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Why won't anyone talk to me? What recruiters look for in a resume

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Re: Why won't anyone talk to me? What recruiters look for in a resume

#11

Post by cllns »

batgaijin wrote: post #7
cllns wrote: post #5

I'm not sure UIUC and UT-Austin are great examples for second-tier schools, as both are top 10 for graduate CS departments.

I disagree entirely. Graduate school has nothing to do with the undergraduate curriculum. I went to a school with an amazing graduate program but I had a terrible watered down education that barely went passed Java and did not push me or many of the other students. It's an excellent opportunity for summer research jobs and the such, but otherwise does not translate well into the lower curriculum unless you want it to…

I agree: a good graduate school can offer a good undergraduate education if you want it to. The ambition to get a good education when it's available (but not necessary) is highly desirable, no?

Re: Why won't anyone talk to me? What recruiters look for in a resume

#13

Post by jowiar »

The resume review process isn't intended to find the single best candidate. It's intended to whittle a big pile of resumes down to one that can be reasonably covered by the next stage of the process. Coming from public listings, the pile of resumes is enormous, and most of them are utter garbage. There may be thousands of resumes where the goal is to find a couple dozen candidates. At some point, the only way to do this is to apply really broad filters: "Went to Stanford, MIT, CMU...", "Worked at MS, Google, FB, Apple...", "Proficient in Scala, MongoDB".

I didn't really appreciate this until I was on the other side of the massive pile-o-resumes, but it's really the only option.

I hate saying this, because I generally believe that "problems solved" are far more indicative of success than any specific school, company, or technology. I have at times used a resume that doesn't do the whole buzzword-bingo game with very limited success - It basically never got pulled from a big pile-of-resumes unless I had a friend on the inside, or was applying to a job on my school's job board (where clearly everyone passed this "filter").

Re: Why won't anyone talk to me? What recruiters look for in a resume

#14

Post by paupino_masano »

Surprisingly, I have the opposite trouble: how do I stop recruiters trying to recruit me? I have about 15-20 recruiters contacting me per week however what I put it down to is:

1. Location. Since I moved to SF the job offers have increased substantially.

2. Skill set. Fortunately I'm skilled in some "popular" languages.

3. Years of experience. I'm in the "hot spot" - not too old, and not too young (sorry - it does seem to be a factor...)

What I find however that recruiters don't necessarily look for anything BUT the above things. I've been approached for the weirdest jobs (considering my experience) from what I believe as a simple keyword search. When it comes to interviewing, the recruiters typically have no idea what they're talking about. This means that they're more interested in forwarding the resume from a brief "do you know this, have you had experience in this" as opposed to really understanding the position. Fortunately, I have had enough experience to interview the recruiters as opposed to them interviewing me.

My advice for developers struggling to get jobs (from how I hire...):

1. Have experience - whether professional or hobby. If it is a hobby: open source it.

2. Show initiative. You need to show you have the ability to actually think.

3. You don't need to know the answers. It's all about the approach to the problem.

4. Try to stand out amongst the resumes. I feel bad to say this: but unfortunately it's true. Given 100 resumes, you're probably only going to really look at 10.

5. Show charisma

I'd recommend other's to add to this: it's just a list I made from what is off the top of my head. But in regards to the article I disagree with:

1. Startup experience. It depends on what type of job you're going for - some will admire the drive, some will fear it (will you leave after a year)

2. School. I don't give a flying f* if they're from MIT or the University of Waikato. However I would give SOME preference to them studying at a school which includes algorithms and memory management (but that is me). Believe me: that (unfortunately) isn't a given...

I'm sure I'll probably get down votes for this; but please comment if you do disagree :) I'm only speaking from my experience as both a student (always) and as an employer.

Re: Why won't anyone talk to me? What recruiters look for in a resume

#15

Post by autarch »

I've been on the hiring side many times and I never look at a resume's education section. I suppose if I were hiring someone fresh out of school that'd count a little more, but experience is much more important than what school they went to or what they studied.

But maybe I'm biased because I have a grad degree in music, so I just assume other degrees are equally worthless ;)

Re: Why won't anyone talk to me? What recruiters look for in a resume

#16

Post by chair6 »

paupino_masano wrote: post #14

Surprisingly, I have the opposite trouble: how do I stop recruiters trying to recruit me? I have about 15-20 recruiters contacting me per week however what I put it down to is: 1. Location. Since I moved to SF the job offers have increased substantially . 2. Skill set. Fortunately I'm skilled in some "popular" languages. 3. Years of experience. I'm in the "hot spot" - not too old, and not too young (sorry - it does s…

Upvoted for University of Waikato reference. Hamilton is a wonderful city, but I opted for Victoria and Wellington instead..

Re: Why won't anyone talk to me? What recruiters look for in a resume

#17

Post by EricDeb »

Articles like this tell me there is a strong need for improvement in tech recruiting. If a candidate truly is "a great coder, easy to work with, and knows data structures and algorithms backwards and forwards" then he/she should have no problem landing a job regardless of his/her background.

I only hope there are firms that see through this elitism and realize that there are undervalued tech wizards out there waiting to be given an opportunity.

Re: Why won't anyone talk to me? What recruiters look for in a resume

#18

Post by nhashem »

While I've never been a recruiter, I've been a hiring manager at some mid-sized companies and worked closely with their recruiters. Side projects or attempted startups are great, but I've seen countless resumes where they get completely overlooked because of how they appeared on the resume.

Ultimately whether I saw a resume was dependent on some sort of subjective pattern matching done by the recruiter. This pattern matching is usually primitive and generally is just a check on whether your "years of experience" is within striking distance of whatever was in the job listing (e.g. "Senior Software Engineer" that required 5+ years of experience, the recruiter would filter anyone with less than 3 years), and (sometimes) would check whether your resume contained enough buzzwords. Yes, this is awful, and no, not every organization does it this way, although a lot do.

So while listing side projects on your resume is good, it's important to get it past the recruiter screen by translating those side projects into years of experience. Rather than just a single line in your resume like, "Side Projects: Enguarde.ly, a Link-Sharing Site for Fencers," find some way to list Enguarde.ly as experience. For example, list the time you worked on your side projects as experience as a "Web Consultant," put Enguarde.ly as a 'portfolio project' and describe the technology you used to build it.

Once your resume actually gets to a hiring manager, everything the OP talked about is much more relevant, because you'll actually have someone who can evaluate your resume. Although I think this post overstates how much your undergrad degree matters. I am a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, typically considered a very prestigious school, but the engineering school is ranked 27th according to US News and World Report rankings[0]. I know many hiring managers who would much rather interview someone with an interesting set of portfolio side projects than someone who went to a prestigious school. Your alma matter can sometimes provide a small bonus as a small signaling effect, but I consider software engineering a discipline where a formal education is only loosely correlated with skill.

[0] http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/engineering-majors/12136...

Re: Why won't anyone talk to me? What recruiters look for in a resume

#20

Post by lostlogin »

chair6 wrote: post #16
paupino_masano wrote: post #14

Surprisingly, I have the opposite trouble: how do I stop recruiters trying to recruit me? I have about 15-20 recruiters contacting me per week however what I put it down to is: 1. Location. Since I moved to SF the job offers have increased substantially . 2. Skill set. Fortunately I'm skilled in some "popular" languages. 3. Years of experience. I'm in the "hot spot" - not too old, and not too young (sorry - it does s…

Upvoted for University of Waikato reference. Hamilton is a wonderful city, but I opted for Victoria and Wellington instead..

New Zealanders other than me come here! It's funny that the Waikato reference is used the same way in an international forum as a it would be on a New Zealand one.

Edited to make sense.

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