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Rip Your Resume in Half and Other Things You Won't Hear from HR

daok 9y ago
I am an engineer who had to do many interviews and before conducting interviews I always look at the resume. In my opinion, I rather have 6 pages resume than 1-2 page with so low information that I have no idea what really was done in the last 10 years of this person. That being said, the first page should give the core idea to pursue the reading, but once you have reached the first scan I am in favor bigger resume than a thin one.
- RubenSandwich 9y ago
  I'm also an engineer who has had to interview. My question to you is: how do you filter through 100 people each with 6 pages resumes? I'd rather have 1 page, 2 max, because I have to filter through a bunch of people in a short amount of time. I did the math once and for the initial filter which was the resume scan, I and another person gave about 1 1/2 minutes per applicant and it still took an hour! I doubt in the future I'll get any more time so please make it scannable in ~1 1/2 minutes.
  - balabaster 9y ago
    Would you rather spend an extra minute or two on the resume scan or an extra half an hour in the interview only to find that a month after you hired them, they're incapable of doing the job? Careful where you think you're wasting time and effort.
    - RubenSandwich 9y ago
      You bring up a good point. My counterpoints: 1. Decision fatigue - A longer resume doesn't make the choice easier, it makes it harder because now I have more to compare and contrast more. 2. Half-life of knowledge - I did computer vision about 5 years ago, but I leave it off my current resume because I know the field has changed so dramatically since I last did it that my knowledge of it is out of date.
      - balabaster 9y ago
        The half-life of knowledge is in the eye of the beholder. The field may have changed dramatically, the technology may have moved on. But much of what we know about how to design computer programs today hasn't changed as much as you think in 50 years. Frameworks have changed, architectures have changed, paradigms have remained very similar. Paradigms are the important part. Be as careful with what you choose to leave out as what you choose to include.
      - maxxxxx 9y ago
        I think your comment about computer vision illustrates what's wrong with this industry. If you were able to do computer vision 5 years ago you should be able to get up to speed now. This attitude doesn't allow most of to build a decent resume but instead we have to chase the latest tech all the time and none of our experience counts. For example I would prefer someone who worked on a big complex web site ten years ago with the tools available then over someone who has done a simple web site with the latest React version.
    - kemiller2002 9y ago
      Here's the problem with long resumes. Most people don't have anything useful to say. Most of the time when I see a resume of any length, they contain very little useful information. Longer resumes just make it worse. Now, there are ones that describe a project in detail, and you're like "Wow, that's really amazing." Most of the ones I've seen in the programming space are more akin to the 3 paragraph long description of writing stored procedures for a database. I include myself in this group, and that's why I keep it short. Having a short resume is also a test I use. The hardest paper I ever wrote was in an advanced Psychology class where we had to perform some sort of analysis on a character in a book. The paper had to be at most 4 pages, for something that could have easily taken 10 or more. Understanding how to communicate effectively is one of the best skills that people can have. Do I discount people immediately for not being able to do this? No, but it is something I take note of when I see it.
      - balabaster 9y ago
        The first litmus test in this situation is "Is this 6 page resume an engaging read that delivers everything useful effectively?" If it doesn't and that is important to you, this isn't your person. Equally, are you discounting this person just because you can't be bothered to spend an extra couple of minutes parsing their resume which upon closer inspection is solid gold? Being concise and communicating effectively doesn't necessarily mean the same thing.
        kemiller2002 9y ago
        You would not believe how many resumes I've seen with things like formatting issues and misspellings. I'm picky about getting technical terms correctly, but I understand that everyone might not know there are capital letters in random places in words. If you're going to misspell something, at least be consistent (no joke, I've seen resumes with JavaScript, Javascript and Java Script, and like three sentences apart from each other). Going through 6 pages of that along with phrasing issues is brutally draining. If you have a long resume, give a summary or something of each entry, so I can choose to see if what you are describing is what I'm looking for. With all that being said, I'm pretty forgiving. I understand that if you have English as a second language, you might not know all the nuances to grammar. I get it. I try and give some flexibility. So here's the thing, with all that in mind, you ask if I can't be bothered, no I can't. Just because someone spews something on a page and calls it a resume does not mean that I should take a look at it. Have some pride in what you send to people. Yes writing resumes suck, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't work at creating it. People say, "I don't know about design", or "I'm not a writer." 1. It's not that hard to understand the basics of design and layout. Buy a book. Read a website. Download a template off the internet. 2. Ask someone to look at it before you send it. It doesn't have to be great, but it least make it look like you care enough about what you do to make it decent.
  - daok 9y ago
    Hello, I would say that if you need to look at 100 for each position open that the HR people are not doing their job to filter it down enough for you. For each open position, I can understand that engineer that does interview may have a dozen or more but 100 seems to be quite huge. Again, I am targeting an engineer position here, not HR or a manager. About 1-2 page, nothing forces you to read through all the 6 pages. If the first page is not a fit, then move on. In my experience, a single page often lead to me to have to dig way more on the person to try to find anything related to this one -- not sure that a time saver.
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  As long as it's not the same paragraph repeated 10 times over 6 pages. We see a lot of people, for some reason especially those from big banks, who pretty much write "wrote stored procedures, gathered requirements, wrote unit tests" 10 times. My favorite resumes are the ones that make me curious about the person and show some enthusiasm but that requires a good writer.
- JakeWesorick 9y ago
  Not disagreeing with what you said, but a lot of multi page resumes I've seen are formatted poorly and have a lot of unhelpful fluff. More pages are fine as long as the info stays relevant.
- megaman22 9y ago
  It's really amazing how many resumes I see that have basic spelling and grammar mistakes in them. Like on the order of, damn the squiggle underlines in Word, full steam ahead. I mostly try to stay away from the more aggravating and useless of grammar pedantry, but it's just not a good signal about diligence and attention to detail.
- gaius 9y ago
  A skill someone used 10+ years ago but not since probably has little to no relevance in an interview. I was doing Java in 1995, don't ask me about it now tho'...
  - vonmoltke 9y ago
    That is highly dependent on the skill. I haven't troubleshot a circuit board (much) since 2006, but if you put me in front of one with a schematic and some test equipment I sure as hell could do it again right now. I haven't written signal processing code since 2012, but I could jump right back into that as well. Not all skills and experiences wither at the same rate. This industry has a bad habit of assuming all skills last about as long as your average JavaScript framework. I'm sick of being typecast based on what I have been doing for the past few years.
  - daok 9y ago
