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Why isn't there a universal data format for résumés?

toot.cat

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Re: Why isn't there a universal data format for résumés?

#301

Post by dahart »

tqi wrote: post #188
jeroenhd wrote: post #42

In my opinion, there shouldn't be. Documents like these shouldn't be automatically processed, they should be reviewed by humans. Reducing someone's life history to a list of educational institutions and employers feels robotic even for a software developer's mindset. I understand that there are real life problems because companies do use automated processing on applications, but that kind of behaviour shouldn't be en…

> Documents like these shouldn't be automatically processed, they should be reviewed by humans. Human review is fraught with bias. A lot of attention and column inches are devoted to algorithmic bias these days, but let's not confuse that for evidence that human review is perfect or even better. It's just harder to audit.

I don't think anyone is confusing algorithmic bias for evidence that humans are better. It's the other way around -- the argument has always been that algorithms are biased because humans are biased. Having a systemic bias that masquerades as neutral seems worse than having people in the loop.

When submitting my resume and interviewing for jobs, I'd certainly prefer to be subject to: 1) multiple people with different biases, 2) humans that can change their mind and/or recognize their biases, 3) humans that can explain their rationale, and 4) humans that can grasp and weight eccentric and non-conforming experience. I'm not interested in being ranked in a standardized way, because I'm not interested in being a pure cog in wheel.

I also think people who want standardized resumes and automated processing are vastly underestimating the SEO effect it will have on hiring. If resumes are automated, then many people more aggressive than you will game the system to the Nth degree. The same thing that happens to Google and the internet will happen to jobs: the loudest and spammiest will win, and the good content will go mostly unnoticed and unrewarded.

Re: Why isn't there a universal data format for résumés?

#302

Post by avh02 »

benrbray wrote: post #248
jeromegv wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI Not an English native speaker It’s a document sent to tons of people. Revised by tons of hiring managers. Can’t you spend 5 minute looking at a dictionary? If you cant be bothered to spend 5 minutes researching this for an important document, what makes me think that you will spend 5 minutes trying to be good at your job. Lack of care on your resume is lack of care on lots of other things.

Companies don't seem to treat it like an important document. I can't tell you how many times an interviewer seemed to be reading my resume for the very first time during the interview itself...

On the flip side, I do technical interviews (I am new to it though), and I spend about half an hour preparing for an interview including going through the CV that made it to me (and making notes/preparing questions) and researching the candidate based on what I see in it (e.g following links, etc)

Re: Why isn't there a universal data format for résumés?

#304

Post by watwut »

throwawayboise wrote: post #205
moralestapia wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's "Node.js" with a dot. If you spell it "nodejs", that's a serious red flag and you shouldn't be surprised if it gets you automatically discarded -- even by a human reviewer. Oh, really!? I'll be very glad NOT to work at a company that throws aways candidates because of such triviliaties.

Even back in the era when reading resumes and hiring was a manual human process, the standard advice was that resumes should be perfect. Nicely formatted, with no spelling or grammatical errors. You have ample time to think about the content, to proofread it yourself, and to have someone else proofread it. It's the first impression the potential employer has of you, no reason to not make an effort.

That is advice to Jon seeker.

It is never advice toward hiring manager. It was always criticized as not smart and leading to many false rejects.

Re: Why isn't there a universal data format for résumés?

#305

Post by vfulco2 »

jeroenhd wrote: post #42

In my opinion, there shouldn't be. Documents like these shouldn't be automatically processed, they should be reviewed by humans. Reducing someone's life history to a list of educational institutions and employers feels robotic even for a software developer's mindset. I understand that there are real life problems because companies do use automated processing on applications, but that kind of behaviour shouldn't be en…

I totally agree but we are fighting the tide (ran a resume, linkedin profile, and interview prep shop for 6 years). Everything in the process is being analyzed, parsed and benchmarked using AI, soon to a more granular level. I even came across some interview analysis software which measured the angle of the person's head along with tone and a bunch of other factors!

