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Comment by onion2k | Hacker News Reader

HR is looking for "node.js" but you wrote it like "nodejs"? Though luck pal, bye. HR wants a "computer scientist" but you have a degree in "computer science"? Same, automatically discarded.

Fixing that would require not only a universal data format but also a universal taxonomy of terms to describe skills. That would need everyone to agree on how to describe what they do. Easy enough when you're describing programming languages, but effectively impossible for any softer skills. This is precisely why you need the human aspect.

The way to fix the issue you describe is to educate HR people, not to try to apply technology to a non-tech problem.

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I'm pretty sure my Resume says "crazy outside-the-box madman" on it somewhere near the top. It pretty much guarantees that I work somewhere with a sense of humor while rejected from places that take themselves too seriously.

Resumes aren't just a list of skills and work history (education isn't even on my resume anymore), it's also a chance to let a small amount of your personality show through so you stand out against the pile.

Of course, if you're submitting to a big corp, you'll be fighting against AI reading your resume first, so, write for that if that's how you roll. I usually only apply to smaller companies that apparently end up as bigger companies by the time I move on.

>"crazy outside-the-box madman"

I like that so much that I dare not copycat it.

see also "never fully domesticated", to quote one HN profile description.

in the house == domesticated

house approxEqual box

I think I actually scored some jobs and interviews while I still kept "wizard" at the top of my CV...

My LinkedIn recruiter spam dropped substantially when I added "literally a wizard" to the skills section (and removed everything remotely tech-telated).

https://www.linkedin.com/mwlite/in/mikkelpaulson

win / win :D

"Wizard at getting resume's to pass automatic resume scanners"

I go by "unicorn wrangler" on mine for the same reason

In a previous life, I was an SRE. Volunteered as a firefighter.

"Keeps things running. Puts out fires."

Served me well on the resume, probably for quite similar reasons.

Fixing that would require not only a universal data format but also a universal taxonomy of terms

A regular HR can only do CTRL-F CTRL-V efficiently in their PDF viewer, when automated system would likely test for /\bnode(?:\.?js)?\b/i, because it's a result of a development cycle, which usually includes some field analysis. HRs would LOVE to select something like "where has($node) and years($redux) >= 2 order by years($php) desc". They are not idiots, they just have piles of data and nonsensical tools. Of course they optimize for nonsense.

A human could search for different variations too, but they are average in average and have no the expertise to install a regex-able viewer. It's stupid little things like this that prevent them from doing their job better, not some systemic issue of their own.

> They are not idiots, they just have piles of data and nonsensical tools.

Disagree.

I can see why. Of course a role that requires CTRL-F level of skills attracts low-skill-required resources to a "helper" subrole. But if you replace it with automation, true skills will remain and thrive. Not that I like them on emotional level, their job is to hire you as cheap as possible and demand as much as they can. But hey it's a market. Learn to negotiate and to plan ahead financially for search periods to avoid premature decision pitfalls.

Maybe I've not applied and worked with big enough companies, but I've never seen an HR person be helpful or in any way been aligned with my interests. This could be forgiven as they may well serve interests which are opposite to mine at times, but there are numerous times where HR representatives just (from what I can gather) pick suboptimal strategies to try and convince me to do something, be it remain or take up a job offer or anything else, i.e. I've yet to see an HR person successfully manage a human resource in an optimal way. And by that I mean that statistically the outcomes would be no different if it was a random person with normal communication skills doing the job of HR or if it was someone with training and experience.

> The way to fix the issue you describe is to educate HR people, not to try to apply technology to a non-tech problem.

I wish it was easier to do. At my first job after university (not my first job altogether) we initially had great rapport between "DCOps" and HR. To be honest, our group was rather... irreverent, which made it even more interesting that we had such great rapport (we had all the stereotypes going for us, including female-only HR team and basement-dwelling male-only sysadmins).

But thanks to great cooperation, HR would do basic filtering on things they actually checked with us about, then forwarded us the CVs unmodified to give our own opinion before deciding whether to go with it or not.

Unfortunately some time later head of HR ended up let go due to some conflict with C-level I believe, and things slowly reverted to the mean :(

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