    I tend to like to see more information that is more recent but is also interesting to see the journey of someone. You can get something interesting by knowing that someone is able to switch language without problem or maybe this person is more the type that doesn't change at all. It's also great to see a long track of achievements even if it's been 15 years. Again, information like knowing that someone has been doing technical positions for x amount of year and now is more in a leadership position can give a good idea where the person is moving and what he still could do or understand but has changed in term of priority. Again, every resume should filter the content as its age but someone in the industry for 30 years shouldn't fit everything on 2 pages in my opinion.
- richmarr 9y ago
  We did a study on 700 candidates applying for a graduate role, putting CV sift in parallel with work sample and situational judgement testing. The CV scoring was entirely uncorrelated with who went on to do well (in fact it was slightly negative but not statistically relevant). That said, graduate level roles suffer from the behavioural/motivational disconnect between education and the workplace. I'd love to do another study with more senior hires. In case anyone's bothered we wrote it up here https://medium.com/finding-needles-in-haystacks/putting-applied-to-the-test-part-1-9f1ad6379e9e https://medium.com/finding-needles-in-haystacks/putting-appl...
hasbot 9y ago
Even at the end of my 28 year career, my resume was only two pages. I continually edited it down. The older stuff, probably no longer relevant stuff, was reduced to just a few words. For anything older than 4 years, only a sentence describing the work is sufficient. If the interviewer is interested, they can ask.
- RulingWalnut 9y ago
  This is the right approach. The problem with the vast majority of multi-page resumes is that the writer has an editing problem. If you can fill out 5 pages with worthwhile info, I suppose that would be fine? But if you're at the level where you can fill out 5 pages of worthwhile info, you'd be recruited directly by the CTO and your resume wouldn't come close to me.
  - quickben 9y ago
    You have to get to the CEO these days. I have one of these five pages resume. I usually get a job offer after an interview.
gdfer 9y ago
Are people intentionally crafting their resume in such a way that the first page(ish?) could essentially be read as a standalone thing -noting the highlights and main points. Then the remaining pages would, in a sense re-state some of what the initial page has but drill down and provide more detail. Is that a good approach to take?
- hasbot 9y ago
  That's pretty much what I did. Top half of first page: summary of skills. Remaining half covered most recent employment. 25 years ago that was the suggested format and I never saw any need for change.
- chadgeidel 9y ago
  That's essentially what I do. First page is all I expect the interviewer to read. My resume is 2 pages for >10 years of experience. I agressively delete unrelated skills and promote related skills based on the job description.
  - gdfer 9y ago
    If you're writing your first page as a standalone thing though that matches what the posting is looking for, do you think you need to eliminate unrelated things on the remaining pages?
    - chadgeidel 9y ago
      Yeah, I wasn't super clear about my scenario. I have a "all skills" resume and I pare that down for each job.
- noitsnot 9y ago
  I tried to leave out the tech stack acronyms except for listing 3 or 4 on the bottom of the resume which I had experience and wanted to continue with. I was asked for an updated resume so HR or recruiter could tell what I actually worked on and the technology.
giis 9y ago
I've around +12 years of experience and my resume is one and half page. Half of that will be opensource contribution not related to any organization. If recruiter needs more info, we can always discuss that during interview itself :-) Edit: If anyone curious about the format/layout, here its: http://www.giis.co.in/LakshmipathiG.pdf http://www.giis.co.in/LakshmipathiG.pdf
- baldfat 9y ago
  Yes and your showing that your older than the other applicants. I really struggle with today's system from HR. My wife wants to move back to her home state. I have over 25 years experience and I have sent out 40+ applications. Jobs I am perfect for, jobs I am under qualified for and entry level jobs. ZERO Phone Calls. I need to just put my application like I am straight out of school.
  - Isamu 9y ago
    Yeah, it is worth remembering that things are very different now, they get many times more applications for every job than used to be the case. It's like direct mail marketing - expect a very low response.
  - madamelic 9y ago
    Could you find some companies, learn about them, find some managers and cold email them personal emails? I've always done that and I have far less experience than you.
  - expertentipp 9y ago
    Similar situation, but 10 years younger, on the other side of the Atlantic, and the salaries are half of those American over here. It's not you and it's not ageism.
  - DavidWoof 9y ago
    Out of curiosity, what is your experience in?
    - 9y ago
dbg31415 9y ago
Two issues with a one-page resume. First, to get to the phone screen many companies now use some form of automation to weed out applications. Less words simply means less chance of an automated match against the job description criteria. Second, never underestimate how lazy the HR screener is. They aren't technical, they aren't ambitious, they're generally borderline incompetent people whose sole marketable skill is that they are pleasant to talk with. If you don't spell out, in detail, that you're a Front-end Developer who uses X, Y, Z tools for N years the screener won't be able to read between the lines. Quick example... I was in a time crunch so I asked a recruiter to find me a Front-end Dev. She came back and asked for a job description, project brief, culture brief, competitors / no hire list, and salary range. I felt like she was asking the right questions, she seemed smart. A week goes by, "Sorry, no candidates." Oh... Ok, well it's a hot market... we can up the price $5k. Next week, "Sorry, no candidates." Hmm, that's really odd. She apologized, said she had gotten over 100 resumes, and said, "Nobody has 5 years of HTML / CSS experience listed on their resume." After a brief talk, she fundamentally didn't understand anything past a direct keyword match. Anyway good and bad recruiters, but you never know when your resume is going to end up in the hands of someone really junior. Better to have everything spelled out. Better to be explicit around what you did with each past job. Generally the posted job description is all the recruiter is going off of to match you, so it's easy to tune your resume to fit. * Optimize Your Resume and Boost Interview Chances - Jobscan || https://www.jobscan.co/ https://www.jobscan.co/
- GhostVII 9y ago
  > Second, never underestimate how lazy the HR screener is. They aren't technical, they aren't ambitious, they're generally borderline incompetent people whose sole marketable skill is that they are pleasant to talk with. There are a lot of HR people in the world, that is a bit of a generalisation, don't you think? I'm sure there are lots of great HR people, and lots of incompetent HR people, just like any other job.
  - dbg31415 9y ago
    I can count on one hand the number of good recruiters I've worked with over the years. Generally they view it all as a numbers game, spam over candidates until one sticks. They won't go out of their way to understand things is what I meant by "ambitious" there... If a candidate is thinking, "Well, my resume is basically just a link to my GitHub profile," or, "I have all these awesome references on LinkedIn..." I would caution them to not rely on HR people going that extra step to get the info -- it should all be on the resume or it's probably not going to get looked at.
cm2012 9y ago
One thing that can take a while to remember, if you've generally ran with the "gifted" crowd in school (Read: top 10% reading comprehension scores on the SAT), is that most people are just uncomfortable reading, it takes them a lot of time, and they don't like doing it. It's almost always a good idea to shorten/simplify any text meant for an unknown audience.
