8 ms·

Why won't anyone talk to me? What recruiters look for in a resume

87 points by bratfarrar 14y ago

derekerdmann 14y ago
A lot of this advice goes for those who are looking for their first co-ops and internships, too. If you haven't built experience yet, your GPA becomes a critical flag for how you dedicate yourself to the work you've been given. Combine that with interesting projects, and you'll be well on your way to getting the internships that will make you stand out later.
- numo16 14y ago
  What got me in easy for my internship was a decent GPA (3.8 at the time) + working full-time as a shift manager from when I turned 18 until the company hired me. GPA + maintaining some sort of responsibility definitely helped
andyjsong 14y ago
This is great advice. As a person that is normally labelled as a job hopper (6 in the past 5 years) I finally settled down and got into tech by attending hackathons and helped ship apps (mostly android) it has given me the opportunity to work for a YC company and I am very happy here. It's just ironic that startups have been the most stable positions rather than corporate or bigger tech companies. Hackathons are relativity cheap (time wise) investments, but make you stand out from the crowd.
- tiramisucode 14y ago
  It sounds like you are pretty savvy at getting hired. I am a computer science student who is graduating this December, and I would love to get hired as soon as possible! Do you have any tips for someone like myself? The only experience I have is interning at a very small shop where I build custom Google maps for other schools and companies.
  - andyjsong 14y ago
    I'm helping running this hackathon that is live right now: hackerrank.com/thanksgiving, show off your skills and get noticed. It ends today @ midnight PST and the winner gets a meeting with a YC Partner and Thanksgiving meal delivered to their door.
cllns 14y ago
I'm not sure UIUC and UT-Austin are great examples for second-tier schools, as both are top 10 for graduate CS departments.
- ndaugherty18 14y ago
  I was thinking the same exact thing.
- batgaijin 14y ago
  I disagree entirely. Graduate school has nothing to do with the undergraduate curriculum. I went to a school with an amazing graduate program but I had a terrible watered down education that barely went passed Java and did not push me or many of the other students. It's an excellent opportunity for summer research jobs and the such, but otherwise does not translate well into the lower curriculum unless you want it to.
  - cllns 14y ago
    I agree: a good graduate school can offer a good undergraduate education if you want it to. The ambition to get a good education when it's available (but not necessary) is highly desirable, no?
  - geebee 14y ago
    According to USNWR, both the UIUC and University of Texas at Austin also have top 10 undergraduate engineering programs (#5 and #10 respectively) as well. I can't think of a top graduate program with a poor undergraduate program. And CS tends to be extremely rigorous, so I am honestly surprised that a recruiter would view a degree in CS from UTex as a non-indicator. But I'm not trying to shoot the messenger. Perhaps UTex and Brown were selected to specifically illustrate the phenomenon here, that a highly regarded engineering school might be discounted while an Ivy league school that normally isn't associated with Computer Science would be considered a positive indicator. It's a little hard to argue with a recruiter, they've done far more placement than I have. But I have worked (and done lots of interviews for) for a large silicon valley company, as well as for a few startups, and personally I think that a CS degree from UTex at Austin or UIUC would be very positively received. Undergraduate curricula tends to be standardized, and nobody gets out of a top school without taking the tough courses. But you can get wiggle through an MS. But at the door... not so sure, the selection requirements (undergraduate GPA and GRE) at Berkeley were very high for any kind of admitted grad student. However, Berkeley doesn't have one of those "industrial affiliate" programs that are profit centers. However, I don't think these programs harm the universities that offer them at all - the students are almost always already employed at good companies doing interesting work, and I think the other students benefit from their presence.
Xcelerate 14y ago
Just out of curiosity, does the undergrad/grad ranking apply to other (non-CS) engineering careers as well? I ask because I went to a top 5 undergrad but never did any research so I'm not attending a top 5 grad school. However, I think the research I am doing now is possibly eye-catching, so how much does what-research vs. which-grad school matter? (By the way, I actually like my grad school significantly more than my undergrad so ranking of course isn't everything).
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
jowiar 14y ago
The resume review process isn't intended to find the single best candidate. It's intended to whittle a big pile of resumes down to one that can be reasonably covered by the next stage of the process. Coming from public listings, the pile of resumes is enormous, and most of them are utter garbage. There may be thousands of resumes where the goal is to find a couple dozen candidates. At some point, the only way to do this is to apply really broad filters: "Went to Stanford, MIT, CMU...", "Worked at MS, Google, FB, Apple...", "Proficient in Scala, MongoDB". I didn't really appreciate this until I was on the other side of the massive pile-o-resumes, but it's really the only option. I hate saying this, because I generally believe that "problems solved" are far more indicative of success than any specific school, company, or technology. I have at times used a resume that doesn't do the whole buzzword-bingo game with very limited success - It basically never got pulled from a big pile-of-resumes unless I had a friend on the inside, or was applying to a job on my school's job board (where clearly everyone passed this "filter").
paupino_masano 14y ago
