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I am not buying the oft-quoted statistics in HR/Recruiting which like most popular adages is mostly made up from a few anecdotes and widely disseminated which p

I am not buying the oft-quoted statistics in HR/Recruiting which like most popular adages is mostly made up from a few anecdotes and widely disseminated which people then accept because "everybody says so". The key is to hook in the reader from the summary/qualifications on the first page. The "tell me about yourself" question is one of the worst to ask and i never do this. It is so open ended that people start rambling. Instead get them to focus (this also calms their nerves) by asking about notable jobs picked from their resume "what did you do as ... at ..." and dig more as needed. Do this for a couple more jobs if available and you will get to see how confident the candidate is, how he communicates, the depth of his knowledge and his modes of thinking. From here, you generalize to what the job actually needs and give the candidate some idea of the job and its environment and ask how he hopes to fit in and contribute. This makes things clear to both interviewer and interviewee. I also do not place much weight on personality/psychology tests/questions. People generally cannot be truthful in their answers to questions like "how do you deal with conflict with your co-worker?" etc. Here i trust to "gut feeling" based on non-verbal impressions, verbal communication and pointed questions (challenge the candidate by taking a contrarian stance and see how he responds). Finally, i make sure that the interviewee at the very outset understands that though i am the interviewer it does not mean that i am more knowledgeable than him in his areas of expertise. This works great by boosting his confidence which then leads to a more natural interaction. Recruiting/HR is a complex art where you have to consider various factors to build a picture of a person (suited to a role) from factual data and psychology. IMO a good way is to start with an understanding of Self-Determination Theory of Edward Deci and Richard Ryan - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination_theory For a nice overview, see the book Why we do What we do: Understanding Self-Motivation by Edward Deci.

scarface_74 2y ago
The fact is that every open req especially for remote positions get hundreds of resumes within the first hour, who is going to read that? An 8 page resume goes straight to the trash. Part of a job of a “senior” is good communication skills and knowing your audience. An eight page resume shows laziness since they didn’t take the time to make it shorter and no one is going to listen to or read anything 8 pages especially as a manager who just wants to know what is going on a high level. I ask the tell me about yourself question partially to assess their communication skills and getting to the point. Do you think people who are conducting an interview loop at large companies are going to go through an 8 page resume? Yes I’ve been on both sides of a BigTech interview loop and have gone through the interview training process there. Even at smaller companies when building a team and I’ve had 80% of the say so about who gets hired, I still needed evidence to take the CxO/director and couldn’t go by “gut feel”. And when dealing with customers (I work in consulting now) or “the business” you have to have a strategy to deal with interdepartmental conflicts, different stakeholders have different priorities, some people don’t want to change etc. I’m not talking about a conflict with another coworker arguing about which design pattern to use.
- rramadass 2y ago
  You have missed the point of the long CV. It is not that the recipient has to read everything. As mentioned, the first couple of pages is the resume. However the details are there to provide more info. as needed. Contrary to what you think i have had very good response to such a layout. Often times they see a company/project/technology there (even if old) which rings a bell with them and which they are then eager to discuss. That is the point; Give them all the info. in which you are strong so that they can make a better informed decision. The same is what i look for when i am the interviewer; a few bullet points on a 2-page resume which basically tell me nothing is useless. Incidentally, Jeff Bezos does something similar with his 6-page memo (plus annexes) for meetings; Same idea different domain; More details help better decision-making. "Gut Feel" is absolutely needed to give your input on Team Fit, Conflict Management and similar other intangible Human factors. Some companies are doing Myers-Briggs etc. but i give them lower weightage (because they can be gamed by practice) over subjective feelings. A report on a interviewee should include objective assessments (knowledge, experience etc. and your inferences based on them) and subjective assessments (temperament, maturity etc.)
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    I worked at AWS for three years (Professional Services). Using Amazon as an example of a good corporate culture and how companies should behave is not the argument you think it is. But I see a few scenarios. You have a strong network and the resume is a formality. In that case it’s easy enough to tailor your resume for the job. I don’t need to put that I wrote FORTRAN and C on VAX and Stratus mainframes in the mid 90s. There is no need for an 8 page resume. The year before last I had two offers for strategic positions based on my network. The second case you are targeting a company where you know you have a competitive advantage, again in that case, you only need to have a resume that focuses on what gives you a competitive advantage. In my case, now I focus on strategic cloud consulting positions that focus on app development. In that case, I only need to focus on my job at a startup in 2018, talk in broad strokes about my time at AWS (working there automatically gets call backs by the way), and when the day comes, when I leave my current job as a “staff architect”. The worse case is if you are spamming your resume far and wide and you are looking for any generic job. I look at an 8 page resume and then I have to take the time to see what is this person trying to communicate - it goes in the trash and I move on. I have hundreds of other resumes that I can get through quickly. Of course if the company is reaching out to me, it’s even easier to tailor my resume for the job requirements. I have my “career document” to pull from either way that is as long as needed. But even then I’m not going back even to the low level work I did in 2012 for Windows CE devices.

