8 ms·

I love stories like this. I have one of my own, actually. When I was first getting into IT I started sending out CVs. Mine was terrible. I had been working in

by movedx 5y ago

I love stories like this. I have one of my own, actually. When I was first getting into IT I started sending out CVs. Mine was terrible. I had been working in call centres for years at this point and all my "experience" was basically self-taught, so not really experience at all. As a result my CV was void of any actual content a hiring manager in IT would want to read, thus it was binned a lot. I applied for a job at a nearby network hardware repair place. They needed someone to look after their Cisco kit and about 30 Debian Linux systems. I was attracted to the mix of responsibilities so I applied, sending in me not-so-good CV. I was eventually asked to come in to have a chat after waiting about a week to hear back from the place. At the end of the interview, Bob (let's call him), said I was more knowledgeable than the RHCEs that were coming through his door. This was nice to hear, but then he said something that really made me smile... Apparently my CV was worse than I thought. It was so bad, that Bob literally put it in the bin under his desk. About four days later, Bob was reading through a local Linux User Group (LUG) mailing list and he saw a name he recognised: mine. So he opens the email and reads the thread in which I helped another LUG member compile a sound driver for their kernel. The instructions I gave worked. Bob was impressed but he couldn't quite remember where he had seen the name. At this point the business owner, John (heh...), was standing besides Bob's desk and noticed my CV in the bin. He pulls it out and reads my name across the top. The penny drops for Bob and I get the call to come in and have a chat. I got the job.

