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What happens when you stop relying on resumes

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Re: What happens when you stop relying on resumes

#71

Post by dexterdog »

sjtgraham wrote: post #65

I screened and interviewed a lot of developers in my last position and it stood out to me that résumé quality seemed to be inversely correlated with the candidate's actual ability. I distinctly remember the absolute best developers that I hired also had the most atrociously bad résumés. The candidates with résumés that literally almost knocked me off my chair failed miserably at the most basic programming task.

That's largely because so many diamonds get jobs thrown at them and wind up in the "I haven't updated my resume. No worries, just send what you have." They get the interview, knock it out of the park and don't bother to update it.

Re: What happens when you stop relying on resumes

#72

Post by AndyNemmity »

I just went through a job search, and never created a resume. I only submitted my linkedin. If anyone required a resume, I immediately responded that we weren't a good culture fit.

Worked out really well. Not sure it's to be duplicated, but for me it went fantastically.

Re: What happens when you stop relying on resumes

#73

Post by vonmoltke »

sjtgraham wrote: post #65

I screened and interviewed a lot of developers in my last position and it stood out to me that résumé quality seemed to be inversely correlated with the candidate's actual ability. I distinctly remember the absolute best developers that I hired also had the most atrociously bad résumés. The candidates with résumés that literally almost knocked me off my chair failed miserably at the most basic programming task.

> I distinctly remember the absolute best developers that I hired also had the most atrociously bad résumés. The candidates with résumés that literally almost knocked me off my chair failed miserably at the most basic programming task.

Comments like this make me wonder if one reason for the ridiculously high failure rate in programming interviews is that the resume screening stage is actually acting as a negative filter, that is disproportionately removing the candidates you want and passing the ones you don't.

Re: What happens when you stop relying on resumes

#74

Post by a-dub »

resu_nimda wrote: post #70
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…

It sounds like you're saying "resumes are fine, as long as you ignore most of the stuff that is considered important in contemporary resume culture." It's broken at a conceptual level, even if there are functional workarounds. The experiment from the article basically does what you describe, cuts out the stuff to ignore and goes straight to the project history. It would be beneficial for this to spread even if some p…

I'm happy with it staying status quo. Less competition makes it easier to hire the good ones. : )

Re: What happens when you stop relying on resumes

#75

Post by vonmoltke »

a-dub wrote: post #66
__z wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Basically I goad them into complaining about past bad work experiences and then pay close attention for subtle clues that may indicate that they are systemically disrespectful or unwilling to compromise on things that don't seem worth fighting for. Were they bothered by people, situations or outcomes? Tell me about the most frustrating time when you needed a thing, or consensus on a thing, and you had to go through w…

What about the opposite, someone who has no answer for either of those because they have never pushed hard enough for something or is too willing to roll over whenever someone higher up insists on something?

Re: What happens when you stop relying on resumes

#76

Post by tjradcliffe »

fredgrott wrote: post #59
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

The list of hobbyists who didn't go on to form companies around their hobby is orders of magnitude longer than the list of those who did. So it really isn't that useful as a metric.

Re: What happens when you stop relying on resumes

#77

Post by [deleted] »

a-dub wrote: post #66
__z wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Basically I goad them into complaining about past bad work experiences and then pay close attention for subtle clues that may indicate that they are systemically disrespectful or unwilling to compromise on things that don't seem worth fighting for. Were they bothered by people, situations or outcomes? Tell me about the most frustrating time when you needed a thing, or consensus on a thing, and you had to go through w…

[deleted]

Re: What happens when you stop relying on resumes

#78

Post by a-dub »

vonmoltke wrote: post #75
a-dub wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically I goad them into complaining about past bad work experiences and then pay close attention for subtle clues that may indicate that they are systemically disrespectful or unwilling to compromise on things that don't seem worth fighting for. Were they bothered by people, situations or outcomes? Tell me about the most frustrating time when you needed a thing, or consensus on a thing, and you had to go through w…

What about the opposite, someone who has no answer for either of those because they have never pushed hard enough for something or is too willing to roll over whenever someone higher up insists on something?

If that were a problem, they'd be unlikely to have interesting projects on their resume or would have failed the "talk about your interesting projects" phase. In other words: it wouldn't matter if they were easy to work with in that case because they wouldn't be considered a good candidate for the job.

Re: What happens when you stop relying on resumes

#79

Post by vonmoltke »

codeonfire wrote: post #68
Nacraile wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Engineering firms won't even talk to someone claiming to be a ME or EE with no degree, no certifications, and/or no license. And, the premise of the article are that they are ignoring both education and experience, so I don't see how your comparison fits. This thread isn't about who is more likely to fail. We are talking about hiring and who is likely to succeed. My point that companies have dumbed down what they cal…

> And, the premise of the article are that they are ignoring both education and experience, so I don't see how your comparison fits.

The premise is not of ignoring them, it's about not elevating them to unreasonable degrees at the filtering stage. In most engineering disciplines, if you have project experience all that matters degree-wise is that you have an accredited one. That it came from MIT instead of Florida Atlantic University might add a couple points, but is otherwise irrelevant. The highlights of your projects get you the initial interview, where you talk details. Then you move to the real technical gauntlet (if there is one).

This industry is different. Too many companies use trivial screening criteria (because resume deluge) and undergrad-level technical quizzes (because fakers) up front, and end up throwing away significant numbers of people they actually want before the process really gets started. This experiment was actually about making the software interview process more like the rest of engineering, with the difference that software as of right now does not require a degree.

Re: What happens when you stop relying on resumes

#80

Post by vonmoltke »

Jemmeh wrote: post #55
vonmoltke wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pa…

I may start doing that. I was, effectively, and embedded software engineer for most of the time.
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