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Comment by yupper32 | Hacker News Reader

I don't see many 5-star skill ratings, dual colored backgrounds (?), or unreadable fonts. Where do you see those? I would turn people away from that format if they asked my advice.

My resume, and the resumes I've seen aren't too far away from this format. More bullet points and a bit more detail than this, I guess. But otherwise pretty similar

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I see them a lot for interns and new grads. I think there's a bunch of templates that have these 'features' and when people are first starting out they don't know better. No interviewer I've ever met thought 5-star ratings were a good idea.

I graduated last year and one of our final classes required a resume be submitted using the professors format which was colorful, differing fonts, and used "confidence percentages". I wouldn't dare use it in the real world but I'm wondering how many of those new grad resumes are similar.

And new grads are probably often looking for something anything to stand out if they haven’t done any projects that really stand out and have a middling GPA from a middling school.

Yep 100%, and I did the same to be honest - I have a memory of painstakingly deciding which languages or technologies I was "experienced" in and which I was merely "intermediate" in, without realising it was wasted effort :) I think people tend to be quite forgiving of graduates or those new to the industry, it's hard to know what's expected of you.

As someone who has been through several government vocational programs in Canada, I will say that when your Case Manager or Instructor says to write your resumes and letters a certain way, you do it.

My girlfriend is a biologist with the National Parks Service and all of their resumes are expected to be three to five pages long. It hurt my soul when she told me that.

Government resumes are different as they rely on documented experience as a substitute for a civil service exam. They want completeness more like a dossier than a marketing document. Your catalog of skills and experience is critical, as "X years of Y" rules the day.

It's actually easier - you just tag on whatever you do every one in awhile. "Normal" resumes are like ads for you, and the positive/negative usefulness of your resume is more about your ability to produce compelling bullshit for an audience, miss the mark, or land in the middle of the bell curve.

That's something specific called a "federal resume" required for most jobs with the US Government. It's more akin to a job application than a resume.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Resume_(United_States)

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