Surprisingly, I have the opposite trouble: how do I stop recruiters trying to recruit me? I have about 15-20 recruiters contacting me per week however what I put it down to is: 1. Location. Since I moved to SF the job offers have increased substantially. 2. Skill set. Fortunately I'm skilled in some "popular" languages. 3. Years of experience. I'm in the "hot spot" - not too old, and not too young (sorry - it does seem to be a factor...) What I find however that recruiters don't necessarily look for anything BUT the above things. I've been approached for the weirdest jobs (considering my experience) from what I believe as a simple keyword search. When it comes to interviewing, the recruiters typically have no idea what they're talking about. This means that they're more interested in forwarding the resume from a brief "do you know this, have you had experience in this" as opposed to really understanding the position. Fortunately, I have had enough experience to interview the recruiters as opposed to them interviewing me. My advice for developers struggling to get jobs (from how I hire...): 1. Have experience - whether professional or hobby. If it is a hobby: open source it. 2. Show initiative. You need to show you have the ability to actually think. 3. You don't need to know the answers. It's all about the approach to the problem. 4. Try to stand out amongst the resumes. I feel bad to say this: but unfortunately it's true. Given 100 resumes, you're probably only going to really look at 10. 5. Show charisma I'd recommend other's to add to this: it's just a list I made from what is off the top of my head. But in regards to the article I disagree with: 1. Startup experience. It depends on what type of job you're going for - some will admire the drive, some will fear it (will you leave after a year) 2. School. I don't give a flying f* if they're from MIT or the University of Waikato. However I would give SOME preference to them studying at a school which includes algorithms and memory management (but that is me). Believe me: that (unfortunately) isn't a given... I'm sure I'll probably get down votes for this; but please comment if you do disagree :) I'm only speaking from my experience as both a student (always) and as an employer.
- chair6 14y ago
  Upvoted for University of Waikato reference. Hamilton is a wonderful city, but I opted for Victoria and Wellington instead..
  - 14y ago
autarch 14y ago
I've been on the hiring side many times and I never look at a resume's education section. I suppose if I were hiring someone fresh out of school that'd count a little more, but experience is much more important than what school they went to or what they studied. But maybe I'm biased because I have a grad degree in music, so I just assume other degrees are equally worthless ;)
EricDeb 14y ago
Articles like this tell me there is a strong need for improvement in tech recruiting. If a candidate truly is "a great coder, easy to work with, and knows data structures and algorithms backwards and forwards" then he/she should have no problem landing a job regardless of his/her background. I only hope there are firms that see through this elitism and realize that there are undervalued tech wizards out there waiting to be given an opportunity.
- davs 14y ago
  bravo, nicely written ! one would think that great coders grow on trees or something, heh?
nhashem 14y ago
While I've never been a recruiter, I've been a hiring manager at some mid-sized companies and worked closely with their recruiters. Side projects or attempted startups are great, but I've seen countless resumes where they get completely overlooked because of how they appeared on the resume. Ultimately whether I saw a resume was dependent on some sort of subjective pattern matching done by the recruiter. This pattern matching is usually primitive and generally is just a check on whether your "years of experience" is within striking distance of whatever was in the job listing (e.g. "Senior Software Engineer" that required 5+ years of experience, the recruiter would filter anyone with less than 3 years), and (sometimes) would check whether your resume contained enough buzzwords. Yes, this is awful, and no, not every organization does it this way, although a lot do. So while listing side projects on your resume is good, it's important to get it past the recruiter screen by translating those side projects into years of experience. Rather than just a single line in your resume like, "Side Projects: Enguarde.ly, a Link-Sharing Site for Fencers," find some way to list Enguarde.ly as experience. For example, list the time you worked on your side projects as experience as a "Web Consultant," put Enguarde.ly as a 'portfolio project' and describe the technology you used to build it. Once your resume actually gets to a hiring manager, everything the OP talked about is much more relevant, because you'll actually have someone who can evaluate your resume. Although I think this post overstates how much your undergrad degree matters. I am a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, typically considered a very prestigious school, but the engineering school is ranked 27th according to US News and World Report rankings[0]. I know many hiring managers who would much rather interview someone with an interesting set of portfolio side projects than someone who went to a prestigious school. Your alma matter can sometimes provide a small bonus as a small signaling effect, but I consider software engineering a discipline where a formal education is only loosely correlated with skill. [0] http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/engineering-majors/1213609-usnwr-2012-best-undergraduate-engineering-programs.html http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/engineering-majors/12136...
- idunno246 14y ago
  I've seen good resumes and had my boss say "but he only went to .." And I didn't even read the college section So education can matter until it gets to the right people. It's an easy filter, sort of, since rankings are pretty bogus anyway.
rrmm 14y ago
Does anyone have some examples of resumes they've used successfully; or from the hiring side, resumes that stood out to them? Anyone A/B testing their resumes?
- Trezoid 14y ago
  As current student trying to come up with a good resume at the moment, this would be extremely useful.
  - warrenm 14y ago
    This is my personal method of phone screens, but I've seen/heard it used similarly elsewhere: http://antipaucity.com/2011/10/03/doing-technical-phone-screens/#.UKu-eodlH00 http://antipaucity.com/2011/10/03/doing-technical-phone-scre...
- warrenm 14y ago
  Mine's served me quite well thus far - http://warrenmyers.com/resume.pdf http://warrenmyers.com/resume.pdf
redguava 14y ago
I think the single best thing you can do is tailor your resume/cover letter for the job you are applying for. Every company wants to think that you really want to work for them and only them. If you send out an obviously standard cover letter and resume, it's very easy to get brushed over. Spend 10 minutes on their website/blog reading about them and tailor your application to match. Include some comments that show you have done so. You can't change what education/experience you have (well you shouldn't), but you can definitely show that you made an effort.
aneth4 14y ago
