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Resumes and cover letters: An extension school resource (2021) [pdf]
- cproctor 4y agoThis document's typography and layout are all over the place. Normally I wouldn't particularly care, but the goal here is to give advice on the resume/CV.
- wyldfire 4y agoWay better 'n resumes coming from Softvard grads, anyways. EDIT: this was a hilarious comment until a mod corrected the title.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4y agoTitle still reads "hardvard" for me.
- wyldfire 4y agoJust trying to anticipate the inevitable. Gotta get up pretty early to pull one over on us Hardvard grads.
- labster 4y agoI always found Standford alumni to be superior.
- dang 4y agoSubmitted title was "Hardvard Resumes and cover letters guide [pdf]"
- totoglazer 4y ago(Extension)
- yCombLinks 4y agoIt's pretty much the exact same as their standard undergrad resume guide with a lot more examples for the extension programs https://hwpi.harvard.edu/files/ocs/files/undergrad_resumes_and_cover_letters.pdf https://hwpi.harvard.edu/files/ocs/files/undergrad_resumes_a...
- jvmx 4y agohttps://www.alumni.hbs.edu/careers/job-search/Pages/resumes-and-cover-letters.aspx https://www.alumni.hbs.edu/careers/job-search/Pages/resumes-... HBS templates and examples for comparison (the sections that say login required apparently do not actually require a login; fyi)
- tenpies 4y agoEvery time I see this type of comment I imagine a freshly minted Harvard undergrad walking up to the Colombian President[1] and saying "yes, but you're Extension so not REAL Harvard". --- [1] Now ex-president, but President Uribe is a Harvard Extension alumni.
- thelittleone 4y agos/hardvard/harvard
- hacsky 4y agoThe reason this exists is because even highly qualified graduates (Harvard included) suck at writing CV's/Resumes. How do i know? I went to a similar kind of college. All of us go through the same 16-20 year education grind (K-12 + University). At the end of it we are made to differentiate ourselves through our CV's/Resumes. A simple rule of thumb: A CV/Resume should be strictly-one-page and honest. Not sure if anyone needs cover letters anymore.
- ghaff 4y agoOr they basically only need cover letters with a pro forma resume because they’re going through their network which has been my case for 25 years or so.
- leetrout 4y ago> A CV/Resume should be strictly-one-page How many years have you been working? 1 page is tough at 15 years unless you leave details out.
- thomasfedb 4y agoAnd the same if you’re in academia, we have lists of papers and conferences we need to fit in
- slyall 4y ago15 years in tech is a good time to start rounding down your age.
- RC_ITR 4y agoLol. Yeah just go to the SVP-and-up offsites of any tech company and you’ll see nothing but people in their 20’s… It’s not 1995 anymore, tech is run by old people, the youth are the expendable labor just like any other industry.
- mrmincent 4y agoYou absolutely will have to leave details out - the HR person scanning through 30+ CVs doesn’t have the time or interest in reading through 3 pages of your work history to see if you tick the boxes they’re trying to match. You don’t have to list every job you’ve had, just list the relevant recent ones for the job you’re applying for. The ones you’ll talk about in your interview.
- DavidPeiffer 4y agoI wish everybody would follow this format. It's so easy to read, everything is in a predictable place. I've seen so many poorly formatted resumes with things like * Soft skills listed above all work and education * Multiple columns of information * Inconsistent formatting. Past/present tense inconsistent within a job, extra spacing between sections, and typos. * Files submitted as "Resume 1.pdf" and similar. Not a huge deal individually, but it's tedious to download 10 resumes like that from the hiring platform then rename as they're reviewed.
- Swizec 4y ago> Not a huge deal individually, but it's tedious to download 10 resumes like that from the hiring platform then rename as they're reviewed What kind of shit platform preserves uploaded filenames? At worst they should turn into opaque IDs. Ideally into an easily indexable, sortable, consistent, human readable filename format.
- dylan604 4y agoI've been on both sides of this argument. Return files as originally named vs return files based on a filenaming rule. I think both have merit, but there's an asterisk next to each with a list of caveats. GIGO is always fun.
