What happens when you stop relying on resumes • Hacker News Board

Re: What happens when you stop relying on resumes

#51

Post by Harj » Thu, Jun 25, 2015, 9:03 PM UTC

levlandau wrote: post #42

Harj wrote: post #19

We have the same belief in the limited usefulness of resumes at Triplebyte. We found talking about projects with candidates both more enjoyable and interesting than looking at words on a resume. Especially when people are enthusiastic about what they built. The difficulty we had was not seeing a strong correlation between talking about projects and doing well at programming during an interview.

I think the other thing to look into is what "talking about projects" means. I'm willing to bet that there's some version of talking about projects that correlates well with programming ability. I've had to screen ~ 500 engineers and we basically use the same method aline describes as a first filter and then talk about the project. Imo it's other things like reliability, speed in real world conditions etc that are a…

That's definitely true. Do you have a particular set of questions you ask during project interviews? If so, which ones tend to be the most revealing?

Re: What happens when you stop relying on resumes

#52

Post by __z » Thu, Jun 25, 2015, 9:05 PM UTC

a-dub wrote: post #43

Resumes are fine, it's really in how you treat them. When I read resumes I generally ignore where people have worked and gone to school and instead look for what they have done. If there's either a good match between the general type of stuff they've done in the past and what the role is, or if there's stuff on there that is interesting enough such that I'd enjoy hearing about it, I give a thumbs up. When I interview…

What kind of "difficult-to-work-with" questions do you ask? I'd like to filter out these people but I'm not sure what sorts of questions to ask to suss that out.

Re: What happens when you stop relying on resumes

#53

Post by Nacraile » Thu, Jun 25, 2015, 9:10 PM UTC

codeonfire wrote: post #32

codeonfire wrote: post #20

When people abandoned resumes like this it's because there is some corruption in their hiring process and lesser skilled management is attempting to hire down for political control. Their only goal is to go through the motions and stay employed. Some people don't want experts. They want to have the illusion of a functioning business unit. People with no formal training that have projects that sound impressive to the…

In a way, the entire premise of what a software engineer is has been destroyed. Imagine if mechanical engineers were hired based on their ability to design a simple bracket. Imagine if electrical engineers were hired because they amazed management by building a flashing LED circuit. After many years, the entire criteria for being an engineer is dumbed down to "are you able to make a flashing led or simple bracket or…

I'm not sure I buy your implicit assertion that other engineering disciplines are somehow better at hiring than the software industry is. As far as I can tell, mechanical and electrical engineers are hired based on relevance of work experience, some discussion of that experience, and maybe a few specific technical details which should be known by anybody with the experience they claim to have. All of which is isomorphic to "Worked at Google, could explain his project in depth, and coded tree inversion on a whiteboard". The only difference I'm aware of is that a Mech or EE would probably be subjected to bullshit situational interviews by HR.

This kind of feels like the general "software isn't rigorous like the real engineering disciplines" angst, which as far as I can tell is also bullshit. In reality, the "rigorous" old-school disciplines still manage to make colossal messes of complex, unprecedented projects, in the same way that software companies often make colossal messes of complex, unprecedented software projects. Sure, civil engineers can build normal roads and bridges and buildings reliably, but then again, software engineers have no problem throwing up CRUD apps and wordpress blogs. There are plenty of bridge collapses, exploding batteries, stalled tunnel-borers, and so on to match all of software's spectacular failures.

It turns out that complicated things are really hard to build, regardless of your field.

Re: What happens when you stop relying on resumes

#54

Post by roymurdock » Thu, Jun 25, 2015, 9:13 PM UTC

So, essentially the company that was hiring (KeepSafe), allowed applicants to submit highly flexible cover letters, and then they actually read the cover letters.

It would be great if the majority of companies used both the resume and the cover letter effectively. It feels like most companies that require a cover letter only do so to screen out the laziest 10% who can't be bothered to write up a generic 1 page essay filled with ass-kissing and vague jargon.

The cover letter is just a relic from the olden days when the application was slower and more formal. There were less applicants for each position so HR probably had more time to read/screen.

This study presents an interesting alternative: Let people submit some text along with their resume on any topic of any length, and see how their personality comes through in the writing. Probably wouldn't work extremely well at a large company, but it seems like it served KeepSafe quite well.

