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Offer HN: I will review and critique your CV.

• rezrovs 16y ago
  The current trend to offer things on HN is amazing. I can't wait until I can figure out what I can offer in return :)
  • KoZeN 16y ago
    That's exactly what prompted me to post this. Communities such as HN, where intelligent discussion is rampant and trolls are minimal, are a rare breed these days and to see the community step up and start assisting each other in the real world is admirable to say the least. Whilst I may not be a genius developer or a powerful CEO, I still have skills that could be of use to the element of the community that are looking for a new challenge or those who are struggling to find work. I think a huge amount of people on this site will have something to offer that others will find incredibly useful so hopefully this will have a knock on affect and we'll see more and more offers of legitimate, useful assistance.
    • mrgordon 16y ago
      This is so true. It had been a few months since I last visited HN and then I dropped by last week and it was shocking how intelligent and considerate the posts are. I can't believe how much easier it is to find posts I care about reading here vs Reddit.
• deleted 16y ago
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• qqqqqq 16y ago
  Oh damn, as someone who's looking at placements for next year, what you're offering is a godsend.
• KoZeN 16y ago
  22 CV's received so far! Looks like I'm going to be kept busy. I will do my absolute best to respond to each and every one of you but you will need to be patient. Anyone else looking to send me a CV, please fire away but it would help if you could include info on what you would like me to focus on, eg. are you concerned about specific content, is it the layout or format that you feel is letting you down, etc. UPDATE: That figure has now doubled and I'm looking at over 40 CV's in my inbox. I'll get started on them tonight and see how many I get through.
  • sidmitra 16y ago
    Here's adding to your workload - http://sidmitra.com/resume.pdf http://sidmitra.com/resume.pdf Let me know if i can every repay your effort with some of my skill sets.
    • ErrantX 16y ago
      My take: Not overly convinced with listing the skills down the right hand side. It makes it a little hard to read. I generally recommend that people stick to "normal" layouts and list skills at the end. Also; be more specific with the skills if you can. "Database design" can mean many things (this is particularly important if you go for, say, a DB design job :)). Also; it is ok to write a short prose section under "interests" or something, which is where you can be a bit more creative and sell yourself. Otherwise, pretty good :)
      • KoZeN 16y ago
        I'll second pretty much everything ErrantX mentioned, specifically the skills comment, move them. I appreciate you are probably trying to keep it to one page but I promise you that this does not give you any advantage whatsoever. As for specifics, list your day to day duties and responsibilities in a format that will stand out and be easy to read such as a list of bullet points under each brief.
        • sidmitra 16y ago
• user24 16y ago
  I'm think my CV is pretty well polished, but I've never asked for professional feedback on it, so let me know what you think: http://www.puremango.co.uk/2009/08/php-cv/ http://www.puremango.co.uk/2009/08/php-cv/ I'm particularly interested in whether you think the order of sections (education->work->general->personal) works, and whether my copy sells. Thanks for the offer! PS: I'm not looking for work at the moment, so please prioritise my request lower than those who are currently seeking.
  • KoZeN 16y ago
    I've just had a very quick look and my instant opinion would be to change how you clarify your responsibilites. Whilst the paragraph descriptions are well written my suggestion on your current role for example would be to keep the first paragraph in place and immediately after that I would bullet point a list of your primary responsibilities. Overall it is a decent CV but I'll have a proper look and send you the feedback directly over the next day or two.
    • user24 16y ago
      Wow, instant feedback! Thanks :) I'll have a think about what my responsibilities actually are!
      • KoZeN 16y ago
        Be honest and be specific. Leave out flowery points like Liasing with various departments & attending meetings for example.
    • user24 16y ago
      One thing I would like to ask about is how my employment history looks - returning to my previous position. Chronologically (earlier first) it went like this: Company 1 (1 year) University (1 year) Company 2 (3 months) Company 1 again (nearly 1 year) Does it raise questions that I left Company 2 after only 3 months, and that I went back to Company 1? (not listing company names here so it doesn't get into their search results)
• inerte 16y ago
  What a coincidence! A few days ago I had some ideas about CV reviewing, and since you're a recruiter, could you provide some feedback if the service would be useful? :) http://www.inerciasensorial.com.br/2010/10/14/geral/crowd-review-a-resume/ http://www.inerciasensorial.com.br/2010/10/14/geral/crowd-re...
