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My dad's resume and skills from 1980

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Re: My dad's resume and skills from 1980

#61

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.

Tech interviews were definitely around prior to Google. I went through multiple tech interviews in the 90s

Re: My dad's resume and skills from 1980

#62

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.

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Re: My dad's resume and skills from 1980

#63

Why does he call out that he is 5'4" I wonder? The "Health: Excellent" seems amusing in today's context too.

I've been to a military museum few days ago and I was surprised how incredibly small some of the cockpits are. I'm 6'3" and wouldn't fit in most of the fighter jets and other vehicles. Not that I wouldn't be comfortable with my legs pushed to something - my shoulders are literally too wide to get in, my thighs/ass are too wide to even try sitting there. Might be a problem for aerospace tech. And don't get me started…

One day the cockpit will be the size of a microchip and then nobody would fit in there!

Re: My dad's resume and skills from 1980

#65

In 1980 - I’m expert in those 3 areas In 2020 - I’m aware of about 10000 different technologies but not expert in anything

In 1985 I learned and shipped products using IBM Assembler, Cobol, JCL, TSO, and some others not listed.

It was a bit of an unusual mainframe software spinoff company where I did my 1st year and later co-op work placements. My next co-op placement was more conventional embedded C.

Re: My dad's resume and skills from 1980

#67
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?

There'll be plenty of legacy Java EE apps in need of maintenance. Not fun work, but it'll pay.

Re: My dad's resume and skills from 1980

#68

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.

Microsoft was known for “why are manhole covers round” and CS trivia before Google was even a company.

Re: My dad's resume and skills from 1980

#69
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...

I struggle with getting a good CV, one that I do feel comfortable with. So, as a reference, I just saved this resume as a reference to use as soon as I get to rework mine. It is straight forward, not overburdened with details and covers the essentials. Great stuff!

Re: My dad's resume and skills from 1980

#70
post #41

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…

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.

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