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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?

#61

Post by bigiain »

flukus wrote: post #51
bwang29 wrote: post #23

1. Some links on the resume (github, portfolio, linkedIn) return 404 or access denied. This is suprisingly common. 2. Little facts / actual performance data, and over use of words such as "passionate", "strong", "self-motivated", "success", "thrive", etc when describing themselves in the resume. 3. Changing jobs very frequently and no consistent theme in jobs, say 5 jobs in 5 years, one in A.I., one in e-commerce, on…

> 3. Have a big, long "technology used" for a project. For example, "technology used" in a project includes "Python, Java, Javascript, HTML, CSS, jQuery, SQL, C#, Django, Messaging, C, Bash.." How exactly is this a red flag? Javascript, HTML, CSS, jQuery, SQL, C#, Messaging would be a typical project for me and there are likely to be integrations with other languages and I usually have some bash scripts for various p…

Without supporting evidence, it looks way too much like claiming credit for and expertise in everything any of your friends or coworkers has ever done. The chance of one person doing production grade work on all of those things is quite small. Tell me which of those you're expert in, and which of those you're familiar with because it was used around your specialty and you had opportunity dip your fingers in. Even your shorter list - while being more believable - would have me asking questions about your strengths at each layer of "full stack" you're claiming. Every great fullstack dev I've met has been open about specialising in some part while being some degree of competent or capable in other parts.

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

#63

Post by bigiain »

muzani wrote: post #33
bbrunner wrote: post #24

In general, anything that is a red flag is probably something I would just clarify in a 20 minute phone screen. Most of the time, what looks like a red flag on a resume has a good explanation. That being said, the two that come to mind that I've seen the most of are: - Not taking direct ownership of achievements (e.g. I was part of a team that did x). I don't care what your team did, I care what you did even if it's…

Would you say those who do recent coding bootcamps are worse than those recently graduated from college?

Graduating from college (even if it's not a CS degree) at least still demonstrates the ability to complete something complex and long-duration.

Bootcamp grads (for me) are more likely to get a look in for project based roles where each project is measured in single digit numbers of weeks. For long projects or product roles, I'll somewhat favour the demonstrated ability of college graduates at sticking with and completing big things.

Not a "red flag" for me, but a reasonably strong signal.

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

#65

Post by walrus01 »

esalman wrote: post #10

I used to hire at a startup. Following are the things I usually looked at. These are not sorted by severity, some are red flags but others are just irrelevant. * not following instruction in the job advert * CC resume to many recipients * weird sender name in email * compressed resume * begging for job in the cover letter * photo * "career objective" * personal information * broken links * clear lack of personalizati…

Photo on resume seems like a South Asia defacto standard. At least from what I have seen in Pakistan and India. Cultural differences.

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

#66

Post by chomp »

viraptor wrote: post #55
bwang29 wrote: post #23

1. Some links on the resume (github, portfolio, linkedIn) return 404 or access denied. This is suprisingly common. 2. Little facts / actual performance data, and over use of words such as "passionate", "strong", "self-motivated", "success", "thrive", etc when describing themselves in the resume. 3. Changing jobs very frequently and no consistent theme in jobs, say 5 jobs in 5 years, one in A.I., one in e-commerce, on…

> no consistent theme in jobs, (...) one in e-commerce, one in gaming Not sure why that's a bad thing. I've done telco, cloud provider, ecommerce, embedded systems. I'm happy with that - it gave me much better experience on a path towards an architect position than any one industry on its own could.

It's not a bad thing, I think they phrased it poorly. If you're doing network operations or devops work at an ecommerce business, then in a gaming company, then telco, yeah you'll definitely be more well rounded.

If you're a developer at these companies, and you try to claim you're an expert in each of these fields... yeah I'm going to raise an eyebrow.