- matte_black 9y ago
  Generally, people say to shorten a text because the best way to write a great text is to take a good text and cut out anything that isn't great, not because the audience has poor reading skills.
  - pessimizer 9y ago
    > the best way to write a great text is to take a good text and cut out anything that isn't great This is for entertainment or marketing purposes, though.
    - epicide 9y ago
      Possibly, but the people reading resumes are still subject to boredom and short attention spans.
- bloopernova 9y ago
  That's really difficult for me. I always end up writing novels for emails then wondering why people only answered the first question. (and they missed out parts (b) and (c) of the question, plus they didn't read the linked web pages supporting my assertions) Yes, I really need to cut back on how much I type there, but I have trouble communicating in person so text is just so much more comfortable for me. Any tips would be greatly appreciated.
  - chadgeidel 9y ago
    Some ideas I've had luck with: Have one actionable item per email. State a question in the subject. Expect a clear answer (not quite "yes/no" but something definite). Spend a short time (one or two paragraphs describing the question in detail, but don't make it longer than that. End the email with the question in the subject asked again. EDIT: If you find that you need to have a conversation, either walk over to their desk or pick up the phone.
jlebrech 9y ago
not matter how pretty you format your CV you'll sit at and interview wondering why the interviewer is looking an mangled up piece of paper which turns out to be your CV. Also recruiters that have a form with 10 textareas (for you to fill out career history) are the worst.
gilbetron 9y ago
I despise one page resumes. I want detail so I can figure out whether to bother with you or not. The only time a short resume is ok is when you have big names in your employer list, or major awards, or something. If you have Google 2005-2015 or something, you really don't need to say much more beyond what languages/technologies/libraries you used there. But for the other 99% of people, I want to hear what you worked on, in detail. I can skim through a 5 page resume just as fast as a one page resume. edit: After reading the article fully: This person is the opposite of me. I've read hundreds of resumes, and I want depth and detail so I don't waste my time. Reading resumes is the cheapest part of the process. Just make sure your HR is sending you anything remotely decent, they should only be a very light filter.
- manyxcxi 9y ago
  Having reviewed hundreds, maybe over a thousand, resumes in the last decade- I am fully in agreement on hating one page resumes. That being said, if it’s five pages long, I’m not reading most of it anyway. Here’s what I care about: - What has this person been doing the last couple of years? - Who were they doing it for? - Scanning their overall work history, does anything interesting (good or bad) stand out. If so, make note for the interview if we get there. - A list of any accomplishments of note. Patents, speaking engagements, related awards, publications, etc. I don’t care about your hobbies, your family, or your GPA. I’m not going to reject your resume because it was too long if I can easily grep the data I’m looking for. I might reject it if it’s too short/empty though. Because this is what I look for, I keep my resume in the same pattern. The last few years of my work history will contain way more detail. A few years out I start summarizing, 6+ years out its only really big things of note or stuff I’m especially proud of still. I have a (small) accomplishments section after that, education last. 12 years of history, organized and summarized in about 3 pages with a lot of space.
  - nicoburns 9y ago
    > I’m not going to reject your resume because it was too long if I can easily grep the data I’m looking for. I think this is a key point. Layout and presentation are really important. Even 1 page of dense, undifferentiated text is a lot. But 3 pages of well presented, sectioned content is pretty easy to read.
DrNuke 9y ago
One page CV, not more not less than that!
bogomipz 9y ago
>"The typical hiring process endorsed by Human Resources is a massive waste of time, calculated to keep hordes of applicants away from hiring managers." This is so true. And I have to wonder why companies allow this nonsense? I'm usually left wondering who is the average "recruiter"? They are amongst the most clueless, unprofessional and inefficient people working at these tech companies. And yet they have one of the most important jobs there. This is not to say all are like this as there are some excellent recruiters out there but I would say that overwhelmingly most are not. I feel like the majority of "recruiters" fall into one of two camps. The first is not actually an employee but a contractor, who hops from one company to another and so has no real vested interest the process or how they represent the company. The second I think is a HR generalist for whom "recruiting" is just another responsibility along with all their other daily exigencies. Either one of those generally results in a suboptimal experience for both the candidate and the company. We often hear about how hard it is to find good people. I don't think there's a talent shortage problem, I think there's a recruiter problem. The deep irony is that these are the very same companies who seek to disrupt and/or exploit some market inefficiency. That mentality of innovation seems to exclude their own hiring process though.
- expertentipp 9y ago
  Recruiting, filtering, and screening have become a perpetuum mobile industry keeping everyone’s out. I’m getting rejection emails from junior people with clearly kimited knowledge about the technology (at least they are polite enough to send it though). I swear one more time I’ll hear about talent or IT workforce shortage.
- bluGill 9y ago
  Depends on the position. I've had some openings where several hundred people applied. I don't have time to read 100 resumes, so anything that filters things down is good. Other positions HR has told me there have been no applicants in 2 weeks, and we need to open up the job description somehow. For programming positions I safely take anybody who knows how to program. It doesn't matter if you know C++ or not (we do most of our work in C++ - you can substitute any language), by the time IT gets you a computer you will know enough C++ to be left on your own. However except in the case of obviously bad jobs (anyone want to do complex merges all day - I have a job opening that is essentially that) such a job opening would give me too many resumes to read.
mixmastamyk 9y ago
I changed my long resume last year to a one-page, largely graphical one, but it hasn't performed well. Might be going back to the old one.
- RickS 9y ago
  > one-page very good > largely graphical dear god no. I've been a designer for 12 years and have no trouble getting hired, and my resume is basically 100% letters. The people who let infographic gimmicks distract them from traditional indicators of competence are not people you want to work for, generally.
  - mixmastamyk 9y ago
    It has logos next to matching text, is that a problem?
- liquidcool 9y ago
  Got an application from a developer that looked terrible. Was ready to dismiss it, when I happened to notice there were patterns to the garbage, and it was really too terrible for anyone. Asked her to send me the original and I found the culprit: It was two columns. That was all it took to throw off the resume parser at Indeed of all places. So what you're doing will be hopelessly destroyed by any resume parser out there. That is likely the reason for the performance.
  - mixmastamyk 9y ago
    There’s no reliable way to parse a resume, mine is a pdf, and almost all sites ask for additional fields anyway.
  - mixmastamyk 9y ago
    Just read this again. Are you telling me job sites are trying to parse resumes and deleting the originals?
aaronchall 9y ago
