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Speaking from experience you need two resumes (I’m much younger, but with a long career). One that’s management focused and one that’s developer focused. Use th
by joewee 8y ago
Speaking from experience you need two resumes (I’m much younger, but with a long career). One that’s management focused and one that’s developer focused. Use the appropriate resume for the role you are applying for. Even though I’m a hands on engineer people didn’t want to consider me for roles because I had management experience and they thought the engineering role would be too boring, and vice versa. Reduce your resume to your experience from the last 10 years. They don’t need to see your first job. Don’t put dates next to your degrees. Don’t say “35 years of experience.” You have to accept that there is age discrimination but there is also manager discrimination and developer discrimination and all sorts of biases, you need to use that to your advantage by crafting resumes with different narratives, highlighting different strengths, dependent on the role.
- poulsbohemian 8y agoSo if you've been in and out of management and technical roles (like myself), how do you make those gaps between two resumes not look like gaps? Or, do you simply address it in interviews when asked?
- RangerScience 8y agoHe said not to put dates on degrees, but could you also not put dates on jobs, just durations?
- joewee 8y agoYou need dates on jobs because they want to identify gaps in employment. The only exception would be if you are a contractor and all of the engagements were under your company. You would list the start and end of your consulting practice in that case.
- gargarplex 8y agoI've screened thousands of resumes and I've never searched for gaps in employment. Some companies may do this but I haven't witnessed it. The things I search for all things obviously within a person's control: consistent formatting, sane file format & filename, and flawless grammar.
- thatcat 8y agoIt's a common HR tactic to identify people that might bring their employee retention time numbers down. Leaving off dates seems like a good idea, but may upset such people.
- gaius 8y agoI've never searched for gaps in employment. Several companies I’ve worked for have had a checkbox on the HR paperwork for interviews, have all gaps in the candidates CV been explained Y/N?
- datavirtue 8y agoI want to see if someone had five jobs over the last five years. Clear sign of a shit developer.
- thatcat 8y agoIt's not really a clear sign of anything. Many other things could cause that, such as a desire to learn new things often or changing jobs to increase pay after gaining experience. Technical work can be interesting and exciting at first, but become tiresome after a year of repeating the same shit.
- UncleMeat 8y agoAnd that's likely not somebody that I want to hire. Hiring and oboarding is incredibly expensive. If you are going to get bored in a year and move on I'd much rather hire somebody else.
- bitcrusher 8y agoOr someone who lives in SF and likes doing startups, or someone who is terrible at finding a position that is the right fit for them, or someone who is terrible at recognizing terrible working environments, or someone who...
- tannhaeuser 8y agoHow so? As a feelancer, I enjoy coming for a specific task rather than getting allocated to a "pool" of developers, though I also get offers from big customers to join into another project after completing one. If I only consider long-term projects from banks etc. my skill set would be much smaller. When working for start-ups, you often have dedicated budgets for a particular customer project of theirs or other time limitations, but the scope of your work can be much broader. Edit: also want to point out that if you only have worked in greenfield projects where you could grow with the particular tools and practices of that project, you don't know anything about writing maintainable code
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- tbirrell 8y agoExplain the role in management/development centric terms. Project management can be "lead a team of devs" or "managed a project". Think of it more like translating to two different languages, rather than being selective with the information you are sharing.
- joewee 8y agoI try to highlight the technical aspect of the work. Sometimes it’s just word play. For example, we’re you a “senior project manager” Or “senior technical lead” but primarily I create bullet points for each role. 8 bullet points, 4 are technology focused “customer facing web application using Python...” 4 are management focused “managed a team of 6 developers to achieve” and I simply remove 4 for each role depending on what I think they are looking for. The objective of the resume is to get a interview.
- pvarangot 8y agoIn some management roles sometimes you hop between technical tasks and have more managerial months interleaved, specially in startups or mid to small firms. Sometimes they are not really gaps.
- joewee 8y agoAlso, don’t give salary requirements. I imagine you’re more interested in the work than the money. I am, and I make it clear that salary won’t be the determining factor, but people will assume because of your experience you are going to be too expensive. I would be happy to look at your resume if you want some more feedback.
- ianai 8y agoAgree on using the discrimination to a resumes advantage. I think in IT age and plenty of experience lends itself to either the security or management positions.
- justinhj 8y agoI've instinctively done this for the last little while (I'm approaching my 50s). I list the last handful of jobs and no dates on the university courses etc. I don't put a huge list of languages and technology I've used, just the most recent and relevant. Not having problems so far.
- darkr 8y agoAs a hiring manager involved in many hires over the past few years, this is excellent advice for anyone with ~10 years or more of experience.
- bigiain 8y agoExactly. When I'm reviewing resumes - I _really_ don't care (or even want to know) that you flipped burgers during one summer break in college in the '80s or that 15-20 years ago you wrote web backends in PHP or maintained logistics software in Cobol. List your last two or three jobs - selectively highlighting/editing(and, if your referees will go along with it, embellishing them) them to emphasis the specific skills and experience needed for the role you're applying for. While a "35 year career in Silicon Valley" might sound impressive to some people (and perhaps rightly so), as a hiring manager I probably don't care about any projects/technologies you worked on in 1983... I want to know whether you can do the project I need delivered now. Tell me what you worked on last year and in the last 5 years - skim over or leave out the rest. (If you're dealing through recruiters instead of directly with hiring managers, you've got a different set of problems - the solution to which is probably ignore the recruiters and don't play that game - surely a 35 year career has left you with a network that can bypass those rent-seeking gatekeepers?)
- petsormeat 8y agoOut of curiosity: what do you think when you meet the candidate, and it’s obvious they have much more than ten years of work experience? Is there something the candidate can do to put you at ease? I’ve noticed some anxious double-takes in interviews after passing hiring filters with my shorter resume.
- kirkules 8y agoThank you for being very constructive.
- wnevets 8y ago>Even though I’m a hands on engineer people didn’t want to consider me for roles because I had management experience and they thought the engineering role would be too boring, and vice versa. I found this to be true a lot of the time. Great idea to tailor your resume to the type of position you're applying for.
- fatnoah 8y agoTwo resumes? Granted, I'm only 43, but each and every resume I send out is tailored to the role I'm applying to. I make sure to highlight experience relevant to the role. Now that I'm mostly on the management side of things, I emphasize outcomes over languages and skills (they're in there, but not as prominent as they once were).
- WalterSear 8y agoI think they mean 'two ways of presenting yourself', or 'two different base resumes to customize for each role'.
- guiambros 8y agoNot the GP, but I think they meant - "go beyond two, and create one for each occasion" (i.e., many more than 2). I agree wholeheartedly with that approach. You're more likely to be successful if you tailor your story and experience to each opportunity, particularly if you have 20+ years of experience. Specifically, OP mention about applying to a "Senior engineer" and "VP of engineering". Depending on the size of the company, these are very different roles. A killer profile for one could be terrible fit for the other, and vice-versa.
- WalterSear 8y agoGGP is advocating separate mindsets, and for organizing them on paper as two separate 'resumes'. This is before you customize your submission for each job.
- jimbokun 8y agoRight, but those resumes should fall into two distinct clusters.
- southphillyman 8y agoInteresting, I'm in my mid 30s and removed the dates of graduation when I was looking 3-4 yrs ago. The person I had reviewing my resume said removing the dates was a dead give away and they may assume I'm even older than I am so I put it back. Age hasn't been an issue for me yet but I have had people say things like "You don't look like you have a kid that old" and other strange things when we talk about personal things and they find a little about me. Now that I'm even older I may just remove education completely and try to get extra sleep leading up to any interviews to minimize my eye elasticity.