9 ms·

That's very nice to think about but in the real world if people don't match some exact keywords they get thrown away. This isn't the "real world" you're referr

by vanusa 5y ago

That's very nice to think about but in the real world if people don't match some exact keywords they get thrown away. This isn't the "real world" you're referring to here -- it's the fin-de-big-tech bubble world where everyone and their dog is not only sold, smack-down drunk on the idea that Algorithms and Data are the Solution to Your Problems. They aren't of course -- it's just a giant hornswoggle. This "world" needs to end, and it needs to end soon. My belief is that it will. But until it does, companies that run crappy ATSs (like there's any other kind) deserve the buzzword-gurgling, keyword-dropping candidate pool get. And developers who get "rejected" by these companies should be grateful for the sublime gift of this rejection -- and for the opportunity to laser focus on companies and teams that use their heads to hire, rather than a fleet of bots. Snark aside - hiring managers that actually read resumes (and yes, actually at least skim each and every one -- really it ain't that hard) are golden to work for (other factors being equal). Really, you don't want to waste your time with companies that have drunken the ATS kool-aid. Really you don't. That said, however: HR is looking for "node.js" but you wrote it like "nodejs"? Though luck pal, bye. It's "Node.js" with a dot. If you spell it "nodejs", that's a serious red flag and you shouldn't be surprised if it gets you automatically discarded -- even by a human reviewer. That's what resumes used to be, after all -- a kind of a take-home test where you really do have enough time (and perfect knowledge) to get everything 100 percent right. And also a test of your awareness of the fact that, yes, in critical business communications at least -- this level of correctness does matter, and it matters a lot.

