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Ask HN: What do you consider resume red flags?

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Re: Ask HN: What do you consider resume red flags?

#131

Post by cema »

muzani wrote: post #52
matt_the_bass wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on context. If someone is a consultant/contractor, short stints are ok. But then have a clear reason why they want to go back to standard employee. If someone has a number of longer stints, then a short one here or there is no big deal. But I want their resume to tell a story. Don’t be afraid of explaining circumstances in a cover letter.

I have this kind of hero syndrome where I like to join dying projects to try to save them. Which means I join a lot of companies for short stints, and most of these projects fail. It's a bit hard to justify in a cover letter without looking defensive.

So what do you do? How do you win attention of the hiring manager? I am asking because I may have (had) the same problem.

Re: Ask HN: What do you consider resume red flags?

#133

Post by drjasonharrison »

fjeuplos wrote: post #96
timrichard wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been a contractor in the UK for a long time... I've tried switching to using a PDF a couple of times, but I've had pushback from Recruiters/Agents each time, and have had to revert to .docx Maybe that's just here.

This is because they want to easily remove some personal details you may have put on the CV, like your email, mobile number etc. before they send it over to the company and they usually dont have a app that can edit PDFs.

Not having the ability to edit PDFs is a red flag...

Re: Ask HN: What do you consider resume red flags?

#134

Post by ganashaw »

candiodari wrote: post #74
ganashaw wrote: post #41

I've written about a few things on my blog ( http://blog.debugmyresume.com/2018/04/11/quality_over_quanti... ), but any time someone lists more than 3-4 programming languages, I'm immediately skeptical.

Why ? I've worked on compilers and theoretical programming languages and as such, I have notions of a dozen programming languages. I don't claim to be good/expert on more than 3 though. But if someone does this on occassion as a hobby, how is it weird to know, or have some projects in 10 or even 20 programming languages ? Also many projects are programming languages in themselves (Greenspun's 10th law). Tensorflow, m…

Perhaps I was too general. A more accurate statement would be if more than 3-4 languages are listed without any distinction between languages you're good at and languages you've just used, then I become skeptical. And I said skeptical, not that I reject the resume outright. I just find that more often than not those candidates don't actually know more than one or two of those languages very well. Or worse, they don't know any of those language very well. (Not that this is a bad thing! We all have to start somewhere; but listing a lot of languages in such a situation seems dishonest from my point of view).

Re: Ask HN: What do you consider resume red flags?

#135

Post by bcbrown »

ruairidhwm wrote: post #101
bcbrown wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, it gets removed when you're removed from that private repo, I believe. A prior employer used Github, and my worked showed up on that activity graph thing, but when I left, it all disappeared.

Really? That's super annoying!

I found it just to be a good reminder that chasing "GitHub streaks" is ephemeral meaninglessness, although it was counterintuitive behavior.

Re: Ask HN: What do you consider resume red flags?

#136

Post by reitanqild »

cema wrote: post #129
reitanqild wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What should you do about the time in between then? Personally I'd consider undescribed gaps of 3 months in between the interesting projects unusual. In fact I'd rather see "waiting tables" rather than nothing.

I'd rather see "waiting tables" rather than nothing But why? Maybe the person used that time to study technologies, to update her skill set. Maybe she used that time to relax and get a long deserved vacation. (Or a myriad other possibilities.) What is wrong with that?

If somebody set aside 3 months to study something they should write that. Otherwise it loos like they've been unemployed, in jail or something they rather don't want to talk about.

Also I read it as multiple 3 months gaps. I might have misread though.

Re: Ask HN: What do you consider resume red flags?

#137

Post by zimpenfish »

handbanana wrote: post #126
zimpenfish wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Try to be as concise as possible and avoid going too granular (listing just SQL vs TSQL, MYSQL, XYZSQL). Tried that. Got endless calls from recruiters who assumed I knew Oracle, Sybase, MSSQL, etc.

What did you do, upload your resume somewhere lots of recruiters have access to?

Well, yeah, that's kinda how it goes.

Re: Ask HN: What do you consider resume red flags?

#138

Post by handbanana »

zimpenfish wrote: post #137
handbanana wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did you do, upload your resume somewhere lots of recruiters have access to?

Well, yeah, that's kinda how it goes.

If you're in tech you shouldn't need to do it that way. Indeed/linkedin/stackoverflow/craigslist etc all have tons of tech jobs which you can selectively (or not) target. Many require not much more than a resume to apply
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