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Comment by tristram_shandy | Hacker News Reader

Don't write anything on your resume that would indicate "number of years experience" -- list your jobs, explain key achievements, don't distill anything down to a number. Your resume should NOT explain who you are, or go into real specifics -- it's an advertisement for you, as simple as that. If they want details, they'll have to schedule an interview.

Once you have the interview, you can talk about your experiences, why you're a good fit, what you do in your spare time, etc -- they will not tally up years of experience or record your answers directly into an Excel spreadsheet.

Also, don't say you're "pivoting" your career. Just don't.

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You're focused on the wrong thing. The resume comes way too late in the job acquisition process to really matter. The vast majority of jobs are filled through networking, not applying cold with a great resume.

You need to work on meeting people in your field, at the companies where you want to work. It's not what you know, it's who you know. Go out to meetups. Be a friendly, helpful person. Make friends, lots of them. One of them will make the connection for you at some point.

I always hear this, but I've never been hired through networking, nor have I ever seen someone hired through networking.

I suspect that to be more the case in very large companies. Luckily I have never worked in one.

My boyfriend got his current job when my friend mentioned that her friend had the same degree as him and had mentioned the company was hiring, would he like to be put in touch? The company is about 15 people altogether.

Large companies are probably even less likely to hire due to networking - it helps more with smaller companies. I have helped gotten friends hired at companies I’ve worked at, and vice versa.

I've never not been hired through networking, and I've never worked for a large company. YMMV.

I pivoted my career and got hired through networking (active attending meetups)

Depends on what you call networking. Being involved (speaking), mentoring, reaching out to people in your social circle who have contacts in professional circles you're interested in, etc. Networking isn't showing up to a something posted on Meetup.com, grabbing a slice of pizza and a drink, and making small talk.

No, eating meetup pizza is not the whole of networking, but it's a very easy path that can certainly lead to the rest.

Of course, it's still a matter of initiative. You have to make those connections, not expect being on auto-pilot to result in a pot of gold.

I got hired in an industry (finance) I had no experience in after giving a talk at a meetup, then an 'interview' in a pub.

I'm working at a place where I don't know anyone who was hired except through networking.

I still doubt the "networking" part.

I've got my first job in the states because a recruiter called me. Same for the second job. The third one was through being acquired. The fourth one, you could call networking if you call showing up for a recruiting event networking. 5th one? You guessed it, recruiter called. Sixth one? Yep. Exactly.

Before that, I worked in Germany. 1st job, applied cold. Second one, applied cold. 3rd one, applied cold. 4th one was working with a friend, so there's that. 5th one, applied cold for contract work, converted into a job. So half networked.

So, if we're generous, 2 out of 11 were networking.

As far as I'm concerned, work on the things you care about, build your skills, and when you switch jobs, make sure it propels you forward in some way. If you're a social person, by all means, enjoy meetups/meeting people because it's something that works for you. But don't force yourself to yet another meetup just because everybody says you should.

I still get recruiters randomly messaging me. However they're all looking for someone to move laterally, not up. This wasn't the case when I was more junior. Much like salary I find myself wondering if there isn't a limit to finding new opportunities without networking.

> I still get recruiters randomly messaging me.

Define "recruiter".

People who recruit. I get messages from recruiters who are direct employees of the companies they recruit for, self-employed recruiters and recruiters for contracting shops. Probably a variety of others, too.

There might be. I don't know. I've been approached by recruiters, told them point blank "not what I'm looking for, here's what I want", and they just pointed me to those opportunities instead.

So I think part of the answer is clearly saying what you want. I don't know if that holds for positions like Director /VP at large tech companies - these are always somewhat political - but it seems to hold up to pretty much right before that.

YMMV, of course. For all I know, I accidentally have the right magic keywords in my LinkedIn or something. (I don't know. I only update it every few years, so I certainly am not paying enough attention to tell :)

”(...) they're all looking for someone to move laterally, not up”

That’s probably safer for them. IME many recruiters doesn’t really have enough knowledge about the role they are trying to recruit for, so it would probably be very risky for them to try to find a ”rough diamond” since they are not really able to make such a judgement call with high enough chance of succeeding.

That's one of the benefits of recruiters in my book - they get paid to do the networking.

No, using a recruiter is nowhere near the same thing as networking. If you think this, you don't really understand what networking is about.

Did I say it was the same thing? If you think that, you can't read. But no, go ahead and use some of your obvious social finesse and let me know how the mystery of networking and its meaning has eluded me for the 50 years I've been alive. Ya punk. And then tell me how a person who contacts, and stays in contact with, many people at many companies, and many workers, in a certain field (a.k.a. a "recruiter") isn't doing networking for you.

Most of my opportunities have come from networking, including the longest, most prosperous role.

Interestingly I'm the exact opposite, of the 4 jobs I've had all have been through network, from the very first grocery stocking job to IT and product jobs.

