8 ms·

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

by 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.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    Many people do get hired cold, but it is the last choice of anyone hiring. If you know the right person you skip to the front of the line with no competition.
  - vitaflo 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. Funny, only one of the gigs I've gotten in my 30 year career has come from not networking...my first one. Every job after that has come about because of people I know recommending me for the job. This has been super helpful over the past 15 years as I've been an independent consultant. In fact, I went indie because I had a network. I don't need to look for gigs anymore, people come to me. I turn down way more gigs than I can take. And I haven't had to have an actual interview for a job in over 20 years. I'm sure this isn't the norm, but it certainly makes work life a lot easier.
  - cercatrova 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. Does that not just imply that your network wasn't that good but not necessarily that the adage "who you know more is more important than what you know" is actually false?
  - taneq 5y ago
    Interesting... Only two of my jobs have not.
  - Cerium 5y ago
    I have the opposite experience. I have never landed a job that I didn't already have a good contact and recommendation for, of course that is probably because I have never tried.
  - theshrike79 5y ago
    I've got exactly zero jobs without networking. =) My first summer jobs were with people my dad knew. The first actual programming job I got because I happened to be tagging along with my friend who had a job interview. From there on in I got jobs mostly because I had a friend inside vouching for my talents. This also goes the other way, I wouldn't join a company where I don't have inside information on how shit actually gets done.
- irrational 5y ago
  I think that is often true, but I work for a Fortune 500 company and did not know anyone who worked there before getting hired. In the 20 years I’ve worked there I’ve been involved in tons of interviewing potential hires. Every single one got their foot in based on their resume. I’ve never seen anyone hired because they knew someone at the company. I’m sure it happens, I’ve just never met anyone it has happened to.
- colechristensen 5y ago
  I have had mediocre experiences, at best, with people bringing in people that they knew from outside the company. There were positive exceptions but usually it ended up being a kind of weird political move that increased divisions in teams. Like there was the group that knew each other from outside and everybody else. something to be wary about
- kevinpet 5y ago
  I've hired a handful of referrals, but when I get referrals I immediately look to see if their resume has relevant experience.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  This is really an unhealthy and flawed understanding of what is a necessary part of life. The problem is how to find good people, and the more society downgrades objective measures of excellence, the more people need to rely on personal recommendations. It's not that people wouldn't take a stranger for a job, but when there is a lot of uncertainty, they can't absorb the risk of the stranger not being qualified. So they will always prefer someone they know is qualified over someone who they don't know is qualified but might be better. The above is as necessary and unsurprising as rain falling to the ground. There is no other way that things can work. Thus the practical advice you can give someone is not only to learn something but to widen their professional network so that there are many people who know they've learned something. It is the exact same thing in a big bureaucracy. You have to know how to sell yourself, which just means you need to successfully communicate your accomplishments. Too many people do great work, but they don't communicate their accomplishments, and then they are surprised that less qualified people are promoted over them, and they grow cynical or resentful when it is really their failure at communication that has caused the problem. Like many things in life, it's better to be mediocre at two necessary things rather than excellent at one and skipping the other. But no amount of righteous anger about the unfairness of life is going to change the fact that people are not omniscient and that talent is hard for strangers to evaluate.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - mr_toad 5y ago
