very thing you don't want is to have hundreds of 1 page dot point resumes coming in. How would you possibly find the time to go through them? You want to stop people applying just by sending in a generic summary resume and clicking a button. You want people who are willing to put a bit of work in to apply specifically to the job you're advertising. It is not uncommon for me, for instance, to write a cover letter for each job, and craft a specific version of my resume for each position, emphasising and exposing those parts of my experience most applicable to that particular position. You can only really do one or two of these well per week, but that's kinda the point.
morgante 10y ago
Honestly, I'm incredibly skeptical that you need 4 pages. Almost anyone can fit their entire experience onto a single page. You don't need to write an essay for each position—just highlight a few bullet points.
- ACow_Adonis 10y ago
  To this and some other comments saying essentially "you can cut it down". Oh sure! I can cut it down to 1 word if I want: awesome :p One of my points is, I have literally not seen a 1 page resume before outside of fast food/janitorial work. Before chatting with her, I would have advised her to fix that up, because no one will take her seriously with a dot point resume that looks like it was put together to hit some automated text search and no natural human reading. I admit after some discussion, I fell back to "wow...they're not even pretending they're nothing but a keyword search meat grinder", because I do respect her so I thought she was telling the truth. And now I've got additional corroboration from HN. I think there are arguments for longer/shorter resumes. In my, and my jobs/culture defence, I need to see you can write in plain English, have some sense of aesthetics, prioritisation, presentation. By that age I expect you've worked in several jobs (about which your summary might be my first impression/knowledge) and dot points aren't going to cut it, because your job titles, product names and keywords are meaningless noise to me: I joke my grandmother is an entrepreneur/CEO and has worked with everything. Your dot point resume looks like an indian from mechanical Turk put it together by amalgamation of keywords from job ads and pop culture. I want personal details, but summaries, on your projects, products, papers, in plain communicable error free English. 1 page screams kid/unprofessional to me. 2 - 4 pages unless you're 50 - 60 and have written 100 books, done something truly remarkable. Now I'm not saying its right, I'm just saying that's my world.
  - morgante 10y ago
    Honestly, your comment is extremely rude and offensive. I'm willing to chalk up your preference for longer resumes to cultural differences, but then you come out with bullshit like this: > Your dot point resume looks like an indian from mechanical Turk put it together by amalgamation of keywords from job ads and pop culture. > 1 page screams kid/unprofessional to me. Your 4-page resume is unprofessional, overlong, self-centered, arrogant, and naive. You apparently are so bad at English that you can't even write concise summaries. A long resume screams that you have an overinflated ego and have no sense of professional decency. A short resume doesn't imply a lack of aesthetics or English. I certainly paid attention to the design of mine. [0] [0] https://www.morgante.net/resume.pdf https://www.morgante.net/resume.pdf
fecak 10y ago
There is a cultural element, and I've worked with candidates using longer form CVs to shorten them to the preferred US length. It's part formatting, part redundancy, and usually just sharing more information than is necessary. The resume doesn't need to include everything you did. It's a highlight reel, not a bio. You don't need to list every responsibility or even every accomplishment. If I forced you to tell me your background in one page, you'd be able to do it if you have any sense as to what is most impressive, what is important, and what isn't. The reason your resume is four pages is that it's acceptable where you are. I once reduced a 26 page resume to a couple pages for a non-US client. It's usually just triage and deleting, some sentence "refactoring", and formatting. Not too tough, as long as my client doesn't have too much emotional attachment to every detail from their career.