Comment by Balgair | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Balgair | Hacker News Reader

I took the dive and let them hack away at my LI. No telling what kind of spam I'm going to get now. That said, wow! This is terrible.

The first thing that they say I should improve on is: Must-Have-Words. Here is their list of those words: Deployment Security API Scalability OOP Continuous Integration (CI) Availability Docker SOLID NoSQL Configuration Management (CM) Robust Tuning Algorithm Web services Networking Design Patterns Unit testing Open Source AWS Hadoop Continuous Deployment (CD) REST Big Data Agile TDD Machine Learning Microservices Artificial Intelligence GitHub.

They also say that after I pay for the service I'll get access to the other fields of things I am missing. Those include: Niche IT Skills, Numbers, Online Presence, Technological Proficiency, Typos, Soft Skills, Your Old Projects, URLs.

They do say that I have a good amount of 'Action Verbs'. But that I need more of them and give the examples of: Devised Debugged Utilized Upgraded Assembled Overhauled Redesigned Coded Rebuilt Maintained Initiated Solved Investigated Developed Architected Trained.

Again, once I pay, I'll unlock a few more categories, which are listed here: Resume Size, Accomplishments, Your Most Recent Roles, Abbreviations, Outdated Tech, File Format, Summary/Objective, Employment History, Short-Term Jobs, Marital Status, Religion, Broken Links, References, Teams

In case you haven't really read through that list I'll highlight the 2 most INSANE items there that should make any HR department dive for the pepto-bismol: Marital Status, Religion. Now, I don't know if they are warning AGAINST including those fields or encouraging including them. However, that they are items that are there at all speaks to the 'demographic' that they are targeting: complete numbskulls. Not a single person that can fog a mirror would ever include those 2 fields in a CV in the English speaking world.

> Utilized

lol

One of the only people I've ever interviewed where I cut it short was a guy who admitted he lied and put "MongoDB" on his resume to get it past any robots that were screening.

Anyway, that massive list of must-have-words reminds me of the old days on the internet where web pages would have a block of content near the bottom that contained many keywords written in the same color as the background. Now I am wondering if that's the direction resumes go for some short period of time.

>Anyway, that massive list of must-have-words reminds me of the old days on the internet where web pages would have a block of content near the bottom that contained many keywords written in the same color as the background. Now I am wondering if that's the direction resumes go for some short period of time.

That's essentially the purpose of my "Technical Skills" section.

> Now I am wondering if that's the direction resumes go for some short period of time.

It is. I have (reliable) reports of CVs listing words like "Stanford" in white on white background, to pass the automated filtering at some companies.

I used to do that kind of thing when I just got out of school but later took it all out. I had heard the algos were smarter and went through hoops to take all that out. Guess that 'hack' still works.

I'm tempted to do this, but openly. Like a bold heading that says "Buzzword Section." Maybe with a parenthetical explanation that although it makes no sense, there are no lies in it.

I've been doing that for years - my resume has a block labeled "buzzwords" immediately after the contact info and just before the job history.

My resume is also kind of aggressively old-fashioned, a single page of 80-column ASCII text, because that's the kind of person I am and I figure anyone interested in hiring me ought to know what they're in for. :-)

How's that working out for you?

It works really well. I've never had to spend more than a couple of weeks looking for a job.

Hard to say if it’s due to the CV or general awesomeness though.

Cold-search or are you consistently being referred to by friends and former co-workers? Because if the latter you CV document might not even factor in your success rate

It is mostly the latter, as you'd imagine, and therefore most people encountering my resume already have some reason to pay attention. I think that lets me get away with being more opinionated in the way I present myself.

Yeah, but I happen to know that one of those jobs involved working on a BASIC compiler, so...

(Hi Mars!)

yeah, what slayed me about this resume tool for coders is that it doesn't accept plain text, but does accept word/doc

I do that too! The fixed width, not the buzzwords. I've gotten a few double takes, but it works. Mine used to be longer but one page is plenty, and more than most interviewers will read in any case.

Just for laughs, I just wrote a simple script that achieves exactly this: https://github.com/nachowski/cv-warfare

Much of that is driven by low-value resume screening services many big companies use, a la:

"Sorry, we see you only have "Ubuntu" and "CentOS" listed on your resume, the client requires Linux experience, we've decided to pass on you.

Similarly, I have a section on the bottom of my resume labeled "Skills" that's just a dumping ground of any buzzword I'm comfortable talking about.

at least he was honest -- i hope mongo was a core requirement and that it wasn't just the lie (aka the application optimization) itself ;)

Hah, no we didn't use Mongo at all. It was just the lie.

I can understand why you’d reject someone for that, but I have to wonder: would you have seen the resume at all without the keyword stuffing, and had you seen it, sans said keywords, would you have interviewed them anyway?