bluedino 5y ago
>> Bob was reading through a local Linux User Group (LUG) mailing list and he saw a name he recognised: mine. I had the opposite happen. I took a job doing some programming, some Linux administration, some helpdesk. I came across a convoluted database setup, nobody in their right mind would run multiple servers on the same machine this way... After researching the issue, I found that it was totally unnecessary, and likely a holdover from an earlier (like 15 years earlier) version of the software, because now it was natively support. During my searching, on a mailing list I found a message from my now-boss. Asking how to do the exact thing they were still doing. And a couple messages from developers of the software basically saying, "If you did it this way, it would in theory work, but it won't ever be supported"
- yabones 5y ago
  When I was younger, I inherited a lot of old PC hardware from my father. One particular motherboard had a massive gouge through the heatsink for the southbridge, and I could never figure out why. One day, I was trying to get Mac OSX to run on this particular system, and on page six of google search I finally found a guide to configuring the BIOS for this board that actually worked! It was one of the very first boards that supported UEFI (iirc, before the spec was fully ratified), and the documentation was very incomplete. I dug a few pages deeper in the thread, and the same poster was describing the poor design of the heatsinks and how they interfered with the full length PCI cards that were used in pro audio at the time. The same poster described how they carefully prized the aluminum heatsink off, screwed it to a board and used a dremel tool to make a slot just wide enough for the card to safely fit. That was strange... I had exactly the same groove cut in my heatsink...
  - bluedino 5y ago
    Sounds right up there with filed-down cards or connectors that had longer grooves cut in them!
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      I had a parking light burn out on my car. Went to the car store, and a replacement bulb was $$. Perused the lamps on tags in the aisles, and found one that looked the same but had different "ears" on the side. Bought it, and filed off the ears so it would fit in my car's socket. Worked perfectly, for a small fraction of the price. Of course, my car is full of aftermarket parts, so I am used to making "adjustments" to get them to fit.
      - jimmaswell 5y ago
        I had to look up what a parking light is. It sounds totally unnecessary to me, but I'd say that about a lot of things put in cars after the 90s. Probably not important in this case since it's just a light for parking, but lights for cars cost more due to having to meet exacting DOT standards/testing. I wouldn't do this with a brake light or real headlight.
pulse7 5y ago
There was a thread on HN a week ago [1] about "How to write a resume that converts" and the most voted comment starts with a sentence "The importance of resumes has been overstated for many years now, and I look forward to the day they are phased out entirely."... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27112542 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27112542
- bluGill 5y ago
  It is, and always been: who you know more is more important than what you know.
  - kindall 5y ago
    People always say that, but only one of the full-time jobs I've had in my thirty-year career has come from networking. In one other situation I was the guy who got several former co-workers hired, all at once, a frankly freak occurrence I still don't quite believe actually happened. My current job, I was contacted out of the blue by the team's manager on LinkedIn. Most of my jobs have come from being active on the Internet, or else from applying cold.
    - vidarh 5y ago
      It depends a lot on your network and pure luck. Here's an example of how much it can matter: * I co-founded my first company with people I met at university. * We got our first investor thanks to a chance encounter between said investor and one of my co-founders at a bar. * When we exited that company, our investors lawyer arranged a meeting for us with another of his clients, who hired us. * One of the execs at that company hired me for his next startup, and introduced me to his brothers, so I could work part-time for them until he got funding. * One of my co-workers at that company was one of my co-founders at my next company, and our other co-founders were friends of that person. One of them had worked for the VCs who invested in our first round. * [I went to Yahoo for a couple of years -- no connections there.] * The general counsel at my last pre-Yahoo startup pulled me into my next startup. * [I then went to a web dev agency, no connections there] * The co-founder of the company I worked at before the web-dev agency contacted me about some contracting, and I ended up joining full time (my current job) So Yahoo and the web dev agency are the only places I've worked over the last 26 years where my resume has mattered. Even then, at the web-dev agency I name-dropped one of people who'd hired me previously, and it impressed them, so who knows how much my resume really mattered there either.
jerf 5y ago
As someone currently wading through resumes and kinda worried about missing some one like this, here's a tip to anyone else like you: The purpose of a resume is to get you hired. If you have something like an incredible technical sound driver support email chain like that... put a link to it in your resume. Yeah, your resume has standard fields, and those are indeed sorted on by HR, so don't leave out the skills & experience... but otherwise, the resume is free form. Generally not prose exactly, but free form. Link to ANYTHING you think will help you get the job. And don't just say "I participate in some LUG"... that can mean you show up to the meetings once every couple of months to eat the free food. Show your helpfulness in an email chain. Show a project that you did with them with a link that explicitly says you did a big portion of it. If no such link exists, get one created! By no means do I promise wonders if you do this. HR filters may still eat your resume. But if you do get through to a real human, they may look at those things, and the ones who will understand what this means are the ones you want to work for anyhow. If you've got the skills to pay the bills but your resume looks like any other high school dropout's, I can tell you, from the other side of the desk, you've given me no way to tell any different. It may stink that all we have are resumes in the initial process... but at least that resume is under your control. (Mostly. Sometimes it gets chewed on. But speaking for myself, I'm looking at raw resumes straight from the candidate and that's not uncommon.) Don't be afraid to use it, and don't be afraid to toot your own horn, that's the whole point of this particular document. (Similarly, to the extent possible without lying, don't say "I participated in some project" as your work experience. Write something you did in the project. Don't say "I participated in a billing system upgrade", say how you rewrote the UI in React to conform to accessibility standards and made it run 10 times faster than before and customers uniformly loved it and paid lots more money or whatever. "Participation" could be "I had my hand held for every bug as I struggled to keep up" and it could be "I stepped up and took more responsibility than anyone expected and almost single-handedly completed the project, freeing up the other developers" or anything in between. Unfortunately, based on experience, I kinda have to assume the worst because it's usually right. If "the worst" interpretation of that phrase isn't right, don't leave it open to me!) Believe me, if you're doing Linux support on a mailing list, or anything even remotely like that, you stand out, at least to the right people. Do whatever it takes to work that on to the resume somehow. The "standard resume form" is a skeleton to be fleshed out, not a straightjacket of form.
JJMcJ 5y ago
> Apparently my CV was worse than I thought. I have seen some awful resumes, including for people with PhDs and long records of accomplishments. Even people who have been through resume writing seminars at job search organizations.
bityard 5y ago
Ha! My first job was effectively through a LUG as well. In the early 2000's, I moved to a new city and joined the LUG there. A few months go by and I'm chatting with someone in the room and they ask what I do. I replied that I was going to college but also looking for part-time work. The next day, another LUG member who owned a small consulting company called me up and said he overheard what I said and pretty much just offered me the job right over the phone. In fact, looking back at my employment history, only one of my jobs was a direct result of someone seeing my resume before they even met me.
8bitsrule 5y ago
Damn. Sometimes the world works with a chuckle. If interviews worked, then Bob would not have not needed two slaps upside the head to get it right.

