So you want to be a developer?
blonde.net
blonde.net
I understand where this is coming from, but I think the author should realize that lots of companies have non-technical people (or robots) screening resumes and they're looking for exact matches. You're a Phonegap expert? Sorry we need someone who knows Cordova. Its better to overlist than underlist.
"Dumb down your CV so that the HR people will understand it, but not so much the hiring manager think you are stupid"
I suggest iterating your CV/LinkedIn/Portfolio. Keep it up to date and tweak your skills just like you would with SEO.
Actually, thinking of it like SEO is pretty accurate. Now let's see if I can make Stephen Fry tweet my CV...
Remember that there are more development jobs than there are developers. As such, don't act desperate. Companies want to control the job market by setting the expectation that they are interviewing you--don't fall for it. They need you more than you need them: you should be interviewing them.
But it's a big firm, they've got to comply with both UK employment law and the German rules too.
They get 1000s of applications, so they need to filter them, it's time that's far to important to spend on a developer, I mean they are short of them too.
So I'll stick it on, probably in a format that makes it obvious to a technical person, I consider this an expansion of the bullet point technology.
I don't know why this would be relevant. Excuses for why they are dysfunctional don't change the fact that they are dysfunctional.
> They get 1000s of applications, so they need to filter them, it's time that's far to important to spend on a developer, I mean they are short of them too.
It doesn't matter how many applications a big company receives as a whole. If you've posted a job posting for a specific job, you're lucky to receive 10s of applications, let alone 1000s. And given that a hire will affect the productivity of the team every second of every day for years, spending an hour filtering applications is absolutely a worthwhile investment of developer time.
And if applications are handled at the corporate level for a large corporation, the hiring process is fundamentally broken. That doesn't mean it's okay to have unqualified people filtering applications, it means that you should be posting jobs for specific teams rather than for the whole company.
I've worked at large companies where applications were filtered by a central office and it showed in the quality of applications we received. I ended up drawing from my local community instead and this was a big part of why our team outperformed others at the company.
> So I'll stick it on, probably in a format that makes it obvious to a technical person, I consider this an expansion of the bullet point technology.
You're only doing yourself a disservice by catering to organizations with crappy hiring practices. Good luck!
I'm a CTO of a multi million pound firm now. But it did work for me very well when I was just a developer. I wouldn't be so quick to write it off.
Some of the big firms I've worked for absolutely did get hundreds of applications each day for jobs, especially ones aimed at graduates. They can afford to take the risk of missing a good candidate because they had T-SQL, but not SQL.
I'm not sure how you arrived at this conclusion. I'm sure you had no problem finding jobs, but that doesn't mean they were the best jobs or that it was due to your applying strategy. Casting a wider net won't necessarily ultimately lead to you having worse jobs, but it will at least cause you to waste more time on interviews.
> Some of the big firms I've worked for absolutely did get hundreds of applications each day for jobs, especially ones aimed at graduates.
I'll venture that every big firm gets hundreds of applications. This is completely irrelevant to my point, which is that handling applications at the corporate level is the wrong way to handle applications.
> They can afford to take the risk of missing a good candidate because they had T-SQL, but not SQL.
And I can afford to be missed by such companies. I am happy to be missed by such companies. I want to work with talented, motivated programmers, not people who made it through a non-technical HR screen.
The problem is, this sounds good, but in reality the world doesn't work like this. Hiring is complex, there are many legal implications of the interview process, I had to correct one of my employees just yesterday because he said the word "young", this is a big no no in the UK, we can't look for a "young person". I had to clarify and expand that he meant this is an entry level position designed for people looking to get exposure to certain technologies in an environment that will foster their ambitions and provide opportunities for growth as we expand. Fun this stuff isn't it, few developers want to learn these rules.
This is why in large firms you end up having to let HR handle things. No one is going to ask us, why out of our 12 employees, we've no one who is transgender, but if we had 1000 people, we would need to demonstrate that it's entirely because we haven't had anyone apply, not because we have turned them all down.
As firms get larger, responsibilities get divided into lines that are more immutable, sadly this will mean the person doing the first stage of the hiring probably knows nothing about computer science, but may well have an excellent understanding of team psychology and HR laws.
When I read a comment like your last one, I find it slightly saddening, it reminds me of being in Hong Kong last month, a friend of mine wouldn't even try the pickled ducks tongue, I've no idea why, he eats pate, but outright refused to even take a bite. I fear you are talking out of complete ignorance.
