My dad's resume and skills from 1980 • Hacker News Board

Re: My dad's resume and skills from 1980

#41

Post by jcadam » Tue, Oct 25, 2022, 3:05 PM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #14

rmnclmnt wrote: post #6

Can we bring back this form of resume, please? Information is clearly organized, easy to read, easy to remember. No need for 5-star skills ratings, dual-colored backgrounds, unreadable fonts, and whatnot...

> No need for 5-star skills ratings, dual-colored backgrounds, unreadable fonts, and whatnot... I read a lot of resumes. Honestly, the number of quirky over-designed resumes I see is probably 1 in 50. The vast majority of people do submit clearly organized resumes based on a template they found. The reason those quirky over-designed resumes get shared on HN or other social media is because they’re different, not beca…

I eventually gave up on Word templates and now keep my resume in LaTeX. Neat and organized - not unlike this example only with more detail and nicer fonts :)

Occasionally a recruiter will ask/demand I give it to them in MS Word - I've learned it's always a bad idea to give recruiter a resume in an easily editable format.

Re: My dad's resume and skills from 1980

#42

Post by rmnclmnt » Tue, Oct 25, 2022, 3:06 PM UTC

Kostic wrote: post #10

rmnclmnt wrote: post #6

Can we bring back this form of resume, please? Information is clearly organized, easy to read, easy to remember. No need for 5-star skills ratings, dual-colored backgrounds, unreadable fonts, and whatnot...

You can use something similar, even today. My CV isn't *much* different than the one in the link and it seems that it does stand out as I've been complimented about it, twice.

I do too, but I see way too many people "over-thinking" their resumes, especially in the presentation layout: if the raw data is clearly organized, the layout should be minimal, not the other way around

Re: My dad's resume and skills from 1980

#43

Post by jean_tta » Tue, Oct 25, 2022, 3:06 PM UTC

j33zusjuice wrote: post #38

jean_tta wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pure speculation, but I would guess it was simply expected information at the time. In some countries, it is still expected or at least common to see information such as: a portrait ; date and place of birth ; marital situation and number of children ; and so on.

What!? Some countries force you to state your marital and familial situations!? That’s insane. It’s illegal for companies in the US to ask about that stuff. That said, some other people pointed out he had a military/aeronautical background, so height and health might come into play for certain jobs. That makes sense to me. You probably can’t work in the cockpit of a plane if you’re 7 feet tall.

It's not _forced_, but it is common that applicants include this information.

Re: My dad's resume and skills from 1980

#44

Post by Lio » Tue, Oct 25, 2022, 3:06 PM UTC

jll29 wrote: post #22

The interesting bit about this post is that with that resume, you can still feed a family in 2022 (okay, you won't need any assembler, and one from the set { Fortran, COBOL } will do). I wonder if Python and JavaScript will get you that far 50 years from now?

Hard to say for sure but I'd bet that Unix/Linux/Posix and SQL skills might still be relevant.

Re: My dad's resume and skills from 1980

#45

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Oct 25, 2022, 3:07 PM UTC

lordnacho wrote: post #27

That job market seems like so long ago. See job ad, type out a letter with your CV, wait for them to write back, somehow organize a time to meet, more rounds, and so forth. At least it must have been hard to spam out CVs. The guy seems pretty hardcore from my perspective. University training for all those techs. Of course hardware back then cost a lot of money so you wanted people who knew what they were doing. What…

[deleted]

Re: My dad's resume and skills from 1980

#46

Post by bradhe » Tue, Oct 25, 2022, 3:08 PM UTC

Imagine the changes they saw between 1956 and 1980...that'd be so amazing.

Re: My dad's resume and skills from 1980

#47

Post by robertlagrant » Tue, Oct 25, 2022, 3:08 PM UTC

j33zusjuice wrote: post #29

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No need for 5-star skills ratings, dual-colored backgrounds, unreadable fonts, and whatnot... I read a lot of resumes. Honestly, the number of quirky over-designed resumes I see is probably 1 in 50. The vast majority of people do submit clearly organized resumes based on a template they found. The reason those quirky over-designed resumes get shared on HN or other social media is because they’re different, not beca…

In my experience looking at résumés (mostly for entry-level tech roles), fancy formatting is 100% an attempt to cover for a lack of skill. I haven’t seen one that had good content. Intuitively, this makes sense to me, and seems to fit with the old adage, “if you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.” Imo, your experience should speak for itself.

I would do your best to fully ignore anything like this. It's bound to be incorrect sometimes.

Re: My dad's resume and skills from 1980

#48

Post by deeblering4 » Tue, Oct 25, 2022, 3:09 PM UTC

lordnacho wrote: post #27

That job market seems like so long ago. See job ad, type out a letter with your CV, wait for them to write back, somehow organize a time to meet, more rounds, and so forth. At least it must have been hard to spam out CVs. The guy seems pretty hardcore from my perspective. University training for all those techs. Of course hardware back then cost a lot of money so you wanted people who knew what they were doing. What…

Up until the mid-late 2000s tech interviews consisted of a few conversations, followed by checking references.

CS trivia interviews were largely introduced by Google, with other companies cargo culting that into their interview practices.

Re: My dad's resume and skills from 1980

#49

Post by robertlagrant » Tue, Oct 25, 2022, 3:09 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #32

rmnclmnt wrote: post #6

Can we bring back this form of resume, please? Information is clearly organized, easy to read, easy to remember. No need for 5-star skills ratings, dual-colored backgrounds, unreadable fonts, and whatnot...

Also: I kind of like the concise wording when the writer doesn't feel they need to adhere to STAR. "Duties Included" is the only meat I want to see when I read a resume. I don't care what the specific challenge you faced was, or if your hard work transforming protobufs from one format to another resulted in "23% year over year revenue growth and 3 industry awards" for a product that uses your protobufs 5 layers up th…

My guess is if you sum all of the money saved/revenue gained listed in each MBA CV you'd end up with a number bigger than the GDP of the history of the world.

Re: My dad's resume and skills from 1980

#50

Post by gautamdivgi » Tue, Oct 25, 2022, 3:10 PM UTC

jll29 wrote: post #22

The interesting bit about this post is that with that resume, you can still feed a family in 2022 (okay, you won't need any assembler, and one from the set { Fortran, COBOL } will do). I wonder if Python and JavaScript will get you that far 50 years from now?

Java probably will for application development. Python should to with all that ML code. I don’t see anyone in a hurry to move it to Julia. C++ also, if you’re in the embedded space. I know Rust is coming but I don’t think c++ is going anywhere for a while.