Why You Didn't Get The Interview, Part II
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Why You Didn't Get The Interview, Part II
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Re: Why You Didn't Get The Interview, Part II
#2A lot of times I see a resume with a laundry list of skills at the top like languages, app servers, CMS systems etc. First I thing I do is check the experience and make sure the skills are actually mentioned as having been used on a project. Otherwise, I assume you are padding to meet the req.
Re: Why You Didn't Get The Interview, Part II
#3Here's what I think is unsaid about the pre-interview stage. Most resumes are junk (recruiter spam, unqualified candidates, perennial candidates who continually punch above their weight class). Your job, pre-interview, is to prove that you're not one of them. Another way to look at it is to establish that your job searching doesn't reflect negatively on you. (Being employed at the time helps.) Everyone job searches, but the bad candidates spend a lot more time doing it.
For example, someone who applies to 5 unrelated positions isn't looking for a career upgrade or new challenges, but just looking for a job in general. That's not attractive.
Once you're in the interview process, you don't have to answer for the mere fact of looking for a job. You've cleared that stigma.
Re: Why You Didn't Get The Interview, Part II
#4A lot of times I see a resume with a laundry list of skills at the top like languages, app servers, CMS systems etc. First I thing I do is check the experience and make sure the skills are actually mentioned as having been used on a project. Otherwise, I assume you are padding to meet the req.
In the original article last year I included a reference to what we typically call 'buzzword bingo' for people either trying to claim much more experience than they actually have or trying to game an ATS (applicant tracking system). I do the same thing. People seem to be a little smarter about this now. The Java dev world had a major problem with this, mainly because of the amount of Java acronyms.
Re: Why You Didn't Get The Interview, Part II
#5A lot of times I see a resume with a laundry list of skills at the top like languages, app servers, CMS systems etc. First I thing I do is check the experience and make sure the skills are actually mentioned as having been used on a project. Otherwise, I assume you are padding to meet the req.
I'd name the law after the guy who told me this but I don't have explicit permission (he'd probably be OK with it, but I don't see him often and he's a well-known CS person) so let's just call it Smith's Nineteenth Rule: the quality of a candidate is inversely proportionate to the number or technologies listed on the resume.
One startup idea I've had is a scarce resume system where people are limited to 7 technologies and allocate 10 points in each for skill and interest (3-5 points means you're really good or really interested). It's like building a character sheet. More information in that than a typical resume.
Re: Why You Didn't Get The Interview, Part II
#6Here's what I think is unsaid about the pre-interview stage. Most resumes are junk (recruiter spam, unqualified candidates, perennial candidates who continually punch above their weight class). Your job, pre-interview, is to prove that you're not one of them. Another way to look at it is to establish that your job searching doesn't reflect negatively on you. (Being employed at the time helps.) Everyone job searches,…
I'd agree. Maybe 75% of the resumes I get are, as you colorfully say, punching above the weight class. I've continued to encourage job seekers (whether or not they are using my recruiting service) to apply to less jobs and spend more time on those fewer applications. I devoted at least a handful of pages in my book on this exact topic, to at least create the image of a passive job seeker even during active searches.
Re: Why You Didn't Get The Interview, Part II
#7A lot of times I see a resume with a laundry list of skills at the top like languages, app servers, CMS systems etc. First I thing I do is check the experience and make sure the skills are actually mentioned as having been used on a project. Otherwise, I assume you are padding to meet the req.
I'd name the law after the guy who told me this but I don't have explicit permission (he'd probably be OK with it, but I don't see him often and he's a well-known CS person) so let's just call it Smith's Nineteenth Rule: the quality of a candidate is inversely proportionate to the number or technologies listed on the resume. One startup idea I've had is a scarce resume system where people are limited to 7 technologie…
Smith's Nineteenth Rule is probably spot on based on most resumes I see. The ones that list every insignificant detail are sometimes good at getting interviews (particularly in companies that use ATS or train recruiters/HR to scan for single words), but not always successful.
Again, as someone who specialized in Java for many years, this was something I'd see on a daily basis. I see it much less now in the camps I deal with regularly (Python, Ruby, FP, mobile) but that probably has something to do with the technologies themselves and naming protocols.
Re: Why You Didn't Get The Interview, Part II
#8A lot of times I see a resume with a laundry list of skills at the top like languages, app servers, CMS systems etc. First I thing I do is check the experience and make sure the skills are actually mentioned as having been used on a project. Otherwise, I assume you are padding to meet the req.
I'd name the law after the guy who told me this but I don't have explicit permission (he'd probably be OK with it, but I don't see him often and he's a well-known CS person) so let's just call it Smith's Nineteenth Rule: the quality of a candidate is inversely proportionate to the number or technologies listed on the resume. One startup idea I've had is a scarce resume system where people are limited to 7 technologie…
Doesn't that just encourage those who do have a range of technologies at least somewhat under their belt to tweak their skill-weights on each application to bring it closer to a presumed "perfect skill vector" for that job?
(...or is that the whole point...?)
Re: Why You Didn't Get The Interview, Part II
#9The problem is that employers actually believe you can glean something useful from a resume. In my hiring experience, the quality of a resume is very rarely correlated with the quality of the candidate.
The majority of the time candidates look much better on paper than in person. I gave up the belief long ago that resumes can be filtered meaningfully.
Re: Why You Didn't Get The Interview, Part II
#10A lot of times I see a resume with a laundry list of skills at the top like languages, app servers, CMS systems etc. First I thing I do is check the experience and make sure the skills are actually mentioned as having been used on a project. Otherwise, I assume you are padding to meet the req.
I find that having a list of technologies is useful... often people ask ask something like "do you know java?" and this makes that question easier to answer. (Because they often can't be bothered to actually read the experience section word for word.)
Or I might not take pains to find some way to mention every single technology I used in my experience. For instance there are about 17 technologies I use currently, if I were to try to name-drop every single one of them it would end up looking like a laundry list anyway, and not interesting to read. Better to focus on what you accomplished and dump the technology list into its own section, IMO.