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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

#71

Post by spywaregorilla »

inanutshellus wrote: post #54
j33zusjuice wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Friend worked for the military overseas. Locals would send in resumes and include details such as their social caste and were horrified (or delighted, depending) when that information was redacted before being sent to hiring folk. On the upside, it apparently became an upward mobility avenue for "low caste" folk who would otherwise not be considered for valuable positions.

> On the upside, it apparently became an upward mobility avenue for "low caste" folk who would otherwise not be considered for valuable positions.

I mean... yeah. Absolutely. That is a huge obvious upside, and as far as I can tell, there are no downsides to this at all.

Re: My dad's resume and skills from 1980

#72

Post by snapetom »

My dad was an electrical engineer in his home country. When he immigrated to the US in the Seventies, he had to basically start over because his certifications weren't recognized. He took it as an opportunity to try and change careers, and he looked at everything from locksmithing to programming.

Several years ago, long after he passed, I found the C book he used. "Hey, I know C!" I thought. It was a weird feeling to have independently ended up in the field he strived to be in.

Re: My dad's resume and skills from 1980

#73

Post by 2ICofafireteam »

yupper32 wrote: post #11
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...

I don't see many 5-star skill ratings, dual colored backgrounds (?), or unreadable fonts. Where do you see those? I would turn people away from that format if they asked my advice. My resume, and the resumes I've seen aren't too far away from this format. More bullet points and a bit more detail than this, I guess. But otherwise pretty similar

As someone who has been through several government vocational programs in Canada, I will say that when your Case Manager or Instructor says to write your resumes and letters a certain way, you do it.

Re: My dad's resume and skills from 1980

#74

Post by Ultimatt »

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.

Then there are the people who dazzle you with both their brilliance and the shiny stuff. They get the job over just the brilliant person...

Re: My dad's resume and skills from 1980

#76

Post by jcadam »

robterrell wrote: post #57
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…

My copy of K&R belonged to my dad and was from the early 80s! My job interviews in the 80s and 90s (college summer jobs, or the one time a company tried to get me to leave college for a job) had no whiteboard-coding-style technical skills components, aside from demos of software I'd written and general discussions of implementation details. One job I interviewed for was at Davinci Email. This was probably 1990-ish? T…

Got a job working on an old Ada system during the Great Recession (I was unemployed and desperate enough to take any job). Mom was kind enough to give me all of her old Ada books - apparently her employer (defense contractor) had sent her to training when the language was first introduced.

> The last interview was with someone very technical, who had printed out a few pages of listings of the obfuscated C contest.

That's cold. The worst I've had was otherwise normal code with a few deliberate bugs introduced: "Tell me what's wrong with this code."

Re: My dad's resume and skills from 1980

#77

Post by jefftk »

uri4 wrote: post #62
j33zusjuice wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Quoted post unavailable.

In the application process?

Re: My dad's resume and skills from 1980

#78

Post by jcadam »

mikestew wrote: post #68
deeblering4 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yep, I blame Microsoft. Now these sorts of interviews are done even by companies writing pedestrian web apps that don't require hard-core CS knowledge. Yet they test every applicant on it anyway.

Re: My dad's resume and skills from 1980

#79

Post by ricardobayes »

deeblering4 wrote: post #48
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.

I've brought that culture back in our company. Hasn't failed us yet. Turns out for a CRUD web app you really don't need top hackerrank skills. In my humble opinion, people who excel in algorithmic code interviews want to overcomplicate everything and get burned out super fast with 'real world' tasks.
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