    > their failure at communication So much to unpick in that statement. The potential for communication differences in culture, gender, and personality to outweigh job performance. That communication is a two way street, but poor communication is often attributed to one party. The tendency for the promotion process to favour “upward focused” communication and communicators. The fact that objective performance measurement, which could ameliorate some of these problems, is a joke. It’s true that communication skills are essential, but laying the blame on poor performers just perpetuates problems.
  - viraptor 5y ago
    > the more society downgrades objective measures of excellence I'd really rather go with "the more society discovers that we don't know how to obtain objective measures of excellence". We really don't have good tests that can fit in the interview slot for a lot of software engineering jobs.
- taneq 5y ago
  That’s how the saying goes but what really matters isn’t who you know, but who knows you (and was impressed by your work).
- WalterBright 5y ago
  Successful people put themselves in situations where they can get to know the people who are important. For example, attend the tech conferences in your field. Contribute to open source projects they are involved with. Hang out where they hang out. Etc. Make it easy for chance encounters to find you.
- atoav 5y ago
  I think the issue is rather that many people have a hard time of communicating the skills they have in a way the other side actually gets the level you are at via simple text. If they already know you, you can skip that step and the risks involved. Depending on your personality and flaws however it might also be a negative thing if people know you : )
- ScottBurson 5y ago
  In none of the last four jobs I've gotten was there anyone there who knew me. What I knew seems to have been the important factor.
trm42 5y ago
Last time a headhunter managed snatch me was weird. I wasn't really active before deadline because I was on a holiday trip and the headhunter said "it's okay, let's call after your holidays". I wasn't actually looking for a new job but couple of the buzzwords sounded promising so I ended up having calling one of those chitchat calls with the headhunter which then led to a chitchat with the company guys. When I was meeting the company guys, I'd updated and printed my puny resume in case they would've wanted it but realised they had "my resume" already. Basically the headhunter had copy pasted my puny LinkedIn profile data into their some sort of resume template and the guys were thinking I was actively looking for a new job. Weird coincidences but ended up taking the job and haven't regretted after 2,5 years.
- robocat 5y ago
  I wonder if the headhunter used a geek code[0] to resume generator? Alternatively I wonder if a modern version of geekcode could be created with a service that automatically compresses a submitted resume into a comprehensible string of Unicode characters? [0] https://www.geekcode.xyz/geek.html https://www.geekcode.xyz/geek.html
  - eointierney 5y ago
    A geek code based on distributed peer review (no blockchain) could be very elegant. A kind of shared CV encompassing gitlogs, third party reviews, customer satisfaction, and actual "thinking when it matters" ability recognition. Where are the semioticians when we need them? Syntax, grammar, pragmatics, all develop at a rate of knots, but we still use a subset of ASCII for the vast majority of our symbolic computation. Could we do better than a joke from the nineties?

