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Ask HN: Could an old CV ruin my chances?
I'm a computer science student and I'm bothering you with a recent experience of mine from an interview. For some of you this may be silly, but I'll give my story a try. I applied for this software developer engineer internship 3 years in row (sounds pretty bad, huh?). The first time I applied, I was in my first year as a student. I was rejected as there were better suited candidates for the positions. A year later, I applied for the job early, passed a test and waited to be called for an interview after a recruiter told me I did well on my written test. I got an answer a month later, saying that the positions were filled, but that there were other positions available, but not as software developer engineer intern. For example, there was a position as a system developer engineer intern. I refused the offer, as I found another job in the meanwhile and was in the process of signing the contract. Third year, this year, the recruiting techniques changed. There is no written test. There is only one interview where a software engineer interviews you for about an hour. I went to the interview and noticed, from the beginning, that the interviewer did not know that I had a job. I found that thing strange, as it was listed in my CV on the first page. How could he have missed it? Taking a glimpse at the CV made me notice it was not the latest one: he had an older version of my CV. I offered to send him the CV from my phone, but he refused. The rest of the interview consisted of solving some pretty easy exercises. In the last few minutes, he prompted me to ask him anything about the internship. I took this opportunity to talk, asked a few questions, and then tried to share more about what my experience is in the field. He did not seem to be very interested in my background. What if he made a bad impression reading my old version of the CV? I have gained a lot of experience and practiced more this past year or so and the old version did not do me justice.
- dylanhassinger 8y agojob interviews can be a crapshoot. best way to up your chances is to apply lots of places, get good at handling all different interview techniques, and build up your portfolio and online body of work. screw that place
- fruitbat_ 8y agoI tend to stay away from generalizing: a bad experience in a place does not necessarily mean that that place is terrible. But I do get skeptical when this happens repeatedly. I could, as you suggested, apply in a bunch of other places and learn the "how to" of interviews. Do you really think I should just get over this interview and find another place?
- chclau 8y agoDifficult to say. I have interviewed lots of people over the years, and have noticed that many people in charge of the interviews barely read the CV in advance. If you were already invited to an interview, a good interviewer should make most of his impression from you yourself and your answers, and less from the CV. From the applicants side, these days it is common for people to put lots of buzzwords... and when you ask many times you discover that they know not many more than the buzzword name. So a good interviewer should make a lot from the interview and not from the CV. But then, a lot of other things come into play: Yours and his attitude that day, your 'chemistry', etc. Passing an interview is tough and it is recommended to go as much as you can, since practices makes perfect.
- fruitbat_ 8y agoI understand your point of view. I, as well, believe that a good interviewer should be able to ask the right questions. This way, he gets to know what the abilities of the person sitting in front of him are. This is part of the problem I've described. The interviewer did not ask me anything significant about my experience with any of the technologies.
- chclau 8y agoWell, then I would say it was not a good interview. And yes, if you can, go to as many interviews as possible. There is a 'mood' for passing interviews and the more you do, the more you approach them with the right mood.