Why won't anyone talk to me? What recruiters look for in a resume
dandreamsofcoding.wordpress.com
dandreamsofcoding.wordpress.com
Ultimately whether I saw a resume was dependent on some sort of subjective pattern matching done by the recruiter. This pattern matching is usually primitive and generally is just a check on whether your "years of experience" is within striking distance of whatever was in the job listing (e.g. "Senior Software Engineer" that required 5+ years of experience, the recruiter would filter anyone with less than 3 years), and (sometimes) would check whether your resume contained enough buzzwords. Yes, this is awful, and no, not every organization does it this way, although a lot do.
So while listing side projects on your resume is good, it's important to get it past the recruiter screen by translating those side projects into years of experience. Rather than just a single line in your resume like, "Side Projects: Enguarde.ly, a Link-Sharing Site for Fencers," find some way to list Enguarde.ly as experience. For example, list the time you worked on your side projects as experience as a "Web Consultant," put Enguarde.ly as a 'portfolio project' and describe the technology you used to build it.
Once your resume actually gets to a hiring manager, everything the OP talked about is much more relevant, because you'll actually have someone who can evaluate your resume. Although I think this post overstates how much your undergrad degree matters. I am a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, typically considered a very prestigious school, but the engineering school is ranked 27th according to US News and World Report rankings[0]. I know many hiring managers who would much rather interview someone with an interesting set of portfolio side projects than someone who went to a prestigious school. Your alma matter can sometimes provide a small bonus as a small signaling effect, but I consider software engineering a discipline where a formal education is only loosely correlated with skill.
[0] http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/engineering-majors/12136...
For me I found that the best way to stand out when looking for a new position was to work on a side project. Sneakily my side project was a resume building app. Which meant I got a nice new resume out of the deal too. It definitely got me noticed and people came to me rather than me having to apply for jobs. I even got some telephone interviews for startups in the Bay despite being located in the UK.
Overall I think if you build out some form of beta app and execute to a minimum viable product level of service then that's going to be a good thing for your chances of employment.
So now for my shameless plug. I'm continuing to slowly bootstrap MightyCV - my resume creation app with hacker leanings. It has integrations with HN, github and StackOverflow along with some other cool features. You can see an example of what one looks like here:
http://robeastham.mightycv.com
If you like the look of it you can sign up for a beta invite at:
I'm hoping to redo the management interface over the next month or two and push out a largish update to the service along with some bug fixes.
If you've coded anything that does something interesting, you should have no problem finding interviews, and frankly offers.
If you haven't coded anything interesting, then why would anyone hire you? Build something or work on an open source project.
I suggest taking your own project from start to production - this is the type of general knowledge and competence startups look for.
I only have 6 months of commercial experience but I get approached literally daily by recruitment companies because of a single resume I posted on a website and it is driving me crazy.
They all ring me up and say "Don't trust another company, they will screw you over, trust us instead" and "The job states it wants 5 years of experience, but that doesn't matter, I'll send your resume too."
Honestly, I wouldn't mind as much, but it all feels half assed, they don't want to find me a job, they want to find their company an employee, telephoning me and pretending to give a crap about my life is all well and good, but to be honest, when you go cold for a week after that without a single email it makes the candidate feel worthless.
That and the fact that if a candidate isn't accepted for an interview, the de facto method of rejection is simply not getting back to them unless they contact you.
This space really needs to be disrupted, for the love of a God, why isn't there a humane recruitment company?
I think your expectation is a little off, and you may view it differently if you viewed them as someone you are doing business with, not an advisor. When someone is trying to sell you a car, they will butter you up the same way.
There ARE humane recruiters who can be more representative of your needs, but they don't usually cold call with specific positions in mind. They build a network of good candidates and people who would have good referrals, then reach out to them when they have a position that's a good fit.
Of course, you've proved my point above :) It doesn't take much to get smothered by recruiters.
Frankly I think the original article is linkbait. It presupposes a problem that does not exist.
Sounds like you've found the business you need to start!
EDIT: I'm sure I've jinxed it now, and this message will cause recruiters to start emailing me.
I lost a job in 2008 over the financial crisis (LIFO employee retention policy), had 2 short contracts (which really shouldn't count as job hopping!) a research position where I suffered a burnout and now recruiters don't answer my calls and I have to jump on any opportunity that comes around. I'm looking for both accounting and software development roles (obviously slightly different CV for accounting roles - in fact I generally tweak it for each application).