  • KoZeN 16y ago
    Interesting approach. To be honest any recruiter posting someones CV publicly asking advice on suitability for a specific job is going to get torn to shreds. Recruitment is an incredibly cut throat, incestuous market and any recruiter worth his salt won't be faced with ambiguity over whether or not a CV would be suitable for a job. Most CV's that are difficult to interpret tend to be specialist skillsets and 9 times out of 10 a vacancy that requires a niche skillset will have agencies that specialise in that area and understand the skillset working on it.
• ethagnawl 16y ago
  do you have any generally applicable advice based on your past experience and the responses you've received so far? i'm attempting to write my first CV as a developer applying for an open position and am feeling a bit overwhelmed. thanks for the offering up your expertise!
  • KoZeN 16y ago
    General advice is quite difficult. If you're looking for structural ideas, take a look at user24's CV that he linked below. His structure is ideal. Simplistic and logical but make sure you read the feedback I gave him on listing his responsibilities. Once you have the CV put together, send it to me and I'll do my best to be as constructive as possible as it's much easier to advise when referencing a specific CV.
• svag 16y ago
  That is a great offer KoZeN, especially for those that are currently seeking a job...
  • KoZeN 16y ago
    Thanks, I just hope people will be patient with me as the response has been immense! As a recruiter I get frustrated when I hear about great candidates not even getting a look-in purely because of their CV. Unfortunately few people are willing to pay to get their CV reviewed because a lot of people believe that it's purely a matter of opinion which can vary from employer to employer which is essentially true but there are a lot of fundamental errors that are universal and that's the advice I'm hoping to offer.
• sanswork 16y ago
  This is great and I think I can help as well from a slightly different view point(not to steal any thunder!). I'm head of development for a search related company and as part of my role review all incoming CV's(with advice from one of my senior devs) as well as handle the most of the interviews. If you'd like two perspectives(Recruiter who will work to get you an interview and HoD who will ultimately hire you) feel free to send them over to me as well. My email is in my profile though I can only honestly help if you're targeting development roles. Same disclaimer about time though, I will try to do any I get through over the next couple of nights though. Edit: If you could include what type of role you are targetting(tech startup, agency, finance, etc) it would really help with my advice.
  • KoZeN 16y ago
    Great offer sanswork! It would be interesting to see how your feedback would differ to mine on certain CV's. I definitely think that you will get flooded with CV's though!
    • sanswork 16y ago
      Well I've definitely gotten hit. For everyone that has sent a CV through I'm going to spend a few hours going through them in more detail tomorrow night(AU time, already 2am here) before I send replies though I have hit them all quickly and made first impression notes already.
      • sga 16y ago
        It would be very interesting if sanswork and KoZeN could throw up a quick blog, where each blog post contains: (1) the original CV; (2) the CVs formatted as each of them would recommend; (3) a few points from each highlighting why the changes were suggested. I'm sure a handful of representative CVs could be chosen and the proper permissions obtained. Might be too much work or simply not of interest. I'd like to see this though. Let me know if I can help in some way.
  • tintin846 16y ago
    I don't want to steal your thunder stealing but I am so excited to see this that if either sanswork or KoZen get swamped or if anyone wants a third set of eyes I would happily offer my critique. I am an educator in the US. I teach our department's professional practices course. In graduate school I gave a seminar to the graduate college on CV development. I ran a small company for someone for 3 years and did all the CV/resume reviewing. My area of training is as a visual artist. Prior to my university work I did a lot of freelance design work for museums, galleries, art agencies and artists. I managed CV's for artists and galleries. I actually advised one gentleman who had a 91 page CV. My professional experience here at the university has been in the development of curriculum that address visual organization of information. This is all by way of saying I can best offer a critique from this perspective. I'm not tech illiterate. I do work with HTML and CSS regularly. I started learning PHP this year as a new years resolution. I started teaching myself AppleScript 11 years ago and I'm proficient with it. But, I'm not offering to review these from the same perspective as sanswork or KoZen, but from another professional who has a lot of experience with this. As a caveat for those who might think I'm looking for teaching examples for free, I promise I'm not. Just really want to help out. Same disclaimer about time. I've already done some mark up on rdamico's CV on crocodoc if you want to take a look at some of my quick remarks on his.