digitalsushi 5y ago
Google has 411m hits for Node.js and 66m for nodejs. I'd guess somewhere in the 66 million people calling it nodejs, we could find a real diamond in the rough if we heard them out at the next interview!
- vanusa 5y ago
  That's exactly what I mean -- people believe in Big Data so much these days that when something appears in a sufficient portion of search results, it must have actual validity.
  - ycombobreaker 5y ago
    Isn't that the same as natural language? "Bone Apple Tea" gets corrected both because it's wrong, and because many people know so. "Begging the Question" is used incorrectly _so frequently_ that even dictionaries have come to accept the incorrect usage as an alternative. It's now correct-ish just because it's popular. So if Node.js has that many more hits than nodejs, it's not surprising that some people see it as canonical. Hearing the context of this conversation, though, I can see that "nodejs" in your resume is a signal to senior peers within that community--others who are "in the know". That may be a useful filter.
    - SantalBlush 5y ago
      As an aside, I never thought "begging the question" is used incorrectly because it is easy to tell whether or not someone is referring to the fallacy based on the context. If the meaning can be understood, then that's what matters.
    - toastal 5y ago
      It's only a matter of time before “alot” is accepted shudder
moralestapia 5y ago
>It's "Node.js" with a dot. If you spell it "nodejs", that's a serious red flag and you shouldn't be surprised if it gets you automatically discarded -- even by a human reviewer. Oh, really!? I'll be very glad NOT to work at a company that throws aways candidates because of such triviliaties.
- Diti 5y ago
  Perfectionism and pedantism are good qualities some teams are after, it is unsurprising that some people would reject a candidate who did not bother “properly” writing the name of the technology they use.
  - monsieurbanana 5y ago
    He was clearly being pedant, not perfectionist. I've never heard of a team looking for pedant people. I'm curious to hear your definition of the word.
    - imwillofficial 5y ago
      Over focus on mind numbing details that don’t appreciably move you closer to your goal. In some software, say, nuclear warhead tracking software, you want those people.
      - democracy 5y ago
        Something tells me they could easily focus their attention on something not necessarily related to the most critical parts of the project. They could be very pedantic (and often are) about some irrelevant thing.
  - moralestapia 5y ago
    nodejs came out on 2009, I've used it non-stop since then and probably built close to 100 things with it. I am on the author's list of both node and v8. I write it as nodejs because that's how I got used to it on the mailing lists and several places that I frequent. If a "team" decides not to hire me because of the latter, then ... thanks, I guess?
kortilla 5y ago
> That's what resumes used to be, after all -- a kind of a take-home test where you really do have enough time (and perfect knowledge) to get everything 100 percent right. The only thing this filters for is people who have been looking for a job for a long time and/or are people focused on presentation instead of content, good luck with that. We’ve hired incredible engineers across that have had typos and major resume mistakes many times and they had no communications problems on the job. A resume is a background/interests check for the hiring manager. Giving them a spell check is about as useful as measuring the ratio of times the letter ‘a’ appears relative to ‘e’. > critical business communications at least -- this level of correctness does matter, and it matters a lot. This sounds like someone who is unable to contextualize when that would be relevant. Unless you’re writing user documentation there are zero times in an engineer’s day-to-day communications where writing nodejs instead of “Node.js” would have any impact at all.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  Being sloppy writing code, though, can be disastrous. I know I've rejected resumes for tech writing positions that contained spelling errors. I would hope a tech writer would at least use a spell chekker.
  - Tyr42 5y ago
    Unfortunate time for a typo there ;p
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      :-)
    - imwillofficial 5y ago
      That was a joke
- vanusa 5y ago
  Giving them a spell check is about as useful as measuring the ratio of times the letter ‘a’ appears relative to ‘e’. I'll leave the matter of whether one should be expect resumes to be at least reasonably correct (in terms of spelling and grammar) or not - or what the threshold for "reasonably" should be on this front - to the side for now. It's obviously a question of taste, to a certain degree. But sorry - what you're saying about the ratio of 'a' to 'e' makes no sense at all. And on this front: Unless you’re writing user documentation I don't know what planet you live on -- but on my planet, good engineers write "user documentation" (in the sense of READMEs, docstrings, etc) and participate in mailing lists, do conference presentations, etc, all the time. And yes, while nobody is 100 percent perfect, consistently making a large number of gaffes (or more to the point: conveying an attitude that these things just don't matter; or that you're so hot that they shouldn't matter for you) in these contexts -- particularly when there there is plenty of time available to edit and review -- is definitely seen as a red flag, both in and outside the company. For any company you'd want to work for, that is.
netizen-936824 5y ago
Its not just big tech that does this. HR is also incompetent in academia and has similar practices at many institutions Edit: oh, and also US state governments. there's a reason they're known for being incompetent, people job hop within months and get keywords on their resumes and nothing ever gets done
threatofrain 5y ago
> It's "Node.js" with a dot. If you spell it "nodejs", that's a serious red flag and you shouldn't be surprised if it gets you automatically discarded -- even by a human reviewer. Yikes. “It’s not JavaScript it’s Ecmascript! What a RED FLAG.”
- vanusa 5y ago
  “It’s not JavaScript it’s Ecmascript! Not comparable.
  - colejohnson66 5y ago
    I’d say they are. Who cares if I write “Nodejs” or “Node.js”? The reader knows exactly what I meant, and that’s what matters. Anything else is just needless pedantry.
    - anhu 5y ago
      It’s not about the fact but about how much you care. Don’t let your counterpart think. Making such „mistakes“ actually shows quite a bit about the counterpart starting with correctness and precise communication. Back then it drove me nuts when someone wrote „advanced in AngularJS 2“ - and it kept coming!
      - CasperDern 5y ago
        As inconsistent as it is, "AngularJS" is the correct spelling and casing, that's probably why it kept coming. Just check the official website.
        KMnO4 5y ago
        I think the point was that AngularJS is V1. Version 2 and beyond is just called “Angular”.
    - saurik 5y ago
      I mean, software is almost entirely pedantry by its very nature.
irrational 5y ago
Absolutely. We typically receive hundreds of resumes for every position. The easiest way to winnow them down is to throw out any with spelling or grammar errors. It is astonishing how high a percentage include these errors. There is absolutely no excuse to have spelling and grammar errors in your resume if you are serious about trying to find work.
- notRobot 5y ago
  Some people aren't native speakers. Do they really need to know how to spell perfectly to work for you?
  - jenscow 5y ago
    Knowing what the red wriggly lines mean is a start. From my experience, however, it's the native English speakers who spel the worse.
    - zo1 5y ago
      Speaking of red squiggly lines in Word/MS products. Is it just me or has the grammar check gotten incredibly worse the past 2 years? It keeps complaining about odd grammar forms and suggesting I replace perfectly valid word-structures with shorter ones? The one I encounter most frequently is the suggestion to replace "in order to" with just "to", which is incredibly frustrating as they mean two different things entirely.
    - LorenPechtel 5y ago
      You'll get plenty of words flagged in a tech resume. Besides, spel chequers werk grate.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    That's why gawd invented spell checkers. Besides, I've noticed that ESL speakers make different kinds of mistakes than sloppy native speakers do.
    - 5y ago
mcenedella 5y ago
These are true: - hiring managers that actually read resumes are golden to work for - a test of your awareness of the fact that, yes, in critical business communications at least -- this level of correctness does matter, and it matters a lot. And for people who want to work in startup land, it’s an ideal. Once a company gets past 40 or so people, though, ATS adoption increases. And 150+ employees without an ATS are rare. It’s just that the volume of candidates and interview processes that need to be managed require there be some software to manage the workflow.
bryanrasmussen 5y ago
So, when I see the ads with XML misspelled XLM like XLM and XSLT experience wanted - or similar stuff that happens every now and then - I should spin up a new CV and replace instances of XML with XLM? on edit: before people come in with not wanting to work for a company that would make such a stupid mistake, first off I believe mistakes sometimes happen, and second Henry Thompson leader of the XML Schema working group, had the subtitle of his LinkedIn page saying something like he was an expert in XLM for at least a year (I should really have taken a screen shot) so I mean I think it would just as silly to not work someplace because they made a mistake as it would for them to screen you out for making a mistake.
Manuel_D 5y ago
Well said. It'll get to a human eventually, but the first step is pretty robotic anyway human or not. Let's dig up the legendary Facebook recruiter specifically looking for Unix experience. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15187874 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15187874
adflux 5y ago
Coming from someone who cant spell "tough luck". Lol
benreesman 5y ago
I think you might be conflating two things: - resume keyword scan (automated or otherwise) - leetcode interviews The former I think you’re spot-on. If you’re serious about hiring, some qualified to do so needs to be reading resumes. The latter is complicated. I tend to agree that the industry has over-pivoted to “dynamic programming whiteboard puzzle” as the LSAT of high-paying software work. But while most seem to agree that leetcode interviews suck in tons of ways, something that is unambiguously superior seems to be an open problem. And some algorithms and data structure testing is important for hard software work. Even choosing the right library requires some basics. Is every SWE at Amazon implementing CS papers every month? No, clearly not. But unless machine resources are free in your domain, brute-force doesn’t always work. FANG people do in fact get elitist about their CMU educations. But there’s another crowd that throws the baby out with the bath water: “I solve business problems, not reverse linked lists.” Well, what kind of business problems don’t involve some computation? It’s a balance that our industry seems to still be trying to find.
nathias 5y ago
this level of pedantry is insane, I'm considering spelling it wrong on purpose to avoid this kind of environments
sbilstein 5y ago
I kinda agree with you -- half the job as a programmer is being really tedious and paying attention to written text on a screen. If you can't reasonably review your resume and use spell check, it is not a great look.
shultays 5y ago
It is Node.js® Here is your pink slip. Don't call us
pendar747 5y ago
> It's "Node.js" with a dot. If you spell it "nodejs", that's a serious red flag and you shouldn't be surprised if it gets you automatically discarded -- even by a human reviewer. Best example of someone I wouldn't want to work for ever
- vanusa 5y ago
  And that's the beauty of it - it's a perfect filter, both ways.
  - wruza 5y ago
    The question is does that really bring something good, either way, or is it just a whim. Some HR check the shape of your ears, and if it doesn't match some patterns, they skip. perfect filter, both ways Two ways of three. Some innocent person may accidentally put Node.js in their resume and get hired.
democracy 5y ago
>> It's "Node.js" with a dot. If you spell it "nodejs", that's a serious red flag and you shouldn't be surprised if it gets you automatically discarded -- even by a human reviewer. Haha and then they scream about labour shortage )