Re: Why isn't there a universal data format for résumés?

#306

Post by Biganon »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #269
vanusa wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“It’s not JavaScript it’s Ecmascript! Not comparable.

I’d say they are. Who cares if I write “Nodejs” or “Node.js”? The reader knows exactly what I meant, and that’s what matters. Anything else is just needless pedantry.

It's not about communication, here. You want to be absolutely perfect in your CV, to prove that you've spent time and effort making it perfect. It serves no other purpose but to show your determination. If communication was the point, a long rant in which you write "yeah I worked with node.js, it was cool lol" would be OK as well, after all it gets the point across doesn't it?

Re: Why isn't there a universal data format for résumés?

#308

Post by pjerem »

moralestapia wrote: post #91
jeroenhd wrote: post #42

In my opinion, there shouldn't be. Documents like these shouldn't be automatically processed, they should be reviewed by humans. Reducing someone's life history to a list of educational institutions and employers feels robotic even for a software developer's mindset. I understand that there are real life problems because companies do use automated processing on applications, but that kind of behaviour shouldn't be en…

>Documents like these shouldn't be automatically processed, they should be reviewed by humans. That's very nice to think about but in the real world if people don't match some exact keywords they get thrown away. HR is looking for "node.js" but you wrote it like "nodejs"? Though luck pal, bye. HR wants a "computer scientist" but you have a degree in "computer science"? Same, automatically discarded. If anything, a st…

This is really not an issue. If the company as such a dumb HR department on automatic mode, I’m glad I’ll never be hired there.

But to be honest, I’ve never seen so stupid HR people. Like a lot of people, they have goals to reach and they’ll happily accept an interview from any CV as long as there are computer-related keywords and roughly the required experience.

HRs are one of the most important department when it comes to a company potential shitiness. So I’m glad they have the power to kick you from the hiring process for stupid reasons.

Re: Why isn't there a universal data format for résumés?

#309

Post by skinkestek »

vanusa wrote: post #233
kortilla wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's what resumes used to be, after all -- a kind of a take-home test where you really do have enough time (and perfect knowledge) to get everything 100 percent right. The only thing this filters for is people who have been looking for a job for a long time and/or are people focused on presentation instead of content, good luck with that. We’ve hired incredible engineers across that have had typos and major resum…

Giving them a spell check is about as useful as measuring the ratio of times the letter ‘a’ appears relative to ‘e’. I'll leave the matter of whether one should be expect resumes to be at least reasonably correct (in terms of spelling and grammar) or not - or what the threshold for "reasonably" should be on this front - to the side for now. It's obviously a question of taste, to a certain degree. But sorry - what you…

Well.

These days I think I work at the best team I ever worked on and it seems I'm in the top two in spelling, it is almost as if the rest if the team is mildly dyslexic or doesn't care.

But they are nice to work with, smart and they make good code.

I'll take them 49 times out of 50 over some perfect in code and writing but nasty in person ex colleagues.

Even if I really really really need a specialist on hight performance I'd still try to look elsewhere first.

Edit:

... and those two ex colleagues? Their code was good but it wasn't perfect either.

Re: Why isn't there a universal data format for résumés?

#310

Post by aparticulate »

jeroenhd wrote: post #42

In my opinion, there shouldn't be. Documents like these shouldn't be automatically processed, they should be reviewed by humans. Reducing someone's life history to a list of educational institutions and employers feels robotic even for a software developer's mindset. I understand that there are real life problems because companies do use automated processing on applications, but that kind of behaviour shouldn't be en…

> I understand that there are real life problems because companies do use automated processing on applications, but that kind of behaviour shouldn't be encouraged.

Ignoring the web, we already do some formatting with the common Education/Work experience trope. We could arrange resumes arbitrarily just to mess with employers, perhaps? They are already pretty easy to parse.

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