5 ms·

I would agree with OP, until when I has become a hiring manager myself. I do understand years of experience may not equal to competency in certain skill sets. B

I would agree with OP, until when I has become a hiring manager myself. I do understand years of experience may not equal to competency in certain skill sets. But if you are going to run a hiring post, what kind of metrics could you use, on top of years of experience? Putting something too generic (e.g. intermediate programmer, mid-level, etc.), you tend to attract a lot of non-relevant, hello-world sort of people. Putting a laundry list of language features? You are afraid you could unwittingly weed out people you want, let alone the first person to complain would be the recruiter in HR. Most hiring managers, myself included, just use years of experience as a guidance so that the candidate can get a feel of the expectations. I did hire candidates with lesser experience but with good technical competencies. Therefore there is no harm to try if you are confident you are a good fit. In fact, I will be really impressed if someone can sell and market oneself intelligently. Surprise me!

drewcoo 14y ago
When I read resumes, and I don't mind personally sifting through hundreds a week, I look for a narrative. If there's a cover letter, that helps create the narrative. I want to see personal, professional growth on a resume. I wonder about time gaps and seeming to do the same job repeatedly but they're not deal-killers at the resume screen stage. I look for increased depth of knowledge and increased scope of influence. Both of those things make someone more senior, rather than having just repeated the same year x-many times. If someone can sell me his/her story in the cover letter and resume, I follow up on that in a phone screen. I'm still looking for more proof of someone being "passionate" (overused term but often part of HR doctrine) and showing that they grow and grow and grow. This has never made any sense to any recruiters I've worked with and has sometimes been a hard sell to others when I wasn't the hiring manager but I honestly don't know how else to screen for "has a lot of potential but maybe doesn't know our stack yet". I'd love to hear how other people do this. I'd especially like to hear from someone who doesn't focus solely on what's in someone's Github repos.
- hga 14y ago
  That's interesting, and I suppose my resume shows that, although there are ups and downs, i.e. a very demanding job followed by one not so demanding. What I do is to express a narrative in each job, showing how I did stuff that made a difference. I'm most proud of this ending to a sentence in my resume: "[my work] provided half of company revenues and enabled another quarter (out of $5 million for FY92)" (it did go along with some demanding work, technically, and human factor for GUI/workflow).
namenotrequired 14y ago
I wonder about this -- what would people like to see on the vacancy page instead, that would attract the right talent (instead of the right experience that happens to be relevant)?
tomjen3 14y ago
The problem with that kind of requirements is that a lot of non-agressive people take it as a "meet this minimum requirement or the CV goes in the bin". I did this initially but then wen't fuck that and applied no matter what, as long as I thought I might be able to do the job.
- hga 14y ago
  Bingo. I myself would put them into a separate bin, and more thoroughly investigate the company to see if I wanted to work there, if I could perhaps weasel around the official requirements in my cover letter, etc. If you're more aggressive, bypass HR and find the hiring manager.

drewcoo 14y ago

When I read resumes, and I don't mind personally sifting through hundreds a week, I look for a narrative. If there's a cover letter, that helps create the narrative. I want to see personal, professional growth on a resume. I wonder about time gaps and seeming to do the same job repeatedly but they're not deal-killers at the resume screen stage. I look for increased depth of knowledge and increased scope of influence. Both of those things make someone more senior, rather than having just repeated the same year x-many times. If someone can sell me his/her story in the cover letter and resume, I follow up on that in a phone screen. I'm still looking for more proof of someone being "passionate" (overused term but often part of HR doctrine) and showing that they grow and grow and grow. This has never made any sense to any recruiters I've worked with and has sometimes been a hard sell to others when I wasn't the hiring manager but I honestly don't know how else to screen for "has a lot of potential but maybe doesn't know our stack yet". I'd love to hear how other people do this. I'd especially like to hear from someone who doesn't focus solely on what's in someone's Github repos.

hga 14y ago
That's interesting, and I suppose my resume shows that, although there are ups and downs, i.e. a very demanding job followed by one not so demanding. What I do is to express a narrative in each job, showing how I did stuff that made a difference. I'm most proud of this ending to a sentence in my resume: "[my work] provided half of company revenues and enabled another quarter (out of $5 million for FY92)" (it did go along with some demanding work, technically, and human factor for GUI/workflow).

namenotrequired 14y ago

I wonder about this -- what would people like to see on the vacancy page instead, that would attract the right talent (instead of the right experience that happens to be relevant)?

tomjen3 14y ago

The problem with that kind of requirements is that a lot of non-agressive people take it as a "meet this minimum requirement or the CV goes in the bin". I did this initially but then wen't fuck that and applied no matter what, as long as I thought I might be able to do the job.

hga 14y ago
Bingo. I myself would put them into a separate bin, and more thoroughly investigate the company to see if I wanted to work there, if I could perhaps weasel around the official requirements in my cover letter, etc. If you're more aggressive, bypass HR and find the hiring manager.