4 ms·

Conversely, my company, which interviewed me by having me write ‘for’ loops in all 12 or so languages listed on my CV during the technical interview, is a prett

by Aeolun 2y ago

Conversely, my company, which interviewed me by having me write ‘for’ loops in all 12 or so languages listed on my CV during the technical interview, is a pretty decent place to work. I cannot tell you how bemused I was after leaving that interview. I’d done months of degrading stupid ‘tell us some trivia about JS’ interviews, and here was someone that (apparently) just wanted to judge whether the information on my CV was true.

Aurornis 2y ago
> Conversely, my company, which interviewed me by having me write ‘for’ loops in all 12 or so languages listed on my CV during the technical interview, is a pretty decent place to work. This is funny. I’ve interviewed so many candidates who think keyword stuffing their resume has no consequences, but then you get them in the interview and discover they couldn’t actually tell you much about the languages or frameworks they listed other than very high level descriptions. When I do resume reviews for people I try to push back on some of the keyword stuffing, but there’s a lot of resistance. There’s a popular idea that resumes are just for tricking the ATS and nothing more, but then these people get in front of someone who actually wants to discuss their resume and it gets ugly fast.
- dennis_jeeves2 2y ago
  > I’ve interviewed so many candidates who think keyword stuffing They do that because HR looks for it. >frameworks they listed other than very high level descriptions. Would you remember the details of the framework you worked on 10 years back? Especially give that in the 10 years you went through another 15 frameworks?
  - vkou 2y ago
    > They do that because HR looks for it. You've described a beautiful symbiosis. Half the people in the interviewing process see keyword stuffing as pointless bullshit, and only care if you can reverse a linked list in a language of your choice. Half of them only care about keyword stuffing, and will send your resume in the shredder if you don't do it. And the third half see anyone trying to avoid the nitpicks of the second half as a person to expose as a fraud.
- erik_seaberg 2y ago
  I will never forget the candidate around 2010 who came in claiming PostScript. Well, our interviewer started asking about stacks and clipping paths, and it quickly emerged that the candidate knew how to click Print > To File.
- xarope 2y ago
  I've done this before: Me: you've listed Java as "Expert", perhaps you could discuss about <favorite footgun in project> Interviewee: sweats for a bit, finally admits only used Java factory factory and copied lots of code Me: ok great, let's move on, you've listed Rust as "Intermediate", lets... Interviewee interrupts, admits they know how to spell Rust and watched a couple of videos of crabs
  - KptMarchewa 2y ago
    I've had a candidate that had Apache Spark on the resume, turns out he was sitting in a room with other people who were writing Spark jobs.
    - kmoser 2y ago
      I had a guy tell me he had experience with Apache's mod_rewrite module and, when asked what its purpose was, he said verbatim "It gives you, like, more commands and stuff." Other questions were met with equally disastrous responses.
    - bornfreddy 2y ago
      Wow, do you use Spark in production? I can't claim to have much experience with it, I just played around with it a loooong time ago, but I was impressed. I thought it went out of use along with Hadoop and HBase, glad to hear this is not the case. Are you hiring? :-D
      - KptMarchewa 2y ago
        Out of use? Databricks is like 40 billion dollar company providing basically "managed Spark" platform.
- sensanaty 2y ago
  The problem is that HR is the first line of entry, and if you're not keyword stuffing every possible technology under the sun, they'll pass you on, because they don't know that being a python expert is fine for a Ruby job. So you have to put both down, lest the HR screen say "well they didn't specify Ruby, they don't make it through!"
  - worble 2y ago
    Yeah, I've actually had this happen before. I keyword stuffed my CV, then when I got to the interview stage, the actual tech lead quizzed me on it. I just replied honestly that while I had passing knowledge, I didn't actually know these things in detail and I did it just to get the interview. I think they appreciated the honesty, or at least could just relate to it. We tested the stuff I actually knew and got the job in the end. It probably helped that I was just bullshitting the fringe cloud stuff, the actual languages/framework everyday related skills were all true.
    - sensanaty 2y ago
      My own HR people tell me it happens lol I don't get to see the fat stack of resumes they get, only the stuff HR has already approved and passed on to me to further review. I asked them about their process, and they basically prioritize anyone who has the exact keywords on the job listing, and they more or less straight up ignore anyone who doesn't. We had a lot of frontenders that HR filtered out because they only had React on their resume, but not Vue or Svelte (both of which are much simpler than React, so even a complete Vue/Svelte novice would do fine if they were good at React). Similarly when we were looking to fill a Ruby (NOT Ruby on Rails) dev, they filtered out people that didn't have specifically Ruby and instead had `Ruby on Rails`. You can't even blame them, half of the stuff in the job listings sounds like complete mumbo-jumbo to anyone not directly involved with the stuff. After they told me about the Rails thing I sat down with the HR team and gave them a high-level overview on this stuff, but it still happens from time to time, especially when the job requirements/description changes every once in a while. Plus, the edge cases here (is someone good at Python OK to let through for the Ruby job? What if they have an Elixir background? Or just JS one? etc.) are basically infinite, and you can't educate them on every single possible variety of technologies out there. The only real system would be to have the devs evaluate every resume that comes in, but that comes with its own set of problems, too.
blkhawk 2y ago
Oh man that would be a nightmare - I mean I probably could do it for most of the languages I have used but I would sweat during an interview. Worse would be "show how long a string is in all these languages". I always keep confusing that syntax when I initally switch between languages.
- Aeolun 2y ago
  I mean, it’s not like my interviewer knew all those languages, so I guess the fact the results were plausible was enough.