• RBr 16y ago
  Does anyone have any recommendations for paid services that do this sort of thing? KoZeN's offer to review CV's is really (really) nice, but with well over 40 to read, his offer won't likely meet the demand. I've thought a few times that there must be something wrong with my resume and I'd like to have it reviewed professionally. Has anyone paid to have their resume reviewed? If so, where, how much did it cost and was it worth it? Google brings up plenty of options, but I'm nervous to use any of them for fear that they may not have experience in tech / I.T. / programming or worse, that they'll simply find a couple of grammar mistakes and charge me a few hundred dollars. Any help?
  • ig1 16y ago
    What would you be willing to pay and what would you expect to get out of it ? I think a big problem is that the return varies a lot, some people have absolutely awful CVs and some people have great CVs. If you're charging a flat-rate for CV reviews then some people will obviously get far more value out of it than others. If you charge variable-rate that's likely to put off customers who want to know upfront how much something will cost.
    • dquigley 16y ago
      It does sounds like there might be an opportunity though for a developer-focused CV review service? HNcvreview.com anyone? Maybe you could get away with a flat rate if you provided additional services besides the review. Maybe taking the CVs and turning them into a profile for them that's indexable by Google or creating a "reverse job application" like a couple people have been floating around lately here?
      • estel 16y ago
        I'm not sure how well a CV review service would work alongside a reverse job application. I'm not so sure I'd want (possibly), old copies of my CV so readily available with suggested changes.
  • KoZeN 16y ago
    I'm glad you brought this up. Firstly, regardless of the size of the response, I will uphold my promise and provide feedback on every single CV I get, it may take some time but I will deliver. Secondly, as for a paid service, you absolutely hit the nail on the head as far as your concern about for fear that they may not have experience in tech / I.T. / programming or worse, that they'll simply find a couple of grammar mistakes and charge me a few hundred dollars. This is the sole reason I haven't set up a paid service myself. How can you charge $100 dollars only to receive a CV that is essentially perfect or even convince your market that you won't just give generic feedback? Send me the CV and I will do my absolute best for you.
• cies 16y ago
  Thanks for your offer! Currently I do not really have a CV anymore, I link to my linkedin or make a dump of my linkedin to doc/pdf. What do you think of this practice? Anyone else who has opinions on "moving the CV to linkedin"?
  • semanticist 16y ago
    As far as I know, LinkedIn makes most of its money by selling access to recruiters. There's definitely automated software that spiders LinkedIn to make it easy for recruiters to search - but they're still going to want a CV to send to their clients.
  • KoZeN 16y ago
    Whilst Linkedin is a vital tool, if one of my candidates sent me a link to their linkedin page when I ask for a copy of their CV I wouldn't bother helping them and I would tell them as much. If you can't go to the effort of compiling a detailed CV for me to send to my clients then I can't be bothered going to the effort to try and get you an interview with people who pay me top dollar to find the strongest, hungriest applicants. If I sent a linkedin page to an employer instead of a candidates CV I am almost certain they wouldn't even bother looking at it.
  • riffraff 16y ago
    I was asked some time ago to provide my CV and I also used a pdf export of linkedin cause it's such a simple option. I believe it's a bit lacking in some areas eg, I recall it does not have anything about human languages (when you are moving around in europe that is kind of useful). I may be wrong though.
    • cies 16y ago
      i too missed that option in linkedin!
• david_p 16y ago
  Great offer ! Here is mine : http://cv.david.cx http://cv.david.cx Also, I'm a French citizen seeking employment in the US (Orlando, Florida to be precise), do you have some special advice for what I should change in my CV in regard to this ?
  • KoZeN 16y ago
    I've only had a quick look but like everyone else, I will have a detailed look over the next few days. Firstly, my market is London & the South East of England so advice on modifying your CV to suit the American market is probably best fielded by someone with more experience in that area. Secondly, you have been working on your own company for over a year and you have surmised that experience in 45 words whereas you spent 6 months with INA and your description for your time there is almost 90 words. Simple things like that raise a concern in my mind about your current position and how relevant it may be to your career.
