6 ms·
I used to hire at a startup. Following are the things I usually looked at. These are not sorted by severity, some are red flags but others are just irrelevant.
by esalman 9y ago
I used to hire at a startup. Following are the things I usually looked at. These are not sorted by severity, some are red flags but others are just irrelevant.
* not following instruction in the job advert
* CC resume to many recipients
* weird sender name in email
* compressed resume
* begging for job in the cover letter
* photo
* "career objective"
* personal information
* broken links
* clear lack of personalization in the resume format
* irrelevant background/experience
* inactive github profile (only uploaded projects etc.)
* MS Office skills
* acknowledgement, signature
- nickthemagicman 9y agoMS Office skills lol.
- esalman 9y agoYep, you'll be surprised how many candidates list this.
- frou_dh 9y agoA lot of software developers, myself included, do lack MS-Office skills beyond beginner-level because we are totally disinterested in it. So if you are genuinely knowledgable about it then it could be worth a quick mention.
- scarface74 9y agoAt a certain level, knowing how to get ideas approved by creating a PowerPoint slide becomes important. So does being able to create a properly formatted statement of work or proposal. They both help to convince your current company the benefits of letting you work on the new and shiny technology that will boost your resume and they help you to get freelance gigs.
- Fsp2WFuH 9y agoI'm sorry, but some of my github activity is best be kept private.
- noarchy 9y agoI think Github profiles can now show activity in private repos (without showing the actual code, obviously), if you choose to turn this feature on. This is potentially useful for those of us who have 99% of their commits in private repos.
- bcbrown 9y agoHowever, it gets removed when you're removed from that private repo, I believe. A prior employer used Github, and my worked showed up on that activity graph thing, but when I left, it all disappeared.
- ruairidhwm 9y agoReally? That's super annoying!
- bcbrown 9y agoI found it just to be a good reminder that chasing "GitHub streaks" is ephemeral meaninglessness, although it was counterintuitive behavior.
- esalman 9y agoI understand. I mean that some candidates create a github profile and upload a couple of projects- just to be able to link that in the resume.
- erichurkman 9y agoBe careful with the "photo" bit. Some parts of the world include photos on resumes as a default, along with age and marital status. I still dislike seeing them on principal, same reason I liked Hired.com's "hide name" option to help remove biases in the resume screening process.
- esalman 9y agoI agree with you. If it is a part of the resume submission system then that's fine. I just mean that personally photo and personal information are irrelevant to me.
- kstrauser 9y ago> "career objective" is interesting to me because that's usually one of the first things I'm asked when interviewing.
- esalman 9y agoI should say boilerplate career objective statements ;)
- walrus01 9y agoPhoto on resume seems like a South Asia defacto standard. At least from what I have seen in Pakistan and India. Cultural differences.