Ask HN: What do you consider resume red flags? • Hacker News Board

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

#101

Post by ruairidhwm » Thu, May 03, 2018, 12:54 PM UTC

bcbrown wrote: post #78

noarchy wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Github profiles can now show activity in private repos (without showing the actual code, obviously), if you choose to turn this feature on. This is potentially useful for those of us who have 99% of their commits in private repos.

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!

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

#102

Post by wenc » Thu, May 03, 2018, 1:03 PM UTC

majewsky wrote: post #92

wenc wrote: post #43

As 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.

Yes, one of many possible interpretations. That doesn’t detract from the main point however. The level of developer aptitude we require generally exceeds what this type of developer (production programmer) is able to bring to the table.

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

#103

Post by mgliwka » Thu, May 03, 2018, 1:36 PM UTC

walrus01 wrote: post #65

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.

Same here in Germany.

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

#104

Post by scarface74 » Thu, May 03, 2018, 1:58 PM UTC

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…

If you say that you created a web based app which did X using JQuery and C# with a MySQL back end most people would know that you used those technologies.

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

#105

Post by frou_dh » Thu, May 03, 2018, 1:59 PM UTC

nickthemagicman wrote: post #11

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…

MS Office skills lol.

A lot of software developers, myself included, do lack MS-Office skills beyond beginner-level because we are totally disinterested in it.

So if you are genuinely knowledgable about it then it could be worth a quick mention.

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

#106

Post by scarface74 » Thu, May 03, 2018, 2:01 PM UTC

viraptor wrote: post #59

wedmondson wrote: post #56

I 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…

That's good information! One thing I don't really agree with is: > Keyword stuffing. This typically means the candidate is writing their resume for a search engine. If you're applying to a larger company, your CV is likely to be imported into their internal system, often semi-automatically. Sometimes the keywords are not for the public search engine, but for the initial HR's sorting.

If you are dependent on submitting your resume to an applicant tracking system and hoping it will stand out to someone in HR, you're doing it wrong (tm).

I haven't blindly submitted a resume in the 20 years I've been working. I've always used recruiters or an inside contact.

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

#107

Post by scarface74 » Thu, May 03, 2018, 2:05 PM UTC

frou_dh wrote: post #105

nickthemagicman wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MS Office skills lol.

A lot of software developers, myself included, do lack MS-Office skills beyond beginner-level because we are totally disinterested in it. So if you are genuinely knowledgable about it then it could be worth a quick mention.

At a certain level, knowing how to get ideas approved by creating a PowerPoint slide becomes important. So does being able to create a properly formatted statement of work or proposal. They both help to convince your current company the benefits of letting you work on the new and shiny technology that will boost your resume and they help you to get freelance gigs.

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

#108

Post by frou_dh » Thu, May 03, 2018, 2:07 PM UTC

vzaliva wrote: post #32

I usually look for some obscure buzzword which I know something about and ask the candidate about it. For example, if he has Foo on his resume I will ask a concrete technical question related to Foo. Oftentimes it turns out the only experience with it he or she has was in a college, years ago. For me, that is an indication that candidate tends to exaggerate his knowledge and whatever else he lists on his resume has t…

I tried that with someone who had written down Lisp and all they could muster was "It has lots of parenthesis lolz".

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

#109

Post by frou_dh » Thu, May 03, 2018, 2:15 PM UTC

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…

This is false negatives vs false positives territory. Outliers can get caught in the crossfire - nothing new.

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

#110

Post by frou_dh » Thu, May 03, 2018, 2:35 PM UTC

drblast wrote: post #18

Any career longer than about five years that has a focus on a single technology or language with no attempt to branch out or learn new things. Especially for those without a comp sci degree. For example, if your resume says you're a "SharePoint developer" or "Java expert" it's automatically suspect. I've worked with too many people who only know a single thing and are trying to ride that train as far as they can. Tho…

A related problem is someone never having designed and implemented a substantial project where they decided what to use. Rather, only having added onto or maintained existing projects.

That gets people into the mindset of being a "FOO Developer" rather than a developer, because the presence of FOO seems like a fact of life.