mcenedella

Exactly right, Michael.

In this market? Not at all. We are living in a historically unparalleled employment market for technology professionals. In no other market in history have a special category of 20-somethings by the tens of thousands been paid 5 times the average compensation of the average citizen of the world's richest country.

The demand for tech professionals is extraordinarily high, and sharp career-minded technologists know that keeping in touch with the market can lead to dramatic increases in their cash compensation.

Thanks iamcreasy - again, we do not handle soon-to-be or recent graduates. Everything about the graduating student employment market is different - the process, the expectations, the communications, the resume required, etc.

It's really best at this point to follow the guidance of your career services office.

It's not really a thing, so I wouldn't lose sleep over it.

The basics are important - get a clean, standard, well-organized resume. Include numbers that show your ability to improve things. Be explicit about titles, capabilities, and achievements.

Unfortunately, a lot of urban legends have popped up over the years that really cause professionals a lot of grief for no good reason.

Not really true. You want to know what the most common keywords searched by the HR team are? "Software engineer", "Java", "Developer", etc. The sophistication of the process is limited by the user, not by the capabilities of the search engine.

どういたしまして!

Another good point, Ben. You seem interested in this stuff - would love to chat further - i'm myfirstname at leetresumes dot com.

We're intending to have a regular check-in to collect facts throughout the years that we then save until you're ready to update your resume. We've also thought about how we could be helpful in 1-on-1s, promotion reviews, and annual performance reviews.

Great points Ben. That is persuasive :) I'll add this comment to my reminders as I update the FAQ this weekend. Thanks so much!

Great resumes can be purchased for $200 - $300 in many places. Only 6% of customers purchase, though, even though 97-98% really have the need for a better resume. I've run the largest paid resume writing business in the US previously, so I've been through this ringer.

That 94% of people who would use a bad resume through their interviews and job search really bugged me though. Hence… Leet Resumes. I'd prefer to see 100% of people with a great resume, as it makes such a difference.

Thanks Jacob - you forgot to mention "keep an eye out for relevant Show HNs!" ;)

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=jacob_rezi

thanks for the good advice.

Thanks for your comment. As I mentioned in another comment:

"Our experience is based on successful hiring practices in North America. We don't have enough (read: any) data on hiring practices and resume review in Europe, Middle east, Africa or Asia. We really don't want to do any harm, so we are not yet able to offer our services there.

If you're based outside of US & Canada, but work remote for US or Canada office of a company, feel free to sign up. But if you're based outside of US/Canada and plan to work outside US/Canada, then we are not yet competent to handle your resume well.

Give us some time! :) "

Thanks very much rychco!

Thank you very kindly for the nice words! Appreciate it!

OK, no spam magnet here. That kind of defeats the purpose of doing nice things for free up front.

Great feedback, thank you. The proper alternative is probably a Google Form, or an actual doc, I imagine. However, when tested, those long forms tend to scare people into thinking it's too much work. Which it really shouldn't be.

But great feedback, and I'll add this to our product reviews.

Fair enough. You're right that the actual most important thing to get right is the numbers. I've written about that on our blog: https://leetresumes.com/blog/how-to-write-bullet-points-for-...

However, these really don't reduce to nice, short bullet points on an examples screen! Thanks for your comment!

We still miss you Vinay! thanks!

In tech? Sign up!

Hi Tchalla, thanks for your comment.

Our experience is based on successful hiring practices in North America. We don't have enough (read: any) data on hiring practices and resume review in Europe, Middle east, Africa or Asia. We really don't want to do any harm, so we are not yet able to offer our services there.

If you're based outside of US & Canada, but work remote for US or Canada office of a company, feel free to sign up. But if you're based outside of US/Canada and plan to work outside US/Canada, then we are not yet competent to handle your resume well.

Give us some time! :)

Thanks so much lasfter! If you have any ideas ever, please let me know, I'm myfirstname at leetresumes dot com. I really appreciate your comments.

