16 ms·

Résumés Are Starting to Look Like Instagram, and Sometimes Even Tinder

178 points by DanBC 7y ago

ken 7y ago
I'd be fine with a resume that included some modern design elements, especially if it were a position which might involve some design work. A "by the numbers" summary could make it easier to see the points a candidate thinks are important. But a photograph would make me immediately pass. There's no way for me to be sure I can avoid prejudice. I already hate that resumes include names/addresses in such a prominent place. Those should be off to the side, so they can easily be removed before the resume even gets to me. > The flashy résumés are colliding with efforts by employers to strip down CVs to their most basic elements—coding skills, college degrees, work histories—to reduce bias in hiring. Many companies run résumés through tools called applicant tracking systems that remove photos and other design embellishments. Others are looking for ways to blind out even names and addresses, which could reveal gender, race or socioeconomic status. Exactly! We should be trying to reduce bias in hiring, not add to it. This is exactly what is meant by "privilege". Either they're hoping to get hired based on how they look, or they don't realize or care that they're creating more work for someone else to strip out all this junk before anyone can read it.
- auggierose 7y ago
  In countries like Germany it is normal to include your picture. Don't see what the problem is, before you hire someone you are usually seeing them in person anyway.
  - CydeWeys 7y ago
    In the United States it is definitely not normal to include your picture, and doing so can lead to conscious or unconscious bias against someone because of their race, gender, beauty, etc. Germany has these problems too.
    - auggierose 7y ago
      These problems don't go away by not including a picture... In Germany a resume without a picture looks odd.
      - changchuming 7y ago
        It does reduce bias in the screening stage, which is exactly what its intended purpose is.
        majewsky 7y ago
        But it's not something that you can decide to do as a candidate. Without a picture, you're the oddball that doesn't get past the first screening.
        rsynnott 7y ago
        Has this changed as hiring gets more international? When I started seeing CVs with pictures I thought it was really, really weird, but I soon realised it was just the norm in some countries. I still think CVs with _pie charts_ are pretty weird, tho...
        majewsky 7y ago
        FWIW, I'm with you on pie charts. :)
        TaylorAlexander 7y ago
        That is only true when everyone else includes a picture. As others said it is great in the US that nobody includes pictures on their resume.
      - googlesux 7y ago
        You live in a homogenous white country I'm sure your situation is different than the US.
      - 7y ago
  - Zxian 7y ago
    There have been many studies that show bias in the a screening process when gender or ethnicity are known. Ideally, the hiring manager should be given anonymized resumes so they can better make objective decisions about the candidates. https://m.phys.org/news/2019-03-women-percent-hiring-men.html https://m.phys.org/news/2019-03-women-percent-hiring-men.htm...
    - jjeaff 7y ago
      Does that bias go away when meeting the candidate in person? Perhaps we should do phone only interviews with voice changing tech.
      - derekp7 7y ago
        Sometimes the biggest hurtle to getting a job is just getting to the interview.
      - andrewflnr 7y ago
        You can't avoid it forever, but it's more critical in the early stages where small signals have a big impact. If you've invested enough time in a candidate to do an interview, you're more (subconsciously) motivated to plow through (subconscious) biases.
      - rayiner 7y ago
        Or via chat.
    - astura 7y ago
      It's been my experience that this often happens nowadays - either the third party recruiter or HR removes identifying information from the resume before passing it onto the hiring manager. I've seen my resume with this treatment during interviews.
      - sokoloff 7y ago
        It may be because I’m hiring for very senior roles, but you can bet I’m looking on LinkedIn and github before bringing someone on-site. Doesn’t mean you have to be on there, but for sure I’m looking to see if I know a connection or have a look at your code and commit habits.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - 03b581a408 7y ago
    And Germany produced the Holocaust. Do we really want to use them as example of normal?
  - kuerbel 7y ago
    I grew up in Switzerland and I remember that for our very first application right after school, for apprenticeships, we should put the names and jobs of our parents on it... Out of interest I searched and read a guide and lo and behold, it is no longer recommended for anyone - except for applying for apprenticeships.
  - starky 7y ago
    The problem is people having a prejudice one way or another due to how the person looks. I know personally, being based in North America, the few times I've seen resumes my initial thought is, "Oh, they must be new to the country since they don't know that isn't acceptable here."
- achow 7y ago
  I'm seeing a trend where now first (and 2nd, 3rd level) of screening is happening sans resume - based upon Linkedin profiles. And Linkedin profiles are anything but B&W (includes lot of other signals including profile pics).
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- RealityVoid 7y ago
  > But a photograph would make me immediately pass. Soo, you're fighting discrimination by being discriminatory? That's bonkers to me!
  - Volundr 7y ago
    Not the OP, but I expect it's more CYA. Many employers will reject a candidate that puts their age in their cover letter or resume. Rejecting these isn't about fighting age discrimination, but having the policy means that the candidate can't later claim discrimination, because anyone who shares that detail regardless of age is out.
    - zhte415 7y ago
      Year of graduation, or years of experience, would surely indicate approximate age for the majority of candidates?
  - dwaltrip 7y ago
    People who place photos on a resume are not a protected class. Perhaps it is a bit unusual to automatically exclude those applicants, but it is _not_ discrimination (as defined by the law).
    - ecf 7y ago
      People who ride their bike to work aren't a protected class, yet I've been informed it's not okay to ask a candidate how their commute was. I really don't want anything to do with the recruiting and hiring process.
      - SamReidHughes 7y ago
        That sounds crazy. How is it not okay to ask about the commute?
        big_chungus 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
lifeisstillgood 7y ago
Swipe left to hire - now there is an enterprise HR app with viral potential
- Spooky23 7y ago
  Having worked in big enterprises and government, it would probably be more effective to do something like that or even random selection for some jobs.
  - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
    Random selection is great for hiring people that are lucky.
- joegahona 7y ago
  Doesn't that already exist? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switch_(app) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switch_(app)
- Invictus0 7y ago
  https://www.jumpstart.me; https://www.jumpstart.me; basically tinder but for jobs.
notus 7y ago
This could be done tastefully, but the examples they are showing seem rather extreme and not tasteful at all. I'd probably not even read a resume that had a "By The Numbers" section. It's such a useless metric to try to highlight.
fecak 7y ago
As a professional resume writer I'm seeing a lot of clients now asking for more design on their resumes (including many senior clients with solid accomplishments) and it's a disturbing trend. I think part of the blame can go to the handful of companies that have gone viral with highly visualized 'mock' resumes for tech celebrities (Elon Musk and Marissa Mayer - example https://enhancv.com/resume-examples/famous/marissa-mayer/ https://enhancv.com/resume-examples/famous/marissa-mayer/). These resumes certainly "look good", but they aren't useful. Obviously, it doesn't matter what your resume looks like if you're Elon Musk - you're getting the interview anyway. With visualized resumes, the user is sacrificing the ability to provide a more robust list of accomplishments, or perhaps to provide additional details and context for the accomplishments they have listed. If you are junior level and don't have many accomplishments to mention, a visualized resume might get their attention. For senior level candidates or even mid-career folks who have already done a thing or two, these resumes look like an ill-fitting suit. Don't distract your reader with fancy formatting. Using a simple format allows the reader to focus entirely on what is important (your body of work) without being distracted.
- joegahona 7y ago
  Do you ever recommend that the resume writer puts his/her picture on the resume? It struck me as really odd when Linkedin started to encourage this, as I was told ages ago that a photo on your resume will get it thrown out instantly because it opens up the potential employer to discrimination.
  - jgtrosh 7y ago
    Depends on the accepted practices. For example in France it's always welcome (AFAIK).
    - walshemj 7y ago
