A common red flag for me is: saying you're an 'expert', '10/10', etc in like 5 different technologies. For juniors it's common to overestimate their capabilities, which is okay, but engineers with some years' experience that already claim to have mastered it all: i'll pass on that.
Ask HN: What do you consider resume red flags?
91–100 of 138 posts
Re: Ask HN: What do you consider resume red flags?
#92As someone who has just gone through over 100 resumes for a developer position, these are some of my observations.These aren't exactly red-flags per se, merely markers that would give one pause. - Heavy Java stack experience, with no significant experience in other programming languages. One of the signs of a production programmer with no passion for the craft of programming. - Huge listing of school projects involvi…
> One of the signs of a production programmer with no passion for the craft of programming.
More like "one of the signs of a programmer who has other things to do after work". It may just be indicative of that person spending time with his kids, or working in an honorary office that's not IT-related.
Re: Ask HN: What do you consider resume red flags?
#931. 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…
> When sending your document, try sending a PDF but not a .docx Is that a suggestion or a red flag?
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.
Re: Ask HN: What do you consider resume red flags?
#94I normally use an outlook email because I can have username@outlook instead of user.name2392.stuff@gmail, also outlook advertisement is less intrusive. I'm under the impression that it turns recruiters away, can this be right? [Edit]: Yes/No is enough, no need to downvote.
If you’re mainly interested in having a clean username, why not purchase your own domain? If you pay for a small vps, most registrars will host an email server at no extra cost.
Yeah, do I have a domain name and used my own domain with gmail.
But it sounds volatile to me, if (for some reason) I lose my domain I'd miss a good part of my communications.
Thanks for your advice, I'll see what I can do.
Re: Ask HN: What do you consider resume red flags?
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This is a self inflicted problem across all companies. As long as companies are not willing to pay the market salary, people will move elsewhere. Why do you say this? Surely underpaying people is one way to make them leave but not the only reason. Some people think “the grass is always greener” elsewhere. Others don’t last long because they are not easy to work with. Others are not great employees and so are encour…
> Why do you say this? I say it because I keep seeing articles like this one [1] all the time: "Workers who stay with a company longer than two years are said to get paid 50% less." And that matches my personal experience. After spending 14 years at a company giving me 3 percent raises year after year, I've switched jobs frequently, but usually with large pay raises with every job. 8 years out and 4 jobs later now I'…
Thank you for your follow up. 5 jobs in 22 years doesn’t seem that extreme to me, especially if you had a legit story to go along with it. Do you think the company you work for now only wants you for 1.1 years?
Out of curiousity, in what region do you live?
Re: Ask HN: What do you consider resume red flags?
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
> When sending your document, try sending a PDF but not a .docx Is that a suggestion or a red flag?
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.
Re: Ask HN: What do you consider resume red flags?
#97I do lots of hiring. Here are some things I watch out for. - Multiple, short stints at different companies. Sometimes things happen but if you have a track record of jumping from one place to another I am pretty confident you won't stay around very long if I hire you. - Multiple pages. A long resume is not impressive. Typically it is just annoying because it makes it harder to find key information. It shows a lack of…
"Multiple pages" point, definitely agree. Ive been a software dev for over 20 years and my CV is two pages of A4 and I dont expect most people to even read page 2 (hint: most wont).
Re: Ask HN: What do you consider resume red flags?
#98Disclaimer: I work at a recruiting company. Resumes should be good enough to get you in the door, no more. The typical recruiter/hr scans a resume for 5 seconds. Two things stick out in a bad way - typos and jumpiness. Anything else is usually forgiven, or subjective based on the person reading it. This is coming from someone who sees anywhere from 10-50 resumes a day.
Agreed, I often tell more junior developers the only point to the CV is to get you the interview.
Re: Ask HN: What do you consider resume red flags?
#99- lots of short stints employment. It costs a lot to find, hire and on board someone. Ideally I’d like them to stick around for a while. - lists of buzzwords without clear descriptions of what they actually did. I don’t care about “fashionable” terms. I wanted heard about concrete things they’ve done. - poor formatting. If they don’t care enough to make their resume look clean and neat, why would I expect them to car…
"lots of short stints employment" - what do you consider short?
Re: Ask HN: What do you consider resume red flags?
#100Earlier 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…
"What's the HN community's view of a reasonable amount of time at an employer?" ... If your a contractor, 6 months or more.