Wow, if you are skilled technically and aren't annoyed by constant recruiter outreach, you are doing something majorly wrong. I'd also say technical recruiters are also doing something majorly wrong if your resume reflects your abilities. If you've coded anything that does something interesting, you should have no problem finding interviews, and frankly offers. If you haven't coded anything interesting, then why would anyone hire you? Build something or work on an open source project. I suggest taking your own project from start to production - this is the type of general knowledge and competence startups look for.
- shanelja 14y ago
  I'm 19 and skipped college and university to travel, I freelanced for a couple of years and worked on games and personal hobby projects during this time and currently work at a small web development company. I only have 6 months of commercial experience but I get approached literally daily by recruitment companies because of a single resume I posted on a website and it is driving me crazy. They all ring me up and say "Don't trust another company, they will screw you over, trust us instead" and "The job states it wants 5 years of experience, but that doesn't matter, I'll send your resume too." Honestly, I wouldn't mind as much, but it all feels half assed, they don't want to find me a job, they want to find their company an employee, telephoning me and pretending to give a crap about my life is all well and good, but to be honest, when you go cold for a week after that without a single email it makes the candidate feel worthless. That and the fact that if a candidate isn't accepted for an interview, the de facto method of rejection is simply not getting back to them unless they contact you. This space really needs to be disrupted, for the love of a God, why isn't there a humane recruitment company?
  - aneth4 14y ago
    I feel you. For sure, most recruiters are basically trying to fill a position - they work for commissions, and the hiring company, not you. Expecting a recruiter who contacted you to represent your interests is like expecting the lawyer for a company suing you to give you legal advice. I think your expectation is a little off, and you may view it differently if you viewed them as someone you are doing business with, not an advisor. When someone is trying to sell you a car, they will butter you up the same way. There ARE humane recruiters who can be more representative of your needs, but they don't usually cold call with specific positions in mind. They build a network of good candidates and people who would have good referrals, then reach out to them when they have a position that's a good fit. Of course, you've proved my point above :) It doesn't take much to get smothered by recruiters. Frankly I think the original article is linkbait. It presupposes a problem that does not exist.
moocow01 14y ago
Yeah these points are valid (although it should be noted that they align with the author's background - sorry the TripAdvisor mention made me curious) I think they are more applicable to early career. In my experience, connections and relationships are way more powerful than any of the stuff mentioned with the baseline that you are competent and relatively easy to work with.
- bratfarrar 14y ago
  True (I hope), true, and VERY true. :)
louischatriot 14y ago
Very sound advice. Having been to a top school is indeed important (even though not necessary). A while ago, I was offered a very well paid freelance gig just because I went to a French top engineering school. I didn't know anything about the technologies I had to use but they didn't give a damn. Of course not everyone thinks like that, but it's puzzling that some people actually do.
known 14y ago
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-company/corporate-trends/whats-the-shelf-life-of-a-techie-just-15-years/articleshow/17251620.cms http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-company/cor...
shrikant 14y ago
I'm not so sure about this bit: > Resumes should be summaries, with more detail for recent positions, less detail for more distant ones. If you’ve been in industry for ten years, you can have a second page. No one needs more than two. I agree with this in principle, and strongly 'implemented' this approach as well in an earlier version of my CV. [To be fair, I'm looking for a product management role, and not a dev job, so maybe it's different here?] But recruiters just kept asking me for a more detailed version so often, that I just gave up and made a 2-pager. I personally believe it goes into far too much detail than is necessary, but the difference in response is quite stark from both startups and BigCos alike. From the other side of the issue, when recruiting PMs or analysts, I always made a conscious effort to ensure that CVs that fell afoul of 'industry standard guidelines' weren't overlooked solely for those reasons. As in, I honestly didn't give a shit if it was one page, or two, or six, as long as it gave the information I was looking for. (However, I suspect I may have been in a minority then..)
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  Every single person, whether they are a recruiter and project manager , a guidance counsellor or your mother has a different opinion about how long your CV/Resume should be and will have all sorts of reasons justifying why they are correct. So the only sensible thing to do is go with the length that you feel sells you best.
  - warrenm 14y ago
    I can't agree more! Mine has 'relevant' experience on the first couple, then 'other' experience on the last howevermany. A fixed length is one of the worst things you can do, in my opinion: it needs to be how I heard an English professor describe her writing assignments: "It should be like a girl's skirt - long enough to cover everything, but short enough to keep it interesting"
Ologn 14y ago