Opinions are like... Well, here's mine, on qualities of a good resume: - consistent style - no complete sentences (too verbose especially w/ consistency) - everything relevant listed - good organization, most relevant things first - LaTeX or markdown for consistent formatting in your output - no typos - nice resume paper (a nice touch) Anything marginally but decidedly helpful that goes past the first page is likely to be ignored, but maybe keep it anyways, especially if you've been in the workforce for more than 10 years. Less than 10 years, probably keep it to one page.
- John_Cena 9y ago
  I thought about using markdown for my resume but I was afraid that nobody would know what it was. At my current job I have found one person that knows what markdown is. Could you go into more detail for me please?
  - aaronchall 9y ago
    I use LaTeX, a document markup language, for my and my wife's resume. (The resumes come out very nice.) Markdown can be used to output to LaTeX, but I haven't built a build-chain that takes markdown and puts it into my prefered resume style yet. I'd like to build one, though, but I'm still not sure what type of markdown to use. If you're a developer applying directly to a hiring manager who is also a developer, and you're going to bypass traditional HR, you might try a resume preformatted as markdown, which seems to be what you thought I meant, but I think that would be a bit nichey - meaning it probably won't work in most situations.
JustSomeNobody 9y ago
> Tell me, in simple English, what you have to offer and why I should hire you. What does this look like, exactly? Edit: Surely it looks different if I were to hand it to a hiring manager vs a machine reading resumes, yes? What are examples of both?
olivermarks 9y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applicant_tracking_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applicant_tracking_system Applicant Tracking Systems have arguably been a disaster for humans seeking positions in larger organizations. Taleo etc are laughably basic and typically miss valuable candidates because they work on 90's era keyword loading...I know this having hired for lots of positions in a couple of large companies. You can copy all the keywords in a job application, stuff your resume with them and the ATS will pick up the resume as 'valuable' I can't say anything positive about the vast majority of HR organizations, who are mostly just sitting in the management meetings waiting for instructions to fire or hire and have virtually no influence outside that...
indymike 9y ago
1. Tell why you aren't a fit. 2. Tell why you are an exceptional fit. 3. Tell where you can see your work. I have not spent five years working with Docker tooling. I do have experience with ___, ___ and ___ and if you've used ____, _____ and _____ (in this case on Android) you've used my work. 80% interview rate.
- r00fus 9y ago
  > 80% interview rate. What does this mean? 80% interview pass? 80% successful hires as manager/interviewer?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- John_Cena 9y ago
  You are saying out of 5 online applications you get all interviews, and that is absolute falsehood. 20% interview rate would be a miracle with Taleo bullshit Maybe you are in a field not taught directly in schools or in some other way specialized and prized field, but don't flaunt your anecdotal evidence around like a puffed up bird. If that is the norm then I am a pineapple with hurt fee fees.
- liquidcool 9y ago
  I'm confident you will improve that rate if you move #1 to #3. It's a form of the halo effect, where we over-weight the beginning of a sentence, paragraph, document, etc.
bbarn 9y ago
I like to have two resumes. One is optimized for getting past HR and screeners. It should check the boxes the job posting has, and leave out anything that indicates your age, unless they specifically ask for 10+ years of experience. The other a longer, more detailed one to hand your interviewer during the interview in case they want to talk about specific experiences more. Either way - you're always gambling here. You can't read the personality on the other side of a job post. Even if that job post looks like the best dev manager in the world wrote it (and that may be the case even) it doesn't mean that applications don't go through the screener who's also handling the hires for janitor, marketing rep, and help desk. It could also be going directly to that manager, and they may have a preference for detail.
- expertentipp 9y ago
  I too have multiple resumes - in pdf, odt, txt. I simultanously keep them up to date and consistent so that when the recruitment system has obnoxious requirements I simply copy paste into the fields from the txt version. One is simply unable to win this game.
fecak 9y ago
Resume writer here. A good one page resume is a strong signal from a candidate IMO and experience. It tells the reader "I don't need to tell you every minute detail of my career to impress you. I want to start a conversation, and I think this one page detail is enough for you to make the decision to start that conversation." I'll write a one page resume and a longer form resume for many clients. The longer form resume can be useful during the actual interview, as it can provide the interviewer with some fodder to ask about from the applicant's experience. A one page resume also tells the reader "I don't want to burden you with more information than you need". When an applicant sends a five-page resume to a company, there is some tacit expectation that the applicant wants the recipient to read the whole thing (otherwise, why did he/she include five pages?). That's an unnecessary burden to put on someone. A single page resume isn't always entirely practical, but there are ways to make it work even for people with 10 or 20 years of experience. Keep in mind that a resume doesn't need to include every single job (the details of the oldest jobs of technologists tend to be almost entirely irrelevant). The resume also has to be written with the mindset that the reader isn't likely qualified to even determine what the candidate does. You have to assume the reader (when human) is looking for keywords in the same way a machine (applicant tracking system) is, so including a summary that simplifies it for the reader is useful. When the CTO of a startup tells the temp at the front desk "You're screening our resumes today, only send along Python developers with over five years of experience", a resume summary that begins with "Python Developer with five years of experience..." checks all the reader's boxes right away. When writing the resume, make it as easy as possible for the reader to figure out who you are and what you do. Don't use inside baseball terms or corporate lingo that doesn't translate. Remove noise to allow hiring signal to come through.
chasedehan 9y ago
If a website looks like its from the '90s I don't care what the content says. I'm going on to the next thing.
- eesmith 9y ago
  If that's true, then why are you here at HN? The UI is little different than Slashdot from 20 years ago.
pklausler 9y ago
I read a lot of resumes. I only ever read the first page, and only up to the first bad spelling error.
littleweep 9y ago
I wish this article got into: 1. how to find the hiring manager for a role (take a wild stab on LinkedIn)? 2. after that, reach out to them directly on LinkedIn and reference the job listing? Attempt to guess their email format and cold email?
- mxuribe 9y ago
  I think if your item #1 were a reality, HR departments would mysteriously get more jobs filled quicker, and with likely more appropriately-matched candidates. And, yet, HR systems and processes seemed designed as the article notes, to block the "flood" of candidates. It is silly really, and I agree with you 100%!
  - littleweep 9y ago
    Along the same vein, how do you even address a cover letter if you don't know the name of the hiring manager? I always felt like "To the Attention of the Hiring Manager" was cheesy and impersonal.
anotheryou 9y ago
I like nice typo. Easily adds 30% pages.
rents 9y ago
While one pager resumes are the standard advice (and yet not many people know that), I see that the author of this article is biased towards the resume skills of a person. You are not judging the person on his technical merits and suitability of the role but rather his resume skills. Unless the role you are hiring for is creating resumes. Again, "tell me why I should hire you and in plain english" is just a bad question and a bad intent. You as an interviewer need to judge that and rather say here is why you should join.