by movedx 5y ago

bluedino 5y ago

>> Bob was reading through a local Linux User Group (LUG) mailing list and he saw a name he recognised: mine. I had the opposite happen. I took a job doing some programming, some Linux administration, some helpdesk. I came across a convoluted database setup, nobody in their right mind would run multiple servers on the same machine this way... After researching the issue, I found that it was totally unnecessary, and likely a holdover from an earlier (like 15 years earlier) version of the software, because now it was natively support. During my searching, on a mailing list I found a message from my now-boss. Asking how to do the exact thing they were still doing. And a couple messages from developers of the software basically saying, "If you did it this way, it would in theory work, but it won't ever be supported"

yabones 5y ago
When I was younger, I inherited a lot of old PC hardware from my father. One particular motherboard had a massive gouge through the heatsink for the southbridge, and I could never figure out why. One day, I was trying to get Mac OSX to run on this particular system, and on page six of google search I finally found a guide to configuring the BIOS for this board that actually worked! It was one of the very first boards that supported UEFI (iirc, before the spec was fully ratified), and the documentation was very incomplete. I dug a few pages deeper in the thread, and the same poster was describing the poor design of the heatsinks and how they interfered with the full length PCI cards that were used in pro audio at the time. The same poster described how they carefully prized the aluminum heatsink off, screwed it to a board and used a dremel tool to make a slot just wide enough for the card to safely fit. That was strange... I had exactly the same groove cut in my heatsink...
- bluedino 5y ago
  Sounds right up there with filed-down cards or connectors that had longer grooves cut in them!
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    I had a parking light burn out on my car. Went to the car store, and a replacement bulb was $$. Perused the lamps on tags in the aisles, and found one that looked the same but had different "ears" on the side. Bought it, and filed off the ears so it would fit in my car's socket. Worked perfectly, for a small fraction of the price. Of course, my car is full of aftermarket parts, so I am used to making "adjustments" to get them to fit.
    - jimmaswell 5y ago
      I had to look up what a parking light is. It sounds totally unnecessary to me, but I'd say that about a lot of things put in cars after the 90s. Probably not important in this case since it's just a light for parking, but lights for cars cost more due to having to meet exacting DOT standards/testing. I wouldn't do this with a brake light or real headlight.

pulse7 5y ago

There was a thread on HN a week ago [1] about "How to write a resume that converts" and the most voted comment starts with a sentence "The importance of resumes has been overstated for many years now, and I look forward to the day they are phased out entirely."... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27112542 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27112542