- kjeetgill 4y ago> What kind of shit platform preserves uploaded filenames? You're coming in pretty strong for design space that has plenty of room for differences and isn't even that dramatic or extreme? And you're on the weird side of it? You don't want your email attachments to preserve filenames both in platform and when you download them? Dropbox? Flashdrives?!? If you're responding to the candidate eventually it'll be nice to be able to respond with "You send me Resume_ABC_V1.pdf" for whatever reason it comes up. If you're preserving file contents like this for later retrieval you want the filename too like, atleast 90% of the time.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- gundmc 4y agoOne unanswered question that I have around resumes is how to represent work done as a contractor or consultant for another company. I've seen everything from making it look like you were employed by the customer directly (obviously bad) to intentionally vague descriptions of the company such as "fortune 500 defense contractor" and every variation in between. My favorite was a candidate that described consulting with "large internet search engine company based in Mountain View, CA". Even when I worked at a consulting firm, there were huge variances in how folks would represent themselves on both internal and external resumes.
- wpietri 4y agoOne way I've liked seeing it as a hiring manager is to treat it as one large block ("self-employed" or "contract work") and then list individual projects as paragraphs in the description. That can help you avoid looking like a job-hopper.
- jhoelzel 4y agoha I thought about doing this, but after 14 years of freelancing you accumulate - a lot - of those entries. Also nobody really cares beyond let's say 5 years. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- wpietri 4y agoYou don't have to list all the entries! Just put in the fun ones, with a bit at the top. "A variety of successful web-based projects, including:"
- manfredz 4y ago[role] at Company A, through Company B
- brailsafe 4y agoI think it's a reasonable thing to think about. I list the client if that's what seems reasonable. If prompted, I'd say "Technically I worked for an agency that provided next to zero value and I don't consider them relevant for the purpose of my CV" If I was consulting through a company on more of a short-term basis for multiple clients, and that consulting company played a more significant role in employing me, than ya they'd get recognition. As it stands, I list the client I worked for, and in my current case I use the name of the one client I work for rather than the proxy company I technically work for. There's a number of valid situations to be in, I usually do list "contract" if it was truly a contract, but otherwise I just do what seems reasonable, and if someone thinks that's deceptive, then I guess that's reasonable too.
- thwoeruio2343 4y ago
- TotoHorner 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- cgb223 4y agoDoes anyone write cover letters anymore when applying for jobs online? I’ve been applying to a few roles and getting a good amount of callbacks without submitting a cover letter or anything. My friend is a FAANG recruiter and basically says he doesn’t have time to read them so they don’t matter to him personally. Are they still a good use of time to write?
- neodypsis 4y agoFor academic jobs, I guess.
- wpietri 4y agoDepends a lot on the hiring process. And on the cover letter. For my process, resume spammers are a problem; I want people actually interested in the job. So I'll have some sort of turing test. One way to pass that is to write enough of a job-specific cover letter. Especially valuable to me is a few sentences on why you personally are a match for the specific role. I think it's also valuable for people whose resume doesn't totally tell the story of why they're the right person. E.g., I recall a cover letter from somebody who had been out of the industry for a few years; it was good that they recognized the issue and had thought about how to overcome it. It's similarly good for people who are changing tracks a bit. But yeah, I'm sure a lot of places pay little attention to the humans they're hiring, so if you're happy working at a place like that, they're fine to skip.
- exitb 4y agoThey’re useful in certain situations, for example when your skill/experience set does not completely match the role requirements, but you still want to make a case for yourself. As a person involved in hiring process at a small, but established company, I can say they’re definitely read, when submitted.
- serial_dev 4y agoMy default approach is write a cover letter if it comes from the heart (yes, really). I got all my recent jobs without a cover letter. I didn't feel any connection to the jobs or people knew me already well and wanted to hire me. I never felt like copying 5 paragraphs of bs just to check a box. The last time I wrote a cover letter I really wanted the position and I really felt that I'm an excellent match for their requirements. It was a forming team, where the technical person was my friend, but the decision was up to a business person higher up. I wanted him to know already before the interview that I'm serious about this position. The interview went well, they both mentioned at a later point my cover letter, and I enjoyed working there. I have just been through the Google interviews, and all the googler acquaintances told me, "don't bother with the cover letter, either your CV is good enough to get to the technical phone screening or not". One even said that the only reason to write a cover letter "if it makes you feel better", because it will make zero difference throughout the whole process. YMMV.
- tqi 4y agoLol of course "hardvard" resume templates would have education listed above work experience, unlike almost every other resume I've ever seen.
- quickthrower2 4y agoBut end up doing Java / .NET gigs like the gen pop.
- Redoubts 4y agoNew grads typically put school above internships in my experience.