There are some teams in the big corporate firms that I'd rather quit (and have done!) than join, but there are also ones where I've worked with some of the best developers, mathematicians and scientists I've ever met, that's a fairly high bar. One in particular had a 'cap' of £250k per year for a developer, to give you an idea the average price is £60k. This big finance firm realised the value the right developers have, the money was symbolic, we had budget for anything we could remotely justify (PCIe SSDs when they were unheard of etc) we had very good levels of autonomy too, with a relaxed working environment, even if other people on other floors were wearing suits. I've also worked for a 'brogrammer startup' that I ended up quitting swiftly as they were breaking the law. I wouldn't project my experiences out to the whole set, only keep in mind that there are interesting opportunities everywhere, understand their barriers and obviously tailor my CV to fit each application.
It is foolish to write them all off, and frankly portrays that element of dismissing something you don't understand, which I find to be very poor trait for an engineer.
"The world" is quite a large thing to make claims about. It certainly works like I describe at some companies.
> Hiring is complex, there are many legal implications of the interview process, I had to correct one of my employees just yesterday because he said the word "young", this is a big no no in the UK, we can't look for a "young person". I had to clarify and expand that he meant this is an entry level position designed for people looking to get exposure to certain technologies in an environment that will foster their ambitions and provide opportunities for growth as we expand. Fun this stuff isn't it, few developers want to learn these rules.
So your dev said something ageist and you taught them how to rebrand it? I'm really not seeing how this supports your point. If HR screening is just a way to cover your ass because your staff are bigots, I'm even more happy to be screened out by your HR department.
> As firms get larger, responsibilities get divided into lines that are more immutable, sadly this will mean the person doing the first stage of the hiring probably knows nothing about computer science, but may well have an excellent understanding of team psychology and HR laws.
What this boils down to is "this is the way it's done, so this is the way it should be done".
If you hired developers that embraced diversity in practice rather than in appearance, you wouldn't have to have such an understanding of HR laws. It sounds like you're so caught up in solving this legal problem that you don't realize you have an actual problem.
To address your concern about demonstrating that you didn't receive any transpeople's applications: I'm not saying you shouldn't keep records of who applies. I'm sure you can figure out a way to keep records of who applies without having HR decide which applicants are considered.
> When I read a comment like your last one, I find it slightly saddening, it reminds me of being in Hong Kong last month, a friend of mine wouldn't even try the pickled ducks tongue, I've no idea why, he eats pate, but outright refused to even take a bite. I fear you are talking out of complete ignorance.
On the contrary, I've worked at firms like the ones you've described, and that's exactly why I despise your way of thinking. I've experienced plenty of it and it's toxic.
> There are some teams in the big corporate firms that I'd rather quit (and have done!) than join, but there are also ones where I've worked with some of the best developers, mathematicians and scientists I've ever met, that's a fairly high bar. One in particular had a 'cap' of £250k per year for a developer, to give you an idea the average price is £60k. This big finance firm realised the value the right developers have, the money was symbolic, we had budget for anything we could remotely justify (PCIe SSDs when they were unheard of etc) we had very good levels of autonomy too, with a relaxed working environment, even if other people on other floors were wearing suits. I've also worked for a 'brogrammer startup' that I ended up quitting swiftly as they were breaking the law. I wouldn't project my experiences out to the whole set, only keep in mind that there are interesting opportunities everywhere, understand their barriers and obviously tailor my CV to fit each application.
I don't disagree that there are great devs on dysfunctional teams. There are even non-dysfunctional teams at large firms (
> It is foolish to write them all off, and frankly portrays that element of dismissing something you don't understand, which I find to be very poor trait for an engineer.
Why is it that you assume I don't understand it? Could you consider that maybe I do understand it but I value different things than you? It sounds to me like we've got differences of values, not different levels of experience.
For many companies, you can determine who you might be working with or working for from the job description, title, etc. Then with a little bit of googling and/or LinkedIn exploration, find some of the relevant people. Even if you can only get to a potential coworker, it's a start.
Drop them a note saying "I'm interested in position X but I want to know more about the role and/or find the proper person to talk to. Do you have any suggestions?" or if you're remotely connected to them at all, cut to the chase with "I don't want to get caught in the HR blackhole. Who should I talk to?"
Most of the tech people out there will understand and often agree with that reasoning and either give you a name, offer to pass along your resume yourself, or - worse case - ignore you. But before they'll pass you along, they'll probably google you to make sure you're not a recruiter and/or scammer.