      That is Problematic on so many grounds. I am surprised the EU hasn't banned that on discrimination grounds.
vultour 7y ago
> “spin aficionado, dog lover, foodie, outdoor enthusiast.” I don't know about marketing, but if I received a CV with this I'd most likely throw it straight in the trash. I don't want CVs to be unique, I judge people based on merit. The more basic the CV the better in my opinion. Just the other day I was slightly upset when someone showed me a candidates LinkedIn profile containing quite a non-professional picture because it immediately put me off a bit.
- seer 7y ago
  From being involved with non-anecdotal data sets on the subject I can say its actually the other way around. With those little tidbits of virtue signaling that you choose to put in the resume usually give the opportunity for the reviewer to see you as more the “just a react dev” and depending on how many people your are competing with - gives you the edge. Experience speaks for itself, and if you have the creds then sure those things can look like pure cruft, but what if you’re just starting out? You need something to stand out, and like it or not most reviewers are humans too, even worse - are not strictly technical, so if you for example like to run, mention that in your resume, and the HR person is also a runner, well he can recommend you based on “gut feeling” and how “runners are more emotionally stable and reliable” or some such. And if by a chance their resume ends up reviewed and judged negatively base on non technical prejudice or something, well you’re better of not working there anyway, as it will probably be damaging emotionally in the long run.
- notus 7y ago
  This is actually a really good point. The more information you give in general just creates more vectors for unwanted biases.
  - paulcole 7y ago
    Also the #1 rule to creating a successful profile on a dating site. Say the absolute minimum and nothing more. Better to remain quiet and be thought a fool than open your mouth and remove all doubt.
    - 7y ago
tormeh 7y ago
Obviously CV design depends on the position you apply for. If it's design, marketing or something like that, then I'd say cool design is a big plus. For a technical position it's just distracting and off-topic.
- jjeaff 7y ago
  I think there is some relation to caring about how things look and being a good coder. I like a well designed resume and I like beautifully written and formatted code. I've actually considered asking candidates to send me a screenshot of their IDE. Obviously not at the top of the list of most important data points, but a data point nonetheless.
jbverschoor 7y ago
Content is always king... Design follows
- randomdata 7y ago
  We're talking about advertising. Getting noticed is king and the content is essentially irrelevant. There is a reason why Apple buries the tech specs for the iPhone deep in the website where most people will never find it. Most people hiring care about your resume's "tech specs" about as much, but flash gets you noticed. Resumes have seen a trend towards more and more design because early adopters of excess design had resumes that stood out, leading to greater success in their job search. However, as more and more people do the same, the effects quickly diminish.
  - jakear 7y ago
    It’s fun to restart the process though. We’re currently in a race to the top for “artful resumes as a means of being noticed”, which means if you submit a “pure content, straight to the point” resume, it will actually be noticed more
_nhynes 7y ago
In the examples the article presents, it looks like the pendulum has swung from “dry” to “overdone” (c.f. 80s era web”). That being said, it’s a net positive that richer media are now emerging as options. It’s like research papers: from plain text to hyperref urls to full on promotional webpages (I’m looking at you Google AI). Some might say that constraints force a pithy communication, but I’ll take a tasteful GIF over a static diagram or dense prose any day.
jon-wood 7y ago
I’m not sure which trend I dislike more, this one, or the general throwing out of the “two pages or fewer” guideline. I regularly get CVs which are four or five pages long, listing everything the person has ever done back to high school. Learn to tailor your CV people, I don’t care that you worked at Subway for six weeks when you were nineteen. I would however love to hear more than a list of technologies used about the three years you spent working in a similar sector.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- siggen 7y ago
  lol, I talk to people regardless of what they put in their resume. To me, a resume is more a “please call me” than an expectation that what’s in the resume precisely fits. I don’t expect folks to tailor resume to fit each time they apply to some position. Also, I’ve noticed people (including me) are really bad at writing good resume. Why lose someone who might otherwise be stellar because of their poor resume-writing skills?
  - avip 7y ago
    Do consider some positions may get 1000s of applications and render your method impractical.
    - walshemj 7y ago
      You probably need to be careful about where you put your job adverts. If your job add is on monster and the other job sites with lower quality inventory your going to get a lot of applicants. In the UK I used to use monster etal as a way to hit my required quota of job applications - in the UK you have to in theory spend x hours a week and submit n job applications or you may lose your JSA (unemployment pay)
    - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
      You are already screwed in that case without an internal rec. HR/recruiter resume filtering is extremely crude, maybe look at the prestige of your school, the prestige of your former companies, and some keyword matching.
vinceguidry 7y ago
Were resumes ever really useful for more than sending very specific signals? I suspect they probably never were. Hiring managers just put them all into buckets "Ivy League, good college, has professional experience," and unless there were obvious red flags, just called everyone on the list that they wanted to hire and let the interview process sort them out. If you needed more vetting on the inbound, then it's easier to just source candidates another way than to try to read the resume tea leaves.
- avip 7y ago
  I factually know that’s not the case as multiple times I’ve sent cvs to positions I’m a perfect fit for and never heard a thing. I’m quite confident reading resumes is old school habit of apatosaurusish generation.
  - vinceguidry 7y ago
    Maybe you just didn't send the right signals?
    - avip 7y ago
      Give me an A/B to test that and I’m in.
      - daveFNbuck 7y ago
        It's pretty simple to set up a scientific test for resume content. You can find examples of reports of studies on names pretty easily. You just set up a template and send out hundreds of resumes with the thing you're testing tweaked. If sending multiple resumes to the same company, also vary the things you're not testing in ways that you think will be insignificant (e.g. use different names like Jack, John, Joe but don't use names that indicate a difference in possibly salient factors like gender or ethnicity). People do this sort of thing to test hiring biases all the time. Ideally you'd be doing it from a university and have an ethics board and people experienced with experiment design overseeing what you're doing to help ensure you're doing it right.
scarmig 7y ago
Next time I have to apply to a job with a resume, I swear, I'm just going to use one formatted in raw markdown and limited to a page in readable font.
- jakear 7y ago
  I started doing that a bit ago actually. I’ve been successful. One pages document, all text, bullet points, font size/weight and document structure to mark significance levels. One other plus is that it makes the automatic resume importers work much better.
  - cbanek 7y ago
    Totally agree. I do plain ASCII text, specifically to help the robots, and it's easier to break down and paste into stupid application forms where they want your resume, but they also want you to write in all the info from your resume too.
rayrrr 7y ago
Young Mr. Bueno has a bright future ahead of him designing WeWork SEC filings.
ravenstine 7y ago
Gen Z is smart. If you can look good, which isn't hard to do when most resumes have no photo, I have no doubt you'll get ahead. 20/20 episode on "lookism": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTfRRmFC4-c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTfRRmFC4-c TL;DR of the video: Good looks will get you hired, make you more money, and make people think you're smarter.
- Aloha 7y ago
  The privilege of beauty. It's a thing I've reckoned with my entire life, though I only really realized what it was in the last 5 years.
  - Jedi72 7y ago
    I gave been waiting #HotPrivilege or equivalent to become a trending hashtag since this whole privilege-acknowledging affair got started.
  - ravenstine 7y ago
    We all understand it, but many of us aren't as conscious about its extent. I only became truly cognizant of the privilege of beauty when I lost weight; I don't think people who have been skinny their whole lives can fathom just how different people treat you if you're overweight.
- bboygravity 7y ago
  Totally agreed. Isn't this a super open door though? I mean: Tinder? LinkedIN? Instagram? Sales? Marketing? This isn't exactly a new discovery in the sales and marketing world is it? And since getting a job = sales...
