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Resumes suck for hiring engineers

blog.alinelerner.com

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Re: Resumes suck for hiring engineers

#61

Post by terranstyler »

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…

Are you hiring right now?

I wrote exactly these two tags "fast thinker" / "quick learner" in my CV / cover letter / LinkedIn profile and I removed them a few months later because from my experience it looks like they drive recruiters away or scare them.

Re: Resumes suck for hiring engineers

#62

Post by nguyenm »

Zenst wrote: post #58

Sadly one of the biggest problems I have found regarding Resumes/CV's in the IT industry and companies is the rise of HR departments who will just word filter the candidates and even remove people they deem not suitable. Even the classic case of filtering out people they deem `overqualified`, which sadly means the IT manager most often does not get to even see or known about the better candidates and ends up with a s…

Yeah agree. Am trying to bootstrap a startup around crowd sourcing the interview process as a potential solution to the disconnect between recruiters and hiring managers. Could always use some more thought partners on it for the interested (see profile for my contact). Sorry, no website yet (busy on an mvp) but hopefully soon.

Re: Resumes suck for hiring engineers

#65

Post by raverbashing »

Zenst wrote: post #58

Sadly one of the biggest problems I have found regarding Resumes/CV's in the IT industry and companies is the rise of HR departments who will just word filter the candidates and even remove people they deem not suitable. Even the classic case of filtering out people they deem `overqualified`, which sadly means the IT manager most often does not get to even see or known about the better candidates and ends up with a s…

"I for one welcome phone interaction and tests"

Yes, but you can't call everybody that sent you a CV. RH filtering sucks, but is needed usually. Of course there are false positives and negatives

Yes, RH might miss a J2EE expert for a position requiring Java experience, but these days companies search from big databases (Linkedin/Indeed) so this type of grepping is usually needed.

Re: Resumes suck for hiring engineers

#66

Post by raverbashing »

aercolino wrote: post #64

Many recruiters don't read resumes and many of those that do, don't understand them, be they from HR or IT depts. Arrogance, disrespect and plain unpreparedness.

Actually, from my last experience, winning the recruiters was easy, it was the company RH/Engineers was tough

They're the first step in the funnel, if you can't get through them your resume usually needs fixing.

And of course the interviewing flaws that are discusses several times on HN play a part as well.

Re: Resumes suck for hiring engineers

#67

Post by freshflowers »

As a hiring manager, I want those resumes as an initial filter. No, they don't say much about engineering skills, but they tell me quite a lot about a number of other things.

Things like communication skills, priorities, attention to detail and motivation are strongly reflected by someones resume.

The only people who can afford to not put serious effort into their resumes are people that have an online (Github etc) or offline (network) footprint that speaks for itself. But those also tend to be the people that don't get recruited via the formal application process.

Re: Resumes suck for hiring engineers

#68

Post by nnnnni »

You know what's frustrating? When you don't even make it to the interview stage because hiring managers think that "Red Hat" and "Linux" are two different things.

I was recently passed over because my 15 years' of experience with Linux has been with multiple distributions (including RPM-based ones) and my resume didn't have a line that just said "Red Hat" on it.

Them: "Oh, I'm sorry, we can't hire you because you don't have any JavaScript experience..."

Candidate: "What do you think all of this stuff with JS in the name on my resume means?!"

Re: Resumes suck for hiring engineers

#69

Post by freshflowers »

Zenst wrote: post #58

Sadly one of the biggest problems I have found regarding Resumes/CV's in the IT industry and companies is the rise of HR departments who will just word filter the candidates and even remove people they deem not suitable. Even the classic case of filtering out people they deem `overqualified`, which sadly means the IT manager most often does not get to even see or known about the better candidates and ends up with a s…

It this really a problem?

Because most of us wouldn't want to work for a company with such a broken hiring process, it's a big red flag for a lot of other things being wrong in they way they treat their tech people.

And those who do want to get in should be smart enough to play the game and cater their resumes to those HR practices. If you can't or won't, you probably wouldn't happy or successful working for such a company.

As far as I'm concerned, any recruitment process is essentially self-selecting: it will attract and pass the candidates that are a good fit for the company. If a company finds it can't get the right candidates, they should take a step back and look at their entire company culture.

Broken HR processes are a symptom, not the root cause. And it's a filter that works both ways, preventing naive candidates form inadvertently getting hired for jobs that will make them miserable.

Re: Resumes suck for hiring engineers

#70

Post by eli_gottlieb »

mbesto wrote: post #44
dragonwriter wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where's the evidence that there is a better alternative? Where's the evidence that resumes are better than random selection among applicants into the next round, much less enough better to be a net positive given the resources that go into reviewing them?

Huh? I think you're confusing the concept of "top of the funnel". Are you suggesting that I randomly select people to interview from a pile of resumes? What if I get a marketing person who has no software experience in the pile for a software developer job?

>Are you suggesting that I randomly select people to interview from a pile of resumes? What if I get a marketing person who has no software experience in the pile for a software developer job?

Well, yeah. If you don't have any better metric, the best result comes from filtering out everyone who just blatantly submitted a resume for the wrong job entirely, and then selecting from the remaining pool at random.

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