by vanusa 5y ago

digitalsushi 5y ago

Google has 411m hits for Node.js and 66m for nodejs. I'd guess somewhere in the 66 million people calling it nodejs, we could find a real diamond in the rough if we heard them out at the next interview!

vanusa 5y ago
That's exactly what I mean -- people believe in Big Data so much these days that when something appears in a sufficient portion of search results, it must have actual validity.
- ycombobreaker 5y ago
  Isn't that the same as natural language? "Bone Apple Tea" gets corrected both because it's wrong, and because many people know so. "Begging the Question" is used incorrectly _so frequently_ that even dictionaries have come to accept the incorrect usage as an alternative. It's now correct-ish just because it's popular. So if Node.js has that many more hits than nodejs, it's not surprising that some people see it as canonical. Hearing the context of this conversation, though, I can see that "nodejs" in your resume is a signal to senior peers within that community--others who are "in the know". That may be a useful filter.
  - SantalBlush 5y ago
    As an aside, I never thought "begging the question" is used incorrectly because it is easy to tell whether or not someone is referring to the fallacy based on the context. If the meaning can be understood, then that's what matters.
  - toastal 5y ago
    It's only a matter of time before “alot” is accepted shudder

moralestapia 5y ago

>It's "Node.js" with a dot. If you spell it "nodejs", that's a serious red flag and you shouldn't be surprised if it gets you automatically discarded -- even by a human reviewer. Oh, really!? I'll be very glad NOT to work at a company that throws aways candidates because of such triviliaties.