  - ravenstine 7y ago
    It's not a new discovery for people in marketing and sales, but the average person hasn't been capitalizing on their looks until fairly recently. 10 years ago, I don't remember encountering any resumes with photos. Even at my last job when we were hiring for a new engineer, we didn't get a single resume with a photo.
Invictus0 7y ago
It makes sense that resumes are becoming better designed: we have been told for years now that recruiters only spend seconds looking at a resume, and many people now have the tools to create a well designed resume. The irony here is that employers are declining candidates on the basis of overdesigning their resume, given that they are ostensibly advocating the position that only the content is important.
leftyted 7y ago
I think the source of this is professional "career adviser" types. When applying for jobs out of school, I was told: 1. I needed to "tell stories" about myself (doesn't matter if they're true) 2. I needed to boast in my resume about my "accomplishments" using buzzwords 3. I needed to have some kind of catchy elevator pitch describing myself 4. I needed at least one "playful" descriptor (e.g. "semicolon enthusiast" or something like that) 5. Lying on your resume is expected and totally fine 6. I needed to apply for ~10 positions a week All of these things made me deeply uncomfortable. I don't think self-description is possible. We reveal ourselves through our actions and nothing matters less than "how you view yourself". When people attempt to describe themselves they tend to list things that they want other people to believe about them but have no correspondence in reality. I disregarded all of this advice and worked really hard on my projects. I didn't do any "coding interview prep" and during my interviews I admitted when I didn't know something and explained what I thought I knew about it. This worked well for me; I didn't have any trouble finding a job.
- ryandrake 7y ago
  The only bit of that advice that is remotely good is #6. The rest is useless at best and counterproductive at worst. What ever happened to traditional resume strategies like STAR and quantifying value? Done college career offices know about these anymore?
- buboard 7y ago
  Or just, people are unemployed and have a lot of time to fiddle about with their resumes
- sdinsn 7y ago
  Career advisers at my university never gave advice like that. They mainly highlighted that resumes should be clear, informative, and concise.
- Silhouette 7y ago
  FWIW, that is almost exactly the opposite of what any careers advisor I've ever met would tell a new graduate applying for their first job. Particularly things like lying on the application are big no-nos. That's potential grounds for dismissal if it ever comes out and it will damage your credibility later on if word gets around.
ma2rten 7y ago
I am surprised, I thought having a photo on your resume is an absolute no-go in the US.
- peter303 7y ago
  This is where linkedin confuses me. No photo considerably lowers the attention you het. On the other hand the photo should be professionally shot with you wearing business attire. Professional socities sometimes offer free head shoots.
forgingahead 7y ago
I'll admit, the headline and the general comments here biased me to waving my fist at the clouds and shouting "hell yeah! These youngsters don't appreciate tradition no more!", BUT, the examples in the article are actually reasonable. As mentioned elsewhere in the comments here, hiring is a two-way street. Certain industries and professions don't appreciate this creative approach, however young folks entering the workforce are fighting to be seen above the crowds. If your company is particular about specific information and formatting, use an applicant tracking system and/or job board that forces your applicants to apply your way. But if you ask for resumes to an email account, or if colleges are still requesting "resume drops" for firms looking to hire on-campus, then folks are going to try grab attention to move the process forward in any way they can.
pseingatl 7y ago
A resumé is advertising. A resumé is marketing. A few thoughts: A resumé is not a biography. It' a pitch. When was the last time anyone tried to sell you a product or service with a white sheet of paper and black ink? Exactly. The six page--or ten page--credentials document is for the interview. For a recent project management position, Facebook received 10,000 resumés. That's too many for the HR department ro review. FB, like many others, use automated systems to weed through these. Graphic and marketing details, innovations, are lost. You can try to game the system: post the job requirements in a white font on white so all the keywords are there. But this is an inexact science. For a small to medium size business, the "new" c.v. has as good or better chance than the traditional c.v.
- seanmcdirmid 7y ago
  If you get an internal rec, you can bypass HR looking at your resume all together at Facebook. I’m sure that’s how 80-90% of the people get hire there.
  - pseingatl 7y ago
    Not correct. They have a three or four-tiered hiring process and by the second tier, everyone is looking at your resumé.
sundayedition 7y ago
I include a very brief summary (< 1 line) that details most of my professional work history (not always tech related, but illustrates progressive responsibility), so I'm probably one of the people whose resume gets thrown out (per some of the posters) on the regular. I'm OK taking that kind of risk because I'm looking for a manager/team who understands a team member is more than the sum of what's on their targeted 1 page resume. Although I'm sure you're all great managers, I can appreciate being weeded out early.
buboard 7y ago
Judging from the discussions here i get the sense that hiring is primarily an exercise to avoid biases in the US. Which probably means that the bigger problem is that most CVs look the same nowadays, with lots of people checking all the points for a job. Which probably means CVs are not a good way to source candidates , but what else is there out ther?
sdinsn 7y ago
> ...received a résumé for a finance job earlier this year that included an avatar of the applicant sweating. > “That was to show they hustle like no one else,” says John Lowe, the company’s chief executive. “That is an important attribute that we prize.” That has to be one of the most ridiculous things I've heard
- ignoramous 7y ago
  Hey, don't blame the applicant. May be they A/B tested the résumé [0], for all we know. They're selling themselves, and résumé is their landing page. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20151104203316/https://signalvnoise.com/posts/2991-behind-the-scenes-ab-testing-part-3-final https://web.archive.org/web/20151104203316/https://signalvno...
- mv4 7y ago
  The whole premise reminds me of the infamous "impossible is nothing" resume submitted to UBS back in 2006. Sadly, the author died. For those unfamiliar, it included: * Cover letter * Resume: one and a half pages * Writing sample: eight pages * A glamour shot of Vayner * Seven-minute video that features the following feats by Vayner: * Interview: gives advice for achieving life goals * Bench press: 495 pounds (225 kilograms) * Downhill skiing with jumps * Tennis serve: 140 miles per hour (225 km/h or 63 m/s) * Ballroom dancing with a female dancer * Karate chop: seven bricks broken Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_Is_Nothing_(video_r%C3%A9sum%C3%A9) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_Is_Nothing_(video_r...
  - FillardMillmore 7y ago
    This is absolutely hilarious and I've never heard of it. Thanks!
  - HenryBemis 7y ago
    That reminds me of the "Possimpible"(?) episode of HIMYM with "Barney Stinson"'s video CV: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GuLcxg5VGuo https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GuLcxg5VGuo Just checked, that is a 2009 episode, thus/possible created in 2008, so the aforementioned CV predated that of the HIMYM TV series https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1256175/?ref_=fn_al_tt_11 https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1256175/?ref_=fn_al_tt_11
elicash 7y ago
> The school ultimately felt the bitmoji résumé was inappropriate. > “We’re not a lot of crotchety old people who don’t understand how bitmojis work,” says Ms. Posthuma, who is 41. “It looked very juvenile.” Seems juvenile to overlook the substance of a resume just because the person also shows their personality. It's unfortunate more people don't care about the actual skills needed for the job and instead make hiring decisions on the weirdest possible criteria. My favorite, very common, example: throwing out a resume because it has a typo for positions where typos don't really matter (most positions). An approach where you stand out seems to make a lot of sense, nevertheless. You can be an "average" candidate and literally never get the job because they're only hiring one person for the position. An approach that turns some off but gets the attention of a few makes sense in many scenarios.
- duxup 7y ago
  It's hard to imagine the justification for "inappropriate" is for a bitmoji of someone waving hi. I can understand not caring for it or it not contributing to the resume but it seems strange to see something like that so negatively. The whole job application system seems like a meta game where the most absurd things get focused on.