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

#67

Post by sgillen »

viraptor wrote: post #55
bwang29 wrote: post #23

1. Some links on the resume (github, portfolio, linkedIn) return 404 or access denied. This is suprisingly common. 2. Little facts / actual performance data, and over use of words such as "passionate", "strong", "self-motivated", "success", "thrive", etc when describing themselves in the resume. 3. Changing jobs very frequently and no consistent theme in jobs, say 5 jobs in 5 years, one in A.I., one in e-commerce, on…

> no consistent theme in jobs, (...) one in e-commerce, one in gaming Not sure why that's a bad thing. I've done telco, cloud provider, ecommerce, embedded systems. I'm happy with that - it gave me much better experience on a path towards an architect position than any one industry on its own could.

I don’t think it’s terrible either. But if I’m reading your resume for a non architect position, I might be thinking that your going to come in, learn the field for a year, and then leave. That’s not the most attractive hire.

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

#68

Post by viuadi »

BurritoAlPastor wrote: post #46

I see a lot of resumes from people who talk a lot about the techs they've used, but talk not at all about what they used them for. I no longer give these people phone screens. Also, be kind about formatting because HR software is rarely kind to it, but some formatting errors can't be attributed there. The text on the third of someone's four bullet points has extra leading space? They're not going to be able to find w…

Some of us do this because we signed a nondisclosure agreement, not because we don't care about the product. As a developer, I would love to talk about the context of my work. It's just that I can't, because my company told me to keep it a secret.

I would consider it more of a red flag if the candidate volunteered too much information about projects on their resume. Let's say you write that you increased revenue by 1%. At some companies you might be able to talk about that. But at many companies, those metrics are extremely sensitive, and putting them on your resume means you're a disloyal employee.

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

#69

Post by lgregg »

Does HN have any suggestions for people switching careers into software engineering/development and landing junior/entry-level roles? Such as, what parts to focus on outside of transferable soft skills?

Using myself as an example for people with a similar situation:

I worked as a freelancer in the past as an "Integrated Producer" which is marketing speak for a Product/Project Manager & "Growth Hacker" hybrid. I've touched everything from strategy and video production to creating shell scripts to configure new computers. Most of my experience will be the projects I've been building following tutorials or peer-programming with my mentor through a year-long boot camp intensive that covers front and backend, but also data structures, databases, algorithms, and etc.

So, most of my descriptions will be "created" or "integrated" with a technology. Like right now, I'm beginning to build a closed social network project as a capstone. I'm not going to be able to say "improved performance by X" for example.

I'm also not sure how much to share of my past. I can say things such as: "I've increased revenue by X over Y via email automation for Z." There are of course soft skills like writing documentation or managing X amount of cases (started as a law clerk/paralegal) under 5 managers. I also know that I shouldn't say back in the late 90s and early 00s that I started building websites for clans and guilds of gaming communities as a kid. (The bug has been there awhile.)

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

#70

Post by bigiain »

nickthemagicman wrote: post #6
whoisjuan wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your definition of "short stint"? Less than 1 year?

I was going to ask that as well! What's the HN community's view of a reasonable amount of time at an employer? Given that startups are way crazier, require way longer hours, and are less stable financially and politically than normally established companies. Asking because I've worked for several startups and tech management has changed several times in a year for both of them, they loose and gain huge streams of rev…

This: https://hackerlife.co/blog/san-francisco-large-corporation-e...

Suggests median tenures at small tech companies can be as low as 1.5years.

For me - it depends on the stage of career a candidate is at.

If you're not job hopping every 2-3 years in the early stages of your career (say, first 8-10 years out of school), you're without doubt losing out monetarily (which may indicate a lack of ambition).

On the other hand, if you've not managed to hold down a job for over two years (or any job for over 18 months), you ring bells in my head of maybe just having managed to not get let go for lack of performance and bailing out before it makes it to your record.

Those are both offset of some of your roles are listed as contracts (but rest assured I'll be getting your references or LinkedIn or network-sourced ex-colleagues checked to make sure they don't describe them as permanent full time roles).

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