During hiring, I have looked through dozens, if not hundreds of resumes over the years, mostly for Unix systems administrator positions. You can tell a lot about what someone knows just by how they put together their resume, over and above the work experience. A question I used to ask on interviews was, "Have you ever worked with Gnu programs, like gcc, Gnu make etc.?" Hiring Unix admins in 1998, when you couldn't get your hands on an experienced one, you'd be surprised how many blank looks I got at that question. Once I got a resume which was very well-written, and he even had the Gnu tools he knew listed. Considering how dismal prior candidates had been, I almost wanted to hire him sight unseen just seeing that. We did make him an offer, which he turned down. It's more than just what buzzwords to put, it's knowing what buzzwords to put and not to put. Most of the time, people who don't know what they're doing don't even know what will sound good on a resume, even if their resume is BS. In terms of my own resume, in 2000 I had a lot of buzzwords on the top. But then people would ask me detailed questions about some of that software, some of which I had not touched for three years. So I removed those words from the top of the resume so as to avoid those questions. But then I stopped getting as many calls. So I put them back. Better to look dumb in an interview then never get the interview I figured. For you young ones - tech guys like me generally just care if you know the stuff or not. Managers, HR etc. are generally more formal - they want to know what degrees you have, they like to see buzzwords and several years of experience, especially at large companies, hear from references, know why you have a gap of two months in your employment record and so forth. Non-techies have no gauge to tell how well you know your stuff. A caveat about large companies - at startups, an older person who has worked a long time at a big company - this can be held against you. You have to make clear you'll be OK with the fact that there is not yet a backup system, or code revision control system, or whatever. You have to say, "I understand you don't have this stuff, and I am fine with you not having it yet, I'll help you build it out as the company grows".
- GotAnyMegadeth 14y ago
  Same goes for recruiters, they need to know which buzz words to use too. I saw a good list of requirements the other day, for a vaguely machine learning type of job, that said: "An Ideal applicant must have experience in: - Maths - Computer Fusion - Algorithms - ..." I assume they misheard 'Computer Vision' over the phone. Also "Why yes, I do have experience in Algorithms.".
eLobato 14y ago
I’m wondering what’s your opinion about how does it affect to have on your resume some great places to work at, but that might not be so well known in the US tech world as they’re not the usual Google, FB etc.. I’m talking about places like CERN, Fermilab, Max Planck Institute for Physics or the MIT Medialab. Do you think these matter as much as Google on a resume? How about having ‘old boring’ companies like IBM or Oracle on your resume?
Uchikoma 14y ago
I mostly - for seniors - look in the experience and what projects the person did. I don't believe any skills in a skill section. This is the first screening, followed by a programming task during the the telephone interview, interview with me, interviews with developers, followed by practical programming work. So yes it is important to get through the CV screen (have experience), but it's only the first step. Side note: Hiring for Junior positions is different, for me the CV here is mostly irrelevant.
- polymatter 14y ago
  How do you select Juniors then if the CV is mostly irrelevant? Do you go by github profile?
  - Uchikoma 14y ago
    Sorry, didn't see your question. I invite more of them.
marcofucci 14y ago
"If you’ve had five jobs in the last five years, why should the recruiter think this time will be different?" Maybe because who is hiring is supposed to be better than the others? There are far too many terrible companies, especially the big ones, and honestly I would never stay in a company just for the sake of it. If recruiters think that this is a problem, it means that who is hiring is not confident enough or worse, the company IS really terrible like the others. IMHO, nobody leaves a company if he feels good, stimulated and paid enough.
- smm2000 14y ago
  If it's only one short term job, it's totally ok. Two is ok but I will ask why. Three+ is a negative. 5+ short term jobs is pretty much no hire unless there is a very good explanation. There are no perfect companies and people have to compromise.
  - marcofucci 14y ago
    Well, I totally agree with you that there are no perfect companies but for the rest, I believe you don't have very good arguments. I do understand that recruiters have to place people and they don't really mind/understand if the company is good or not but I can't see why this should be our problem.
takrupp 14y ago
Technical recruiting is hard, but I think good technical recruiters approach things differently than this. Its not as black and white, everything lives in the nuances: We are looking for some sort of external validation: A really popular module on CPAN? Graduated with a 4.0? Graduated from Stanford? Hired full time by Google? That is all external validation, and it is something that shows me that other people / organizations think you are good. I really need just one piece of solid validation for me to speak with a candidate and this can take on a lot of forms. In lieu of this, we can administer a coding test if someone is on the cusp. The second thing I look for is passion: Is this person a 9 to 5 code monkey in it for the solid and consistent paycheck? Or do they love the work they do and constantly push themselves to further their craft? You can almost always get to the bottom of this question on the phone. Journeymen programmers are fine for a lot of jobs, but not for the jobs we are talking about here. If both of those line up then the candidate is good, and we will represent them. We can't promise a placement, but I would be surprised if someone with both of those boxes checked didn't get at least one offer. They are really hard to find.
- warrenm 14y ago
  If you're recruiting by people who "love what they do" - that's awesome .. but don't forget they need to have a life and a family they're likely taking care of, too: if you're recruiting for the positions wherein 50 or 60 hours is "normal", then I hope you're only getting single folks who don't care if they have a life :) The occasional long week is fine - but I'm going to be a lot more interested in someone who is good but expects a "normal" amount of work.
monksy 14y ago
I'm not sure what the deal was about the schools. An expectation of a top tier school is mostly useless. Yes a solid education is important, however just because you have credentials from a "top" school doesn't mean you'll be: 1. a good worker 2. motivation to perform the tasks 3. experience. Secondly, anyone who depends on a big name school to get by fails to understand economics. Yes you might be able to get a small premium for the name. However, the market can't afford to choose only the top names. Theres more work that is needed than the small group of "top school" names can fill.
- warrenm 14y ago
  The only thing a "top tier school" can really provide is the potential for a 'better' set of initial contacts in your network (eg startup founders and investors if you go to MIT, Rice, or Stanford). Beyond that - it's all pretty much the same: can you get the job done? Can you think? Can you communicate coherently? Those are the real biggies when I interview.

