What I want (and don’t want) to see on your software engineering resume | Hacker News Reader

What I want (and don’t want) to see on your software engineering resume

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12 pointsstatico12 comments

Be open to having to merge the terse non-academic resume and not-terse academic CV. When a company looks for a scientific developer, particularly if an advanced degree is required, they want to see proof of “science”. In these positions, there’s usually an hour seminar on a research topic similar to a scientific conference (along with the other, more typical interview stuff). In these areas, terse can be read as nothing to say.

I never tried to write a resume. I had a main part of the CV that I tried to keep to 3 pages. I also had a secondary part that collected presentations and publications and the like. This grew over the years and I think it stabilized at 7 or more pages but the time I stopped updating it. But then, I never applied for a non scientific programming position as they saw PhD as a big negative.

I have a friend who insists on including a photo of himself on his resume. I've told him countless times that there's no point unless he's applying to a modeling job, and this article just serves to confirm that opinion.

I've found the part about the cover letter to ring true. I just got hired after 13 months of interview processes for different positions. The cover letter seemed to have no bearing on whether or not I got hired. In fact, the less effort I put into the cover letter the better I did in the interview process. For the job I got, I literally wrote a casual "Hey, I really want to work for you" paragraph on indeed.

I’ve seen photos, too, but always wonder how big firms handle these, given anti-discrimination laws.

Yes, names, addresses, and education are proxies for race, gender, age, etc., too, but those also carry information that is necessary to evaluate an applicant.

I would think photos, being unnecessary as part of the CV, are more problematic.

At FAANG I once got passed a resume with a photo.

It was a fairly attractive woman, either quality being rare for our org. But its even more rare to have a photo on your resume.

But the article is right - it hurt them. It made her look like she didn’t have confidence in her engineering skills - and that she was trying to cash in on being a minority. What other reason could there be? (legitimate question)

It’s hard then to imagine who a picture helps. Someone that confirms stereotypes? Why would you even need a photo then.

p.s. Afterwards I emailed the recruiter to say they should remove photos, put some placeholder.

Pretty woman puts picture on resume. Is she hitting on me?

I'm surprised by the advice to avoid a cover letter. I think the cover letter is more important than the resume because its provides a thesis for hire. Whereas the resume is a list and you are hoping they ask you about something. But you can just plant the seed in the cover letter.

Having been in a position to read resumes and cover letters, there are very few cover letters that I've read that really made me want to talk to someone, but there are very, very, very many that immediately soured me.

A well-written cover letter can help, but a form letter, copy/paste, or other low-effort letter won't help, and the latter is what I've gotten for the most part.

A T cover letter is pretty helpful. If there are a list of requirements in a job description, comparing yourself to them gives a very good overview, probably even better than a CV.

Having sat through years and years of presentations and documentation reviews, I'd say most developers, even highly educated ones, can't write decent prose so a cover letter displaying that would hurt them. Even if they have someone else polish their cover letter, that's still them presenting themselves as having a level of writing talent that they don't actually have.

There are entire industries built around designing systems to automate the process of resume review BECAUSE people like this have lists of “What I want (and don’t want) to see”.

Really like how simplistic the example resume is. Tells you what you need to know without bombarding you with too much information.

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