by Aeolun 2y ago

Aurornis 2y ago

> Conversely, my company, which interviewed me by having me write ‘for’ loops in all 12 or so languages listed on my CV during the technical interview, is a pretty decent place to work. This is funny. I’ve interviewed so many candidates who think keyword stuffing their resume has no consequences, but then you get them in the interview and discover they couldn’t actually tell you much about the languages or frameworks they listed other than very high level descriptions. When I do resume reviews for people I try to push back on some of the keyword stuffing, but there’s a lot of resistance. There’s a popular idea that resumes are just for tricking the ATS and nothing more, but then these people get in front of someone who actually wants to discuss their resume and it gets ugly fast.

dennis_jeeves2 2y ago
> I’ve interviewed so many candidates who think keyword stuffing They do that because HR looks for it. >frameworks they listed other than very high level descriptions. Would you remember the details of the framework you worked on 10 years back? Especially give that in the 10 years you went through another 15 frameworks?
- vkou 2y ago
  > They do that because HR looks for it. You've described a beautiful symbiosis. Half the people in the interviewing process see keyword stuffing as pointless bullshit, and only care if you can reverse a linked list in a language of your choice. Half of them only care about keyword stuffing, and will send your resume in the shredder if you don't do it. And the third half see anyone trying to avoid the nitpicks of the second half as a person to expose as a fraud.
erik_seaberg 2y ago
I will never forget the candidate around 2010 who came in claiming PostScript. Well, our interviewer started asking about stacks and clipping paths, and it quickly emerged that the candidate knew how to click Print > To File.
xarope 2y ago
I've done this before: Me: you've listed Java as "Expert", perhaps you could discuss about <favorite footgun in project> Interviewee: sweats for a bit, finally admits only used Java factory factory and copied lots of code Me: ok great, let's move on, you've listed Rust as "Intermediate", lets... Interviewee interrupts, admits they know how to spell Rust and watched a couple of videos of crabs
- KptMarchewa 2y ago
  I've had a candidate that had Apache Spark on the resume, turns out he was sitting in a room with other people who were writing Spark jobs.
  - kmoser 2y ago
    I had a guy tell me he had experience with Apache's mod_rewrite module and, when asked what its purpose was, he said verbatim "It gives you, like, more commands and stuff." Other questions were met with equally disastrous responses.
  - bornfreddy 2y ago
    Wow, do you use Spark in production? I can't claim to have much experience with it, I just played around with it a loooong time ago, but I was impressed. I thought it went out of use along with Hadoop and HBase, glad to hear this is not the case. Are you hiring? :-D
    - KptMarchewa 2y ago
      Out of use? Databricks is like 40 billion dollar company providing basically "managed Spark" platform.
sensanaty 2y ago
The problem is that HR is the first line of entry, and if you're not keyword stuffing every possible technology under the sun, they'll pass you on, because they don't know that being a python expert is fine for a Ruby job. So you have to put both down, lest the HR screen say "well they didn't specify Ruby, they don't make it through!"
- worble 2y ago
  Yeah, I've actually had this happen before. I keyword stuffed my CV, then when I got to the interview stage, the actual tech lead quizzed me on it. I just replied honestly that while I had passing knowledge, I didn't actually know these things in detail and I did it just to get the interview. I think they appreciated the honesty, or at least could just relate to it. We tested the stuff I actually knew and got the job in the end. It probably helped that I was just bullshitting the fringe cloud stuff, the actual languages/framework everyday related skills were all true.
  - sensanaty 2y ago
    My own HR people tell me it happens lol I don't get to see the fat stack of resumes they get, only the stuff HR has already approved and passed on to me to further review. I asked them about their process, and they basically prioritize anyone who has the exact keywords on the job listing, and they more or less straight up ignore anyone who doesn't. We had a lot of frontenders that HR filtered out because they only had React on their resume, but not Vue or Svelte (both of which are much simpler than React, so even a complete Vue/Svelte novice would do fine if they were good at React). Similarly when we were looking to fill a Ruby (NOT Ruby on Rails) dev, they filtered out people that didn't have specifically Ruby and instead had `Ruby on Rails`. You can't even blame them, half of the stuff in the job listings sounds like complete mumbo-jumbo to anyone not directly involved with the stuff. After they told me about the Rails thing I sat down with the HR team and gave them a high-level overview on this stuff, but it still happens from time to time, especially when the job requirements/description changes every once in a while. Plus, the edge cases here (is someone good at Python OK to let through for the Ruby job? What if they have an Elixir background? Or just JS one? etc.) are basically infinite, and you can't educate them on every single possible variety of technologies out there. The only real system would be to have the devs evaluate every resume that comes in, but that comes with its own set of problems, too.

blkhawk 2y ago

Oh man that would be a nightmare - I mean I probably could do it for most of the languages I have used but I would sweat during an interview. Worse would be "show how long a string is in all these languages". I always keep confusing that syntax when I initally switch between languages.

Aeolun 2y ago
I mean, it’s not like my interviewer knew all those languages, so I guess the fact the results were plausible was enough.