    • david_p 16y ago
      Thank you ! That's a great point. I'll try to change that. Don't hesitate to give me more feedback, if you have time, of course.
• snikolov 16y ago
  Thanks a lot for doing this. Here is mine http://snikolov.weebly.com/uploads/3/9/0/4/3904101/snikolov-resume-oct2010.pdf http://snikolov.weebly.com/uploads/3/9/0/4/3904101/snikolov-... if you or anyone else has time to take a look. My goal with the colors was to make it scan-able by highlighting where I worked as well as approximate position titles and letting gray-colored description stay in the background. But it might also be too harsh on the eyes. Another concern is having too many things and not saying very much about any one of them. I am a student, and many companies seem to want to hire people who get things done for internships, rather than people with very specific skills. So I want my message to be "I've done things", rather than "I've done these very specific things that your job description lists." Is this misguided? Should I take certain parts of it out depending on where I am applying? Thanks again.
  • KoZeN 16y ago
    Instant opinion: The colours are drastic. I appreciate your intention but the same affect can be achieved by using slightly larger fonts. On a side note, I see you worked @ Numenta Inc. A colleague & I have been experimenting with various potential applications for NuPIC. When I have a more detailed look at the CV I'll throw in a few side questions that you might be able to assist with.
    • snikolov 16y ago
      Thanks for the quick reply! I feared as much. I will try making everything gray/black. re: Numenta -- certainly shoot me an email (snikolov@mit.edu) and I'll see what I can answer (if I am allowed to answer it :-)) If I can't, I can direct you to people who would be a lot more knowledgeable.
• user24 16y ago
  Out of interest, as a recruiter, what did you think of the two 'reverse job application' posts? first: http://www.reversejobapplication.com/ http://www.reversejobapplication.com/ and in response: http://www.thejohnnybrown.com/?p=21 http://www.thejohnnybrown.com/?p=21
  • KoZeN 16y ago
    RE: http://www.reversejobapplication.com/ http://www.reversejobapplication.com/ I thought this was a really entertaining read. Will it generate his dream job on it's own merits? Probably not. Will it generate a ton of job offers due to the publicity it's received? Probably. More and more employers want 'celebrities' working for them. I recently placed a gentleman who had a relatively average CV but he had been published in numerous Insurance related publications and his name was well recognised throughout the industry, when people heard he was open to offers I had multiple interviews lined up for him within 245 hours. That's a minor example but it's definitely a growing trend.
    • eru 16y ago
      Do you know why employers would want celebrities?
      • KoZeN 16y ago
        Good question. I believe it's the credibility factor. If someone has a lot of positive exposure be it online, in print media or what ever the case may be, then that is going to attract attention to who the person works for. Take actual celebrity examples; almost everyone in the world knows who David Beckham is and now most of those people know who LA Galaxy are. I can assure you, before he joined the team few people in Europe had ever even heard of LA Galaxy and now they are a recognised and respected brand purely because of their association with Beckham. On an infinitely smaller scale the same applies to certain industries in larger cities.
• Alan01252 16y ago
  Thanks very much for this. I've never had much luck with recruiters and my C.V so any feedback you have would be greatly appreciated. I've also decided to upload it here. http://www.alanhollis.com/Alan_Hollis.pdf http://www.alanhollis.com/Alan_Hollis.pdf Please note I'm not actively seeking employment at the moment but might as well take advantage of the opportunity to get some constructive criticism whilst it's here.
  • KoZeN 16y ago
    Thanks for the link. I have had a look and there is plenty of advice I could give you. I'm facing a pile of almost 100 CV's now but I promise you that I will get round to it although it may take a few days if that's ok?
    • Alan01252 16y ago
      It's fantastic thank you :) I must think of ways to pay back the community now.
  • kapilkaisare 16y ago
    Your choice of technologies in your individual projects is not clear; this would be something I look for, since I evaluate a candidate eligibility in part through his personal technological preferences.
    • Alan01252 16y ago
      Thanks very much, never really thought that people would be interested in the "what and the why". I have a feeling I'll be making a lot of changes to my C.V tonight.