  - elicash 7y ago
    Another example: how people dress. It's bizarre that for most employers in the U.S., if you don't dress professionally enough in your interview you won't get a job. Even in jobs where you have a uniform and can't choose your own clothing if you were chosen for the position! This can cut both ways for folks who gather on Hacker News I think, where for some positions the way to signal you're the type of person who just cares about results is to INTENTIONALLY dress less professionally, weirdly enough. Dressing professionally shouldn't be seen as a negative, either. And don't get me started on the "firm handshake" people...
- DangitBobby 7y ago
  Agreed. And many commenters in here are saying that they'd throw out such a resume... Pretty alarming that so many would not just use such inconsequential measures for candidate selection, but be proud of themselves for it.
wy35 7y ago
As a current Gen Z applying to jobs, I think this trend is very minor and depends on the industry. Anecdotally, in all the tech career fairs and networking events/resume drops I've been to, 95% of resumes follow the traditional format without a hint of color. The other 5% are people who downloaded a flashy template for the first time and don't know what they're doing. For designers, I think it's reasonable to have a "unique" resume design, but for other non-visual jobs it's just in poor taste.
- baron816 7y ago
  Yep. Article looks like click bait.
- rolltiide 7y ago
  I’m just glad millenials arent getting flack anymore, and no longer mean “people younger than me” Peer pressure for the win! Just keep correcting out of touch people
  - odessacubbage 7y ago
    it means we're old though ;_;.
- nkrisc 7y ago
  As a designer, if I was given a resume that looked what was described in the article I'd Mark them down a point. Knowing your audience and the appropriate time and place is an important part of design. If they send their resume somewhere that likes that, then good for them.
  - realshowbiz 7y ago
    Yeah knowing the audience is key. But an eye catching resume can also be very valuable. In this field a design with something like familiar grey/white fixed-width type on a matte black background, ascii table outlines, and “syntax” highlighting, etc, etc, would probably get some more attention (good or bad)
- 7y ago
vikingcaffiene 7y ago
What you know, what you’ve recently done. That’s literally all I want to know when a resume comes to me. I could care less about the design.
chadash 7y ago
You know what kind of resume stands out? A traditional one with nice formatting, nothing extraneous (if you have a college degree I don't care where you went to high school), and no typos. Maybe 25% of resumes that I see hit all of these criteria. If you can't pay attention to detail on a one-page resume that you update every year or two and send out to every job that you apply to, then how can I possibly expect that you are going to pay attention to detail in the code that you write?
- davidhyde 7y ago
  A lot of errors you see in resumes are as a result of change. This is a document that gets re-compressed into its original length every time you add content to it. It is important to have an error free resume because it gives a good first impression but that's where it ends. Just because a second language English speaker doesn't understand the nuances of the language does not make them a poor coder. Furthermore, who says that making coding mistakes makes for a poor developer anyway? You should work in an environment that is forgiving to mistakes. For example, using unit tests, integration tests and code reviews. What I look for is perseverance, creativity and the ability to get on with other developers.
  - chadash 7y ago
    I hear what you are saying and I think it's only fair to be more lax for foreign applicants although I actually find that they usually have fewer to typos, perhaps because they'll ask someone to proofread their resume. As to mistakes in code, yeah process is important, but so is attention to detail. Unit tests can only take you so far, so it's important that coders read over their code and make sure the logic is sound before merging.
kevindong 7y ago
Some of the examples shown were obviously bad, but others I (as a non-recruiter) thought were pretty tasteful and honestly would be pretty good at getting the candidate hired. e.g. Valentino Bogliacino Bueno's highlights on his resume: recruiters are going to skim through his resume and he's catering to that behavior by putting the highlights of his resume prominently up front and center
Silhouette 7y ago
These might be the most misunderstood, dogmatically constructed documents that exist. In reality, a bit of common sense and a basic understanding of how recruitment processes tend to work will go a long way. Hopefully for those new to the job market who don't yet have that understanding, a careers advisor or similar mentor will help them to acquire it quickly. If you're applying somewhere big and you haven't established any prior connection then chances are you're going to be screened by some sort of automated system as a first step, so you need to provide sufficient information in sufficiently recognisable terms to clear that hurdle. Sometimes this is little better than a tedious keyword-matching exercise, but it's a necessary first step if you're not in a position to reach a real person at your potential employer from the start. In any case, the first human being to read your CV/resume and make a real decision on progressing your application or not is probably going to be spending seconds, not minutes, reviewing it. Chances are they'll be looking for your general area(s) of competence and approximate level of experience to see if you fit the required profile, and any obvious red flags that would disqualify you immediately. Anything else is a potentially damaging distraction at this stage. Subsequent human beings to read your CV/resume will hopefully be involved in the in-person recruiting process, i.e., phone screens, on-site interviews, etc. These people are probably going to spend a bit longer reading now you're on a short(er) list, but they're probably looking for the opposite: what particular qualities or specific accomplishments make you stand out from the crowd as a better candidate? It follows from the above that an effective CV/resume should probably include just enough filler and buzzwords to get past an automated filter, just enough overview material to show you're the right sort of candidate, and then a few carefully selected highlights to intrigue the people making the real decisions in the later stages and provide interesting interview topics. Anything else, particularly a complete life history including the LOGO program you wrote at age 10 to draw a circle, is wasting everyone's time and just gives more opportunities to get rejected. If you can't fit that on a single page at any stage in your career then improving your CV/resume writing skills will probably improve your chances of landing that next job (barring certain fields like academia, where expectations are often quite different to most recruitment processes).
gdubs 7y ago
Creativity that solves a problem can be a good signal. Creativity for creativity’s sake is a mixed bag, and depends a lot on the role.
ggm 7y ago
End of (work) life stage with 37 years continuous employment in two economies and 7-10 employees under my belt, I do not believe I could cope in this hiring market, at these behaviours. I do not envy the cohorts surviving in this market/model. I feel we screwed things up, allowing HR to drive to this, and I feel we overplay "selling" in hiring, instead of letting people reach out and find like minds. I realize its a highly competitive market, but I think we've allowed the distortions to overtake the real intent. I do not believe this is a good model. I do not want to participate or facilitate this model of resume/CV and hiring.
tmaly 7y ago
Outside of the US, many countries have photos on the resume. I could recall the first time I saw one about a decade ago. Not sure what I would do if I saw an info graphic on a resume.
smsm42 7y ago
I've seen some very beautifully designed resumes, some even looking more like work of art than a primarily utilitarian document it essentially is (or supposed to be). I can not deny I liked the beautiful ones, but only to the point - if the content did not match what I needed, I rejected it without a second thought, maybe with a slight sigh of "well, it was a beautiful resume, too bad it's not going anywhere". Moreover, having to go through a pile of literally hundreds, I didn't have much time to admire fine design points too much, and by the time it comes to select candidates which get to the point of in person interview and other considerations, everybody would forget how the resume looked like. So for technical candidate it probably does not matter, even if personally I like aesthetically pleasing ones - just it won't help any on actual technical merits.
dymk 7y ago
And it's a fad that will live and die quickly.
theshadowknows 7y ago
My resume is a single page. Black and white text. It does have my name and contact details. But that’s all. I did take the time to use proper formatting though. Paragraph and heading spacing for example rather than just a bunch of returns.
blaser-waffle 7y ago
LaTeX motherfucker, do you use it?
mv4 7y ago
How would I describe myself? Three words. Hard-working, Alpha male, Jackhammer, Merciless, Insatiable.