daok 9y ago

I am an engineer who had to do many interviews and before conducting interviews I always look at the resume. In my opinion, I rather have 6 pages resume than 1-2 page with so low information that I have no idea what really was done in the last 10 years of this person. That being said, the first page should give the core idea to pursue the reading, but once you have reached the first scan I am in favor bigger resume than a thin one.

RubenSandwich 9y ago
I'm also an engineer who has had to interview. My question to you is: how do you filter through 100 people each with 6 pages resumes? I'd rather have 1 page, 2 max, because I have to filter through a bunch of people in a short amount of time. I did the math once and for the initial filter which was the resume scan, I and another person gave about 1 1/2 minutes per applicant and it still took an hour! I doubt in the future I'll get any more time so please make it scannable in ~1 1/2 minutes.
- balabaster 9y ago
  Would you rather spend an extra minute or two on the resume scan or an extra half an hour in the interview only to find that a month after you hired them, they're incapable of doing the job? Careful where you think you're wasting time and effort.
  - RubenSandwich 9y ago
    You bring up a good point. My counterpoints: 1. Decision fatigue - A longer resume doesn't make the choice easier, it makes it harder because now I have more to compare and contrast more. 2. Half-life of knowledge - I did computer vision about 5 years ago, but I leave it off my current resume because I know the field has changed so dramatically since I last did it that my knowledge of it is out of date.
    - balabaster 9y ago
      The half-life of knowledge is in the eye of the beholder. The field may have changed dramatically, the technology may have moved on. But much of what we know about how to design computer programs today hasn't changed as much as you think in 50 years. Frameworks have changed, architectures have changed, paradigms have remained very similar. Paradigms are the important part. Be as careful with what you choose to leave out as what you choose to include.
    - maxxxxx 9y ago
      I think your comment about computer vision illustrates what's wrong with this industry. If you were able to do computer vision 5 years ago you should be able to get up to speed now. This attitude doesn't allow most of to build a decent resume but instead we have to chase the latest tech all the time and none of our experience counts. For example I would prefer someone who worked on a big complex web site ten years ago with the tools available then over someone who has done a simple web site with the latest React version.
  - kemiller2002 9y ago
    Here's the problem with long resumes. Most people don't have anything useful to say. Most of the time when I see a resume of any length, they contain very little useful information. Longer resumes just make it worse. Now, there are ones that describe a project in detail, and you're like "Wow, that's really amazing." Most of the ones I've seen in the programming space are more akin to the 3 paragraph long description of writing stored procedures for a database. I include myself in this group, and that's why I keep it short. Having a short resume is also a test I use. The hardest paper I ever wrote was in an advanced Psychology class where we had to perform some sort of analysis on a character in a book. The paper had to be at most 4 pages, for something that could have easily taken 10 or more. Understanding how to communicate effectively is one of the best skills that people can have. Do I discount people immediately for not being able to do this? No, but it is something I take note of when I see it.
    - balabaster 9y ago
      The first litmus test in this situation is "Is this 6 page resume an engaging read that delivers everything useful effectively?" If it doesn't and that is important to you, this isn't your person. Equally, are you discounting this person just because you can't be bothered to spend an extra couple of minutes parsing their resume which upon closer inspection is solid gold? Being concise and communicating effectively doesn't necessarily mean the same thing.
      - kemiller2002 9y ago
        You would not believe how many resumes I've seen with things like formatting issues and misspellings. I'm picky about getting technical terms correctly, but I understand that everyone might not know there are capital letters in random places in words. If you're going to misspell something, at least be consistent (no joke, I've seen resumes with JavaScript, Javascript and Java Script, and like three sentences apart from each other). Going through 6 pages of that along with phrasing issues is brutally draining. If you have a long resume, give a summary or something of each entry, so I can choose to see if what you are describing is what I'm looking for. With all that being said, I'm pretty forgiving. I understand that if you have English as a second language, you might not know all the nuances to grammar. I get it. I try and give some flexibility. So here's the thing, with all that in mind, you ask if I can't be bothered, no I can't. Just because someone spews something on a page and calls it a resume does not mean that I should take a look at it. Have some pride in what you send to people. Yes writing resumes suck, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't work at creating it. People say, "I don't know about design", or "I'm not a writer." 1. It's not that hard to understand the basics of design and layout. Buy a book. Read a website. Download a template off the internet. 2. Ask someone to look at it before you send it. It doesn't have to be great, but it least make it look like you care enough about what you do to make it decent.
- daok 9y ago
  Hello, I would say that if you need to look at 100 for each position open that the HR people are not doing their job to filter it down enough for you. For each open position, I can understand that engineer that does interview may have a dozen or more but 100 seems to be quite huge. Again, I am targeting an engineer position here, not HR or a manager. About 1-2 page, nothing forces you to read through all the 6 pages. If the first page is not a fit, then move on. In my experience, a single page often lead to me to have to dig way more on the person to try to find anything related to this one -- not sure that a time saver.
maxxxxx 9y ago
As long as it's not the same paragraph repeated 10 times over 6 pages. We see a lot of people, for some reason especially those from big banks, who pretty much write "wrote stored procedures, gathered requirements, wrote unit tests" 10 times. My favorite resumes are the ones that make me curious about the person and show some enthusiasm but that requires a good writer.
JakeWesorick 9y ago
Not disagreeing with what you said, but a lot of multi page resumes I've seen are formatted poorly and have a lot of unhelpful fluff. More pages are fine as long as the info stays relevant.
megaman22 9y ago
It's really amazing how many resumes I see that have basic spelling and grammar mistakes in them. Like on the order of, damn the squiggle underlines in Word, full steam ahead. I mostly try to stay away from the more aggravating and useless of grammar pedantry, but it's just not a good signal about diligence and attention to detail.
gaius 9y ago
A skill someone used 10+ years ago but not since probably has little to no relevance in an interview. I was doing Java in 1995, don't ask me about it now tho'...
- vonmoltke 9y ago
  That is highly dependent on the skill. I haven't troubleshot a circuit board (much) since 2006, but if you put me in front of one with a schematic and some test equipment I sure as hell could do it again right now. I haven't written signal processing code since 2012, but I could jump right back into that as well. Not all skills and experiences wither at the same rate. This industry has a bad habit of assuming all skills last about as long as your average JavaScript framework. I'm sick of being typecast based on what I have been doing for the past few years.
- daok 9y ago
  I tend to like to see more information that is more recent but is also interesting to see the journey of someone. You can get something interesting by knowing that someone is able to switch language without problem or maybe this person is more the type that doesn't change at all. It's also great to see a long track of achievements even if it's been 15 years. Again, information like knowing that someone has been doing technical positions for x amount of year and now is more in a leadership position can give a good idea where the person is moving and what he still could do or understand but has changed in term of priority. Again, every resume should filter the content as its age but someone in the industry for 30 years shouldn't fit everything on 2 pages in my opinion.
richmarr 9y ago
We did a study on 700 candidates applying for a graduate role, putting CV sift in parallel with work sample and situational judgement testing. The CV scoring was entirely uncorrelated with who went on to do well (in fact it was slightly negative but not statistically relevant). That said, graduate level roles suffer from the behavioural/motivational disconnect between education and the workplace. I'd love to do another study with more senior hires. In case anyone's bothered we wrote it up here https://medium.com/finding-needles-in-haystacks/putting-applied-to-the-test-part-1-9f1ad6379e9e https://medium.com/finding-needles-in-haystacks/putting-appl...