  • user24 16y ago
    I'm not a recruiter, but my opinion is that 'experience' should mean 'commercial experience'. By saying you've got seven years (4 commercial) you look like you're trying to bump up your figures. Page 3 is ridiculous. Shorten your borders and margins and get it onto 2 pages. Overuse of bullets for my liking, esp when really you're putting paragraphs in. Bullets are for <5 word points ideally. Nested bullets are always ugly. Tell people what they care about. Eg: > Livenumber, a blackberry application... Nobody cares that it's called Livenumber. Say: > A blackberry application... It looks a bit wall-of-texty. Just my opinion though, don't take it for gospel!
• maithreyi 16y ago
  I am actually studying financial mathematics, so my resume might be up your alley, www.ivanbercovich.com/resume. I have been working on this piece of paper for quite some time, so I hope you like it.
• rwmj 16y ago
  Is this a good opportunity for identity theft?
  • KoZeN 16y ago
    Not really. As stated in the original post, I'm prefectly fine with people censoring their personal details as well as employer details. If you believe that a CV can furnish you with enough info to steal peoples identity then pay a job site $100 and you will get instant access to tens of thousands of CV's.
• inscitekjeff 16y ago
  A recruiter collecting a big pile of resumes? - Imagine that! Call me a cynic, but I hope the motivations here are pure or at least balanced.
  • KoZeN 16y ago
    The logical critic in you will assume I'm offering to do this in order to generate leads or recruits and to counter-act that, I have no problem with you removing your personal details and even censoring company names. If one single member of this website comes back to this page and complains that I abused this oportunity for my own personal gain then I will officially hold my hands up and accept the title as 'Worlds Biggest Idiot'. If you click my username you can clearly find my full name as well as the name of the company I work for. A quick google search with that info will furnish you with the address of the office I work from along with my direct line number. Considering the fact that my career would be at stake, do you honestly believe I would abuse peoples trust like that?
  • zavulon 16y ago
    He mentioned he's fine with people removing their contact information from them
• daeken 16y ago
  Great idea and offer -- thanks for putting this forward, KoZeN. I sent my CV over, but I figure I'll throw it up here too; more feedback is always a Good Thing (TM). http://daeken.github.com/CV.html http://daeken.github.com/CV.html http://daeken.github.com/CV.pdf http://daeken.github.com/CV.pdf I recently rewrote it from scratch, as my previous CV was simply thrown together when applying for a random job. When I decided to put myself on the job market seriously, I figured I'd go ahead and spiff it up a bit.
• babul 16y ago
  I remember http://www.razume.com/ http://www.razume.com/ being a useful (and free) service back in 2008, where many professional recruiters would give visual feedback and good advice. Not sure what it is like now (seems more crowd-sourced), but maybe be worth a try.
• rdamico 16y ago
  If you want to make notes directly on peoples' resumes, you can use crocodoc (YC W2010) to view and mark them up online. (Disclaimer: I'm one of the co-founders!) Just forward their emails (w/ attachments) to upload@crocodoc.com, or upload them directly through crocodoc.com. Either way you'll receive a unique crocodoc URL you can use to view, mark up, and share each resume with its creator. Would love to hear your feedback if you end up giving this a try! Note: You don't need to create a crocodoc account to use the service (which is free), but I'd suggest doing so to keep track of all the resumes it looks like you'll be working on :) Example document: https://crocodoc.com/demo1 https://crocodoc.com/demo1 (note: since this is a demo document your changes won't actually be saved)
• dageroth 16y ago
  Great offer. Perhaps a small idea for those looking to put an original element in their CV that I used successfully: Put your Skills in as a Tagcloud. Strong skills get a bigger fontsize than minor skills. Additionally I used grey tones to indicate which skills have been used more recently and which are older (more grey than black, paling so to speak.) It is somewhat daring, because not necessarily everyone gets tagclouds yet - but I was invited quite a few times for the tag cloud to interviews.
• lelele 16y ago
  Giving private feedback seems like a wasted opportunity to share your knowledge widely. Would you consider publishing somewhere both the CVs and your assessments, after removing personal data and companies names? Thanks.
• KoZeN 16y ago
  Over 200 CV's received so far so can I ask that you don't submit any more new requests? I intend on responding to everyone who has emailed me up until now and I am going through each request chronologically. Thank you so much for all your messages of support.