bluGill 5y ago
It is, and always been: who you know more is more important than what you know.
- kindall 5y ago
  People always say that, but only one of the full-time jobs I've had in my thirty-year career has come from networking. In one other situation I was the guy who got several former co-workers hired, all at once, a frankly freak occurrence I still don't quite believe actually happened. My current job, I was contacted out of the blue by the team's manager on LinkedIn. Most of my jobs have come from being active on the Internet, or else from applying cold.
  - vidarh 5y ago
    It depends a lot on your network and pure luck. Here's an example of how much it can matter: * I co-founded my first company with people I met at university. * We got our first investor thanks to a chance encounter between said investor and one of my co-founders at a bar. * When we exited that company, our investors lawyer arranged a meeting for us with another of his clients, who hired us. * One of the execs at that company hired me for his next startup, and introduced me to his brothers, so I could work part-time for them until he got funding. * One of my co-workers at that company was one of my co-founders at my next company, and our other co-founders were friends of that person. One of them had worked for the VCs who invested in our first round. * [I went to Yahoo for a couple of years -- no connections there.] * The general counsel at my last pre-Yahoo startup pulled me into my next startup. * [I then went to a web dev agency, no connections there] * The co-founder of the company I worked at before the web-dev agency contacted me about some contracting, and I ended up joining full time (my current job) So Yahoo and the web dev agency are the only places I've worked over the last 26 years where my resume has mattered. Even then, at the web-dev agency I name-dropped one of people who'd hired me previously, and it impressed them, so who knows how much my resume really mattered there either.

jerf 5y ago

As someone currently wading through resumes and kinda worried about missing some one like this, here's a tip to anyone else like you: The purpose of a resume is to get you hired. If you have something like an incredible technical sound driver support email chain like that... put a link to it in your resume. Yeah, your resume has standard fields, and those are indeed sorted on by HR, so don't leave out the skills & experience... but otherwise, the resume is free form. Generally not prose exactly, but free form. Link to ANYTHING you think will help you get the job. And don't just say "I participate in some LUG"... that can mean you show up to the meetings once every couple of months to eat the free food. Show your helpfulness in an email chain. Show a project that you did with them with a link that explicitly says you did a big portion of it. If no such link exists, get one created! By no means do I promise wonders if you do this. HR filters may still eat your resume. But if you do get through to a real human, they may look at those things, and the ones who will understand what this means are the ones you want to work for anyhow. If you've got the skills to pay the bills but your resume looks like any other high school dropout's, I can tell you, from the other side of the desk, you've given me no way to tell any different. It may stink that all we have are resumes in the initial process... but at least that resume is under your control. (Mostly. Sometimes it gets chewed on. But speaking for myself, I'm looking at raw resumes straight from the candidate and that's not uncommon.) Don't be afraid to use it, and don't be afraid to toot your own horn, that's the whole point of this particular document. (Similarly, to the extent possible without lying, don't say "I participated in some project" as your work experience. Write something you did in the project. Don't say "I participated in a billing system upgrade", say how you rewrote the UI in React to conform to accessibility standards and made it run 10 times faster than before and customers uniformly loved it and paid lots more money or whatever. "Participation" could be "I had my hand held for every bug as I struggled to keep up" and it could be "I stepped up and took more responsibility than anyone expected and almost single-handedly completed the project, freeing up the other developers" or anything in between. Unfortunately, based on experience, I kinda have to assume the worst because it's usually right. If "the worst" interpretation of that phrase isn't right, don't leave it open to me!) Believe me, if you're doing Linux support on a mailing list, or anything even remotely like that, you stand out, at least to the right people. Do whatever it takes to work that on to the resume somehow. The "standard resume form" is a skeleton to be fleshed out, not a straightjacket of form.

JJMcJ 5y ago

> Apparently my CV was worse than I thought. I have seen some awful resumes, including for people with PhDs and long records of accomplishments. Even people who have been through resume writing seminars at job search organizations.

bityard 5y ago

Ha! My first job was effectively through a LUG as well. In the early 2000's, I moved to a new city and joined the LUG there. A few months go by and I'm chatting with someone in the room and they ask what I do. I replied that I was going to college but also looking for part-time work. The next day, another LUG member who owned a small consulting company called me up and said he overheard what I said and pretty much just offered me the job right over the phone. In fact, looking back at my employment history, only one of my jobs was a direct result of someone seeing my resume before they even met me.

8bitsrule 5y ago

Damn. Sometimes the world works with a chuckle. If interviews worked, then Bob would not have not needed two slaps upside the head to get it right.