7 ms·

What employers want to see on your resume

62 points by physcab 18y ago

access_denied 18y ago
What about not working for companies who want me to deal with that kind of cruft in the first place, because life is to short?
- neilc 18y ago
  You wouldn't work for a company that requires you to present a resume? That is basically equivalent to not working for any company at all, other than as a consultant or a founder. Making a decent resume is not difficult, and done well, it isn't "cruft".
  - eru 18y ago
    Don't you have to provide at least equivalent documentation as a consultant?
xenoterracide 18y ago
What I don't like to see on blogs, no place for comments, or registration required for comments. How dare anyone question you.
- endtime 18y ago
  Um...click the "Leave a comment" link at the bottom and you get a comment box with the name defaulting to "Guest". Doesn't get much easier than that.
  - xenoterracide 18y ago
    I see no "leave a comment link". in fact there is no word "comment" on the page at all. Fail at web accessibility, you know the part where your site should work without javascript. At least I assume this is added if I allow one of the 10-ish domains that noscript says I'm blocking, I tried allowing the main domain, but that didn't help.
    - smokinn 18y ago
      The comments are loaded through a script tag. The top of the comment box says (Powered by JS-Kit) The script tag loads content from this url: http://js-kit.com/comments-data.js?jx=0&gen=0&srt=date&ord=desc&sp=1&pn=2&ps=500&ref=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.guykawasaki.com%2F2009%2F02%2Fguest-post-memo.html&randevuId=1235450753197.3486&#38 http://js-kit.com/comments-data.js?jx=0&gen=0&srt=da...; So either no-script is blocking that or you have security settings that don't allow script tags to an alternate domain or something of the sort.
xenoterracide 18y ago
Churn: does this keep you from hiring someone? I'm unfortunately just getting started, I've had a lot of contract jobs. When my job was done I moved on. Gmail address: Seriously get a life other than worrying about who someones email provider is. If they have AOL so what? how does this affect the job they do for you, AOL allows you pop or imap right? (might have to pay extra) maybe they use a mail client... and because they've had it for so long they don't want to change. I'm not an employer (yet) but I really don't care what email you use to mail me, even if it's totally unprofessional/inappropriate. I'm going to give you a company email anyways, I assume you were just being efficient with your time and not going out of your way to make another email just to impress me. Customization: I probably wouldn't reject a tailored resume, but to me this reeks of a person who wastes time on perfection. If you are seriously looking for work... you are probably emailing a lot of companies, tailoring for each one is just a foolish waste of time, there are better things you could be doing with your time, like learning something new. I'd make an exception for a place you really want to work, have inside info on, customer etc. but most places I've applied to have not made this list. Email to the CEO: Really it's a good idea to waste the CEO's time? In a small business where the CEO is HR then it's fine. I think emailing the department manager that you want to work with is the right answer. Numbers: the numbers this guys citing are probably BS, numbers like that are obviously made up, don't lie on your resume if you have numbers that you can prove you are responsible for, then don't list them.
- Flemlord 18y ago
  Churn - Consulting is fine, but if an applicant has moved too quickly between permanent jobs it's a sign that they probably won't be at yours for long. Maybe they have a recruiter friend constantly putting new offers in front of them, or maybe they are outright incompetent and are quickly fired. My hiring team calls them "jumpers", and it's one of our biggest negatives. If you are working as a consultant, I would suggest listing the consulting company as your main job source, and any specific companies as sub-items beneath it. Make sure you don't get thrown into the jumper pile.
  - aaronblohowiak 18y ago
    How short is "too quickly" ?
staunch 18y ago
Highly bothered by the 944x1384 image scaled to 200x293 with the IMG tag. Can't help it.
- thinkzig 18y ago
  Me too. I'm guessing the people at wagner.edu where he's hotlinking the 194k image from are highly bothered by it as well.
- jrockway 18y ago
  It amuses me that people think putting irrelevant pictures into their writing makes it "more interesting". If you want to make a lolcat, just make a lolcat.
  - tjr 18y ago
    There's an art to it. I always found Philip Greenspun's oft-random image placement amusing and tasteful, e.g. http://philip.greenspun.com/panda/better-living http://philip.greenspun.com/panda/better-living But the image placement in this story does seem odd and awkward.
    - jrockway 18y ago
      I think he takes all the pictures himself. This doesn't make them more relevant, but they are nicer looking than ads :)
- derefr 18y ago
  I usually use too-large images in my design nowadays, because I tell them to scale with the page. Thus, when you increase the font size or resize your browser, the image gets larger, but not more pixelated.
chime 18y ago
> # Verbs ending in "d": shipped, launched, built, sold. Uhem.
- boredguy8 18y ago
  His point is past-tense action verbs. Get over it.
joshwa 18y ago