hasbot 9y ago

Even at the end of my 28 year career, my resume was only two pages. I continually edited it down. The older stuff, probably no longer relevant stuff, was reduced to just a few words. For anything older than 4 years, only a sentence describing the work is sufficient. If the interviewer is interested, they can ask.

RulingWalnut 9y ago
This is the right approach. The problem with the vast majority of multi-page resumes is that the writer has an editing problem. If you can fill out 5 pages with worthwhile info, I suppose that would be fine? But if you're at the level where you can fill out 5 pages of worthwhile info, you'd be recruited directly by the CTO and your resume wouldn't come close to me.
- quickben 9y ago
  You have to get to the CEO these days. I have one of these five pages resume. I usually get a job offer after an interview.

gdfer 9y ago

Are people intentionally crafting their resume in such a way that the first page(ish?) could essentially be read as a standalone thing -noting the highlights and main points. Then the remaining pages would, in a sense re-state some of what the initial page has but drill down and provide more detail. Is that a good approach to take?

hasbot 9y ago
That's pretty much what I did. Top half of first page: summary of skills. Remaining half covered most recent employment. 25 years ago that was the suggested format and I never saw any need for change.
chadgeidel 9y ago
That's essentially what I do. First page is all I expect the interviewer to read. My resume is 2 pages for >10 years of experience. I agressively delete unrelated skills and promote related skills based on the job description.
- gdfer 9y ago
  If you're writing your first page as a standalone thing though that matches what the posting is looking for, do you think you need to eliminate unrelated things on the remaining pages?
  - chadgeidel 9y ago
    Yeah, I wasn't super clear about my scenario. I have a "all skills" resume and I pare that down for each job.
noitsnot 9y ago
I tried to leave out the tech stack acronyms except for listing 3 or 4 on the bottom of the resume which I had experience and wanted to continue with. I was asked for an updated resume so HR or recruiter could tell what I actually worked on and the technology.

giis 9y ago

I've around +12 years of experience and my resume is one and half page. Half of that will be opensource contribution not related to any organization. If recruiter needs more info, we can always discuss that during interview itself :-) Edit: If anyone curious about the format/layout, here its: http://www.giis.co.in/LakshmipathiG.pdf http://www.giis.co.in/LakshmipathiG.pdf

baldfat 9y ago
Yes and your showing that your older than the other applicants. I really struggle with today's system from HR. My wife wants to move back to her home state. I have over 25 years experience and I have sent out 40+ applications. Jobs I am perfect for, jobs I am under qualified for and entry level jobs. ZERO Phone Calls. I need to just put my application like I am straight out of school.
- Isamu 9y ago
  Yeah, it is worth remembering that things are very different now, they get many times more applications for every job than used to be the case. It's like direct mail marketing - expect a very low response.
- madamelic 9y ago
  Could you find some companies, learn about them, find some managers and cold email them personal emails? I've always done that and I have far less experience than you.
- expertentipp 9y ago
  Similar situation, but 10 years younger, on the other side of the Atlantic, and the salaries are half of those American over here. It's not you and it's not ageism.
- DavidWoof 9y ago
  Out of curiosity, what is your experience in?
  - 9y ago

dbg31415 9y ago

Two issues with a one-page resume. First, to get to the phone screen many companies now use some form of automation to weed out applications. Less words simply means less chance of an automated match against the job description criteria. Second, never underestimate how lazy the HR screener is. They aren't technical, they aren't ambitious, they're generally borderline incompetent people whose sole marketable skill is that they are pleasant to talk with. If you don't spell out, in detail, that you're a Front-end Developer who uses X, Y, Z tools for N years the screener won't be able to read between the lines. Quick example... I was in a time crunch so I asked a recruiter to find me a Front-end Dev. She came back and asked for a job description, project brief, culture brief, competitors / no hire list, and salary range. I felt like she was asking the right questions, she seemed smart. A week goes by, "Sorry, no candidates." Oh... Ok, well it's a hot market... we can up the price $5k. Next week, "Sorry, no candidates." Hmm, that's really odd. She apologized, said she had gotten over 100 resumes, and said, "Nobody has 5 years of HTML / CSS experience listed on their resume." After a brief talk, she fundamentally didn't understand anything past a direct keyword match. Anyway good and bad recruiters, but you never know when your resume is going to end up in the hands of someone really junior. Better to have everything spelled out. Better to be explicit around what you did with each past job. Generally the posted job description is all the recruiter is going off of to match you, so it's easy to tune your resume to fit. * Optimize Your Resume and Boost Interview Chances - Jobscan || https://www.jobscan.co/ https://www.jobscan.co/

GhostVII 9y ago
> Second, never underestimate how lazy the HR screener is. They aren't technical, they aren't ambitious, they're generally borderline incompetent people whose sole marketable skill is that they are pleasant to talk with. There are a lot of HR people in the world, that is a bit of a generalisation, don't you think? I'm sure there are lots of great HR people, and lots of incompetent HR people, just like any other job.
- dbg31415 9y ago
  I can count on one hand the number of good recruiters I've worked with over the years. Generally they view it all as a numbers game, spam over candidates until one sticks. They won't go out of their way to understand things is what I meant by "ambitious" there... If a candidate is thinking, "Well, my resume is basically just a link to my GitHub profile," or, "I have all these awesome references on LinkedIn..." I would caution them to not rely on HR people going that extra step to get the info -- it should all be on the resume or it's probably not going to get looked at.

cm2012 9y ago

One thing that can take a while to remember, if you've generally ran with the "gifted" crowd in school (Read: top 10% reading comprehension scores on the SAT), is that most people are just uncomfortable reading, it takes them a lot of time, and they don't like doing it. It's almost always a good idea to shorten/simplify any text meant for an unknown audience.