178 points by DanBC 7y ago

ken 7y ago

I'd be fine with a resume that included some modern design elements, especially if it were a position which might involve some design work. A "by the numbers" summary could make it easier to see the points a candidate thinks are important. But a photograph would make me immediately pass. There's no way for me to be sure I can avoid prejudice. I already hate that resumes include names/addresses in such a prominent place. Those should be off to the side, so they can easily be removed before the resume even gets to me. > The flashy résumés are colliding with efforts by employers to strip down CVs to their most basic elements—coding skills, college degrees, work histories—to reduce bias in hiring. Many companies run résumés through tools called applicant tracking systems that remove photos and other design embellishments. Others are looking for ways to blind out even names and addresses, which could reveal gender, race or socioeconomic status. Exactly! We should be trying to reduce bias in hiring, not add to it. This is exactly what is meant by "privilege". Either they're hoping to get hired based on how they look, or they don't realize or care that they're creating more work for someone else to strip out all this junk before anyone can read it.

auggierose 7y ago
In countries like Germany it is normal to include your picture. Don't see what the problem is, before you hire someone you are usually seeing them in person anyway.
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  In the United States it is definitely not normal to include your picture, and doing so can lead to conscious or unconscious bias against someone because of their race, gender, beauty, etc. Germany has these problems too.
  - auggierose 7y ago
    These problems don't go away by not including a picture... In Germany a resume without a picture looks odd.
    - changchuming 7y ago
      It does reduce bias in the screening stage, which is exactly what its intended purpose is.
      - majewsky 7y ago
        But it's not something that you can decide to do as a candidate. Without a picture, you're the oddball that doesn't get past the first screening.
        rsynnott 7y ago
        Has this changed as hiring gets more international? When I started seeing CVs with pictures I thought it was really, really weird, but I soon realised it was just the norm in some countries. I still think CVs with _pie charts_ are pretty weird, tho...
        majewsky 7y ago
        FWIW, I'm with you on pie charts. :)
        TaylorAlexander 7y ago
        That is only true when everyone else includes a picture. As others said it is great in the US that nobody includes pictures on their resume.
    - googlesux 7y ago
      You live in a homogenous white country I'm sure your situation is different than the US.
    - 7y ago
- Zxian 7y ago
  There have been many studies that show bias in the a screening process when gender or ethnicity are known. Ideally, the hiring manager should be given anonymized resumes so they can better make objective decisions about the candidates. https://m.phys.org/news/2019-03-women-percent-hiring-men.html https://m.phys.org/news/2019-03-women-percent-hiring-men.htm...
  - jjeaff 7y ago
    Does that bias go away when meeting the candidate in person? Perhaps we should do phone only interviews with voice changing tech.
    - derekp7 7y ago
      Sometimes the biggest hurtle to getting a job is just getting to the interview.
    - andrewflnr 7y ago
      You can't avoid it forever, but it's more critical in the early stages where small signals have a big impact. If you've invested enough time in a candidate to do an interview, you're more (subconsciously) motivated to plow through (subconscious) biases.
    - rayiner 7y ago
      Or via chat.
  - astura 7y ago
    It's been my experience that this often happens nowadays - either the third party recruiter or HR removes identifying information from the resume before passing it onto the hiring manager. I've seen my resume with this treatment during interviews.
    - sokoloff 7y ago
      It may be because I’m hiring for very senior roles, but you can bet I’m looking on LinkedIn and github before bringing someone on-site. Doesn’t mean you have to be on there, but for sure I’m looking to see if I know a connection or have a look at your code and commit habits.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- 03b581a408 7y ago
  And Germany produced the Holocaust. Do we really want to use them as example of normal?
- kuerbel 7y ago
  I grew up in Switzerland and I remember that for our very first application right after school, for apprenticeships, we should put the names and jobs of our parents on it... Out of interest I searched and read a guide and lo and behold, it is no longer recommended for anyone - except for applying for apprenticeships.
- starky 7y ago
  The problem is people having a prejudice one way or another due to how the person looks. I know personally, being based in North America, the few times I've seen resumes my initial thought is, "Oh, they must be new to the country since they don't know that isn't acceptable here."
achow 7y ago
I'm seeing a trend where now first (and 2nd, 3rd level) of screening is happening sans resume - based upon Linkedin profiles. And Linkedin profiles are anything but B&W (includes lot of other signals including profile pics).
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
RealityVoid 7y ago
> But a photograph would make me immediately pass. Soo, you're fighting discrimination by being discriminatory? That's bonkers to me!
- Volundr 7y ago
  Not the OP, but I expect it's more CYA. Many employers will reject a candidate that puts their age in their cover letter or resume. Rejecting these isn't about fighting age discrimination, but having the policy means that the candidate can't later claim discrimination, because anyone who shares that detail regardless of age is out.
  - zhte415 7y ago
    Year of graduation, or years of experience, would surely indicate approximate age for the majority of candidates?
- dwaltrip 7y ago
  People who place photos on a resume are not a protected class. Perhaps it is a bit unusual to automatically exclude those applicants, but it is _not_ discrimination (as defined by the law).
  - ecf 7y ago
    People who ride their bike to work aren't a protected class, yet I've been informed it's not okay to ask a candidate how their commute was. I really don't want anything to do with the recruiting and hiring process.
    - SamReidHughes 7y ago
      That sounds crazy. How is it not okay to ask about the commute?
      - big_chungus 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

lifeisstillgood 7y ago

Swipe left to hire - now there is an enterprise HR app with viral potential

Spooky23 7y ago
Having worked in big enterprises and government, it would probably be more effective to do something like that or even random selection for some jobs.
- seanmcdirmid 7y ago
  Random selection is great for hiring people that are lucky.
joegahona 7y ago
Doesn't that already exist? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switch_(app) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switch_(app)
Invictus0 7y ago
https://www.jumpstart.me; https://www.jumpstart.me; basically tinder but for jobs.

notus 7y ago

This could be done tastefully, but the examples they are showing seem rather extreme and not tasteful at all. I'd probably not even read a resume that had a "By The Numbers" section. It's such a useless metric to try to highlight.

fecak 7y ago

As a professional resume writer I'm seeing a lot of clients now asking for more design on their resumes (including many senior clients with solid accomplishments) and it's a disturbing trend. I think part of the blame can go to the handful of companies that have gone viral with highly visualized 'mock' resumes for tech celebrities (Elon Musk and Marissa Mayer - example https://enhancv.com/resume-examples/famous/marissa-mayer/ https://enhancv.com/resume-examples/famous/marissa-mayer/). These resumes certainly "look good", but they aren't useful. Obviously, it doesn't matter what your resume looks like if you're Elon Musk - you're getting the interview anyway. With visualized resumes, the user is sacrificing the ability to provide a more robust list of accomplishments, or perhaps to provide additional details and context for the accomplishments they have listed. If you are junior level and don't have many accomplishments to mention, a visualized resume might get their attention. For senior level candidates or even mid-career folks who have already done a thing or two, these resumes look like an ill-fitting suit. Don't distract your reader with fancy formatting. Using a simple format allows the reader to focus entirely on what is important (your body of work) without being distracted.

joegahona 7y ago
Do you ever recommend that the resume writer puts his/her picture on the resume? It struck me as really odd when Linkedin started to encourage this, as I was told ages ago that a photo on your resume will get it thrown out instantly because it opens up the potential employer to discrimination.
- jgtrosh 7y ago
  Depends on the accepted practices. For example in France it's always welcome (AFAIK).
  - walshemj 7y ago
    That is Problematic on so many grounds. I am surprised the EU hasn't banned that on discrimination grounds.