scarface_74 2y ago

The fact is that every open req especially for remote positions get hundreds of resumes within the first hour, who is going to read that? An 8 page resume goes straight to the trash. Part of a job of a “senior” is good communication skills and knowing your audience. An eight page resume shows laziness since they didn’t take the time to make it shorter and no one is going to listen to or read anything 8 pages especially as a manager who just wants to know what is going on a high level. I ask the tell me about yourself question partially to assess their communication skills and getting to the point. Do you think people who are conducting an interview loop at large companies are going to go through an 8 page resume? Yes I’ve been on both sides of a BigTech interview loop and have gone through the interview training process there. Even at smaller companies when building a team and I’ve had 80% of the say so about who gets hired, I still needed evidence to take the CxO/director and couldn’t go by “gut feel”. And when dealing with customers (I work in consulting now) or “the business” you have to have a strategy to deal with interdepartmental conflicts, different stakeholders have different priorities, some people don’t want to change etc. I’m not talking about a conflict with another coworker arguing about which design pattern to use.

rramadass 2y ago
You have missed the point of the long CV. It is not that the recipient has to read everything. As mentioned, the first couple of pages is the resume. However the details are there to provide more info. as needed. Contrary to what you think i have had very good response to such a layout. Often times they see a company/project/technology there (even if old) which rings a bell with them and which they are then eager to discuss. That is the point; Give them all the info. in which you are strong so that they can make a better informed decision. The same is what i look for when i am the interviewer; a few bullet points on a 2-page resume which basically tell me nothing is useless. Incidentally, Jeff Bezos does something similar with his 6-page memo (plus annexes) for meetings; Same idea different domain; More details help better decision-making. "Gut Feel" is absolutely needed to give your input on Team Fit, Conflict Management and similar other intangible Human factors. Some companies are doing Myers-Briggs etc. but i give them lower weightage (because they can be gamed by practice) over subjective feelings. A report on a interviewee should include objective assessments (knowledge, experience etc. and your inferences based on them) and subjective assessments (temperament, maturity etc.)
- scarface_74 2y ago
  I worked at AWS for three years (Professional Services). Using Amazon as an example of a good corporate culture and how companies should behave is not the argument you think it is. But I see a few scenarios. You have a strong network and the resume is a formality. In that case it’s easy enough to tailor your resume for the job. I don’t need to put that I wrote FORTRAN and C on VAX and Stratus mainframes in the mid 90s. There is no need for an 8 page resume. The year before last I had two offers for strategic positions based on my network. The second case you are targeting a company where you know you have a competitive advantage, again in that case, you only need to have a resume that focuses on what gives you a competitive advantage. In my case, now I focus on strategic cloud consulting positions that focus on app development. In that case, I only need to focus on my job at a startup in 2018, talk in broad strokes about my time at AWS (working there automatically gets call backs by the way), and when the day comes, when I leave my current job as a “staff architect”. The worse case is if you are spamming your resume far and wide and you are looking for any generic job. I look at an 8 page resume and then I have to take the time to see what is this person trying to communicate - it goes in the trash and I move on. I have hundreds of other resumes that I can get through quickly. Of course if the company is reaching out to me, it’s even easier to tailor my resume for the job requirements. I have my “career document” to pull from either way that is as long as needed. But even then I’m not going back even to the low level work I did in 2012 for Windows CE devices.