My (dev) CV is at (https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8PrUXneejNRdThYRWFHZUk5aHM/...) and I welcome and solicit any feedback to relfect on. Its hard to wrap a cohesive career trajectory around it when its really just me taking the best of the opportunities that I find.
I admit my github is embarrassingly bad, and I've been focusing more on my Coursera courses at the moment. I've had 1 interview in 2 months of looking for entry level/junior positions.
/rant
2. Have a searchable PDF version of your CV / resume linked to from your page. If possible also include an HTML version. Consider SEO when writing your CV. What keywords do you want people to find you for?
3. Be everywhere. Have active social media profiles on all the major sites. LinkedIn is a cesspool of recruiters so get your keywords on your profile and link to examples of your work.
1. Location. Since I moved to SF the job offers have increased substantially.
2. Skill set. Fortunately I'm skilled in some "popular" languages.
3. Years of experience. I'm in the "hot spot" - not too old, and not too young (sorry - it does seem to be a factor...)
What I find however that recruiters don't necessarily look for anything BUT the above things. I've been approached for the weirdest jobs (considering my experience) from what I believe as a simple keyword search. When it comes to interviewing, the recruiters typically have no idea what they're talking about. This means that they're more interested in forwarding the resume from a brief "do you know this, have you had experience in this" as opposed to really understanding the position. Fortunately, I have had enough experience to interview the recruiters as opposed to them interviewing me.
My advice for developers struggling to get jobs (from how I hire...):
1. Have experience - whether professional or hobby. If it is a hobby: open source it.
2. Show initiative. You need to show you have the ability to actually think.
3. You don't need to know the answers. It's all about the approach to the problem.
4. Try to stand out amongst the resumes. I feel bad to say this: but unfortunately it's true. Given 100 resumes, you're probably only going to really look at 10.
5. Show charisma
I'd recommend other's to add to this: it's just a list I made from what is off the top of my head. But in regards to the article I disagree with:
1. Startup experience. It depends on what type of job you're going for - some will admire the drive, some will fear it (will you leave after a year)
2. School. I don't give a flying f* if they're from MIT or the University of Waikato. However I would give SOME preference to them studying at a school which includes algorithms and memory management (but that is me). Believe me: that (unfortunately) isn't a given...
I'm sure I'll probably get down votes for this; but please comment if you do disagree :) I'm only speaking from my experience as both a student (always) and as an employer.
Edited to make sense.
It becomes very apparent very quickly which recruiters have made any effort to read it and if they can't do that, they are unlikely to be paying much attention to their clients either. Since I run my own mail server, I then add the most egregious cases to a block list. (They also tend to be repeat offenders so that problem is solved too.)
When recruiting I look at the initial acronym soup. I especially like people who categorise what they are very good at versus ok. Then I look everything else for substantiation and to get a flavour of experience. For example is networking there, mobile, low level languages (eg C), web stuff, Python/Ruby etc. It is generally a good idea to include the acronym soup for each item in the resume (eg if doing a network server say what language and frameworks were used).
Open source stuff is excellent because it is actually concrete - something I can look at, and far more informative than generic text elsewhere can ever be.
What I am usually ultimately looking for is "smart and gets things done". (Joel has articles with more detail.)
The general bad things people do are what appears to be a bulk send, really long but irrelevant cover letters, and not substantiating things. I was looking at a resume this morning where C++ was listed as the first skill yet could find no mention of it anywhere else. It immediately makes me sceptical of everything else listed.
Now I have LinkedIn for that.
However, now I am on the market (at the worst possible time of the year). Logically, a recruiter would be the best person to go to for work, but my relationship with recruiters is tainted, and it appears that there are a lot of good companies that simply won't deal with them.
Christmas isn't the best time to be looking for jobs, but even following all the rules won't necessarily get you noticed.
"If you wish to contact me, please put the word 'Waffles'
in your message. It sounds silly, but it lets me know that
you have taken a little time to asses my profile, rather than
mass messaging people based on a keyword search."