matte_black 9y ago
Generally, people say to shorten a text because the best way to write a great text is to take a good text and cut out anything that isn't great, not because the audience has poor reading skills.
- pessimizer 9y ago
  > the best way to write a great text is to take a good text and cut out anything that isn't great This is for entertainment or marketing purposes, though.
  - epicide 9y ago
    Possibly, but the people reading resumes are still subject to boredom and short attention spans.
bloopernova 9y ago
That's really difficult for me. I always end up writing novels for emails then wondering why people only answered the first question. (and they missed out parts (b) and (c) of the question, plus they didn't read the linked web pages supporting my assertions) Yes, I really need to cut back on how much I type there, but I have trouble communicating in person so text is just so much more comfortable for me. Any tips would be greatly appreciated.
- chadgeidel 9y ago
  Some ideas I've had luck with: Have one actionable item per email. State a question in the subject. Expect a clear answer (not quite "yes/no" but something definite). Spend a short time (one or two paragraphs describing the question in detail, but don't make it longer than that. End the email with the question in the subject asked again. EDIT: If you find that you need to have a conversation, either walk over to their desk or pick up the phone.

jlebrech 9y ago

not matter how pretty you format your CV you'll sit at and interview wondering why the interviewer is looking an mangled up piece of paper which turns out to be your CV. Also recruiters that have a form with 10 textareas (for you to fill out career history) are the worst.

gilbetron 9y ago

I despise one page resumes. I want detail so I can figure out whether to bother with you or not. The only time a short resume is ok is when you have big names in your employer list, or major awards, or something. If you have Google 2005-2015 or something, you really don't need to say much more beyond what languages/technologies/libraries you used there. But for the other 99% of people, I want to hear what you worked on, in detail. I can skim through a 5 page resume just as fast as a one page resume. edit: After reading the article fully: This person is the opposite of me. I've read hundreds of resumes, and I want depth and detail so I don't waste my time. Reading resumes is the cheapest part of the process. Just make sure your HR is sending you anything remotely decent, they should only be a very light filter.

manyxcxi 9y ago
Having reviewed hundreds, maybe over a thousand, resumes in the last decade- I am fully in agreement on hating one page resumes. That being said, if it’s five pages long, I’m not reading most of it anyway. Here’s what I care about: - What has this person been doing the last couple of years? - Who were they doing it for? - Scanning their overall work history, does anything interesting (good or bad) stand out. If so, make note for the interview if we get there. - A list of any accomplishments of note. Patents, speaking engagements, related awards, publications, etc. I don’t care about your hobbies, your family, or your GPA. I’m not going to reject your resume because it was too long if I can easily grep the data I’m looking for. I might reject it if it’s too short/empty though. Because this is what I look for, I keep my resume in the same pattern. The last few years of my work history will contain way more detail. A few years out I start summarizing, 6+ years out its only really big things of note or stuff I’m especially proud of still. I have a (small) accomplishments section after that, education last. 12 years of history, organized and summarized in about 3 pages with a lot of space.
- nicoburns 9y ago
  > I’m not going to reject your resume because it was too long if I can easily grep the data I’m looking for. I think this is a key point. Layout and presentation are really important. Even 1 page of dense, undifferentiated text is a lot. But 3 pages of well presented, sectioned content is pretty easy to read.

DrNuke 9y ago

One page CV, not more not less than that!

bogomipz 9y ago

>"The typical hiring process endorsed by Human Resources is a massive waste of time, calculated to keep hordes of applicants away from hiring managers." This is so true. And I have to wonder why companies allow this nonsense? I'm usually left wondering who is the average "recruiter"? They are amongst the most clueless, unprofessional and inefficient people working at these tech companies. And yet they have one of the most important jobs there. This is not to say all are like this as there are some excellent recruiters out there but I would say that overwhelmingly most are not. I feel like the majority of "recruiters" fall into one of two camps. The first is not actually an employee but a contractor, who hops from one company to another and so has no real vested interest the process or how they represent the company. The second I think is a HR generalist for whom "recruiting" is just another responsibility along with all their other daily exigencies. Either one of those generally results in a suboptimal experience for both the candidate and the company. We often hear about how hard it is to find good people. I don't think there's a talent shortage problem, I think there's a recruiter problem. The deep irony is that these are the very same companies who seek to disrupt and/or exploit some market inefficiency. That mentality of innovation seems to exclude their own hiring process though.

expertentipp 9y ago
Recruiting, filtering, and screening have become a perpetuum mobile industry keeping everyone’s out. I’m getting rejection emails from junior people with clearly kimited knowledge about the technology (at least they are polite enough to send it though). I swear one more time I’ll hear about talent or IT workforce shortage.
bluGill 9y ago
Depends on the position. I've had some openings where several hundred people applied. I don't have time to read 100 resumes, so anything that filters things down is good. Other positions HR has told me there have been no applicants in 2 weeks, and we need to open up the job description somehow. For programming positions I safely take anybody who knows how to program. It doesn't matter if you know C++ or not (we do most of our work in C++ - you can substitute any language), by the time IT gets you a computer you will know enough C++ to be left on your own. However except in the case of obviously bad jobs (anyone want to do complex merges all day - I have a job opening that is essentially that) such a job opening would give me too many resumes to read.

mixmastamyk 9y ago

I changed my long resume last year to a one-page, largely graphical one, but it hasn't performed well. Might be going back to the old one.

RickS 9y ago
> one-page very good > largely graphical dear god no. I've been a designer for 12 years and have no trouble getting hired, and my resume is basically 100% letters. The people who let infographic gimmicks distract them from traditional indicators of competence are not people you want to work for, generally.
- mixmastamyk 9y ago
  It has logos next to matching text, is that a problem?
liquidcool 9y ago
Got an application from a developer that looked terrible. Was ready to dismiss it, when I happened to notice there were patterns to the garbage, and it was really too terrible for anyone. Asked her to send me the original and I found the culprit: It was two columns. That was all it took to throw off the resume parser at Indeed of all places. So what you're doing will be hopelessly destroyed by any resume parser out there. That is likely the reason for the performance.
- mixmastamyk 9y ago
  There’s no reliable way to parse a resume, mine is a pdf, and almost all sites ask for additional fields anyway.
- mixmastamyk 9y ago
  Just read this again. Are you telling me job sites are trying to parse resumes and deleting the originals?

aaronchall 9y ago

Opinions are like... Well, here's mine, on qualities of a good resume: - consistent style - no complete sentences (too verbose especially w/ consistency) - everything relevant listed - good organization, most relevant things first - LaTeX or markdown for consistent formatting in your output - no typos - nice resume paper (a nice touch) Anything marginally but decidedly helpful that goes past the first page is likely to be ignored, but maybe keep it anyways, especially if you've been in the workforce for more than 10 years. Less than 10 years, probably keep it to one page.