87 points by bratfarrar 14y ago

A lot of this advice goes for those who are looking for their first co-ops and internships, too. If you haven't built experience yet, your GPA becomes a critical flag for how you dedicate yourself to the work you've been given. Combine that with interesting projects, and you'll be well on your way to getting the internships that will make you stand out later.

numo16 14y ago
What got me in easy for my internship was a decent GPA (3.8 at the time) + working full-time as a shift manager from when I turned 18 until the company hired me. GPA + maintaining some sort of responsibility definitely helped

andyjsong 14y ago

This is great advice. As a person that is normally labelled as a job hopper (6 in the past 5 years) I finally settled down and got into tech by attending hackathons and helped ship apps (mostly android) it has given me the opportunity to work for a YC company and I am very happy here. It's just ironic that startups have been the most stable positions rather than corporate or bigger tech companies. Hackathons are relativity cheap (time wise) investments, but make you stand out from the crowd.

tiramisucode 14y ago
It sounds like you are pretty savvy at getting hired. I am a computer science student who is graduating this December, and I would love to get hired as soon as possible! Do you have any tips for someone like myself? The only experience I have is interning at a very small shop where I build custom Google maps for other schools and companies.
- andyjsong 14y ago
  I'm helping running this hackathon that is live right now: hackerrank.com/thanksgiving, show off your skills and get noticed. It ends today @ midnight PST and the winner gets a meeting with a YC Partner and Thanksgiving meal delivered to their door.

cllns 14y ago

I'm not sure UIUC and UT-Austin are great examples for second-tier schools, as both are top 10 for graduate CS departments.

ndaugherty18 14y ago
I was thinking the same exact thing.
batgaijin 14y ago
I disagree entirely. Graduate school has nothing to do with the undergraduate curriculum. I went to a school with an amazing graduate program but I had a terrible watered down education that barely went passed Java and did not push me or many of the other students. It's an excellent opportunity for summer research jobs and the such, but otherwise does not translate well into the lower curriculum unless you want it to.
- cllns 14y ago
  I agree: a good graduate school can offer a good undergraduate education if you want it to. The ambition to get a good education when it's available (but not necessary) is highly desirable, no?
- geebee 14y ago
  According to USNWR, both the UIUC and University of Texas at Austin also have top 10 undergraduate engineering programs (#5 and #10 respectively) as well. I can't think of a top graduate program with a poor undergraduate program. And CS tends to be extremely rigorous, so I am honestly surprised that a recruiter would view a degree in CS from UTex as a non-indicator. But I'm not trying to shoot the messenger. Perhaps UTex and Brown were selected to specifically illustrate the phenomenon here, that a highly regarded engineering school might be discounted while an Ivy league school that normally isn't associated with Computer Science would be considered a positive indicator. It's a little hard to argue with a recruiter, they've done far more placement than I have. But I have worked (and done lots of interviews for) for a large silicon valley company, as well as for a few startups, and personally I think that a CS degree from UTex at Austin or UIUC would be very positively received. Undergraduate curricula tends to be standardized, and nobody gets out of a top school without taking the tough courses. But you can get wiggle through an MS. But at the door... not so sure, the selection requirements (undergraduate GPA and GRE) at Berkeley were very high for any kind of admitted grad student. However, Berkeley doesn't have one of those "industrial affiliate" programs that are profit centers. However, I don't think these programs harm the universities that offer them at all - the students are almost always already employed at good companies doing interesting work, and I think the other students benefit from their presence.

Xcelerate 14y ago

Just out of curiosity, does the undergrad/grad ranking apply to other (non-CS) engineering careers as well? I ask because I went to a top 5 undergrad but never did any research so I'm not attending a top 5 grad school. However, I think the research I am doing now is possibly eye-catching, so how much does what-research vs. which-grad school matter? (By the way, I actually like my grad school significantly more than my undergrad so ranking of course isn't everything).

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

jowiar 14y ago

The resume review process isn't intended to find the single best candidate. It's intended to whittle a big pile of resumes down to one that can be reasonably covered by the next stage of the process. Coming from public listings, the pile of resumes is enormous, and most of them are utter garbage. There may be thousands of resumes where the goal is to find a couple dozen candidates. At some point, the only way to do this is to apply really broad filters: "Went to Stanford, MIT, CMU...", "Worked at MS, Google, FB, Apple...", "Proficient in Scala, MongoDB". I didn't really appreciate this until I was on the other side of the massive pile-o-resumes, but it's really the only option. I hate saying this, because I generally believe that "problems solved" are far more indicative of success than any specific school, company, or technology. I have at times used a resume that doesn't do the whole buzzword-bingo game with very limited success - It basically never got pulled from a big pile-of-resumes unless I had a friend on the inside, or was applying to a job on my school's job board (where clearly everyone passed this "filter").