Re: What happens when you stop relying on resumes

#55

Post by Jemmeh » Thu, Jun 25, 2015, 9:14 PM UTC

vonmoltke wrote: post #26

nether wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And again, if you worked at NG, what possibly interesting things you could have done? Applicant: Well, I wrote a code to optimize a UAV flight path to avoid enemy radar and minimize fuel consumption, and debugged another controls code to prevent people from dying. Did some debugging on a computational electrodynamics code for radar simulations... Recruiter: Oh. You know what's cool? Photo sharing.

On top of that, hope your title was never "Systems Engineer"[1] at one of these companies. If it was, prepare for a whole lot of clueless recruiters and managers to misunderstand your experience. [1] At Raytheon, if you were the one developing radar avoidance algorithms[2] and code, that was probably your title. [2] "Algorithms", another word that has slightly different meaning leading to major misinterpretation.

I frequently put my title on resumes as whatever the company I am applying for is calling it. There's so many names for the same thing. If we call it "programmer" at this job and they call it "software developer" at the place I'm applying to-- well, I can read the requirements in the ad. Usually it is similar enough to not matter. So I just put software developer even if that's not the title on my paystub. Gets me past computer and HR filter, but when they call me/past employer no one balks at the slight difference.

Re: What happens when you stop relying on resumes

#56

Post by igeoghegan » Thu, Jun 25, 2015, 9:15 PM UTC

Nacraile wrote: post #53

codeonfire wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a way, the entire premise of what a software engineer is has been destroyed. Imagine if mechanical engineers were hired based on their ability to design a simple bracket. Imagine if electrical engineers were hired because they amazed management by building a flashing LED circuit. After many years, the entire criteria for being an engineer is dumbed down to "are you able to make a flashing led or simple bracket or…

I'm not sure I buy your implicit assertion that other engineering disciplines are somehow better at hiring than the software industry is. As far as I can tell, mechanical and electrical engineers are hired based on relevance of work experience, some discussion of that experience, and maybe a few specific technical details which should be known by anybody with the experience they claim to have. All of which is isomorp…

Amen - amen to Nacraile's comment.

Re: What happens when you stop relying on resumes

#57

Post by mpenn » Thu, Jun 25, 2015, 9:19 PM UTC

The writer claims to "rely heavily on data," but the punchline of the article is purely anecdotal that 1 person at 1 company got hired, was good and would have been overlooked. I am sure there were also many candidates with good resumes who were now overlooked.

This article starts out with an air of science and ends with a completely unproven conclusion.

While I do agree in my gut that resumes are not an amazing filter, she has completely failed to present evidence that her alternative interview process is better.

And in fact, while KeepSafe still has the no resumes option open, they are now accepting resumes again -- I do not great confidence that the alternative system was anything more than a PR move by the company.

Re: What happens when you stop relying on resumes

#58

Post by roneesh » Thu, Jun 25, 2015, 9:24 PM UTC

mpenn wrote: post #57

The writer claims to "rely heavily on data," but the punchline of the article is purely anecdotal that 1 person at 1 company got hired, was good and would have been overlooked. I am sure there were also many candidates with good resumes who were now overlooked. This article starts out with an air of science and ends with a completely unproven conclusion. While I do agree in my gut that resumes are not an amazing filt…

Shortly after she says she's come to "rely heavily on data", she says "This post, however, is going to be a bit of a departure. Rather than making broad, sweeping conclusions based on a lot of data points, I’m going to narrow in on one story that happened".

I think she did a great job of doing exactly what she set out to do, and since this is just one anecdote, any qualitative or numerical data she presents won't be worth much, all the more reason to omit it and just share the story.

Re: What happens when you stop relying on resumes

#59

Post by fredgrott » Thu, Jun 25, 2015, 9:32 PM UTC

codeonfire wrote: post #20

When people abandoned resumes like this it's because there is some corruption in their hiring process and lesser skilled management is attempting to hire down for political control. Their only goal is to go through the motions and stay employed. Some people don't want experts. They want to have the illusion of a functioning business unit. People with no formal training that have projects that sound impressive to the…

some famous hobbyists that went on to form companis around their hobby:

Ford, Edison, etc

Re: What happens when you stop relying on resumes

#60

Post by wambotron » Thu, Jun 25, 2015, 9:34 PM UTC

I worked at two places where people had resumegasms over "brand name" schools. Neither of them hired anyone who was ever any better than completely average (and yes, I include myself).

I don't really care where anyone went to school. It doesn't mean anything. Really, going to school at all doesn't mean much. I need to see what you've done outside of that to make any meaningful evaluation. It doesn't matter if it's a huge project. You can give me a couple 10-line things that do something useful and I'll still get to see how you name things, format code, use built-in libraries, etc. Then we can chit chat about project management and how much you love or hate it.