vultour 7y ago

> “spin aficionado, dog lover, foodie, outdoor enthusiast.” I don't know about marketing, but if I received a CV with this I'd most likely throw it straight in the trash. I don't want CVs to be unique, I judge people based on merit. The more basic the CV the better in my opinion. Just the other day I was slightly upset when someone showed me a candidates LinkedIn profile containing quite a non-professional picture because it immediately put me off a bit.

seer 7y ago
From being involved with non-anecdotal data sets on the subject I can say its actually the other way around. With those little tidbits of virtue signaling that you choose to put in the resume usually give the opportunity for the reviewer to see you as more the “just a react dev” and depending on how many people your are competing with - gives you the edge. Experience speaks for itself, and if you have the creds then sure those things can look like pure cruft, but what if you’re just starting out? You need something to stand out, and like it or not most reviewers are humans too, even worse - are not strictly technical, so if you for example like to run, mention that in your resume, and the HR person is also a runner, well he can recommend you based on “gut feeling” and how “runners are more emotionally stable and reliable” or some such. And if by a chance their resume ends up reviewed and judged negatively base on non technical prejudice or something, well you’re better of not working there anyway, as it will probably be damaging emotionally in the long run.
notus 7y ago
This is actually a really good point. The more information you give in general just creates more vectors for unwanted biases.
- paulcole 7y ago
  Also the #1 rule to creating a successful profile on a dating site. Say the absolute minimum and nothing more. Better to remain quiet and be thought a fool than open your mouth and remove all doubt.
  - 7y ago

tormeh 7y ago

Obviously CV design depends on the position you apply for. If it's design, marketing or something like that, then I'd say cool design is a big plus. For a technical position it's just distracting and off-topic.

jjeaff 7y ago
I think there is some relation to caring about how things look and being a good coder. I like a well designed resume and I like beautifully written and formatted code. I've actually considered asking candidates to send me a screenshot of their IDE. Obviously not at the top of the list of most important data points, but a data point nonetheless.

jbverschoor 7y ago

Content is always king... Design follows

randomdata 7y ago
We're talking about advertising. Getting noticed is king and the content is essentially irrelevant. There is a reason why Apple buries the tech specs for the iPhone deep in the website where most people will never find it. Most people hiring care about your resume's "tech specs" about as much, but flash gets you noticed. Resumes have seen a trend towards more and more design because early adopters of excess design had resumes that stood out, leading to greater success in their job search. However, as more and more people do the same, the effects quickly diminish.
- jakear 7y ago
  It’s fun to restart the process though. We’re currently in a race to the top for “artful resumes as a means of being noticed”, which means if you submit a “pure content, straight to the point” resume, it will actually be noticed more

_nhynes 7y ago

In the examples the article presents, it looks like the pendulum has swung from “dry” to “overdone” (c.f. 80s era web”). That being said, it’s a net positive that richer media are now emerging as options. It’s like research papers: from plain text to hyperref urls to full on promotional webpages (I’m looking at you Google AI). Some might say that constraints force a pithy communication, but I’ll take a tasteful GIF over a static diagram or dense prose any day.

jon-wood 7y ago

I’m not sure which trend I dislike more, this one, or the general throwing out of the “two pages or fewer” guideline. I regularly get CVs which are four or five pages long, listing everything the person has ever done back to high school. Learn to tailor your CV people, I don’t care that you worked at Subway for six weeks when you were nineteen. I would however love to hear more than a list of technologies used about the three years you spent working in a similar sector.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
siggen 7y ago
lol, I talk to people regardless of what they put in their resume. To me, a resume is more a “please call me” than an expectation that what’s in the resume precisely fits. I don’t expect folks to tailor resume to fit each time they apply to some position. Also, I’ve noticed people (including me) are really bad at writing good resume. Why lose someone who might otherwise be stellar because of their poor resume-writing skills?
- avip 7y ago
  Do consider some positions may get 1000s of applications and render your method impractical.
  - walshemj 7y ago
    You probably need to be careful about where you put your job adverts. If your job add is on monster and the other job sites with lower quality inventory your going to get a lot of applicants. In the UK I used to use monster etal as a way to hit my required quota of job applications - in the UK you have to in theory spend x hours a week and submit n job applications or you may lose your JSA (unemployment pay)
  - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
    You are already screwed in that case without an internal rec. HR/recruiter resume filtering is extremely crude, maybe look at the prestige of your school, the prestige of your former companies, and some keyword matching.

vinceguidry 7y ago

Were resumes ever really useful for more than sending very specific signals? I suspect they probably never were. Hiring managers just put them all into buckets "Ivy League, good college, has professional experience," and unless there were obvious red flags, just called everyone on the list that they wanted to hire and let the interview process sort them out. If you needed more vetting on the inbound, then it's easier to just source candidates another way than to try to read the resume tea leaves.

avip 7y ago
I factually know that’s not the case as multiple times I’ve sent cvs to positions I’m a perfect fit for and never heard a thing. I’m quite confident reading resumes is old school habit of apatosaurusish generation.
- vinceguidry 7y ago
  Maybe you just didn't send the right signals?
  - avip 7y ago
    Give me an A/B to test that and I’m in.
    - daveFNbuck 7y ago
      It's pretty simple to set up a scientific test for resume content. You can find examples of reports of studies on names pretty easily. You just set up a template and send out hundreds of resumes with the thing you're testing tweaked. If sending multiple resumes to the same company, also vary the things you're not testing in ways that you think will be insignificant (e.g. use different names like Jack, John, Joe but don't use names that indicate a difference in possibly salient factors like gender or ethnicity). People do this sort of thing to test hiring biases all the time. Ideally you'd be doing it from a university and have an ethics board and people experienced with experiment design overseeing what you're doing to help ensure you're doing it right.

scarmig 7y ago

Next time I have to apply to a job with a resume, I swear, I'm just going to use one formatted in raw markdown and limited to a page in readable font.

jakear 7y ago
I started doing that a bit ago actually. I’ve been successful. One pages document, all text, bullet points, font size/weight and document structure to mark significance levels. One other plus is that it makes the automatic resume importers work much better.
- cbanek 7y ago
  Totally agree. I do plain ASCII text, specifically to help the robots, and it's easier to break down and paste into stupid application forms where they want your resume, but they also want you to write in all the info from your resume too.

rayrrr 7y ago

Young Mr. Bueno has a bright future ahead of him designing WeWork SEC filings.

ravenstine 7y ago

Gen Z is smart. If you can look good, which isn't hard to do when most resumes have no photo, I have no doubt you'll get ahead. 20/20 episode on "lookism": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTfRRmFC4-c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTfRRmFC4-c TL;DR of the video: Good looks will get you hired, make you more money, and make people think you're smarter.

Aloha 7y ago
The privilege of beauty. It's a thing I've reckoned with my entire life, though I only really realized what it was in the last 5 years.
- Jedi72 7y ago
  I gave been waiting #HotPrivilege or equivalent to become a trending hashtag since this whole privilege-acknowledging affair got started.
- ravenstine 7y ago
  We all understand it, but many of us aren't as conscious about its extent. I only became truly cognizant of the privilege of beauty when I lost weight; I don't think people who have been skinny their whole lives can fathom just how different people treat you if you're overweight.
bboygravity 7y ago
Totally agreed. Isn't this a super open door though? I mean: Tinder? LinkedIN? Instagram? Sales? Marketing? This isn't exactly a new discovery in the sales and marketing world is it? And since getting a job = sales...
- ravenstine 7y ago
  It's not a new discovery for people in marketing and sales, but the average person hasn't been capitalizing on their looks until fairly recently. 10 years ago, I don't remember encountering any resumes with photos. Even at my last job when we were hiring for a new engineer, we didn't get a single resume with a photo.

