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Resumes suck for hiring engineers

blog.alinelerner.com

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Re: Resumes suck for hiring engineers

#11

Post by itsdrewmiller »

itsdrewmiller wrote: post #8
klochner wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That resumes are an objectively bad communication/evaluation tool.

I think that's a stronger statement than is intended in the article - theoretically if people wrote resumes differently they could be good, but the way they are used now, they are bad. You're providing a theory as to why they are bad now, but not really contradicting anything in the article.

Probably just arguing semantics at this point. I think "engineers need to all learn how to write resumes differently from how any of them do now" qualifies as a pretty fundamental change. Although I guess you really only need to get the good ones to do it. :-)

Re: Resumes suck for hiring engineers

#12

Post by fredophile »

I'm not very surprised that resumes aren't a good indicator of performance. They're real only useful as an indicator of experience. In other words they tell you about quantity and not quality. I'd say if they seem reasonable for the role then move them on to the next step of the hiring process. Every interview process that I've been involved with has had a series of increasing expensive steps designed to find specific information and weed people out as early as possible.

It's also worth noting that several of the criteria people used to reject candidates in the article aren't good predictors. For example, lack of pedigree doesn't tell you much. People from a variety of backgrounds can be good or bad as coders. A good or bad pedigree can be a useful indicator.

Re: Resumes suck for hiring engineers

#13

Post by itsdrewmiller »

hw wrote: post #7

It's hard to gauge a person's qualities from a resume. Things like culture fit (extremely important IMO), fast thinker, quick learner - are all aspects that can't be garnered from a resume. IMO, resumes are only a decent filter for experience, and provides a baseline for the interview. There are many I've interviewed that padded their resumes and said they are experienced in something they really aren't, and there ar…

What do you think about the writing sample idea in the article? Doesn't seem crazy to me.

Re: Resumes suck for hiring engineers

#14

Post by hacknat »

>For each resume, I had a pretty good idea of how strong the engineer in question was, and I split resumes into two strength-based groups. To make this judgment call, I drew on my personal experience — most of the resumes came from candidates I placed (or tried to place) at top-tier startups. In these cases, I knew exactly how the engineer had done in technical interviews, and, more often than not, I had visibility into how they performed on the job afterwards. The remainder of resumes came from engineers I had worked with directly.

Does anyone else think this is a huge caveat getting thrown into a blender of numbers? Why does this person's opinion even matter? Why should I take this at face value? I'm not trying to say resumes are a good indicator of anything, but neither is this "study".

Re: Resumes suck for hiring engineers

#16

Post by usaar333 »

hacknat wrote: post #14

>For each resume, I had a pretty good idea of how strong the engineer in question was, and I split resumes into two strength-based groups. To make this judgment call, I drew on my personal experience — most of the resumes came from candidates I placed (or tried to place) at top-tier startups. In these cases, I knew exactly how the engineer had done in technical interviews, and, more often than not, I had visibility i…

Agreed. The study is showing how much people's views of resume X agrees with the author's full evaluation.

But what I or my company consider a quality candidate may differ from the author.

On another note, I've found that for recent grads, GPA, school, and major (all items on the resume) are excellent predictors of interview performance.

Re: Resumes suck for hiring engineers

#17

Post by itsdrewmiller »

joelgrus wrote: post #15

I don't see anywhere the Ockham's Razor explanation that bad candidates fudge their resumes in order to make themselves look like good candidates.

I don't think the article posits a cause for why resumes are useless - just argues that they are useless. Your guess about why is definitely a reasonable option. From a hiring manager's perspective, it doesn't matter all that much.

Re: Resumes suck for hiring engineers

#18

Post by itsdrewmiller »

usaar333 wrote: post #16
hacknat wrote: post #14

>For each resume, I had a pretty good idea of how strong the engineer in question was, and I split resumes into two strength-based groups. To make this judgment call, I drew on my personal experience — most of the resumes came from candidates I placed (or tried to place) at top-tier startups. In these cases, I knew exactly how the engineer had done in technical interviews, and, more often than not, I had visibility i…

Agreed. The study is showing how much people's views of resume X agrees with the author's full evaluation. But what I or my company consider a quality candidate may differ from the author. On another note, I've found that for recent grads, GPA, school, and major (all items on the resume) are excellent predictors of interview performance.

It goes further than just that - the stuff about Fleiss' kappa shows that not only do these people not agree with the author; they also don't agree with each other. Maybe all development shops are so different that there is no significant correlation between success at one place and success at another, but I highly doubt it!

Re: Resumes suck for hiring engineers

#20

Post by tjradcliffe »

itsdrewmiller wrote: post #13
hw wrote: post #7

It's hard to gauge a person's qualities from a resume. Things like culture fit (extremely important IMO), fast thinker, quick learner - are all aspects that can't be garnered from a resume. IMO, resumes are only a decent filter for experience, and provides a baseline for the interview. There are many I've interviewed that padded their resumes and said they are experienced in something they really aren't, and there ar…

What do you think about the writing sample idea in the article? Doesn't seem crazy to me.

Great... if you're hiring writers. Writing skill is uncorrelated with everything else. I'm a great writer. Many engineers I admire and respect are not.

I've got no magic bullet. Hiring people you know is good, and I strongly recommend informal face-to-face interviews. Two of the best interviews I've ever had (one where I was the interviewer, the other where I was the interviewee) were mostly about language design, which turns out to be a really revealing topic for discovering attitudes about process, standards, and software design generally.

But how to screen people in the pipeline so you can avoid interviewing everyone who applies? No idea.

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