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Practical Tips for Facelifting a Tech Resume
- evadne 7y ago> Comis Sans
- lechienquipete 7y agoFunny when the previous point is "avoid typos"
- samplatt 7y agoMuphry's Law is a harsh mistress.
- DonHopkins 7y agoThere's a Comic Serif font just for ironic resumes. https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/hvdfonts/hvd-comic-serif-pro/ https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/hvdfonts/hvd-comic-serif-pro/ https://fonts.adobe.com/fonts/hvd-comic-serif https://fonts.adobe.com/fonts/hvd-comic-serif
- andrewstetsenko 7y agoFixed, thanks
- DoreenMichele 7y agoOr hire someone for a few bucks to give it the once over. Because it's really hard to edit your own stuff.
- uchman 7y agoYea eventually the tool eventually gets you to pay for manual review or extra features.
- DoreenMichele 7y agoIt's content marketing. I have no clue if the advice is any good. But that's how the game gets played, basically. I sometimes edit resumes for pay. They are typically very good resumes -- well written, few typos, etc. They still benefit from having a second set of eyes on them. I'm also a freelance writer and blogger. I know all too well how hard it is to edit your own writing. It's extremely hard. People tend to see what they intended to say instead of what they actually wrote, thereby glossing over all the typos. It's very hard to catch your own mistakes. If you are in tech, you can probably afford to cough up a few bucks to have someone review your resume. If you can't, ask a friend or go to a Reddit sub that does this for free or similar. But get some feedback somehow. Don't just do it all yourself.
- lacampbell 7y agoInstead of ‘Was building a web application with [X] and [Y], write ‘Led the development of [X] feature, integrated it across [Z] products, resulting in extra [Y] in revenue’. How many people are actually in positions to know how much revenue a feature of theirs brought in? Unless I'm supposed to read between the lines and it's actually telling me to make something up.
- non-entity 7y agoI was told regarding my previous position, but it was a very small company that contracted me to do one big task
- JabrZer0 7y agoRelated question: How does one balance objective, numbers-driven reporting like this with the terms of an NDA? I imagine that most companies would consider the financial impact (or other similar statistics) of many features to be a trade secret.
- idunno246 7y agoRevenue is just one example, probably not a great one, the point is to have anything quantifiable. “Optimized web server” has a lot less punch than “reduced home page median response time from 10s to 1s”
- uchman 7y agoWhere do you even find these fonts? Can't find them in Word Palanquin, Merriweather, Lato, and Poppins
- 0az 7y agoIf Mac, you can install them through Homebrew (Cask). Otherwise, the files are online at the Google Fonts GitHub.
- lmilcin 7y agoFor my CV I am right now using Merriweather that comes stock with Tetex on Debian.
- jobigoud 7y agohttps://fonts.google.com/ https://fonts.google.com/
- mediumdeviation 7y agoYup, you can definitely see a web developer bias here - those are all popular webfonts because Google offer them free on their CDN, and it is easy to drop them into any website by just pasting in the CSS, but they are probably much less familiar to those outside frontend web development. They're also not necessarily the best fonts to use for the same reason.
- joncp 7y agoYou know, if a resume came my way that was in comic sans I’d definitely read it, thinking “here’s a wiseass who’s confident in their abilities. I’d probably like working with them.”
- mieseratte 7y agoWell now I’m curious, would anyone here reject a Comic Sans resume and why?
- umanwizard 7y agoForcing your personal brand of silliness/quirkiness on someone before you have established enough of a rapport with them to know what they’re likely to find funny is a sure-fire recipe for annoying them. I wouldn’t automatically reject such a resume but it would absolutely be a negative signal.
- mieseratte 7y ago> I wouldn’t automatically reject such a resume but it would absolutely be a negative signal. I could imagine using a resume with a wonky font to elicit signal from the employer side.
- DonHopkins 7y agoI'd reject Fraktur, Gebrochene Grotesk, and Tannenberg resumes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraktur#Use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraktur#Use
- booleandilemma 7y agoHow do you feel about Wingdings?
- jonathankoren 7y agoSTRONG HIRE
- 0942v8653 7y agoI disagree with the point about fonts. Computer Modern or similar will look much more professional than the listed modern fonts, in my opinion.
- williamdclt 7y agoI think you could send your resume with any of those fonts to a couple hundred recruiters, none of them will notice that it's not Times New Roman (and I don't blame them).
- bartread 7y agoI'm getting pretty tired of seeing 5 ("Establish and showcase an online presence"). Why? It's substantially nonsense. Many of the best programmers I've worked with don't do, or don't showcase, side-projects. And why should they? They've got families and other interests. Who wants to be stuck in front of a computer all the time? (He said, ironically, whilst typing a HN comment on a Sunday evening.)
- mfrye0 7y agoBecause most of the code you write at a previous job is not going to publicly available. So I have no other reference point as to your current skills. Apart from just the code itself, having side projects is a good sign of valuable, non-technical skills. Such as intellectual curiosity, ability to start/finish things, and if it's a collaborative open source project, can play well / collaborate with others.
- king_magic 7y agoEh, I’ve never really found that candidates I’ve interviewed with an established open source presence are any better than those without. It does not impress me as an interviewer at all anymore.
- jonathankoren 7y agoAgree. All it tells me is that you either worked at someplace that already open sourced something, or you have lots of time and don’t have hobbies outside of programming. People think that somehow interviewers or hiring managers are going to dig through some random repo and assess it, but frankly there’s no time nor motivation. The most I’ve ever done is click some links, and see if the repo is just 3 files, or if it’s more substantial. There’s just not any time for anything more, and it’s all going to become clear during the interview anyway.
