Live data from Hacker News

Offer HN: I will review and critique your CV.

news.ycombinator.com

61–70 of 90 posts

Re: Offer HN: I will review and critique your CV.

#61
post #49
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My take: Not overly convinced with listing the skills down the right hand side. It makes it a little hard to read. I generally recommend that people stick to "normal" layouts and list skills at the end. Also; be more specific with the skills if you can. "Database design" can mean many things (this is particularly important if you go for, say, a DB design job :)). Also; it is ok to write a short prose section under "i…

I'll second pretty much everything ErrantX mentioned, specifically the skills comment, move them. I appreciate you are probably trying to keep it to one page but I promise you that this does not give you any advantage whatsoever. As for specifics, list your day to day duties and responsibilities in a format that will stand out and be easy to read such as a list of bullet points under each brief.

Thanks for all the comments to ErrantX and Kozen. Will try to make relevant changes soon.

Re: Offer HN: I will review and critique your CV.

#62
post #57
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I would like to ask about is how my employment history looks - returning to my previous position. Chronologically (earlier first) it went like this: Company 1 (1 year) University (1 year) Company 2 (3 months) Company 1 again (nearly 1 year) Does it raise questions that I left Company 2 after only 3 months, and that I went back to Company 1? (not listing company names here so it doesn't get into their search…

Does it raise questions that I left Company 2 after only 3 months, and that I went back to Company 1? It does and you will be questioned on this. The fact is, if you have a reasonable, logical, verifiable reason for returning then it won't be an issue. If the company 2 role was a contract position I would highlight that on the CV.

thankyou.

No, I've never done contract work. I won't go into details here, but I feel I have good reasons for leaving C2. They were great to work for, but just weren't quite in line with my career goals.

Re: Offer HN: I will review and critique your CV.

#63
post #33
post #30

Out of interest, as a recruiter, what did you think of the two 'reverse job application' posts? first: http://www.reversejobapplication.com/ and in response: http://www.thejohnnybrown.com/?p=21

RE: http://www.reversejobapplication.com/ I thought this was a really entertaining read. Will it generate his dream job on it's own merits? Probably not. Will it generate a ton of job offers due to the publicity it's received? Probably. More and more employers want 'celebrities' working for them. I recently placed a gentleman who had a relatively average CV but he had been published in numerous Insurance related publ…

Do you know why employers would want celebrities?

Re: Offer HN: I will review and critique your CV.

#64

Thanks very much for this. I've never had much luck with recruiters and my C.V so any feedback you have would be greatly appreciated. I've also decided to upload it here. http://www.alanhollis.com/Alan_Hollis.pdf Please note I'm not actively seeking employment at the moment but might as well take advantage of the opportunity to get some constructive criticism whilst it's here.

I'm not a recruiter, but my opinion is that 'experience' should mean 'commercial experience'. By saying you've got seven years (4 commercial) you look like you're trying to bump up your figures.

Page 3 is ridiculous. Shorten your borders and margins and get it onto 2 pages.

Overuse of bullets for my liking, esp when really you're putting paragraphs in. Bullets are for Tell people what they care about. Eg:

> Livenumber, a blackberry application...

Nobody cares that it's called Livenumber. Say:

> A blackberry application...

It looks a bit wall-of-texty.

Just my opinion though, don't take it for gospel!

Re: Offer HN: I will review and critique your CV.

#65
post #63
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RE: http://www.reversejobapplication.com/ I thought this was a really entertaining read. Will it generate his dream job on it's own merits? Probably not. Will it generate a ton of job offers due to the publicity it's received? Probably. More and more employers want 'celebrities' working for them. I recently placed a gentleman who had a relatively average CV but he had been published in numerous Insurance related publ…

Do you know why employers would want celebrities?

Good question.

I believe it's the credibility factor. If someone has a lot of positive exposure be it online, in print media or what ever the case may be, then that is going to attract attention to who the person works for.

Take actual celebrity examples; almost everyone in the world knows who David Beckham is and now most of those people know who LA Galaxy are. I can assure you, before he joined the team few people in Europe had ever even heard of LA Galaxy and now they are a recognised and respected brand purely because of their association with Beckham. On an infinitely smaller scale the same applies to certain industries in larger cities.

Re: Offer HN: I will review and critique your CV.

#67
post #21

Does anyone have any recommendations for paid services that do this sort of thing? KoZeN's offer to review CV's is really (really) nice, but with well over 40 to read, his offer won't likely meet the demand. I've thought a few times that there must be something wrong with my resume and I'd like to have it reviewed professionally. Has anyone paid to have their resume reviewed? If so, where, how much did it cost and wa…

I got mine reviewed by Neil Rauch. I paid $75, and he must have spent about 3-4 hours on it to shrink it from seven pages to three! I did not accept all changes but most were helpful. Overall, I was happy that I got it reviewed.

Search for "Neil Rauch resume doctor" to find his contact information.

Re: Offer HN: I will review and critique your CV.

#69
post #22

Thanks for your offer! Currently I do not really have a CV anymore, I link to my linkedin or make a dump of my linkedin to doc/pdf. What do you think of this practice? Anyone else who has opinions on "moving the CV to linkedin"?

I was asked some time ago to provide my CV and I also used a pdf export of linkedin cause it's such a simple option. I believe it's a bit lacking in some areas eg, I recall it does not have anything about human languages (when you are moving around in europe that is kind of useful). I may be wrong though.

i too missed that option in linkedin!
Post reply on HN