Mandatory reading for job-seekers-- Rands' essay on engineering resumes: http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2007/02/25/a_glimpse_and_a_hook.html http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2007/02/25/a_glimpse_a... (and a brief update): http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2007/12/06/a_brief_glimpse.html http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2007/12/06/a_brief_gli...
eli 18y ago
College GPA? Emailing the CEO? My takeaway is that I guess different people look for different things. Because when I was hiring for a developer, I couldn't care less what your GPA was, and emailing the CEO certainly wouldn't have earned you any bonus points. I looked for, well, relevant experience and a good cover letter that explains why you want to work here specifically -- as opposed to an obvious copy/paste job. (And, incidentally, the cover letter should be the body of you email message. It's unbelievable how many people attach a professional looking coverletter.doc to an extremely informal email message. Give me a reason to want to fire up Word and read your attachment. </rant>)
- TimothyFitz 18y ago
  This gives me an idea: If I should ever have to be back in the situation of applying for jobs, I'll put tracking pixels in my e-mail and my resume document. Resume open rates!
  - eli 18y ago
    Not a bad idea, though virtually every email client blocks images by default. You could track clicks to your portfolio or website though
  - derefr 18y ago
    The digital version of sticking together pages of a book draft.
- boredguy8 18y ago
  But you're probably looking for a cog. You'll get what you look for. As an applicant, you get what you apply for. That you wouldn't have liked my style doesn't really matter: the person that wants to employ me would like my style. The problem with all these 'how to apply' topics is that they really mean 'how to apply to me'. But I think there are 2 underlying and competing truths: 1) Be authentic. If you're not the person on your resume, it will come out sooner or later. Hopefully (for everyone) sooner. 2) Be unique. If you don't have a way to differentiate yourself, you don't have a reason to get hired. Of course, what makes you unique for one person won't make you unique (or will make you uniquely annoying) for another. Of course, these are suggestions for getting the 'right' job - a job where you fit in with the people that hired you. If you just need an employer: pander.
mavelikara 18y ago
I am aware that it is not an employees hiring market out there right now, but if you want to see a specific kind of resume, say so in your job advert. Please don't generalize what you want to see, to what employers want to see. The job advert or your website is the best place to put this information, not when you do a guest post on some other guys blog (unless clairvoyance is a job requirement).
dkokelley 18y ago
"Verbs ending in "d": shipped, launched, built, sold." I wouldn't want to see such an obvious oversight on a resume. Should read "Accomplishment Verbs" I also disagree with the "churn" criteria. I think it's becoming more and more acceptable for an employee to have a broader range of employers over a shorter period of time. The "company man" idea is dying. Sure, different industries will have different standards, but I tend to think that the trend is heading away from 20 years at the same company. It typically pays better to keep moving, and employers should (and are) realizing that the brighter candidates are the ones who are always looking for better opportunities.
bradgessler 18y ago
Here is how I go through resumes from developers: (1) Sort resumes in order from least amount of pages (on the top) to the most amount of pages (on the bottom). The resumes with the lesser amount of pages get priority (I've seen 12 pagers... the quals on it were from a complete bozo). I'll throw out anything over 3-4 pages. (2) Throw out resumes that list every programming language since 1982 (this halves the resume stack) or a list of languages the person is "familiar with" (when will head hunters stop telling their applicants to list this crap?) (3) I could care less about GPA as long as its over 3.0; I look for diversity at this point. Was this person an English major or a CS major? Does this person code outside of work? Are they experimenting with other languages/technologies? Does this person travel quite a bit? (4) Now its time to more carefully read the resume. I'll actually look at the experiences to make sure they're being honest and not making stupid claims like, "Save over $10mm in costs from writing code X". (5) Next up is the phone interview where I ask simple questions to make sure the applicant can communicate clearly, knows what regex is (this questions throws a lot of applicants to the way-side), and verify a few claims on their resume. I had one person claim they knew about DOA web-services and another guy who had "HTTP" listed on his resume and didn't even know what an HTTP verb was. Another more clever guy was actually Googling shit as I was asking him a question (I can hear your keyboard!).
- Daniel_Newby 18y ago
  "I had ... another guy who had "HTTP" listed on his resume and didn't even know what an HTTP verb was." Indeed. HTTP has methods. Apparently certainly proprietary software has "verbs".
aristus 18y ago
"...my twin brother Wes..." Shit. There's two of them?
herval 18y ago
"Verbs ending in d: shipped, launched, built" ouch...