When I hire the first thing I do is also reach out to my personal network to see if anyone is looking for work or know anyone who is.

My wife did just manage to land a job with a cold application, though, so it's not like either way doesn't work.

> they will not tally up years of experience or record your answers directly > into an Excel spreadsheet.

About half of my interviews started with an HR phone call where they spew their laundry list of technologies and ask me to disclose the years of experience and how do I rate my skills from 0 to 10 for each element in the list.

How do you typically rate yourself on these scales?

You can't call yourself anything lower than a 9 lest they move on.

I'm not the right person to ask. I've never managed to get a job that involved HR screening phone calls.

I usually rate myself from 7 to 8. Probably 9 if I have 5+ years of experience or I would be confident consulting.

Once I rated my skills as 10 for a technology I know quite a lot about. I was then told that I was showing off and that I need to work on being more humble.

Ouch. I think I'm starting to see why so many people get jobs through connections rather than cold applying.

They're testing for Dunning-kruger - either you're below average and you rate yourself a 7 or you're a 10 and you rate yourself an 8.

Good advice but as many are pointing out, many a times the job description will have some kid of "number of years experience" requirement. Even if it means asking for X number of years when the technology has existed for X-N years.

Ideally this should be the flow in having a job conversation. This will clearly lead to better fit for both the employer and the employee. Unfortunately, most of the real world jobs ask for some kind of number as experience, even though they know that the number does not directly translate into anything meaningful.

> they will not tally up years of experience or record your answers directly into an Excel spreadsheet.

They absolutely will ask for the exact years and months if you haven't listed them, and they'll think you're hiding something if you prevaricate.

> Don't write anything on your resume that would indicate "number of years experience"

So hold off on start/end dates at jobs then? Since those could be used to figure out experience?

>"Also, don't say you're 'pivoting' yout career. Just don't."

I tend to find such polemics unhelpful. Usually when someone tells me "just don't", I end up really wanting to know the mechanism behind what is causing such a stern warning.

For example, if I asked someone, "should I jump out of an airplane with no parachute",...

and someone says...

"just don't, because unless you have lots of luck and can defy lots of laws of physics, you will most likely be killed"...

then they have revealed a very clear and concrete reason, which strengthens their assertion of "just don't".

I see no such evidence for or against using the word "pivot", and I can imagine scenarios where the word even resonates with certain types of people.

I agree with you in general but I agree with parent about the use of the word pivot and its synonyms in this case. By using that word in an interview, you are signaling inexperience which the OP is trying to avoid.

This not only signals inexperience, it also invites questions on why did you decide to pivot (did you fail? any other negativity there?). This is not necessarily bad, you can theoretically use those questions to your advantage.

However, interview gives one a very limited time to impress. Better use it to discuss your strength and the future, not invite archeological queries.

The reason, at least to me, was implicit: Because the word itself is a signal of bullshit and is likely to raise flags for many people doing the hiring.

There isn't anything more concrete than that. YMMV. In this particular case, it rings true to me.

My thoughts exactly. Software development in general is a high-bullshit career, so I think anyone involved in either building software or hiring people to build software is going to have an extremely well-tuned bullshit detector.

Startups "pivot" because they failed in some way.

Pivoting your career can be construed as having failed somewhere and needing to find something else.

In the context of a career, phrase it as evolving your skills to match market demand. The very people who "pivot" resonate with will immediately associate it with failure.

^^^ This ^^^

They are pivoting because they don't want to fail. They maybe made a mistake or the market changed, acknowledged it and took action based on this information.

For me this is not something negative at all

I agree with your comment except the last sentence. Negative or not, I think it's a poor choice of word to use in the context of a CV/career.

When interviewees are asked "So why are you looking to move from your present job?". Saying that you need a new challenge sounds very different than "needing to pivot".

Pivoting sin't because they've failed. It's because the path to their goal has changed or isn't what they previously thought. Basically, they're adjusting to new information (market, industry, etc) just like the rest of your definition.

Yes, it's an overused term but it's NOT a sign of failure.

I think this is bordering on a no true Scottsman argument, although maybe unintentionally. But whether that's true or not, I think lots of people take it as a euphemism for failure.

it can be construed that way, but it can also be construed other ways. Perhaps how it is construed acts as a filter on who you want to work for.

100% with regards to "just don't".

Independent of that, I think using the word 'pivot' here is fine. We all know what he means. There might be a different word with a different connotation that some people may be more receptive to. But, pivot is well within the realm of reasonable words to use here.

Pivoting is the new failure. It casts you in a bad light, like putting a reason for leaving as being fired. Additionally, pivoting means you're trying something new, and this is less valuable than having experience in the job. It means you'll have to spend a lot of the employer's time (money) messing around, making mistakes, breaking things, etc - as is necessitated by learning.

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