Sorry for wandering off topic. I have used a method similar to your "waffles" technique when hiring for positions. It reduces the 100's of applicants for a job down to a few, simply because most people won't read your postings clearly. It has saved me hundreds of hours in the recruitment process.
This may be true, but I'd say it's not true for most people. People's heads are easily turned by famous universities, in some kind of halo effect.
What about candidates who are willing to relocate? What about overseas relocation? Not being married and liking travel that sounds like fun to me.
I didn't really appreciate this until I was on the other side of the massive pile-o-resumes, but it's really the only option.
I hate saying this, because I generally believe that "problems solved" are far more indicative of success than any specific school, company, or technology. I have at times used a resume that doesn't do the whole buzzword-bingo game with very limited success - It basically never got pulled from a big pile-of-resumes unless I had a friend on the inside, or was applying to a job on my school's job board (where clearly everyone passed this "filter").
It's an excellent opportunity for summer research jobs and the such, but otherwise does not translate well into the lower curriculum unless you want it to.
I can't think of a top graduate program with a poor undergraduate program. And CS tends to be extremely rigorous, so I am honestly surprised that a recruiter would view a degree in CS from UTex as a non-indicator.
But I'm not trying to shoot the messenger. Perhaps UTex and Brown were selected to specifically illustrate the phenomenon here, that a highly regarded engineering school might be discounted while an Ivy league school that normally isn't associated with Computer Science would be considered a positive indicator.
It's a little hard to argue with a recruiter, they've done far more placement than I have. But I have worked (and done lots of interviews for) for a large silicon valley company, as well as for a few startups, and personally I think that a CS degree from UTex at Austin or UIUC would be very positively received.
Undergraduate curricula tends to be standardized, and nobody gets out of a top school without taking the tough courses. But you can get wiggle through an MS. But at the door... not so sure, the selection requirements (undergraduate GPA and GRE) at Berkeley were very high for any kind of admitted grad student. However, Berkeley doesn't have one of those "industrial affiliate" programs that are profit centers. However, I don't think these programs harm the universities that offer them at all - the students are almost always already employed at good companies doing interesting work, and I think the other students benefit from their presence.
However, my experience (as a holder of a degree from a further-down-the-list university) has been that after the first job (and then even moreso after the second), the name of your undergrad university matters much less. Having real, productive work experience is itself a powerful signal—so hopefully those first jobs let you do interesting or varied enough stuff to have something good for the resume. So I don't have the network (yet!) that a Stanford or MIT grad would, but I'm not landing on discard piles either.
The reason being the only people that go to private universities are the ones without good notes to earn a place at the public universities, but whose parents are rich enough to pay for the university.
People with degrees from private universities are told they bought the degree.
Every company wants to think that you really want to work for them and only them. If you send out an obviously standard cover letter and resume, it's very easy to get brushed over.
Spend 10 minutes on their website/blog reading about them and tailor your application to match. Include some comments that show you have done so.
You can't change what education/experience you have (well you shouldn't), but you can definitely show that you made an effort.
I only hope there are firms that see through this elitism and realize that there are undervalued tech wizards out there waiting to be given an opportunity.
one would think that great coders grow on trees or something, heh?
Of course not everyone thinks like that, but it's puzzling that some people actually do.
I think they are more applicable to early career.
In my experience, connections and relationships are way more powerful than any of the stuff mentioned with the baseline that you are competent and relatively easy to work with.
Anyone A/B testing their resumes?
You can tell a lot about what someone knows just by how they put together their resume, over and above the work experience. A question I used to ask on interviews was, "Have you ever worked with Gnu programs, like gcc, Gnu make etc.?" Hiring Unix admins in 1998, when you couldn't get your hands on an experienced one, you'd be surprised how many blank looks I got at that question. Once I got a resume which was very well-written, and he even had the Gnu tools he knew listed. Considering how dismal prior candidates had been, I almost wanted to hire him sight unseen just seeing that. We did make him an offer, which he turned down. It's more than just what buzzwords to put, it's knowing what buzzwords to put and not to put. Most of the time, people who don't know what they're doing don't even know what will sound good on a resume, even if their resume is BS.
In terms of my own resume, in 2000 I had a lot of buzzwords on the top. But then people would ask me detailed questions about some of that software, some of which I had not touched for three years. So I removed those words from the top of the resume so as to avoid those questions. But then I stopped getting as many calls. So I put them back. Better to look dumb in an interview then never get the interview I figured.