by pulse7 5y ago

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.
- bluGill 5y ago
  Many people do get hired cold, but it is the last choice of anyone hiring. If you know the right person you skip to the front of the line with no competition.
- vitaflo 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. Funny, only one of the gigs I've gotten in my 30 year career has come from not networking...my first one. Every job after that has come about because of people I know recommending me for the job. This has been super helpful over the past 15 years as I've been an independent consultant. In fact, I went indie because I had a network. I don't need to look for gigs anymore, people come to me. I turn down way more gigs than I can take. And I haven't had to have an actual interview for a job in over 20 years. I'm sure this isn't the norm, but it certainly makes work life a lot easier.
- cercatrova 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. Does that not just imply that your network wasn't that good but not necessarily that the adage "who you know more is more important than what you know" is actually false?
- taneq 5y ago
  Interesting... Only two of my jobs have not.
- Cerium 5y ago
  I have the opposite experience. I have never landed a job that I didn't already have a good contact and recommendation for, of course that is probably because I have never tried.
- theshrike79 5y ago
  I've got exactly zero jobs without networking. =) My first summer jobs were with people my dad knew. The first actual programming job I got because I happened to be tagging along with my friend who had a job interview. From there on in I got jobs mostly because I had a friend inside vouching for my talents. This also goes the other way, I wouldn't join a company where I don't have inside information on how shit actually gets done.
irrational 5y ago
I think that is often true, but I work for a Fortune 500 company and did not know anyone who worked there before getting hired. In the 20 years I’ve worked there I’ve been involved in tons of interviewing potential hires. Every single one got their foot in based on their resume. I’ve never seen anyone hired because they knew someone at the company. I’m sure it happens, I’ve just never met anyone it has happened to.
colechristensen 5y ago
I have had mediocre experiences, at best, with people bringing in people that they knew from outside the company. There were positive exceptions but usually it ended up being a kind of weird political move that increased divisions in teams. Like there was the group that knew each other from outside and everybody else. something to be wary about
kevinpet 5y ago
I've hired a handful of referrals, but when I get referrals I immediately look to see if their resume has relevant experience.
rsj_hn 5y ago
This is really an unhealthy and flawed understanding of what is a necessary part of life. The problem is how to find good people, and the more society downgrades objective measures of excellence, the more people need to rely on personal recommendations. It's not that people wouldn't take a stranger for a job, but when there is a lot of uncertainty, they can't absorb the risk of the stranger not being qualified. So they will always prefer someone they know is qualified over someone who they don't know is qualified but might be better. The above is as necessary and unsurprising as rain falling to the ground. There is no other way that things can work. Thus the practical advice you can give someone is not only to learn something but to widen their professional network so that there are many people who know they've learned something. It is the exact same thing in a big bureaucracy. You have to know how to sell yourself, which just means you need to successfully communicate your accomplishments. Too many people do great work, but they don't communicate their accomplishments, and then they are surprised that less qualified people are promoted over them, and they grow cynical or resentful when it is really their failure at communication that has caused the problem. Like many things in life, it's better to be mediocre at two necessary things rather than excellent at one and skipping the other. But no amount of righteous anger about the unfairness of life is going to change the fact that people are not omniscient and that talent is hard for strangers to evaluate.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- mr_toad 5y ago
  > their failure at communication So much to unpick in that statement. The potential for communication differences in culture, gender, and personality to outweigh job performance. That communication is a two way street, but poor communication is often attributed to one party. The tendency for the promotion process to favour “upward focused” communication and communicators. The fact that objective performance measurement, which could ameliorate some of these problems, is a joke. It’s true that communication skills are essential, but laying the blame on poor performers just perpetuates problems.
- viraptor 5y ago
  > the more society downgrades objective measures of excellence I'd really rather go with "the more society discovers that we don't know how to obtain objective measures of excellence". We really don't have good tests that can fit in the interview slot for a lot of software engineering jobs.
taneq 5y ago
That’s how the saying goes but what really matters isn’t who you know, but who knows you (and was impressed by your work).
WalterBright 5y ago
Successful people put themselves in situations where they can get to know the people who are important. For example, attend the tech conferences in your field. Contribute to open source projects they are involved with. Hang out where they hang out. Etc. Make it easy for chance encounters to find you.
atoav 5y ago
I think the issue is rather that many people have a hard time of communicating the skills they have in a way the other side actually gets the level you are at via simple text. If they already know you, you can skip that step and the risks involved. Depending on your personality and flaws however it might also be a negative thing if people know you : )
ScottBurson 5y ago
In none of the last four jobs I've gotten was there anyone there who knew me. What I knew seems to have been the important factor.

trm42 5y ago

Last time a headhunter managed snatch me was weird. I wasn't really active before deadline because I was on a holiday trip and the headhunter said "it's okay, let's call after your holidays". I wasn't actually looking for a new job but couple of the buzzwords sounded promising so I ended up having calling one of those chitchat calls with the headhunter which then led to a chitchat with the company guys. When I was meeting the company guys, I'd updated and printed my puny resume in case they would've wanted it but realised they had "my resume" already. Basically the headhunter had copy pasted my puny LinkedIn profile data into their some sort of resume template and the guys were thinking I was actively looking for a new job. Weird coincidences but ended up taking the job and haven't regretted after 2,5 years.

robocat 5y ago
I wonder if the headhunter used a geek code[0] to resume generator? Alternatively I wonder if a modern version of geekcode could be created with a service that automatically compresses a submitted resume into a comprehensible string of Unicode characters? [0] https://www.geekcode.xyz/geek.html https://www.geekcode.xyz/geek.html
- eointierney 5y ago
  A geek code based on distributed peer review (no blockchain) could be very elegant. A kind of shared CV encompassing gitlogs, third party reviews, customer satisfaction, and actual "thinking when it matters" ability recognition. Where are the semioticians when we need them? Syntax, grammar, pragmatics, all develop at a rate of knots, but we still use a subset of ASCII for the vast majority of our symbolic computation. Could we do better than a joke from the nineties?