3 ms·

What does it mean to be bad at promoting themselves in their resume? It’s just a list of companies and dates.

by flappyeagle 3y ago

Ensorceled 3y ago
Your resume is just a list of companies and dates? Who the heck has been telling you to write resumes like that?
- flappyeagle 3y ago
  What do you expect to see on a resume? No companies? No dates?
  - simonw 3y ago
    For me personally I want to know about the projects that you accomplished - both at those companies and outside of them.
    - flappyeagle 3y ago
      Why? You have no possible way to contextual these things I built an internal workflow engine at a law firm. It worked really well for the use case. I can spend all my time convincing you how cool of a project this was but what I should have done is buy Jira.
      - simonw 3y ago
        Then that should be on your resume. Knowing that you built an internal workflow engine is much more interesting to me than knowing you were a "senior software engineer". It gives me something to ask you questions about in an interview - I don't need to see the proprietary code to have an interesting conversation about how you designed it and what you learned from the process.
JoshTriplett 3y ago
The list of companies/roles/descriptions/dates, and the list of universities/degrees/GPAs/dates, is the least interesting part of your résumé and should take up very little space. Most of it should be what projects you've done (for an employer or otherwise), presentations/publications, or other unique things. I've been in the position of reviewing résumés for hiring, many times, and the list of companies gets a brief perfunctory glance when filtering, and then a second glance before the interview when looking for prompts to get the candidate talking. Projects are going to get a much closer look, to get an idea of what they did, what skills they demonstrated, and what we should spend more of the interview talking about.
taberiand 3y ago
Having just started another hiring round and reviewing resumes, it's clear to me there are definitely good and bad ways of self promotion in a resume. The purpose of a resume isn't just to present a list of companies and dates, it's to get the candidate to next interview stage without annoying the hiring manager, and then to be a useful reference document in the interview itself. We don't have more than a few minutes to scan through any particular candidates resume and decide to progress or reject, and a resume that doesn't immediately express why the candidate should go to interview is a bad self promotion. The resumes I like best avoid waffling paragraphs of information without clear highlights of relevant skills (the information is usually there, it just doesn't stand out against the background text), and stick to simple dot points of clear personal achievements and demonstration of skills relevant to the position being applied. It's frustrating how many quite possibly great candidates hide themselves in their resume and are subsequently dropped into the too-hard basket.
simonw 3y ago
For each company you should ideally include some context that helps understand what you did there - more than just your job title (job titles convey very little information). This isn't a great example, but I mean things like "Lead the architectural design of the new search and recommendations features, built on top of Elasticsearch and PostgreSQL."
cratermoon 3y ago
This is maybe a US vs other countries thing, but a list of companies and dates is what I call a curriculum vitae, or CV. Resumes should have more about the skills and accomplishments at each position. For example https://github.com/posquit0/Awesome-CV https://github.com/posquit0/Awesome-CV

What does it mean to be bad at promoting themselves in their resume? It’s just a list of companies and dates.

Ensorceled 3y ago

Your resume is just a list of companies and dates? Who the heck has been telling you to write resumes like that?

flappyeagle 3y ago
What do you expect to see on a resume? No companies? No dates?
- simonw 3y ago
  For me personally I want to know about the projects that you accomplished - both at those companies and outside of them.
  - flappyeagle 3y ago
    Why? You have no possible way to contextual these things I built an internal workflow engine at a law firm. It worked really well for the use case. I can spend all my time convincing you how cool of a project this was but what I should have done is buy Jira.
    - simonw 3y ago
      Then that should be on your resume. Knowing that you built an internal workflow engine is much more interesting to me than knowing you were a "senior software engineer". It gives me something to ask you questions about in an interview - I don't need to see the proprietary code to have an interesting conversation about how you designed it and what you learned from the process.

JoshTriplett 3y ago

The list of companies/roles/descriptions/dates, and the list of universities/degrees/GPAs/dates, is the least interesting part of your résumé and should take up very little space. Most of it should be what projects you've done (for an employer or otherwise), presentations/publications, or other unique things. I've been in the position of reviewing résumés for hiring, many times, and the list of companies gets a brief perfunctory glance when filtering, and then a second glance before the interview when looking for prompts to get the candidate talking. Projects are going to get a much closer look, to get an idea of what they did, what skills they demonstrated, and what we should spend more of the interview talking about.

taberiand 3y ago

Having just started another hiring round and reviewing resumes, it's clear to me there are definitely good and bad ways of self promotion in a resume. The purpose of a resume isn't just to present a list of companies and dates, it's to get the candidate to next interview stage without annoying the hiring manager, and then to be a useful reference document in the interview itself. We don't have more than a few minutes to scan through any particular candidates resume and decide to progress or reject, and a resume that doesn't immediately express why the candidate should go to interview is a bad self promotion. The resumes I like best avoid waffling paragraphs of information without clear highlights of relevant skills (the information is usually there, it just doesn't stand out against the background text), and stick to simple dot points of clear personal achievements and demonstration of skills relevant to the position being applied. It's frustrating how many quite possibly great candidates hide themselves in their resume and are subsequently dropped into the too-hard basket.

simonw 3y ago

For each company you should ideally include some context that helps understand what you did there - more than just your job title (job titles convey very little information). This isn't a great example, but I mean things like "Lead the architectural design of the new search and recommendations features, built on top of Elasticsearch and PostgreSQL."

cratermoon 3y ago

This is maybe a US vs other countries thing, but a list of companies and dates is what I call a curriculum vitae, or CV. Resumes should have more about the skills and accomplishments at each position. For example https://github.com/posquit0/Awesome-CV https://github.com/posquit0/Awesome-CV