62 points by physcab 18y ago

What about not working for companies who want me to deal with that kind of cruft in the first place, because life is to short?

neilc 18y ago
You wouldn't work for a company that requires you to present a resume? That is basically equivalent to not working for any company at all, other than as a consultant or a founder. Making a decent resume is not difficult, and done well, it isn't "cruft".
- eru 18y ago
  Don't you have to provide at least equivalent documentation as a consultant?

xenoterracide 18y ago

What I don't like to see on blogs, no place for comments, or registration required for comments. How dare anyone question you.

endtime 18y ago
Um...click the "Leave a comment" link at the bottom and you get a comment box with the name defaulting to "Guest". Doesn't get much easier than that.
- xenoterracide 18y ago
  I see no "leave a comment link". in fact there is no word "comment" on the page at all. Fail at web accessibility, you know the part where your site should work without javascript. At least I assume this is added if I allow one of the 10-ish domains that noscript says I'm blocking, I tried allowing the main domain, but that didn't help.
  - smokinn 18y ago
    The comments are loaded through a script tag. The top of the comment box says (Powered by JS-Kit) The script tag loads content from this url: http://js-kit.com/comments-data.js?jx=0&gen=0&srt=date&ord=desc&sp=1&pn=2&ps=500&ref=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.guykawasaki.com%2F2009%2F02%2Fguest-post-memo.html&randevuId=1235450753197.3486&#38 http://js-kit.com/comments-data.js?jx=0&gen=0&srt=da...; So either no-script is blocking that or you have security settings that don't allow script tags to an alternate domain or something of the sort.

xenoterracide 18y ago

Churn: does this keep you from hiring someone? I'm unfortunately just getting started, I've had a lot of contract jobs. When my job was done I moved on. Gmail address: Seriously get a life other than worrying about who someones email provider is. If they have AOL so what? how does this affect the job they do for you, AOL allows you pop or imap right? (might have to pay extra) maybe they use a mail client... and because they've had it for so long they don't want to change. I'm not an employer (yet) but I really don't care what email you use to mail me, even if it's totally unprofessional/inappropriate. I'm going to give you a company email anyways, I assume you were just being efficient with your time and not going out of your way to make another email just to impress me. Customization: I probably wouldn't reject a tailored resume, but to me this reeks of a person who wastes time on perfection. If you are seriously looking for work... you are probably emailing a lot of companies, tailoring for each one is just a foolish waste of time, there are better things you could be doing with your time, like learning something new. I'd make an exception for a place you really want to work, have inside info on, customer etc. but most places I've applied to have not made this list. Email to the CEO: Really it's a good idea to waste the CEO's time? In a small business where the CEO is HR then it's fine. I think emailing the department manager that you want to work with is the right answer. Numbers: the numbers this guys citing are probably BS, numbers like that are obviously made up, don't lie on your resume if you have numbers that you can prove you are responsible for, then don't list them.

Flemlord 18y ago
Churn - Consulting is fine, but if an applicant has moved too quickly between permanent jobs it's a sign that they probably won't be at yours for long. Maybe they have a recruiter friend constantly putting new offers in front of them, or maybe they are outright incompetent and are quickly fired. My hiring team calls them "jumpers", and it's one of our biggest negatives. If you are working as a consultant, I would suggest listing the consulting company as your main job source, and any specific companies as sub-items beneath it. Make sure you don't get thrown into the jumper pile.
- aaronblohowiak 18y ago
  How short is "too quickly" ?

staunch 18y ago

Highly bothered by the 944x1384 image scaled to 200x293 with the IMG tag. Can't help it.

thinkzig 18y ago
Me too. I'm guessing the people at wagner.edu where he's hotlinking the 194k image from are highly bothered by it as well.
jrockway 18y ago
It amuses me that people think putting irrelevant pictures into their writing makes it "more interesting". If you want to make a lolcat, just make a lolcat.
- tjr 18y ago
  There's an art to it. I always found Philip Greenspun's oft-random image placement amusing and tasteful, e.g. http://philip.greenspun.com/panda/better-living http://philip.greenspun.com/panda/better-living But the image placement in this story does seem odd and awkward.
  - jrockway 18y ago
    I think he takes all the pictures himself. This doesn't make them more relevant, but they are nicer looking than ads :)
derefr 18y ago
I usually use too-large images in my design nowadays, because I tell them to scale with the page. Thus, when you increase the font size or resize your browser, the image gets larger, but not more pixelated.

chime 18y ago

> # Verbs ending in "d": shipped, launched, built, sold. Uhem.

