How (not) to apply for a software job

Indeed's PDF export resume looks great, in my opinion. It's the only thing that I use.

When do employers get to "how to properly write a job advertisement"? All these articles are only about what workers should do, not how companies fail again and again at writing a good description of the job.

E.g. "Describe your experience with software operations and running services in production" is a really bad question as it is too open ended and leads to name dropping. Asking for "engaging answers" judges the persons ability to write interesting novels instead of ability to solve (or avoid) problems.

Ditto with “How would you approach the design and implementation of new features for a production service?”. This question is way too generic and a proper answer could fill many books. There is so many different ways of doing this and depends a lot on what the software is used for. When benhoyt says "In short, don’t be generic" then at least he could take his own advice into account when writing questions.

An example response like "At Shopify [...] doubled click rate, from 15% to 27%" likely violate NDAs. I don't think companies like you to tell this to their competitor.

This is one of those “it depends” areas.

The author is talking about a fairly “classic” approach. I was a hiring manager for a long time, and had a similar (but more flexible) worldview. It may not age well.

I personally think that being able to leverage AI tools will be an important skillset, in the future, and would not disqualify AI submissions, right off the bat (but maybe not consider them a “leg up,” either). They will just be part of the landscape, going forward. A lot of “classic” résumé advice isn’t really much better than what ChatGPT will provide, anyway. For example, he rails against “Buzzword Bingo.” I hate that, too, but it is also a “classic” CV technique, and many professional submissions will be absolutely packed with jargon.

I just think that there isn’t any way to avoid having to dedicate some real time and effort to screening applicants. In my case, it was something that I took very seriously. I had to fight like crazy to get headcount, and I was hiring pretty high-functioning people for a small, rather “elite” team. I really can’t relate to having to sort through hundreds of CVs of folks right out of school.

> and by “cover letter” I just mean an email that’s says here’s who I am and here’s what I like/do

This makes it sound like it would be something that would be "copied and pasted to countless other employers", just like a resume often is.

But your last point made it sound like the applicant should invest more of their time than that.

Conventionally, a good cover letter will be, at least to a degree, bespoke for that job. But that is a non-trivial time investment on the part of the applicant. And it can be a significant waste of time in cases where something on their resume disqualifies them from consideration regardless of their cover letter.

Also, in the last several years, the impact of a good cover letter on getting an employment offer has diminished tremendously to the point that expect it of applicants isn't not respectful of their time.

It's funny because I've read that details scare people, so you should avoid them. May be include something the employer likes (saved the employer 200K per year using xyz solution) but technical details?

I guess it depends on who's reading.