5 ms·

Let's be honest. The guy reviewed 22 CVs and went to write a blog post about it. I have interviewed hundreds of candidates, not just red their CVs (typically a

Let's be honest. The guy reviewed 22 CVs and went to write a blog post about it. I have interviewed hundreds of candidates, not just red their CVs (typically around 1 candidate a week for the past 15 years, currently 3 candidates a week on average). What I have learned is to be very cautious when looking through CVs lest you select for candidates who can make good looking CVs. I have met many nice and competent people who don't write blog post and who can't make nice CV. They don't make projects for show because they have enough work at... work and they don't do ten other projects because they want to focus where it really matters for them. They might have other non-technical hobbies like riding a bike or picking up girls at the bar. They may not feel the need to impose their interests and thoughts on everybody else or they might think their thoughts and experiences are not at all valuable to general public. A person who writes blog posts, for-show github repos, who creates public image, is just one of many types of developers. If you select for this you are missing out on many excellent people.

mesaframe 6y ago
But issue is the people you are talking about rarely gets noticed.
- lmilcin 6y ago
  They do, just not on the front page of HN.
- mstade 6y ago
  I don't know about that, most of the people I've ever worked with (and hired or helped hire) seems to fall in to the category of not writing blogs, etc. A silent majority, if you will. I may well be wrong of course, and I don't doubt that being better at marketing gets you noticed more easily but that's not the same as everyone else rarely getting noticed.
  - lmilcin 6y ago
    Exactly. Not every act of noticing must be noticed by general public, if that makes sense. You might be doing a good job and get promoted and be part of 99.9% of population who will never make headlines.
- itronitron 6y ago
  And the beauty of it is that they are perfectly happy with that.
  - mesaframe 6y ago
    How can you say on behalf of every one of them?
PopeDotNinja 6y ago
I hope my backend self never needs to make a snappy looking pretty something. If I am ever judged by the quality of my visual design skills, I’ll be executed for crimes against eyeballs.
- itronitron 6y ago
  I just run a script that auto-generates a pdf via html from an edited markdown file. The css just defines the font and a few spacing parameters. It takes all the headache out of trying to format everything nicely in Word, and any fanciness will look dated real soon.
  - PopeDotNinja 6y ago
    For my CV, I just use a PDF of my LinkedIn Profile. Seems to work well enough. Maybe a bit long, but the page space is used inefficiently, so I blame big fonts and large sidebars.
plake 6y ago
Exactly. It's one type of candidate, that the OP happens to like; you don't need this stuff to get hired. Personally my gut reaction to lots of side projects or social media is slightly negative, simply because my experience has been that those candidates tend to interview slightly worse. I think side projects can be valuable when you want to demonstrate competence at something, and you don't otherwise have experience to draw on. If you're a barista who's learning to code in their spare time, or you want to understand a hot new technology, sure. Otherwise, I'd rather ask you about your actual work.
- munchbunny 6y ago
  my experience has been that those candidates tend to interview slightly worse. Mine hasn’t been that way, but in my experience those publicly visible artifacts tend to be high noise signals anyway. Over time I’ve generally converged on a few criteria for the resume stage: (1) does this person have a minimally credible claim of being able to deliver projects at the level of the position? (2) if the job requires background knowledge, do they have a relevant background? If they have a public Github profile, I might go look at some PR’s created by them to confirm that they’re generally respectful to others and that their actual code looks not-insane. Once you actually watch them work and talk to them, you will get a better sense for them as a candidate, but CVs really don’t tell you much, so it’s best not to pretend that they do.

mesaframe 6y ago

But issue is the people you are talking about rarely gets noticed.

lmilcin 6y ago
They do, just not on the front page of HN.
mstade 6y ago
I don't know about that, most of the people I've ever worked with (and hired or helped hire) seems to fall in to the category of not writing blogs, etc. A silent majority, if you will. I may well be wrong of course, and I don't doubt that being better at marketing gets you noticed more easily but that's not the same as everyone else rarely getting noticed.
- lmilcin 6y ago
  Exactly. Not every act of noticing must be noticed by general public, if that makes sense. You might be doing a good job and get promoted and be part of 99.9% of population who will never make headlines.
itronitron 6y ago
And the beauty of it is that they are perfectly happy with that.
- mesaframe 6y ago
  How can you say on behalf of every one of them?

PopeDotNinja 6y ago

I hope my backend self never needs to make a snappy looking pretty something. If I am ever judged by the quality of my visual design skills, I’ll be executed for crimes against eyeballs.

itronitron 6y ago
I just run a script that auto-generates a pdf via html from an edited markdown file. The css just defines the font and a few spacing parameters. It takes all the headache out of trying to format everything nicely in Word, and any fanciness will look dated real soon.
- PopeDotNinja 6y ago
  For my CV, I just use a PDF of my LinkedIn Profile. Seems to work well enough. Maybe a bit long, but the page space is used inefficiently, so I blame big fonts and large sidebars.

plake 6y ago

Exactly. It's one type of candidate, that the OP happens to like; you don't need this stuff to get hired. Personally my gut reaction to lots of side projects or social media is slightly negative, simply because my experience has been that those candidates tend to interview slightly worse. I think side projects can be valuable when you want to demonstrate competence at something, and you don't otherwise have experience to draw on. If you're a barista who's learning to code in their spare time, or you want to understand a hot new technology, sure. Otherwise, I'd rather ask you about your actual work.

munchbunny 6y ago
my experience has been that those candidates tend to interview slightly worse. Mine hasn’t been that way, but in my experience those publicly visible artifacts tend to be high noise signals anyway. Over time I’ve generally converged on a few criteria for the resume stage: (1) does this person have a minimally credible claim of being able to deliver projects at the level of the position? (2) if the job requires background knowledge, do they have a relevant background? If they have a public Github profile, I might go look at some PR’s created by them to confirm that they’re generally respectful to others and that their actual code looks not-insane. Once you actually watch them work and talk to them, you will get a better sense for them as a candidate, but CVs really don’t tell you much, so it’s best not to pretend that they do.