paupino_masano 14y ago

Surprisingly, I have the opposite trouble: how do I stop recruiters trying to recruit me? I have about 15-20 recruiters contacting me per week however what I put it down to is: 1. Location. Since I moved to SF the job offers have increased substantially. 2. Skill set. Fortunately I'm skilled in some "popular" languages. 3. Years of experience. I'm in the "hot spot" - not too old, and not too young (sorry - it does seem to be a factor...) What I find however that recruiters don't necessarily look for anything BUT the above things. I've been approached for the weirdest jobs (considering my experience) from what I believe as a simple keyword search. When it comes to interviewing, the recruiters typically have no idea what they're talking about. This means that they're more interested in forwarding the resume from a brief "do you know this, have you had experience in this" as opposed to really understanding the position. Fortunately, I have had enough experience to interview the recruiters as opposed to them interviewing me. My advice for developers struggling to get jobs (from how I hire...): 1. Have experience - whether professional or hobby. If it is a hobby: open source it. 2. Show initiative. You need to show you have the ability to actually think. 3. You don't need to know the answers. It's all about the approach to the problem. 4. Try to stand out amongst the resumes. I feel bad to say this: but unfortunately it's true. Given 100 resumes, you're probably only going to really look at 10. 5. Show charisma I'd recommend other's to add to this: it's just a list I made from what is off the top of my head. But in regards to the article I disagree with: 1. Startup experience. It depends on what type of job you're going for - some will admire the drive, some will fear it (will you leave after a year) 2. School. I don't give a flying f* if they're from MIT or the University of Waikato. However I would give SOME preference to them studying at a school which includes algorithms and memory management (but that is me). Believe me: that (unfortunately) isn't a given... I'm sure I'll probably get down votes for this; but please comment if you do disagree :) I'm only speaking from my experience as both a student (always) and as an employer.

chair6 14y ago
Upvoted for University of Waikato reference. Hamilton is a wonderful city, but I opted for Victoria and Wellington instead..
- 14y ago

autarch 14y ago

I've been on the hiring side many times and I never look at a resume's education section. I suppose if I were hiring someone fresh out of school that'd count a little more, but experience is much more important than what school they went to or what they studied. But maybe I'm biased because I have a grad degree in music, so I just assume other degrees are equally worthless ;)

EricDeb 14y ago

Articles like this tell me there is a strong need for improvement in tech recruiting. If a candidate truly is "a great coder, easy to work with, and knows data structures and algorithms backwards and forwards" then he/she should have no problem landing a job regardless of his/her background. I only hope there are firms that see through this elitism and realize that there are undervalued tech wizards out there waiting to be given an opportunity.

davs 14y ago
bravo, nicely written ! one would think that great coders grow on trees or something, heh?

nhashem 14y ago

While I've never been a recruiter, I've been a hiring manager at some mid-sized companies and worked closely with their recruiters. Side projects or attempted startups are great, but I've seen countless resumes where they get completely overlooked because of how they appeared on the resume. Ultimately whether I saw a resume was dependent on some sort of subjective pattern matching done by the recruiter. This pattern matching is usually primitive and generally is just a check on whether your "years of experience" is within striking distance of whatever was in the job listing (e.g. "Senior Software Engineer" that required 5+ years of experience, the recruiter would filter anyone with less than 3 years), and (sometimes) would check whether your resume contained enough buzzwords. Yes, this is awful, and no, not every organization does it this way, although a lot do. So while listing side projects on your resume is good, it's important to get it past the recruiter screen by translating those side projects into years of experience. Rather than just a single line in your resume like, "Side Projects: Enguarde.ly, a Link-Sharing Site for Fencers," find some way to list Enguarde.ly as experience. For example, list the time you worked on your side projects as experience as a "Web Consultant," put Enguarde.ly as a 'portfolio project' and describe the technology you used to build it. Once your resume actually gets to a hiring manager, everything the OP talked about is much more relevant, because you'll actually have someone who can evaluate your resume. Although I think this post overstates how much your undergrad degree matters. I am a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, typically considered a very prestigious school, but the engineering school is ranked 27th according to US News and World Report rankings[0]. I know many hiring managers who would much rather interview someone with an interesting set of portfolio side projects than someone who went to a prestigious school. Your alma matter can sometimes provide a small bonus as a small signaling effect, but I consider software engineering a discipline where a formal education is only loosely correlated with skill. [0] http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/engineering-majors/1213609-usnwr-2012-best-undergraduate-engineering-programs.html http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/engineering-majors/12136...

idunno246 14y ago
I've seen good resumes and had my boss say "but he only went to .." And I didn't even read the college section So education can matter until it gets to the right people. It's an easy filter, sort of, since rankings are pretty bogus anyway.

rrmm 14y ago

Does anyone have some examples of resumes they've used successfully; or from the hiring side, resumes that stood out to them? Anyone A/B testing their resumes?

Trezoid 14y ago
As current student trying to come up with a good resume at the moment, this would be extremely useful.
- warrenm 14y ago
  This is my personal method of phone screens, but I've seen/heard it used similarly elsewhere: http://antipaucity.com/2011/10/03/doing-technical-phone-screens/#.UKu-eodlH00 http://antipaucity.com/2011/10/03/doing-technical-phone-scre...
warrenm 14y ago
Mine's served me quite well thus far - http://warrenmyers.com/resume.pdf http://warrenmyers.com/resume.pdf

redguava 14y ago

I think the single best thing you can do is tailor your resume/cover letter for the job you are applying for. Every company wants to think that you really want to work for them and only them. If you send out an obviously standard cover letter and resume, it's very easy to get brushed over. Spend 10 minutes on their website/blog reading about them and tailor your application to match. Include some comments that show you have done so. You can't change what education/experience you have (well you shouldn't), but you can definitely show that you made an effort.

