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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

#11

Post by michaelochurch »

dasmoth wrote: post #8
michaelochurch wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...?)

Also listed would be years of experience, in the first iteration. In a later one, I'd want to replace that with some way of evaluating directly a person's general skill level on a scale like this: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/04/22/gervais-macle... That would take a long time to figure out, though: how to evaluate programmers in the general case.

3 points of Machine Learning with 20+ years of experience (or 2.0 level skill) is different from 3 points from a fresh college student. The first means he's probably an expert; the second means he specialized in it while in school.

Resumes have two purposes. One is to give a list of topics one is willing to discuss in the interview. The second is to project social status (i.e. lie). So you have a mix of self-evaluations and lies on a resume. The latter don't have signal, but the former do. The reason for the 10-point allocation is that self-evaluation has a great deal of signal if a person is expected to trade off one claim against another ("i.e. I know Java but I'm really good at Python" vs. "yeah, I'm an expert in all languages").

Re: Why You Didn't Get The Interview, Part II

#12

Post by fecak »

dasmoth wrote: post #8
michaelochurch wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...?)

There is a tendency for people that are less skilled to pad their resume a bit to try and give the appearance of being more rounded and knowledgeable. This backfires for a couple reasons. The first reason is that it is fairly well-known and accepted now that people who list too much are usually trying to compensate, and are stigmatized. The second reason is that these candidates, if chosen, may be asked about the technology in an interview and will not be able to answer tech questions about the technology.

I would think that those in the know will limit the amount of technologies they list based on the job spec and their experience level. It isn't really useful to list something that you read one article about.

Re: Why You Didn't Get The Interview, Part II

#14

Post by michaelochurch »

fecak wrote: post #7
michaelochurch wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 de…

The Java programmers tend to be enterprise types (not to knock that; a few of those are really good) who aren't especially selective in the technologies they work with. Until about 5 years ago, using Python meant you deliberately went out there to find non-standard technologies-- you were passionate about more than just getting a job.

Short technology lists show selectivity. For example, I've dealt with XML but I'm not going to put that on my resume. I don't even know what it means to "know XML".

Re: Why You Didn't Get The Interview, Part II

#15

Post by fecak »

michaelochurch wrote: post #14
fecak wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 de…

The Java programmers tend to be enterprise types (not to knock that; a few of those are really good) who aren't especially selective in the technologies they work with. Until about 5 years ago, using Python meant you deliberately went out there to find non-standard technologies-- you were passionate about more than just getting a job. Short technology lists show selectivity . For example, I've dealt with XML but I'm…

Java programmers tend to have longer lists for a few other reasons.

For one, the number of available frameworks, IDE's, and other tools is much more significant than other language ecosystems. There really isn't another dev group that has as many tools available between the vendor and open source options.

There is also the tendency to name every single Java API - you can't just say you know Java EE (formerly J2EE), but you have to list EJB, JSP, JMS, etc specifically to get picked up by searchers. There are many Java devs who worked with JSP and servlets that didn't use EJB, but when EJB was in high demand everyone listed it anyway.

Re: Why You Didn't Get The Interview, Part II

#16

Post by d23 »

tootie wrote: post #2

A 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.

If you list more than 10 languages, all on equal footing, and you have no portfolio or explanation for all of them to back it up, I assume you're full of shit and your resume goes in the trash. These people generally have no cover letter or explanation for why they're even applying for the job in the first place either.

Re: Why You Didn't Get The Interview, Part II

#17

Post by d23 »

michaelochurch wrote: post #5
tootie wrote: post #2

A 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…

> 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.

I'm not sure if it's a good startup idea, but I definitely plan on doing something like this one my own resume next time I have to job hunt.

Re: Why You Didn't Get The Interview, Part II

#18

Post by d23 »

michaelochurch wrote: post #3

Here'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,…

> Everyone job searches, but the bad candidates spend a lot more time doing it.

This sums up what my experience seems to be hiring. I've never really thought of it that way, but there's a clear selection bias. The good ones get snatched up quickly; the bad ones spam out to every damn listing they see.

Re: Why You Didn't Get The Interview, Part II

#19

Post by jiggy2011 »

michaelochurch wrote: post #5
tootie wrote: post #2

A 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…

If you get to rate yourself from 1-10 isn't the standard approach just to make yourself a 9 in whatever you are most familiar with and weigh everything else relative to that.

So if your main programming experience is a couple of semesters of Java at university you are a "9" at Java and a "7" at PHP because you built a website for the knitting society.

Re: Why You Didn't Get The Interview, Part II

#20

Post by fecak »

d23 wrote: post #18
michaelochurch wrote: post #3

Here'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,…

> Everyone job searches, but the bad candidates spend a lot more time doing it. This sums up what my experience seems to be hiring. I've never really thought of it that way, but there's a clear selection bias. The good ones get snatched up quickly; the bad ones spam out to every damn listing they see.

Good candidates are rarely on the market for an extended period of time, and are often much easier for experienced recruiters and hiring managers to identify than mediocre or below average candidates. When I have a candidate that I know is in the top tier, I'll advise clients that they need to move quickly or lose their chance to even see them, because other companies will be relatively quick and aggressive to hire.

It's not much different than real estate, where if you see a house that has been on the market for a long time you may be less inclined to give it a look. Thankfully, job seekers don't have listing dates unless they choose to post a resume publicly.

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