Diti 5y ago
Perfectionism and pedantism are good qualities some teams are after, it is unsurprising that some people would reject a candidate who did not bother “properly” writing the name of the technology they use.
- monsieurbanana 5y ago
  He was clearly being pedant, not perfectionist. I've never heard of a team looking for pedant people. I'm curious to hear your definition of the word.
  - imwillofficial 5y ago
    Over focus on mind numbing details that don’t appreciably move you closer to your goal. In some software, say, nuclear warhead tracking software, you want those people.
    - democracy 5y ago
      Something tells me they could easily focus their attention on something not necessarily related to the most critical parts of the project. They could be very pedantic (and often are) about some irrelevant thing.
- moralestapia 5y ago
  nodejs came out on 2009, I've used it non-stop since then and probably built close to 100 things with it. I am on the author's list of both node and v8. I write it as nodejs because that's how I got used to it on the mailing lists and several places that I frequent. If a "team" decides not to hire me because of the latter, then ... thanks, I guess?

kortilla 5y ago

> That's what resumes used to be, after all -- a kind of a take-home test where you really do have enough time (and perfect knowledge) to get everything 100 percent right. The only thing this filters for is people who have been looking for a job for a long time and/or are people focused on presentation instead of content, good luck with that. We’ve hired incredible engineers across that have had typos and major resume mistakes many times and they had no communications problems on the job. A resume is a background/interests check for the hiring manager. Giving them a spell check is about as useful as measuring the ratio of times the letter ‘a’ appears relative to ‘e’. > critical business communications at least -- this level of correctness does matter, and it matters a lot. This sounds like someone who is unable to contextualize when that would be relevant. Unless you’re writing user documentation there are zero times in an engineer’s day-to-day communications where writing nodejs instead of “Node.js” would have any impact at all.

WalterBright 5y ago
Being sloppy writing code, though, can be disastrous. I know I've rejected resumes for tech writing positions that contained spelling errors. I would hope a tech writer would at least use a spell chekker.
- Tyr42 5y ago
  Unfortunate time for a typo there ;p
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    :-)
  - imwillofficial 5y ago
    That was a joke
vanusa 5y ago
Giving them a spell check is about as useful as measuring the ratio of times the letter ‘a’ appears relative to ‘e’. I'll leave the matter of whether one should be expect resumes to be at least reasonably correct (in terms of spelling and grammar) or not - or what the threshold for "reasonably" should be on this front - to the side for now. It's obviously a question of taste, to a certain degree. But sorry - what you're saying about the ratio of 'a' to 'e' makes no sense at all. And on this front: Unless you’re writing user documentation I don't know what planet you live on -- but on my planet, good engineers write "user documentation" (in the sense of READMEs, docstrings, etc) and participate in mailing lists, do conference presentations, etc, all the time. And yes, while nobody is 100 percent perfect, consistently making a large number of gaffes (or more to the point: conveying an attitude that these things just don't matter; or that you're so hot that they shouldn't matter for you) in these contexts -- particularly when there there is plenty of time available to edit and review -- is definitely seen as a red flag, both in and outside the company. For any company you'd want to work for, that is.

netizen-936824 5y ago

Its not just big tech that does this. HR is also incompetent in academia and has similar practices at many institutions Edit: oh, and also US state governments. there's a reason they're known for being incompetent, people job hop within months and get keywords on their resumes and nothing ever gets done

threatofrain 5y ago

> It's "Node.js" with a dot. If you spell it "nodejs", that's a serious red flag and you shouldn't be surprised if it gets you automatically discarded -- even by a human reviewer. Yikes. “It’s not JavaScript it’s Ecmascript! What a RED FLAG.”

vanusa 5y ago
“It’s not JavaScript it’s Ecmascript! Not comparable.
- colejohnson66 5y ago
  I’d say they are. Who cares if I write “Nodejs” or “Node.js”? The reader knows exactly what I meant, and that’s what matters. Anything else is just needless pedantry.
  - anhu 5y ago
    It’s not about the fact but about how much you care. Don’t let your counterpart think. Making such „mistakes“ actually shows quite a bit about the counterpart starting with correctness and precise communication. Back then it drove me nuts when someone wrote „advanced in AngularJS 2“ - and it kept coming!
    - CasperDern 5y ago
      As inconsistent as it is, "AngularJS" is the correct spelling and casing, that's probably why it kept coming. Just check the official website.
      - KMnO4 5y ago
        I think the point was that AngularJS is V1. Version 2 and beyond is just called “Angular”.
  - saurik 5y ago
    I mean, software is almost entirely pedantry by its very nature.

