We created a fake language to root out resume liars • Hacker News Board

Re: We created a fake language to root out resume liars

#451

Post by meheleventyone » Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 4:10 PM UTC

seg_lol wrote: post #318

jarcane wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My second ever job was at a startup that put me through three rounds of interviews, all of them in Python. The homework task, the questions, literally nothing else was mentioned through the entire process. After I got hired, I showed up the first day and one of the managers asks me, "So I heard you know functional programming, right?" I said "yes" and was immediately whisked off to the backend division that worked en…

That is absolutely phenomenal. I assume your Python code had functional stylings that would translate well into how the team used Scala? What was the rest of your experience like there? Sounds like a place that thinks at a deeper level than most.

Is it unusual? I’ve changed jobs three times now going into places with different languages than ones I had much experience of. IME it takes about as much time to learn the codebase as it does to learn a new language and both go hand in glove.

Re: We created a fake language to root out resume liars

#452

Post by bhandziuk » Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 4:10 PM UTC

pradn wrote: post #381

brigandish wrote: post #77

> That way, when candidates were pitched to us with "X years of MOVA experience", we knew that somebody was full of it. I'd put my money on the recruiter. I once had an excruciatingly awkward interview at a company on an industrial estate in the middle of nowhereland with no train station nearby that took me bloody ages to get to… which was actually going well until they asked me about my long experience with Exchang…

> I've been to plenty of interviews where my CV hasn't been given more than a glance. I do technical interviews and I never look at CVs before doing the interview. I do this to avoid bias. I want to treat them the same no matter if they went to Stanford or were not working for 10 years or if this is their first job. Also, people are adaptable, and soft skills matter a lot. So the error bars for recruiting even based…

What if there is something interesting on their CV worth exploring?

Re: We created a fake language to root out resume liars

#453

Post by mnw21cam » Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 4:11 PM UTC

lwigo wrote: post #351

DoubleGlazing wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had the almost exact same experience, but with Java. I'm a C# developer and although I have some experience with Java, I don't have enough to list it as a skill on my CV. Anyways, in this interview I was being asked about Java and I answered every question by saying I don't really know Java. The interviewers were obviously getting annoyed. So I asked "Sorry, I thought this was a C# job?". No, it was a Java job and ma…

Recruiters will straight up ask for .DOC versions, too. The gall.

Ages ago, I was looking for a job. I made my CV using LaTeX, and provided it as a PDF to the recruiters. They straight turned around and asked for a Word format version instead. So I converted each page into an image, and pasted each one into a page each in a Word document, then sent that to them. They complained that there was something wrong with the document, and they were having trouble editing it.

I later had a job interview, and saw what the potential employer had been sent. They had re-typed it, and it looked awful.

Re: We created a fake language to root out resume liars

#454

Post by fractionalhare » Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 4:12 PM UTC

jameshart wrote: post #317

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn’t put “chess” onto my resume unless I was at least titled. Otherwise, what is a signal that it sends to the hedge fund crowd of overachievers? That you have a hobby that you managed to not get good at?

Is the objective of hobbies to ‘get good’ at them? That sounds exhausting. If someone lists ‘skiing’ as a hobby I’m not expecting them to have Olympic medals to back that up. ‘It says here on your resume that you play guitar. Well, let’s see how you fair in a guitar battle with Slash from accounting’ This is just more of that hyper competitive ‘well rounded college applicant’ performative high school stuff, isn’t it?…

Hobbies don't have to be maximally mastered, no. But what's the point of putting something on your resume if you're not particularly good at it? In my opinion that's the only kind of thing that should be on a resume.

I think if you put a hobby on a resume for the purpose of signaling some kind of orthogonal skillset ostensibly related to the job (like in this example, "strategy"), it stops being just about your personality and becomes explicitly performance-oriented. And I would even argue your resume is not the play to round out your personality, because it's such an overly subjective and bias-inducing thing.

Re: We created a fake language to root out resume liars

#455

Post by scollet » Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 4:12 PM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #189

JasonFruit wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It works in reverse, too: slangy school-newspaper style writing from back then is almost incomprehensible now.

My dizzy age afternoonified chuckaboo looks arf’arf’an’arf, I bet they want to bricky batty-fang that bag o' mystery, could be bow wow mutton. IDK I just googled 1900's slang.

Do you want fries with that?

Re: We created a fake language to root out resume liars

#456

Post by motohagiography » Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 4:12 PM UTC

dmos62 wrote: post #126

Serious question: if you're applying for positions you're not totally confident in your experience and skillset, do you inflate your resume? My thinking goes that if I slip in by being dishonest, I'll be nervous of being found out, feel an intruder. So being honest and taking a longer time looking for match would get more comfort later on.

I leave a stuff off my resume because nobody would believe it all together. The whole story looks like I'm Forrest Gump. I can't imagine inflating it.

Sometimes I think you're actually supposed to put in a glaringly obvious falsifiable lie to show you're a player.

I should A/B test that.

Re: We created a fake language to root out resume liars

#457

Post by nixpulvis » Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 4:12 PM UTC

Does anyone have a link to the mentioned Industry Standard Magazine profile article? Or was that made up too?

Re: We created a fake language to root out resume liars

#458

Post by ficklepickle » Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 4:12 PM UTC

DoubleGlazing wrote: post #385

noneeeed wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a recruiter say "XML and UML are basically the same, right?". There's almost a dangerous level of knowledge among some recruiters where they think they know enough to do crap like this.

That's something I've noticed over the last 10 years or so as job descriptions get longer. All those new terms like React, Vue, SaaS, Azure, AWS etc. They don't really know what they mean. I was asked if I could code in Azure. This led to a weird conversation where I was trying to explain what Azure was, whilst he wouldn't listen to me and was adamant that it was a programming language.

"But can you code in API? I don't want your life story, just answer me! Do you know API?!"

I'm so lucky, I think I found the best recruiter in all Vancouver. He helped me get my ideal role and was generally kind and competent. Just to offset the horror stories.

Re: We created a fake language to root out resume liars

#459

Post by jjk166 » Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 4:13 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #253

texasbigdata wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putting an ELO is like putting your SAT when you’re 25 and over: sort of aggressive and you better have a really high number!

I scored fairly well on the SAT. I can’t think of anything short of a court order that would cause me to put it on my resume.

If someone had bad education credentials (bad school, dropout, etc) but they put a high SAT score on a resume that would be a pretty concise way of communicating "it wasn't because I'm dumb"

Re: We created a fake language to root out resume liars

#460

Post by jschwartzi » Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 4:14 PM UTC

yreg wrote: post #440

rjmill wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's common practice for recruiters to replace your personal contact info with their agency's header/contact info. I don't mind that. It makes sense. I generate my resume as a PDF from HTML/CSS. It's fun to see how recruiters handle that. I think most use image manipulation to insert their header. One recruiter sent me some image assets and let me add the header/footer myself. I'm sure some recruiters go too far with…

What are these recruiters you all talk about? Are these some middlemen you contract to get you a job? Like an athlete's/actor's agent? I only had experience with recruiters who work for the organisation I'm interviewing for. None of this contact info / skills tampering makes sense in that context.

Post your resume on one of the really big job boards like Dice or Indeed and you'll see what we're talking about. Last time I did that I was getting 4 or 5 calls a day. Most of those recruiters were from the same three companies and you could safely rule them out because they would ask for your SSN. But anyone who calls you and tries to establish a personal relationship might be worth working with.