And even if his answer is yes, the applicant had no way of knowing.

I get around this sort of thing by not lying.

Well I don't either, but I've also been rejected out of hand by non-technical people for lacking keywords.

Well it's lose lose for applicants then. We get shuffled aside by non-technical HR reps and automated processes for lacking specific keywords that often aren't even relevant, and then we also get rejected for playing the game. I would have continued the interview.

Has anyone tried this with resumes? Embed the pdf with white text at a tiny font size so machine read the keywords, but then they never show up for a person reading them. Not sure it would get you anywhere, but gets past the machines or something. Not that I think this is a good idea, just curious what would happen.

Seen resumes with this, but a person somewhat reviews them for a few seconds after the giant batch filter - so you'd want to work for a company that does this and somehow thing your resume would qualify even if you dont have the thing they want.

I worked on applicant tracking databases, it's not worth your time - just go to a networking event or find some human face to the company if you want to skip their dumb systems.

edit - I would also say ATS systems are largely a waste of time.

I've been doing it for 3 years. Smallest font possible, white coloured text, just a list of keywords. It has worked pretty well and I'm honestly disgusted that these kinds of strategies are being rewarded.

This list of keywords were things I knew about or had experience with, just didn't want to ever mention on my actual CV text out of self-respect: things like 'Agile'.

> Marital Status, Religion

This is just completely at odds with modernity in the west. I wonder if this service was created by Indians? I say this because I've done a lot of hiring in India over many years, and almost every CV I see has unnecessary personal details such as age/DoB, gender, marital status and home address.

Occasionally they include religion too, and I've previously been cautioned by Indian managers to be careful about putting together teams that mix Muslims or Christians with Hindus or Jains (I obviously ignore this).

> I wonder if this service was created by Indians?

"Take CV Compiler, a new product by Andrew Stetsenko and Alexandra Dosii"

Going by the names, I guess Eastern European.

> The first thing that they say I should improve on is: Must-Have-Words.

They might as well expect everyone to read the following texts:

https://i.imgur.com/DQcks8u.jpg

https://john.do/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/buzzwordfirstdesi...

Religion? WTF? My bet is that they find religious keywords and recommend you purge them. Hopefully?! Still funny to see it here.

Anyway thanks for the word salad buddy, I'm gonna sprinkle some in my own CV. Not too much, just a smattering.

Your point about

>in the English speaking world.

and

>Resume size

don't make me confident that this will apply very well to any job not in the USA. Or in something other than Silicon Valley web-dev.

The 'English speaking world' is to clarify that the Religion and Marriage Status fields are heart-attacks to any HR department in the US/UK/AUS/NZ/CAN.(Granted I did not pay them, so they may be telling me to take those things out).

I know in other countries and in other cultures, such questions may be routine. For example: in Japan, blood types (O+/-,A+/-,B+/-) have been included in interviews: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2009/02/04/in-ja...

And in parts of the UK (Northern Ireland) you could well create a political firestorm and piss of the Unionist or the Republican tradition.

NI has a load of extra laws around sectarian discrimination.

> In case you haven't really read through that list I'll highlight the 2 most INSANE items there that should make any HR department dive for the pepto-bismol: Marital Status, Religion. Now, I don't know if they are warning AGAINST including those fields or encouraging including them. However, that they are items that are there at all speaks to the 'demographic' that they are targeting: complete numbskulls. Not a single person that can fog a mirror would ever include those 2 fields in a CV in the English speaking world.

Why not? There's nothing lost and only anything to gain in mentioning you're a Christian/Satanist/whatever. Tossing someone's resume on the grounds that they mention they're a Satanist is actual discrimination and the applicant would have a justifiable complaint. If anything it's a challenge-- "I dare you to throw mine away without a damn good reason."

In southern states it's incredibly common for general contractors, handymen and such to stick an ickthys on the back of their truck or include it somewhere on the side vinyl. It's an appeal to customer sentiment-- "I can trust this guy not to screw me, we're both Christians." The Jews have done similar insourcing for centuries.

I personally once went on a lunch interview for a dev position where the president and his CFO expected me to join them in saying grace before the meal. Guy had more crucifixes in his office than the Pope himself. Guarantee you they would have loved it if candidates disclosed their religious affiliation on their resume; they would not have wasted their time on me.

It's a mess but not as toxic as you're letting on.

> Why not? There's nothing lost and only anything to gain in mentioning you're a Christian/Satanist/whatever.

Well, this clearly isn't true but your general point is correct: sometimes when applying for a job it can be helpful to advertise your religious beliefs. Still, those jobs overwhelmingly don't come through LinkedIn.

Lol just say it and Latin and mention your a lay member of Opus Dei or a Jesuit.

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