boredguy8 18y ago
His point is past-tense action verbs. Get over it.

joshwa 18y ago

Mandatory reading for job-seekers-- Rands' essay on engineering resumes: http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2007/02/25/a_glimpse_and_a_hook.html http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2007/02/25/a_glimpse_a... (and a brief update): http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2007/12/06/a_brief_glimpse.html http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2007/12/06/a_brief_gli...

eli 18y ago

College GPA? Emailing the CEO? My takeaway is that I guess different people look for different things. Because when I was hiring for a developer, I couldn't care less what your GPA was, and emailing the CEO certainly wouldn't have earned you any bonus points. I looked for, well, relevant experience and a good cover letter that explains why you want to work here specifically -- as opposed to an obvious copy/paste job. (And, incidentally, the cover letter should be the body of you email message. It's unbelievable how many people attach a professional looking coverletter.doc to an extremely informal email message. Give me a reason to want to fire up Word and read your attachment. </rant>)

TimothyFitz 18y ago
This gives me an idea: If I should ever have to be back in the situation of applying for jobs, I'll put tracking pixels in my e-mail and my resume document. Resume open rates!
- eli 18y ago
  Not a bad idea, though virtually every email client blocks images by default. You could track clicks to your portfolio or website though
- derefr 18y ago
  The digital version of sticking together pages of a book draft.
boredguy8 18y ago
But you're probably looking for a cog. You'll get what you look for. As an applicant, you get what you apply for. That you wouldn't have liked my style doesn't really matter: the person that wants to employ me would like my style. The problem with all these 'how to apply' topics is that they really mean 'how to apply to me'. But I think there are 2 underlying and competing truths: 1) Be authentic. If you're not the person on your resume, it will come out sooner or later. Hopefully (for everyone) sooner. 2) Be unique. If you don't have a way to differentiate yourself, you don't have a reason to get hired. Of course, what makes you unique for one person won't make you unique (or will make you uniquely annoying) for another. Of course, these are suggestions for getting the 'right' job - a job where you fit in with the people that hired you. If you just need an employer: pander.

mavelikara 18y ago

I am aware that it is not an employees hiring market out there right now, but if you want to see a specific kind of resume, say so in your job advert. Please don't generalize what you want to see, to what employers want to see. The job advert or your website is the best place to put this information, not when you do a guest post on some other guys blog (unless clairvoyance is a job requirement).

dkokelley 18y ago

"Verbs ending in "d": shipped, launched, built, sold." I wouldn't want to see such an obvious oversight on a resume. Should read "Accomplishment Verbs" I also disagree with the "churn" criteria. I think it's becoming more and more acceptable for an employee to have a broader range of employers over a shorter period of time. The "company man" idea is dying. Sure, different industries will have different standards, but I tend to think that the trend is heading away from 20 years at the same company. It typically pays better to keep moving, and employers should (and are) realizing that the brighter candidates are the ones who are always looking for better opportunities.

bradgessler 18y ago

Here is how I go through resumes from developers: (1) Sort resumes in order from least amount of pages (on the top) to the most amount of pages (on the bottom). The resumes with the lesser amount of pages get priority (I've seen 12 pagers... the quals on it were from a complete bozo). I'll throw out anything over 3-4 pages. (2) Throw out resumes that list every programming language since 1982 (this halves the resume stack) or a list of languages the person is "familiar with" (when will head hunters stop telling their applicants to list this crap?) (3) I could care less about GPA as long as its over 3.0; I look for diversity at this point. Was this person an English major or a CS major? Does this person code outside of work? Are they experimenting with other languages/technologies? Does this person travel quite a bit? (4) Now its time to more carefully read the resume. I'll actually look at the experiences to make sure they're being honest and not making stupid claims like, "Save over $10mm in costs from writing code X". (5) Next up is the phone interview where I ask simple questions to make sure the applicant can communicate clearly, knows what regex is (this questions throws a lot of applicants to the way-side), and verify a few claims on their resume. I had one person claim they knew about DOA web-services and another guy who had "HTTP" listed on his resume and didn't even know what an HTTP verb was. Another more clever guy was actually Googling shit as I was asking him a question (I can hear your keyboard!).

Daniel_Newby 18y ago
"I had ... another guy who had "HTTP" listed on his resume and didn't even know what an HTTP verb was." Indeed. HTTP has methods. Apparently certainly proprietary software has "verbs".

aristus 18y ago

"...my twin brother Wes..." Shit. There's two of them?

herval 18y ago

"Verbs ending in d: shipped, launched, built" ouch...