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Comment by nnnnni | Hacker News Reader

You know what's frustrating? When you don't even make it to the interview stage because hiring managers think that "Red Hat" and "Linux" are two different things.

I was recently passed over because my 15 years' of experience with Linux has been with multiple distributions (including RPM-based ones) and my resume didn't have a line that just said "Red Hat" on it.

Them: "Oh, I'm sorry, we can't hire you because you don't have any JavaScript experience..."

Candidate: "What do you think all of this stuff with JS in the name on my resume means?!"

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Had the same experience. These days I tailor my resume for every single job application. I make sure it uses the language the job description uses. If it says Red Hat, my resume says Red Hat. If it says JavaScript, my resume says JavaScript. It takes time, but its been worth it.

Where a skill is required that I don't have, I don't mention it. Where a skill applies to a version I'm not experienced with, I leave the version number out. When the job spec requires experience of say, Red Hat, and I have experience of multiple distributions, I lie and call it Red Hat. The point of the resume is to land the interview, so I make sure my resume doesn't fail me in achieving that objective.

> These days I tailor my resume for every single job application

You absolutely need to do this unless you're in crazy demand. Every generic resume I've sent out has yielded exactly zero phone calls. Every tailor-made resume I've sent out has gotten at least to the in-person interview stage.

Survivor bias? Maybe, but 5 jobs in since college and I'm never sending generic resumes anywhere ever again.

While I understand the sentiment, I only used a single resume for all of my applications this past fall. But I think the reason it worked is that I knew what positions I wanted to apply for and they were all similar(ish). So my resume matched all of them.

I did find that when I was applying to the bigger SV companies (and Seattle), I wasn't necessarily applying for a specific position, so even if I had wanted to tailor it, it would have been more of a challenge. That's just my experience though. I do believe that if I was going for a very specific position, I would definitely spend the extra time to make sure it was perfect.

That is a good point. I have not yet applied "to a company," but rather for a specific position within a company.

I'm sure if I was trying to get a job at Buffer or someplace like that where you are mostly applying to the company, I'd need to rethink my strategy.

(I have no affiliation with Buffer whatsoever).

Treat CV writing as a SEO task: "JavaScripted the JavaScript scripts using the JavaScript MVC framework Angular.js (JavaScript)." instead of "Implemented using Angular.js".

Exactly this.

I don't think Google can give a good match to a Javascript CV with only Angular.js written

Yes, it's stupid. Yes, do it.

I got an interview with Google without having "JavaScript" in my resume, and with tons of AngularJS on it. I did link to my GitHub though, where it shows contributions to Angular, various Angular plugins, and other random libraries.

I ended up turning down the interview after accepting another offer though.

Maybe they explicitly looked for people in the Angular.js space?

Yeah, I think you made the right choice turning them down.

I've got a blatant http://... hyperlink on the top of my resume. Almost nobody clicks on it. I went to an interview where they requested code samples which they could have already reviewed beforehand if they had just followed that link.

I've recently written a resolution engine for keywords when matching cv's to job descriptions. it also helps finding patterns in other skills that may be transferrable. i hope to show HN as soon as i finish some performance improvements (which includes writing a brand new db driver :'()

Add me to the list of people to notify when your project is done, plz.

Its a bit pedantic but if your "hiring manager"* doesn't know Red Hat from Linux you don't want to work there.

If a recruiter or HR rep doesn't know Red Hat from Linux they need to find another field to recruit in.

(a hiring manager is usually the person a new hire directly reports to, not the person doing initial resume screening)

The problem is that tons of resumes are getting rejected by ATS' due to low keyword match scores without ever passing across human eyes.

This was a state government position where the "hiring manager" is "the person who looks at resumes and decides who to call to be interviewed" rather than the direct supervisor of the new hire.

Maybe I used the wrong phrase or maybe it just means different things in different places.

I think that I won't be compatible in a culture where such process is acceptable. If my first touch-point at a company is profound incompetence, I've already wasted enough of my time.

I do not look forward to being on a team with people who were compatible with such a brain-damaged arbitrary system. I've been engaged with too many clients where every day of work is a theater of the absurd.

I would bounce this back and say, if the hiring manager doesn't know the difference between Red Hat and Linux, do you even want to work at that place?

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