- tqi 4y agoInteresting - from what I've seen when hiring for FT from undergrad, most people put internships above education.
- trhway 4y agoGood cover letter seems to be similar to Nigerian scam letter, in structure, style and content.
- kleiba 4y agoOf course such guides are completely specific to the customs of one specific culture. In other words, this is more or less useless if you don't live in North America. Okay, well, maybe not quite useless but one should certainly take the outlined recommendations with a big grain of salt if you live somewhere else.
- adamsmith143 4y agoWhat else would you expect from a US university helping students in the US job market?
- camillomiller 4y agoJust FYI, if you use those suggestion for a German company that requires a Lebenslauf, good luck getting picked. These rules are general enough, but they are VERY American. Boasting about your results (e.g. about how you saved your previous company A LOT of money singlehandedly) will not fly very well in a German setting, even if it's an international company.
- btheshoe 4y agoWhy would a German company not want to hear about the impact that a potential employee created? What's the difference in culture here? Genuine question.
- krageon 4y agoIt's braggy and reeks of narcissism. It's also probably not true.
- spoonjim 4y agoCultural norms around tooting one's own horn vary widely, but the United States is a far end of the "toot away" spectrum (with Israel and some parts of Central America)
- newswasboring 4y agoI am not sure about German companies but I'm almost always sceptical of these claims. It might be that I have always worked in high tech manufacturing industry and any person making a "single handedly" claim is lying. You may have come up with the algorithm, but someone made the system to deploy it, someone made available all the data, someone else made the dashboard library which you built upon. Making these kind of claims are at best selfish and at worst stealing credit.
- ralfd 4y agoTo a German such boasting would sound like you are an embellishing loudmouth who at best likes to sniff his own farts and at worst makes stories up. Would you want a Zapp Brannigan as a colleague? Such stories can be better told in the personal interview, where the recruiter can judge the validity better.
- abernard1 4y agoStep 1: Put that you went to Harvard on your cover letter.
- mhb 4y agoAnd try to obfuscate that it is Harvard Extension School that you actually went to.
- roenxi 4y agoI question if these guidelines mean anything. My strategy, if I had a degree from Harvard (or associated, in this case), I would be to put "I have a degree from Harvard" & a Harvard logo on the resume, plus some level of indirection to make it look less blunt. Harvard-educated students are possibly the pool of people with the least competitive pressure to come up with a good resume. Go find a management consultant with 10 years experience and ask them for advice to get a good resume written. It won't look like this.
- antasvara 4y agoDepending on your field, Harvard grads could be applying for jobs against other Harvard grads and applicants with prestigious work experience.
- mhb 4y agoFWIW, this is from Harvard Extension School, not Harvard.
- yCombLinks 4y agoWondering why you think like this? Harvard has 12 schools, extension being one of them. They all grant a Harvard degree. I've been very pleased with it, very challenging course work. Several of those courses shared with what you consider "real" Harvard students, the only difference being they had to be in person at the lecture hall.
- ada1981 4y agoThey forgot the most important part, make sure you have a “white” sounding name. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-29/job-applicants-with-black-names-still-less-likely-to-get-the-interview https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-29/job-appli...
- nazka 4y agoIf you want the best template for a cover letter you should take example of that guy named Leonardo da Vinci. [1] Quite a smart guy! The idea is it’s not a summary of what you did and what you can do. But it’s all about what value you can offer to them and how you can solve ~their~ most critical problems. It’s like you pitching yourself as a business. Now go say no to a guy like that and that can demonstrate these skills for free if necessary. [1] https://lettersofnote.com/2012/03/28/the-skills-of-leonardo-da-vinci/ https://lettersofnote.com/2012/03/28/the-skills-of-leonardo-...
- OkayPhysicist 4y agoThat was fantastic. Definitely going to tell my next employer about my convenient and portable siege weaponry.
- nazka 4y agoYa it’s quite a read! Glad it can help your employer! :) The dark side is you can see where his money came from so he could continue to do research in stuff he loved. It’s like if you are a dev and you get to code stuff for the army (missiles, planes, software to manage C&C…). Like you pitch how good you can improve the thermal detection of a missile thanks to the cutting edge models in machine learning. Or like Google and the contract they tried to have. Things are different now. But still at the same time not so much!
- OnionBlender 4y agoThose of you that review resumes. Do you like seeing a summary at the top? What do you look for in a summary?