Invictus0 7y ago

It makes sense that resumes are becoming better designed: we have been told for years now that recruiters only spend seconds looking at a resume, and many people now have the tools to create a well designed resume. The irony here is that employers are declining candidates on the basis of overdesigning their resume, given that they are ostensibly advocating the position that only the content is important.

leftyted 7y ago

I think the source of this is professional "career adviser" types. When applying for jobs out of school, I was told: 1. I needed to "tell stories" about myself (doesn't matter if they're true) 2. I needed to boast in my resume about my "accomplishments" using buzzwords 3. I needed to have some kind of catchy elevator pitch describing myself 4. I needed at least one "playful" descriptor (e.g. "semicolon enthusiast" or something like that) 5. Lying on your resume is expected and totally fine 6. I needed to apply for ~10 positions a week All of these things made me deeply uncomfortable. I don't think self-description is possible. We reveal ourselves through our actions and nothing matters less than "how you view yourself". When people attempt to describe themselves they tend to list things that they want other people to believe about them but have no correspondence in reality. I disregarded all of this advice and worked really hard on my projects. I didn't do any "coding interview prep" and during my interviews I admitted when I didn't know something and explained what I thought I knew about it. This worked well for me; I didn't have any trouble finding a job.

ryandrake 7y ago
The only bit of that advice that is remotely good is #6. The rest is useless at best and counterproductive at worst. What ever happened to traditional resume strategies like STAR and quantifying value? Done college career offices know about these anymore?
buboard 7y ago
Or just, people are unemployed and have a lot of time to fiddle about with their resumes
sdinsn 7y ago
Career advisers at my university never gave advice like that. They mainly highlighted that resumes should be clear, informative, and concise.
Silhouette 7y ago
FWIW, that is almost exactly the opposite of what any careers advisor I've ever met would tell a new graduate applying for their first job. Particularly things like lying on the application are big no-nos. That's potential grounds for dismissal if it ever comes out and it will damage your credibility later on if word gets around.

ma2rten 7y ago

I am surprised, I thought having a photo on your resume is an absolute no-go in the US.

peter303 7y ago
This is where linkedin confuses me. No photo considerably lowers the attention you het. On the other hand the photo should be professionally shot with you wearing business attire. Professional socities sometimes offer free head shoots.

forgingahead 7y ago

I'll admit, the headline and the general comments here biased me to waving my fist at the clouds and shouting "hell yeah! These youngsters don't appreciate tradition no more!", BUT, the examples in the article are actually reasonable. As mentioned elsewhere in the comments here, hiring is a two-way street. Certain industries and professions don't appreciate this creative approach, however young folks entering the workforce are fighting to be seen above the crowds. If your company is particular about specific information and formatting, use an applicant tracking system and/or job board that forces your applicants to apply your way. But if you ask for resumes to an email account, or if colleges are still requesting "resume drops" for firms looking to hire on-campus, then folks are going to try grab attention to move the process forward in any way they can.

pseingatl 7y ago

A resumé is advertising. A resumé is marketing. A few thoughts: A resumé is not a biography. It' a pitch. When was the last time anyone tried to sell you a product or service with a white sheet of paper and black ink? Exactly. The six page--or ten page--credentials document is for the interview. For a recent project management position, Facebook received 10,000 resumés. That's too many for the HR department ro review. FB, like many others, use automated systems to weed through these. Graphic and marketing details, innovations, are lost. You can try to game the system: post the job requirements in a white font on white so all the keywords are there. But this is an inexact science. For a small to medium size business, the "new" c.v. has as good or better chance than the traditional c.v.

seanmcdirmid 7y ago
If you get an internal rec, you can bypass HR looking at your resume all together at Facebook. I’m sure that’s how 80-90% of the people get hire there.
- pseingatl 7y ago
  Not correct. They have a three or four-tiered hiring process and by the second tier, everyone is looking at your resumé.

sundayedition 7y ago

I include a very brief summary (< 1 line) that details most of my professional work history (not always tech related, but illustrates progressive responsibility), so I'm probably one of the people whose resume gets thrown out (per some of the posters) on the regular. I'm OK taking that kind of risk because I'm looking for a manager/team who understands a team member is more than the sum of what's on their targeted 1 page resume. Although I'm sure you're all great managers, I can appreciate being weeded out early.

buboard 7y ago

Judging from the discussions here i get the sense that hiring is primarily an exercise to avoid biases in the US. Which probably means that the bigger problem is that most CVs look the same nowadays, with lots of people checking all the points for a job. Which probably means CVs are not a good way to source candidates , but what else is there out ther?

sdinsn 7y ago

> ...received a résumé for a finance job earlier this year that included an avatar of the applicant sweating. > “That was to show they hustle like no one else,” says John Lowe, the company’s chief executive. “That is an important attribute that we prize.” That has to be one of the most ridiculous things I've heard

ignoramous 7y ago
Hey, don't blame the applicant. May be they A/B tested the résumé [0], for all we know. They're selling themselves, and résumé is their landing page. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20151104203316/https://signalvnoise.com/posts/2991-behind-the-scenes-ab-testing-part-3-final https://web.archive.org/web/20151104203316/https://signalvno...
mv4 7y ago
The whole premise reminds me of the infamous "impossible is nothing" resume submitted to UBS back in 2006. Sadly, the author died. For those unfamiliar, it included: * Cover letter * Resume: one and a half pages * Writing sample: eight pages * A glamour shot of Vayner * Seven-minute video that features the following feats by Vayner: * Interview: gives advice for achieving life goals * Bench press: 495 pounds (225 kilograms) * Downhill skiing with jumps * Tennis serve: 140 miles per hour (225 km/h or 63 m/s) * Ballroom dancing with a female dancer * Karate chop: seven bricks broken Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_Is_Nothing_(video_r%C3%A9sum%C3%A9) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_Is_Nothing_(video_r...
- FillardMillmore 7y ago
  This is absolutely hilarious and I've never heard of it. Thanks!
- HenryBemis 7y ago
  That reminds me of the "Possimpible"(?) episode of HIMYM with "Barney Stinson"'s video CV: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GuLcxg5VGuo https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GuLcxg5VGuo Just checked, that is a 2009 episode, thus/possible created in 2008, so the aforementioned CV predated that of the HIMYM TV series https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1256175/?ref_=fn_al_tt_11 https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1256175/?ref_=fn_al_tt_11

elicash 7y ago

> The school ultimately felt the bitmoji résumé was inappropriate. > “We’re not a lot of crotchety old people who don’t understand how bitmojis work,” says Ms. Posthuma, who is 41. “It looked very juvenile.” Seems juvenile to overlook the substance of a resume just because the person also shows their personality. It's unfortunate more people don't care about the actual skills needed for the job and instead make hiring decisions on the weirdest possible criteria. My favorite, very common, example: throwing out a resume because it has a typo for positions where typos don't really matter (most positions). An approach where you stand out seems to make a lot of sense, nevertheless. You can be an "average" candidate and literally never get the job because they're only hiring one person for the position. An approach that turns some off but gets the attention of a few makes sense in many scenarios.

