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Comment by isoskeles | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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>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.

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.

> 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'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.

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.

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

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

(Hi Mars!)

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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'.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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