John_Cena 9y ago
I thought about using markdown for my resume but I was afraid that nobody would know what it was. At my current job I have found one person that knows what markdown is. Could you go into more detail for me please?
- aaronchall 9y ago
  I use LaTeX, a document markup language, for my and my wife's resume. (The resumes come out very nice.) Markdown can be used to output to LaTeX, but I haven't built a build-chain that takes markdown and puts it into my prefered resume style yet. I'd like to build one, though, but I'm still not sure what type of markdown to use. If you're a developer applying directly to a hiring manager who is also a developer, and you're going to bypass traditional HR, you might try a resume preformatted as markdown, which seems to be what you thought I meant, but I think that would be a bit nichey - meaning it probably won't work in most situations.

JustSomeNobody 9y ago

> Tell me, in simple English, what you have to offer and why I should hire you. What does this look like, exactly? Edit: Surely it looks different if I were to hand it to a hiring manager vs a machine reading resumes, yes? What are examples of both?

olivermarks 9y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applicant_tracking_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applicant_tracking_system Applicant Tracking Systems have arguably been a disaster for humans seeking positions in larger organizations. Taleo etc are laughably basic and typically miss valuable candidates because they work on 90's era keyword loading...I know this having hired for lots of positions in a couple of large companies. You can copy all the keywords in a job application, stuff your resume with them and the ATS will pick up the resume as 'valuable' I can't say anything positive about the vast majority of HR organizations, who are mostly just sitting in the management meetings waiting for instructions to fire or hire and have virtually no influence outside that...

indymike 9y ago

1. Tell why you aren't a fit. 2. Tell why you are an exceptional fit. 3. Tell where you can see your work. I have not spent five years working with Docker tooling. I do have experience with ___, ___ and ___ and if you've used ____, _____ and _____ (in this case on Android) you've used my work. 80% interview rate.

r00fus 9y ago
> 80% interview rate. What does this mean? 80% interview pass? 80% successful hires as manager/interviewer?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
John_Cena 9y ago
You are saying out of 5 online applications you get all interviews, and that is absolute falsehood. 20% interview rate would be a miracle with Taleo bullshit Maybe you are in a field not taught directly in schools or in some other way specialized and prized field, but don't flaunt your anecdotal evidence around like a puffed up bird. If that is the norm then I am a pineapple with hurt fee fees.
liquidcool 9y ago
I'm confident you will improve that rate if you move #1 to #3. It's a form of the halo effect, where we over-weight the beginning of a sentence, paragraph, document, etc.

bbarn 9y ago

I like to have two resumes. One is optimized for getting past HR and screeners. It should check the boxes the job posting has, and leave out anything that indicates your age, unless they specifically ask for 10+ years of experience. The other a longer, more detailed one to hand your interviewer during the interview in case they want to talk about specific experiences more. Either way - you're always gambling here. You can't read the personality on the other side of a job post. Even if that job post looks like the best dev manager in the world wrote it (and that may be the case even) it doesn't mean that applications don't go through the screener who's also handling the hires for janitor, marketing rep, and help desk. It could also be going directly to that manager, and they may have a preference for detail.

expertentipp 9y ago
I too have multiple resumes - in pdf, odt, txt. I simultanously keep them up to date and consistent so that when the recruitment system has obnoxious requirements I simply copy paste into the fields from the txt version. One is simply unable to win this game.

fecak 9y ago

Resume writer here. A good one page resume is a strong signal from a candidate IMO and experience. It tells the reader "I don't need to tell you every minute detail of my career to impress you. I want to start a conversation, and I think this one page detail is enough for you to make the decision to start that conversation." I'll write a one page resume and a longer form resume for many clients. The longer form resume can be useful during the actual interview, as it can provide the interviewer with some fodder to ask about from the applicant's experience. A one page resume also tells the reader "I don't want to burden you with more information than you need". When an applicant sends a five-page resume to a company, there is some tacit expectation that the applicant wants the recipient to read the whole thing (otherwise, why did he/she include five pages?). That's an unnecessary burden to put on someone. A single page resume isn't always entirely practical, but there are ways to make it work even for people with 10 or 20 years of experience. Keep in mind that a resume doesn't need to include every single job (the details of the oldest jobs of technologists tend to be almost entirely irrelevant). The resume also has to be written with the mindset that the reader isn't likely qualified to even determine what the candidate does. You have to assume the reader (when human) is looking for keywords in the same way a machine (applicant tracking system) is, so including a summary that simplifies it for the reader is useful. When the CTO of a startup tells the temp at the front desk "You're screening our resumes today, only send along Python developers with over five years of experience", a resume summary that begins with "Python Developer with five years of experience..." checks all the reader's boxes right away. When writing the resume, make it as easy as possible for the reader to figure out who you are and what you do. Don't use inside baseball terms or corporate lingo that doesn't translate. Remove noise to allow hiring signal to come through.

chasedehan 9y ago

If a website looks like its from the '90s I don't care what the content says. I'm going on to the next thing.

eesmith 9y ago
If that's true, then why are you here at HN? The UI is little different than Slashdot from 20 years ago.

pklausler 9y ago

I read a lot of resumes. I only ever read the first page, and only up to the first bad spelling error.

littleweep 9y ago

I wish this article got into: 1. how to find the hiring manager for a role (take a wild stab on LinkedIn)? 2. after that, reach out to them directly on LinkedIn and reference the job listing? Attempt to guess their email format and cold email?

mxuribe 9y ago
I think if your item #1 were a reality, HR departments would mysteriously get more jobs filled quicker, and with likely more appropriately-matched candidates. And, yet, HR systems and processes seemed designed as the article notes, to block the "flood" of candidates. It is silly really, and I agree with you 100%!
- littleweep 9y ago
  Along the same vein, how do you even address a cover letter if you don't know the name of the hiring manager? I always felt like "To the Attention of the Hiring Manager" was cheesy and impersonal.

anotheryou 9y ago

I like nice typo. Easily adds 30% pages.

rents 9y ago

While one pager resumes are the standard advice (and yet not many people know that), I see that the author of this article is biased towards the resume skills of a person. You are not judging the person on his technical merits and suitability of the role but rather his resume skills. Unless the role you are hiring for is creating resumes. Again, "tell me why I should hire you and in plain english" is just a bad question and a bad intent. You as an interviewer need to judge that and rather say here is why you should join.