duxup 7y ago
It's hard to imagine the justification for "inappropriate" is for a bitmoji of someone waving hi. I can understand not caring for it or it not contributing to the resume but it seems strange to see something like that so negatively. The whole job application system seems like a meta game where the most absurd things get focused on.
- elicash 7y ago
  Another example: how people dress. It's bizarre that for most employers in the U.S., if you don't dress professionally enough in your interview you won't get a job. Even in jobs where you have a uniform and can't choose your own clothing if you were chosen for the position! This can cut both ways for folks who gather on Hacker News I think, where for some positions the way to signal you're the type of person who just cares about results is to INTENTIONALLY dress less professionally, weirdly enough. Dressing professionally shouldn't be seen as a negative, either. And don't get me started on the "firm handshake" people...
DangitBobby 7y ago
Agreed. And many commenters in here are saying that they'd throw out such a resume... Pretty alarming that so many would not just use such inconsequential measures for candidate selection, but be proud of themselves for it.

wy35 7y ago

As a current Gen Z applying to jobs, I think this trend is very minor and depends on the industry. Anecdotally, in all the tech career fairs and networking events/resume drops I've been to, 95% of resumes follow the traditional format without a hint of color. The other 5% are people who downloaded a flashy template for the first time and don't know what they're doing. For designers, I think it's reasonable to have a "unique" resume design, but for other non-visual jobs it's just in poor taste.

baron816 7y ago
Yep. Article looks like click bait.
rolltiide 7y ago
I’m just glad millenials arent getting flack anymore, and no longer mean “people younger than me” Peer pressure for the win! Just keep correcting out of touch people
- odessacubbage 7y ago
  it means we're old though ;_;.
nkrisc 7y ago
As a designer, if I was given a resume that looked what was described in the article I'd Mark them down a point. Knowing your audience and the appropriate time and place is an important part of design. If they send their resume somewhere that likes that, then good for them.
- realshowbiz 7y ago
  Yeah knowing the audience is key. But an eye catching resume can also be very valuable. In this field a design with something like familiar grey/white fixed-width type on a matte black background, ascii table outlines, and “syntax” highlighting, etc, etc, would probably get some more attention (good or bad)
7y ago

vikingcaffiene 7y ago

What you know, what you’ve recently done. That’s literally all I want to know when a resume comes to me. I could care less about the design.

chadash 7y ago

You know what kind of resume stands out? A traditional one with nice formatting, nothing extraneous (if you have a college degree I don't care where you went to high school), and no typos. Maybe 25% of resumes that I see hit all of these criteria. If you can't pay attention to detail on a one-page resume that you update every year or two and send out to every job that you apply to, then how can I possibly expect that you are going to pay attention to detail in the code that you write?

davidhyde 7y ago
A lot of errors you see in resumes are as a result of change. This is a document that gets re-compressed into its original length every time you add content to it. It is important to have an error free resume because it gives a good first impression but that's where it ends. Just because a second language English speaker doesn't understand the nuances of the language does not make them a poor coder. Furthermore, who says that making coding mistakes makes for a poor developer anyway? You should work in an environment that is forgiving to mistakes. For example, using unit tests, integration tests and code reviews. What I look for is perseverance, creativity and the ability to get on with other developers.
- chadash 7y ago
  I hear what you are saying and I think it's only fair to be more lax for foreign applicants although I actually find that they usually have fewer to typos, perhaps because they'll ask someone to proofread their resume. As to mistakes in code, yeah process is important, but so is attention to detail. Unit tests can only take you so far, so it's important that coders read over their code and make sure the logic is sound before merging.

kevindong 7y ago

Some of the examples shown were obviously bad, but others I (as a non-recruiter) thought were pretty tasteful and honestly would be pretty good at getting the candidate hired. e.g. Valentino Bogliacino Bueno's highlights on his resume: recruiters are going to skim through his resume and he's catering to that behavior by putting the highlights of his resume prominently up front and center

Silhouette 7y ago

These might be the most misunderstood, dogmatically constructed documents that exist. In reality, a bit of common sense and a basic understanding of how recruitment processes tend to work will go a long way. Hopefully for those new to the job market who don't yet have that understanding, a careers advisor or similar mentor will help them to acquire it quickly. If you're applying somewhere big and you haven't established any prior connection then chances are you're going to be screened by some sort of automated system as a first step, so you need to provide sufficient information in sufficiently recognisable terms to clear that hurdle. Sometimes this is little better than a tedious keyword-matching exercise, but it's a necessary first step if you're not in a position to reach a real person at your potential employer from the start. In any case, the first human being to read your CV/resume and make a real decision on progressing your application or not is probably going to be spending seconds, not minutes, reviewing it. Chances are they'll be looking for your general area(s) of competence and approximate level of experience to see if you fit the required profile, and any obvious red flags that would disqualify you immediately. Anything else is a potentially damaging distraction at this stage. Subsequent human beings to read your CV/resume will hopefully be involved in the in-person recruiting process, i.e., phone screens, on-site interviews, etc. These people are probably going to spend a bit longer reading now you're on a short(er) list, but they're probably looking for the opposite: what particular qualities or specific accomplishments make you stand out from the crowd as a better candidate? It follows from the above that an effective CV/resume should probably include just enough filler and buzzwords to get past an automated filter, just enough overview material to show you're the right sort of candidate, and then a few carefully selected highlights to intrigue the people making the real decisions in the later stages and provide interesting interview topics. Anything else, particularly a complete life history including the LOGO program you wrote at age 10 to draw a circle, is wasting everyone's time and just gives more opportunities to get rejected. If you can't fit that on a single page at any stage in your career then improving your CV/resume writing skills will probably improve your chances of landing that next job (barring certain fields like academia, where expectations are often quite different to most recruitment processes).

gdubs 7y ago

Creativity that solves a problem can be a good signal. Creativity for creativity’s sake is a mixed bag, and depends a lot on the role.

ggm 7y ago

End of (work) life stage with 37 years continuous employment in two economies and 7-10 employees under my belt, I do not believe I could cope in this hiring market, at these behaviours. I do not envy the cohorts surviving in this market/model. I feel we screwed things up, allowing HR to drive to this, and I feel we overplay "selling" in hiring, instead of letting people reach out and find like minds. I realize its a highly competitive market, but I think we've allowed the distortions to overtake the real intent. I do not believe this is a good model. I do not want to participate or facilitate this model of resume/CV and hiring.

tmaly 7y ago

Outside of the US, many countries have photos on the resume. I could recall the first time I saw one about a decade ago. Not sure what I would do if I saw an info graphic on a resume.

smsm42 7y ago

I've seen some very beautifully designed resumes, some even looking more like work of art than a primarily utilitarian document it essentially is (or supposed to be). I can not deny I liked the beautiful ones, but only to the point - if the content did not match what I needed, I rejected it without a second thought, maybe with a slight sigh of "well, it was a beautiful resume, too bad it's not going anywhere". Moreover, having to go through a pile of literally hundreds, I didn't have much time to admire fine design points too much, and by the time it comes to select candidates which get to the point of in person interview and other considerations, everybody would forget how the resume looked like. So for technical candidate it probably does not matter, even if personally I like aesthetically pleasing ones - just it won't help any on actual technical merits.

dymk 7y ago

And it's a fad that will live and die quickly.

theshadowknows 7y ago

My resume is a single page. Black and white text. It does have my name and contact details. But that’s all. I did take the time to use proper formatting though. Paragraph and heading spacing for example rather than just a bunch of returns.

blaser-waffle 7y ago

LaTeX motherfucker, do you use it?

mv4 7y ago

How would I describe myself? Three words. Hard-working, Alpha male, Jackhammer, Merciless, Insatiable.