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Comment by andsoitis | Hacker News Reader

Yeah I don’t know what others are doing, but I work in the valley and those elements signal checklist mentality. To wit, those keyword lists often include, in my experience, proficiency in specific tool use, rather than communicating skills that transcend tools, which tells me the person is likely not very dynamic or creative.

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> those keyword lists often include, in my experience, proficiency in specific tool use

This used to be called "buzzword bingo" and was pretty much required. It was how you got past the initial automated filtering step before a human even saw your resume.

I don’t know whether it was ever effective strategy for candidates, but I will simply say that as a hiring manager for over 12 years, I have never been interested in anyone’s resume when I see that.

As someone who's been a hiring manager for around 7 years, I agree with you, but note that the people who screen resumés before they even _get to you_ very well may be looking for those references.

For my own resumé, I include the stack used at each job which I feel strikes a fair balance.

That's what I always did too. Then I removed it because I wanted to focus more on the kind of problems I solve rather than the languages I've worked in, and recruiters complained, so I put it back in.

Most HR departments have been filtering resumes (or LinkedIn) based on things like keywords for years before they got to you. So your reaction to resumes that heavily use those may be reactionary to being presented with tons of those (by whoever filtered them before you)

I once had an application rejected less than five minutes after submission. Hard to imagine that was anything but lacking a certain threshold keyword.

The problem is that the candidate doesn't know, its not even good proxy either way just like everything on the resume besides the list of companies the person worked on.

Most applicants have no idea about your internal HR procedures and what's the pipeline before the resume even gets from you so they might as well optimize for what generally seems the most "successful" approach. Maybe they actually think writing metrics and keywords is a good idea, maybe they think its stupid and resent it but can't get any interviews without it, its really impossible to tell without other variables..

No used to be. It still is standard. Large companies that do not use external recruiters still use keywords and skills matching to find candidates and it drives me nuts.

I rewrote my resume in a way that sounds like exactly what you want: focus on skills that transcend tools instead of just the tools, and every recruiter asks me about tools.

And then during the screening call they ask questions like this: how many years of experience do you have with Jira?

Please, do show us your resume so that we can judge the heck out of you as well. It is a fun game, apparently.

I’m giving advice that I judge to be useful.

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