aneth4 14y ago

Wow, if you are skilled technically and aren't annoyed by constant recruiter outreach, you are doing something majorly wrong. I'd also say technical recruiters are also doing something majorly wrong if your resume reflects your abilities. If you've coded anything that does something interesting, you should have no problem finding interviews, and frankly offers. If you haven't coded anything interesting, then why would anyone hire you? Build something or work on an open source project. I suggest taking your own project from start to production - this is the type of general knowledge and competence startups look for.

shanelja 14y ago
I'm 19 and skipped college and university to travel, I freelanced for a couple of years and worked on games and personal hobby projects during this time and currently work at a small web development company. I only have 6 months of commercial experience but I get approached literally daily by recruitment companies because of a single resume I posted on a website and it is driving me crazy. They all ring me up and say "Don't trust another company, they will screw you over, trust us instead" and "The job states it wants 5 years of experience, but that doesn't matter, I'll send your resume too." Honestly, I wouldn't mind as much, but it all feels half assed, they don't want to find me a job, they want to find their company an employee, telephoning me and pretending to give a crap about my life is all well and good, but to be honest, when you go cold for a week after that without a single email it makes the candidate feel worthless. That and the fact that if a candidate isn't accepted for an interview, the de facto method of rejection is simply not getting back to them unless they contact you. This space really needs to be disrupted, for the love of a God, why isn't there a humane recruitment company?
- aneth4 14y ago
  I feel you. For sure, most recruiters are basically trying to fill a position - they work for commissions, and the hiring company, not you. Expecting a recruiter who contacted you to represent your interests is like expecting the lawyer for a company suing you to give you legal advice. I think your expectation is a little off, and you may view it differently if you viewed them as someone you are doing business with, not an advisor. When someone is trying to sell you a car, they will butter you up the same way. There ARE humane recruiters who can be more representative of your needs, but they don't usually cold call with specific positions in mind. They build a network of good candidates and people who would have good referrals, then reach out to them when they have a position that's a good fit. Of course, you've proved my point above :) It doesn't take much to get smothered by recruiters. Frankly I think the original article is linkbait. It presupposes a problem that does not exist.

moocow01 14y ago

Yeah these points are valid (although it should be noted that they align with the author's background - sorry the TripAdvisor mention made me curious) I think they are more applicable to early career. In my experience, connections and relationships are way more powerful than any of the stuff mentioned with the baseline that you are competent and relatively easy to work with.

bratfarrar 14y ago
True (I hope), true, and VERY true. :)

louischatriot 14y ago

Very sound advice. Having been to a top school is indeed important (even though not necessary). A while ago, I was offered a very well paid freelance gig just because I went to a French top engineering school. I didn't know anything about the technologies I had to use but they didn't give a damn. Of course not everyone thinks like that, but it's puzzling that some people actually do.

known 14y ago

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-company/corporate-trends/whats-the-shelf-life-of-a-techie-just-15-years/articleshow/17251620.cms http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-company/cor...

shrikant 14y ago

I'm not so sure about this bit: > Resumes should be summaries, with more detail for recent positions, less detail for more distant ones. If you’ve been in industry for ten years, you can have a second page. No one needs more than two. I agree with this in principle, and strongly 'implemented' this approach as well in an earlier version of my CV. [To be fair, I'm looking for a product management role, and not a dev job, so maybe it's different here?] But recruiters just kept asking me for a more detailed version so often, that I just gave up and made a 2-pager. I personally believe it goes into far too much detail than is necessary, but the difference in response is quite stark from both startups and BigCos alike. From the other side of the issue, when recruiting PMs or analysts, I always made a conscious effort to ensure that CVs that fell afoul of 'industry standard guidelines' weren't overlooked solely for those reasons. As in, I honestly didn't give a shit if it was one page, or two, or six, as long as it gave the information I was looking for. (However, I suspect I may have been in a minority then..)

jiggy2011 14y ago
Every single person, whether they are a recruiter and project manager , a guidance counsellor or your mother has a different opinion about how long your CV/Resume should be and will have all sorts of reasons justifying why they are correct. So the only sensible thing to do is go with the length that you feel sells you best.
- warrenm 14y ago
  I can't agree more! Mine has 'relevant' experience on the first couple, then 'other' experience on the last howevermany. A fixed length is one of the worst things you can do, in my opinion: it needs to be how I heard an English professor describe her writing assignments: "It should be like a girl's skirt - long enough to cover everything, but short enough to keep it interesting"

