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> Utilized lol One of the only people I've ever interviewed where I cut it short was a guy who admitted he lied and put "MongoDB" on his resume to get it past
by isoskeles 8y ago
> Utilized
lol
One of the only people I've ever interviewed where I cut it short was a guy who admitted he lied and put "MongoDB" on his resume to get it past any robots that were screening.
Anyway, that massive list of must-have-words reminds me of the old days on the internet where web pages would have a block of content near the bottom that contained many keywords written in the same color as the background. Now I am wondering if that's the direction resumes go for some short period of time.
- komali2 8y ago>Anyway, that massive list of must-have-words reminds me of the old days on the internet where web pages would have a block of content near the bottom that contained many keywords written in the same color as the background. Now I am wondering if that's the direction resumes go for some short period of time. That's essentially the purpose of my "Technical Skills" section.
- Al-Khwarizmi 8y ago> Now I am wondering if that's the direction resumes go for some short period of time. It is. I have (reliable) reports of CVs listing words like "Stanford" in white on white background, to pass the automated filtering at some companies.
- Balgair 8y agoI used to do that kind of thing when I just got out of school but later took it all out. I had heard the algos were smarter and went through hoops to take all that out. Guess that 'hack' still works.
- rdiddly 8y agoI'm tempted to do this, but openly. Like a bold heading that says "Buzzword Section." Maybe with a parenthetical explanation that although it makes no sense, there are no lies in it.
- marssaxman 8y agoI've been doing that for years - my resume has a block labeled "buzzwords" immediately after the contact info and just before the job history. My resume is also kind of aggressively old-fashioned, a single page of 80-column ASCII text, because that's the kind of person I am and I figure anyone interested in hiring me ought to know what they're in for. :-)
- sleavey 8y agoHow's that working out for you?
- marssaxman 8y agoIt works really well. I've never had to spend more than a couple of weeks looking for a job.
- Aeolun 8y agoHard to say if it’s due to the CV or general awesomeness though.
- gota 8y agoCold-search or are you consistently being referred to by friends and former co-workers? Because if the latter you CV document might not even factor in your success rate
- marssaxman 8y agoIt is mostly the latter, as you'd imagine, and therefore most people encountering my resume already have some reason to pay attention. I think that lets me get away with being more opinionated in the way I present myself.
- dmd 8y agoYeah, but I happen to know that one of those jobs involved working on a BASIC compiler, so... (Hi Mars!)
- nachi 8y agoJust for laughs, I just wrote a simple script that achieves exactly this: https://github.com/nachowski/cv-warfare https://github.com/nachowski/cv-warfare
- TuringNYC 8y agoMuch of that is driven by low-value resume screening services many big companies use, a la: "Sorry, we see you only have "Ubuntu" and "CentOS" listed on your resume, the client requires Linux experience, we've decided to pass on you.
- zacherates 8y agoSimilarly, I have a section on the bottom of my resume labeled "Skills" that's just a dumping ground of any buzzword I'm comfortable talking about.
- wtfhn 8y agoat least he was honest -- i hope mongo was a core requirement and that it wasn't just the lie (aka the application optimization) itself ;)
- isoskeles 8y agoHah, no we didn't use Mongo at all. It was just the lie.
- Bedon292 8y agoHas anyone tried this with resumes? Embed the pdf with white text at a tiny font size so machine read the keywords, but then they never show up for a person reading them. Not sure it would get you anywhere, but gets past the machines or something. Not that I think this is a good idea, just curious what would happen.
- hobs 8y agoSeen resumes with this, but a person somewhat reviews them for a few seconds after the giant batch filter - so you'd want to work for a company that does this and somehow thing your resume would qualify even if you dont have the thing they want. I worked on applicant tracking databases, it's not worth your time - just go to a networking event or find some human face to the company if you want to skip their dumb systems. edit - I would also say ATS systems are largely a waste of time.
- bicubic 8y agoI've been doing it for 3 years. Smallest font possible, white coloured text, just a list of keywords. It has worked pretty well and I'm honestly disgusted that these kinds of strategies are being rewarded. This list of keywords were things I knew about or had experience with, just didn't want to ever mention on my actual CV text out of self-respect: things like 'Agile'.