- goatinaboat 7y agoEvery bootcamp teaches it’s students to fake a Github. Unless a person’s repos are substantial original work now, it’s a strong negative signal. It tells me this candidate is trying to game the filters. Which they are.
- mfrye0 7y agoA helpful tip for finding a new job that uses technologies you don't have professional experience with, but you want to learn... Say you want to learn Rust, but all your experience is in Javascript. Most recruiters will immediately filter out your resume if you don't have the keyword "Rust" somewhere in the document. Before you start sending out your resume, spend a few weeks hacking on a Rust side project to learn some of the basics. Then on your resume, include a description at the top saying you're proficient in Javascript, but want the opportunity to work in Rust. Then include a "Side Projects" section at the bottom that lists your Rust experience. I've landed 3 jobs that way, where I'm hired for my experience with X, but under the condition I will have the opportunity to learn Y. Otherwise, it's easy to get trapped working with the same tech at a new job, and your skills eventually become obsolete over time.
- mettamage 7y agoThis is blog post worthy, as I think this idea could fleshed out. Here are some questions in no particular order of importance, just curious (and showing some evidence this could be fleshed out): 1. How many times did you try it? 2. Why do you think it works? 3. How do you find companies that have both technologies? 4. Have you seen a difference in the willingness to let you learn the technology that you'd want to learn? 5. Do you know of times when this approach failed, if so why? 6. Are you of the opinion that if you'd spend 5 years working on JS for 100% of the time vs 5 years 50% of the time and 5 years 50% of the time on a technology that you'd like, that you would be as experienced in JS in both cases? Even if you're not, could people prove that you're not? Should you just say you've had 5 years of XP with JS? 7. Are there moments when this approach is strictly worse compared to a traditional approach despite it not failing, if so why? 8. Are there strategies that synergize well with this approach? Are there strategies that diminish the value of this approach (aka work against it somehow)? Alright, brainstorm time is over. I'd read your blog post about it, or having an email discussion would be awesome too (my email is in my profile, if you think it'd be fun).
- mfrye0 7y agoThat's a good idea. I think a blog post explaining the strategy further could be helpful for a lot of devs. To be frank though, I really don't have time at the moment. My typical blog post takes a few days to write, and I'm completely swamped with work for the next couple months. Like 12-15 hours a day, no life sort of thing... With that said, I'd be open to chat with you or someone else about it, and they could run with it on their own. My email is hello --at-- michaelfrye.me
- xwdv 7y agoAs an engineer I’ve resigned to making my resumes simple text files written in monospaced Menlo with manually wrapped columns at 80 characters. Very little adjectives are used, I stick straight to the facts. People are stunned when they pick up my single page resume and see how simple and straight forward it is. In a time when so many people are making wacky embellishments and cover letters to stand out, here’s a page filled with dense information and a promise to not waste any time.
- yjftsjthsd-h 7y agoOkay, but does it actually get you through HR? I'm not writing a "fancy" resume because I like it; I wanna get hired.
- xwdv 7y agoWay more often than a fancy resume.
- wikibob 7y agoCould you share a link? Would like to see this
- Supermancho 7y ago> Avoid ‘false accomplishments’. These are your responsibilities, described in the past tense. Until you’ve shown an impact, it’s not meaningful. That's just wrong. These are talking points and are the basis for your "experience", which is important to discuss. > Enrich your resume with numbers and accomplishments. Instead of ‘Was building a web application with [X] and [Y], write ‘Led the development of [X] feature, integrated it across [Z] products, resulting in extra [Y] in revenue’. You probably don't know the revenue at a company of any scale larger than 10 people. More importantly, these numbers likely mean nothing when applying at a different company (even if it's the exact same position in the same industry). > Omit the Summary and Objective sections. In 9 cases out of 10, summaries and objectives are not impressive. It's not supposed to be impressive, it's supposed to be informative and a talking point. > Use modern fonts. Use courier or some other common plain text fixed-width font. Format it as if it's being read like that, since someone may have to print it out and hand it around and maybe gasp copy-paste it (like web forms and other large-company-process-nonsense) in an intermediate form. Don't be an ass. Having interviewed hundreds of times and been interviewed hundreds of times (I keep lots of resumes), I would not recommend this blog post as a guide.
- iKevinShah 7y agoThank you for a different PoV. If not this post, is there a post you'd recommend? Like some points we tend to knowingly or unknowingly ignore.
- rohan_ 7y agoFixed-width fonts are harder to read than proportional fonts. There's a reason they're not used much outside of programming.
- the_resistence 7y agoGreat counter-points here. I completely agree as a professional resume editor who creates a few a week and has done so for years. Kudos!
- thekhatribharat 7y ago> Led the development of [X] feature, integrated it across [Z] products, resulting in extra [Y] in revenue The example isn't apt. "[Y] in revenue" has no connection with the engineering function, "[Y] in revenue" is a responsibility of the product, marketing and sales functions. (This then contradicts pt. 3: "Avoid false accomplishments" of the article) I'd wager technical hiring managers would be more interested in technical metrics (QPS, incident response times, etc.) than business metrics (revenue, MAU, etc.)
- vekker 7y agoYeah I agree. This makes sense for a managerial role, not for tech roles. From the perspective of a hiring manager such a line looks like hiding behind the accomplishments of the team.
- xpe 7y agoRe: ‘Your potential employer will objectively evaluate your skills and knowledge during the technical interview or a test task.’ Please remove the word ‘objectively’. Employers have varying types of evaluation, none of which I would call objective. I think a company is doing fairly well if their evaluation is a (1) useful proxy for the work and culture and (2) updated on a regular basis.