irrational 5y ago

Absolutely. We typically receive hundreds of resumes for every position. The easiest way to winnow them down is to throw out any with spelling or grammar errors. It is astonishing how high a percentage include these errors. There is absolutely no excuse to have spelling and grammar errors in your resume if you are serious about trying to find work.

notRobot 5y ago
Some people aren't native speakers. Do they really need to know how to spell perfectly to work for you?
- jenscow 5y ago
  Knowing what the red wriggly lines mean is a start. From my experience, however, it's the native English speakers who spel the worse.
  - zo1 5y ago
    Speaking of red squiggly lines in Word/MS products. Is it just me or has the grammar check gotten incredibly worse the past 2 years? It keeps complaining about odd grammar forms and suggesting I replace perfectly valid word-structures with shorter ones? The one I encounter most frequently is the suggestion to replace "in order to" with just "to", which is incredibly frustrating as they mean two different things entirely.
  - LorenPechtel 5y ago
    You'll get plenty of words flagged in a tech resume. Besides, spel chequers werk grate.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  That's why gawd invented spell checkers. Besides, I've noticed that ESL speakers make different kinds of mistakes than sloppy native speakers do.
  - 5y ago

mcenedella 5y ago

These are true: - hiring managers that actually read resumes are golden to work for - a test of your awareness of the fact that, yes, in critical business communications at least -- this level of correctness does matter, and it matters a lot. And for people who want to work in startup land, it’s an ideal. Once a company gets past 40 or so people, though, ATS adoption increases. And 150+ employees without an ATS are rare. It’s just that the volume of candidates and interview processes that need to be managed require there be some software to manage the workflow.

bryanrasmussen 5y ago

So, when I see the ads with XML misspelled XLM like XLM and XSLT experience wanted - or similar stuff that happens every now and then - I should spin up a new CV and replace instances of XML with XLM? on edit: before people come in with not wanting to work for a company that would make such a stupid mistake, first off I believe mistakes sometimes happen, and second Henry Thompson leader of the XML Schema working group, had the subtitle of his LinkedIn page saying something like he was an expert in XLM for at least a year (I should really have taken a screen shot) so I mean I think it would just as silly to not work someplace because they made a mistake as it would for them to screen you out for making a mistake.

Manuel_D 5y ago

Well said. It'll get to a human eventually, but the first step is pretty robotic anyway human or not. Let's dig up the legendary Facebook recruiter specifically looking for Unix experience. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15187874 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15187874

adflux 5y ago

Coming from someone who cant spell "tough luck". Lol

benreesman 5y ago

I think you might be conflating two things: - resume keyword scan (automated or otherwise) - leetcode interviews The former I think you’re spot-on. If you’re serious about hiring, some qualified to do so needs to be reading resumes. The latter is complicated. I tend to agree that the industry has over-pivoted to “dynamic programming whiteboard puzzle” as the LSAT of high-paying software work. But while most seem to agree that leetcode interviews suck in tons of ways, something that is unambiguously superior seems to be an open problem. And some algorithms and data structure testing is important for hard software work. Even choosing the right library requires some basics. Is every SWE at Amazon implementing CS papers every month? No, clearly not. But unless machine resources are free in your domain, brute-force doesn’t always work. FANG people do in fact get elitist about their CMU educations. But there’s another crowd that throws the baby out with the bath water: “I solve business problems, not reverse linked lists.” Well, what kind of business problems don’t involve some computation? It’s a balance that our industry seems to still be trying to find.

nathias 5y ago

this level of pedantry is insane, I'm considering spelling it wrong on purpose to avoid this kind of environments

sbilstein 5y ago

I kinda agree with you -- half the job as a programmer is being really tedious and paying attention to written text on a screen. If you can't reasonably review your resume and use spell check, it is not a great look.

shultays 5y ago

It is Node.js® Here is your pink slip. Don't call us

pendar747 5y ago

> It's "Node.js" with a dot. If you spell it "nodejs", that's a serious red flag and you shouldn't be surprised if it gets you automatically discarded -- even by a human reviewer. Best example of someone I wouldn't want to work for ever

vanusa 5y ago
And that's the beauty of it - it's a perfect filter, both ways.
- wruza 5y ago
  The question is does that really bring something good, either way, or is it just a whim. Some HR check the shape of your ears, and if it doesn't match some patterns, they skip. perfect filter, both ways Two ways of three. Some innocent person may accidentally put Node.js in their resume and get hired.

democracy 5y ago

>> It's "Node.js" with a dot. If you spell it "nodejs", that's a serious red flag and you shouldn't be surprised if it gets you automatically discarded -- even by a human reviewer. Haha and then they scream about labour shortage )