Ologn 14y ago

During hiring, I have looked through dozens, if not hundreds of resumes over the years, mostly for Unix systems administrator positions. You can tell a lot about what someone knows just by how they put together their resume, over and above the work experience. A question I used to ask on interviews was, "Have you ever worked with Gnu programs, like gcc, Gnu make etc.?" Hiring Unix admins in 1998, when you couldn't get your hands on an experienced one, you'd be surprised how many blank looks I got at that question. Once I got a resume which was very well-written, and he even had the Gnu tools he knew listed. Considering how dismal prior candidates had been, I almost wanted to hire him sight unseen just seeing that. We did make him an offer, which he turned down. It's more than just what buzzwords to put, it's knowing what buzzwords to put and not to put. Most of the time, people who don't know what they're doing don't even know what will sound good on a resume, even if their resume is BS. In terms of my own resume, in 2000 I had a lot of buzzwords on the top. But then people would ask me detailed questions about some of that software, some of which I had not touched for three years. So I removed those words from the top of the resume so as to avoid those questions. But then I stopped getting as many calls. So I put them back. Better to look dumb in an interview then never get the interview I figured. For you young ones - tech guys like me generally just care if you know the stuff or not. Managers, HR etc. are generally more formal - they want to know what degrees you have, they like to see buzzwords and several years of experience, especially at large companies, hear from references, know why you have a gap of two months in your employment record and so forth. Non-techies have no gauge to tell how well you know your stuff. A caveat about large companies - at startups, an older person who has worked a long time at a big company - this can be held against you. You have to make clear you'll be OK with the fact that there is not yet a backup system, or code revision control system, or whatever. You have to say, "I understand you don't have this stuff, and I am fine with you not having it yet, I'll help you build it out as the company grows".

GotAnyMegadeth 14y ago
Same goes for recruiters, they need to know which buzz words to use too. I saw a good list of requirements the other day, for a vaguely machine learning type of job, that said: "An Ideal applicant must have experience in: - Maths - Computer Fusion - Algorithms - ..." I assume they misheard 'Computer Vision' over the phone. Also "Why yes, I do have experience in Algorithms.".

eLobato 14y ago

I’m wondering what’s your opinion about how does it affect to have on your resume some great places to work at, but that might not be so well known in the US tech world as they’re not the usual Google, FB etc.. I’m talking about places like CERN, Fermilab, Max Planck Institute for Physics or the MIT Medialab. Do you think these matter as much as Google on a resume? How about having ‘old boring’ companies like IBM or Oracle on your resume?

Uchikoma 14y ago

I mostly - for seniors - look in the experience and what projects the person did. I don't believe any skills in a skill section. This is the first screening, followed by a programming task during the the telephone interview, interview with me, interviews with developers, followed by practical programming work. So yes it is important to get through the CV screen (have experience), but it's only the first step. Side note: Hiring for Junior positions is different, for me the CV here is mostly irrelevant.

polymatter 14y ago
How do you select Juniors then if the CV is mostly irrelevant? Do you go by github profile?
- Uchikoma 14y ago
  Sorry, didn't see your question. I invite more of them.

marcofucci 14y ago

"If you’ve had five jobs in the last five years, why should the recruiter think this time will be different?" Maybe because who is hiring is supposed to be better than the others? There are far too many terrible companies, especially the big ones, and honestly I would never stay in a company just for the sake of it. If recruiters think that this is a problem, it means that who is hiring is not confident enough or worse, the company IS really terrible like the others. IMHO, nobody leaves a company if he feels good, stimulated and paid enough.

smm2000 14y ago
If it's only one short term job, it's totally ok. Two is ok but I will ask why. Three+ is a negative. 5+ short term jobs is pretty much no hire unless there is a very good explanation. There are no perfect companies and people have to compromise.
- marcofucci 14y ago
  Well, I totally agree with you that there are no perfect companies but for the rest, I believe you don't have very good arguments. I do understand that recruiters have to place people and they don't really mind/understand if the company is good or not but I can't see why this should be our problem.

takrupp 14y ago

Technical recruiting is hard, but I think good technical recruiters approach things differently than this. Its not as black and white, everything lives in the nuances: We are looking for some sort of external validation: A really popular module on CPAN? Graduated with a 4.0? Graduated from Stanford? Hired full time by Google? That is all external validation, and it is something that shows me that other people / organizations think you are good. I really need just one piece of solid validation for me to speak with a candidate and this can take on a lot of forms. In lieu of this, we can administer a coding test if someone is on the cusp. The second thing I look for is passion: Is this person a 9 to 5 code monkey in it for the solid and consistent paycheck? Or do they love the work they do and constantly push themselves to further their craft? You can almost always get to the bottom of this question on the phone. Journeymen programmers are fine for a lot of jobs, but not for the jobs we are talking about here. If both of those line up then the candidate is good, and we will represent them. We can't promise a placement, but I would be surprised if someone with both of those boxes checked didn't get at least one offer. They are really hard to find.

warrenm 14y ago
If you're recruiting by people who "love what they do" - that's awesome .. but don't forget they need to have a life and a family they're likely taking care of, too: if you're recruiting for the positions wherein 50 or 60 hours is "normal", then I hope you're only getting single folks who don't care if they have a life :) The occasional long week is fine - but I'm going to be a lot more interested in someone who is good but expects a "normal" amount of work.

monksy 14y ago

I'm not sure what the deal was about the schools. An expectation of a top tier school is mostly useless. Yes a solid education is important, however just because you have credentials from a "top" school doesn't mean you'll be: 1. a good worker 2. motivation to perform the tasks 3. experience. Secondly, anyone who depends on a big name school to get by fails to understand economics. Yes you might be able to get a small premium for the name. However, the market can't afford to choose only the top names. Theres more work that is needed than the small group of "top school" names can fill.

warrenm 14y ago
The only thing a "top tier school" can really provide is the potential for a 'better' set of initial contacts in your network (eg startup founders and investors if you go to MIT, Rice, or Stanford). Beyond that - it's all pretty much the same: can you get the job done? Can you think? Can you communicate coherently? Those are the real biggies when I interview.