Thanks so much sciencewolf! Cycnicism is OK - there have been a lot of crappy products in this space and devs are sick and tired of LinkedIn spam.

The plan is to become a trusted partner to engineers and technologists - helping to update their resume yearly, produce better resumes by having a deeper insight into their performance. That trust and that relationship will be super valuable and I'm sure we'll find the business model.

As mentioned in FAQs -- "In the future, we will offer additional upgraded services for purchase such as resume distribution, hosting, tracking, salary negotiation, vetted job opportunities, recruiter outreach and cover letter writing." -- but at this moment we don't really know.

The core product today is writing resumes and building that trust. I think if we do that very well, we'll have a lot of opportunities to make a successful business out of it. If we do that poorly, we'll have nothing.

Developers get enough job spam, and it's annoying. Our plan is to create something that users control - don't contact me unless it's above this title, or above this $, or includes these technologies. Or, simply don't contact me at all.

From our research, devs aren't looking for another LinkedIn spam machine, so we're going to build something better than that. Our thought is that if we do that well, and we update users' resumes for them each year, then it will work out well. If we do that poorly, then we can't update users' resumes annually, and it won't work.

But it is free, no hidden cost, no hidden spam. And if we aren't adding value to your career, then it's easy for you to simply opt out permanently.

OK, I don't know what that means. More important than what users write, is what the audience wants -- hiring managers, HR departments, recruiters, to a lesser extent the ATSs that companies use. Those are the real drivers of resume-writing insights.

For developer job market insights, aggregated data such as StackOverflow's annual Developer Survey are far superior to anything you could glean from a few thousand resumes: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020

Thanks so much Derek. Same service, just changed the beta name from MeetLeet to Leet Resumes.

People were consistently mispronouncing it - MeetLeek, for example :) - so we simplified the name to Leet Resumes.

Thanks! Yes!

Student resumes are quite different - placement of education, prominence of projects, importance of specific entry-level knowledge and skills. So they really are a different category of document entirely.

Our expertise is in experienced developers' resumes - two or more years of experience, up to 35+ years' experience. It's a different process, with different hiring teams at a company, and different resume product entirely from new graduates'.

So, unfortunately, for now, the answer is that we have no plans to add student resumes.

Thanks - rendering error in conversion from GDoc. Fixed.

I’ve built a service to write technical resumes for free at www.leetresumes.com You provide your existing resume, answer ten questions, and in a couple days I’ll email your improved resume back to you, optimized for resume readers, parsers, and what hiring managers are looking for in 2021.

We’re just starting out, so we can probably handle 1,000 or so resumes per week. Hopefully, as we automate, we’ll be able to handle more volume, but right now, there’s still humans in the loop to ensure quality at Leet Resumes: https://leetresumes.com/

If you’re interested in our internals, expertise and philosophy on resume optimization, I’ve written our detailed technical documentation here: https://leetresumes.com/blog/leet-resumes-technical-resume-d...

And some examples of “before” and “after” are here: https://leetresumes.com/examples It might or might not surprise you that multiple colors, multiple columns, and filling your resume up with stuff other than your accomplishments is bad.

We believe in being transparent, open, data-driven, and helpful, so let me know what you think!

Truly beautiful list. With a few twists of the knob, makes excellent axioms for living, not just engineering. “Change is constant” and “Don't pick a solution until you've thought of at least one more.” are far more important than most business school learnings.

Words change, and there is no such thing as a “true” or “phony” engineer. The original engineers built siege engines, and were weaponsmongers:

Middle English (denoting a designer and constructor of fortifications and weapons; formerly also as ingineer ): in early use from Old French engigneor, from medieval Latin ingeniator, from ingeniare ‘contrive, devise’, from Latin ingenium (see engine); in later use from French ingénieur or Italian ingegnere, also based on Latin ingenium, with the ending influenced by -eer.

So the evolution of the word engineer to encompass software engineering is its emergent, and I’d imagine by the middle of this century, it’s dominant, form.