For you young ones - tech guys like me generally just care if you know the stuff or not. Managers, HR etc. are generally more formal - they want to know what degrees you have, they like to see buzzwords and several years of experience, especially at large companies, hear from references, know why you have a gap of two months in your employment record and so forth. Non-techies have no gauge to tell how well you know your stuff.
A caveat about large companies - at startups, an older person who has worked a long time at a big company - this can be held against you. You have to make clear you'll be OK with the fact that there is not yet a backup system, or code revision control system, or whatever. You have to say, "I understand you don't have this stuff, and I am fine with you not having it yet, I'll help you build it out as the company grows".
"An Ideal applicant must have experience in:
- Maths
- Computer Fusion
- Algorithms
- ..."
And, in many places (especially smallish shops), the sysadmin is also a developer is also an interviewer is also is also is also...
We are looking for some sort of external validation: A really popular module on CPAN? Graduated with a 4.0? Graduated from Stanford? Hired full time by Google? That is all external validation, and it is something that shows me that other people / organizations think you are good. I really need just one piece of solid validation for me to speak with a candidate and this can take on a lot of forms. In lieu of this, we can administer a coding test if someone is on the cusp.
The second thing I look for is passion: Is this person a 9 to 5 code monkey in it for the solid and consistent paycheck? Or do they love the work they do and constantly push themselves to further their craft? You can almost always get to the bottom of this question on the phone. Journeymen programmers are fine for a lot of jobs, but not for the jobs we are talking about here.
If both of those line up then the candidate is good, and we will represent them. We can't promise a placement, but I would be surprised if someone with both of those boxes checked didn't get at least one offer. They are really hard to find.
The occasional long week is fine - but I'm going to be a lot more interested in someone who is good but expects a "normal" amount of work.
> Resumes should be summaries, with more detail for recent positions, less detail for more distant ones. If you’ve been in industry for ten years, you can have a second page. No one needs more than two.
I agree with this in principle, and strongly 'implemented' this approach as well in an earlier version of my CV.
[To be fair, I'm looking for a product management role, and not a dev job, so maybe it's different here?]
But recruiters just kept asking me for a more detailed version so often, that I just gave up and made a 2-pager. I personally believe it goes into far too much detail than is necessary, but the difference in response is quite stark from both startups and BigCos alike.
From the other side of the issue, when recruiting PMs or analysts, I always made a conscious effort to ensure that CVs that fell afoul of 'industry standard guidelines' weren't overlooked solely for those reasons. As in, I honestly didn't give a shit if it was one page, or two, or six, as long as it gave the information I was looking for. (However, I suspect I may have been in a minority then..)
So the only sensible thing to do is go with the length that you feel sells you best.
Mine has 'relevant' experience on the first couple, then 'other' experience on the last howevermany.
A fixed length is one of the worst things you can do, in my opinion: it needs to be how I heard an English professor describe her writing assignments: "It should be like a girl's skirt - long enough to cover everything, but short enough to keep it interesting"
Beyond that - it's all pretty much the same: can you get the job done? Can you think? Can you communicate coherently? Those are the real biggies when I interview.
Maybe because who is hiring is supposed to be better than the others? There are far too many terrible companies, especially the big ones, and honestly I would never stay in a company just for the sake of it.
If recruiters think that this is a problem, it means that who is hiring is not confident enough or worse, the company IS really terrible like the others.
IMHO, nobody leaves a company if he feels good, stimulated and paid enough.
I do understand that recruiters have to place people and they don't really mind/understand if the company is good or not but I can't see why this should be our problem.
Hackathons are relativity cheap (time wise) investments, but make you stand out from the crowd.
(By the way, I actually like my grad school significantly more than my undergrad so ranking of course isn't everything).
This is the first screening, followed by a programming task during the the telephone interview, interview with me, interviews with developers, followed by practical programming work.
So yes it is important to get through the CV screen (have experience), but it's only the first step.
Side note: Hiring for Junior positions is different, for me the CV here is mostly irrelevant.
I invite more of them.
How about having ‘old boring’ companies like IBM or Oracle on your resume?
But maybe I'm biased because I have a grad degree in music, so I just assume other degrees are equally worthless ;)