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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

#141

Post by autokad »

roymurdock wrote: post #54

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…

like the above commented, people would game the text, hire coaches, etc. I don't think there is anything fundamentally wrong with the cover letter / resume process. i just don think companies use resources properly at hand.

I am biased, i think most HR are useless and most tech people aren't great at picking candidates either. they seem to have their own biases that they cant get over (for example: putting too much weight on technical skills and none on soft skills).

honestly, if i were a company i'd send select employees to school. either take classes or better yet teach a class. you'd get a semester long interview process and the employee would get something out of it.

Re: What happens when you stop relying on resumes

#142

Post by dsymonds »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #126

So you've turned down 399 people to employ 1. Not sure if that is any different when employing via resume, but that sends shivers to my spine. 399:1 ratio says to me that there is oversupply of engineers.

It means there's an oversupply of people who want engineering jobs. Most people applying for software engineering positions aren't able to program even the most basic of things. That doesn't mean there's too many qualified engineers.

Re: What happens when you stop relying on resumes

#143

Post by 7402 »

I've always found resumes to be quite useful in figuring out who to bring in for an interview - BUT, most of the people I've been involved in hiring have had between 5 and 15 years of experience, usually at at least 2 or more real companies. I can well believe that if you're only interested in people right out of school, then it's harder to figure out candidates from their resumes.

I am a little puzzled, though, about why others seem to find resumes so opaque. It seems like resume-reading is a lost art. A resume is usually a document that someone has spent a lot of effort on to make themselves look good. If you learn to read them, that can tell you a lot about the author. (Note: searching for buzzwords is not "reading.") A resume should not be regarded as simply a collection of facts - of course you'll be misled if you do that; a resume should be regarded as a document of self-expression. After a while, you can see useful patterns in what people put in resumes - a least for more-experienced applicants. Almost every resume suggests a bunch of next questions, which can be asked in a phone screen or interview to get a pretty good idea of what a person is about.

It's worth recalling that absolutely all software engineers at all software companies in the world from the first ones around 1955 up to 2002 were hired without benefit of LinkedIn, StackOverflow, Github. Almost all of these engineers submitted resumes, which were reviewed prior to offering interviews. Yes, there were hiring mistakes in the old days, but I don't see a huge number of people taking about how the hiring process now is so much easier, smoother and more foolproof than it used to be.

Re: What happens when you stop relying on resumes

#144

Post by NhanH »

analog31 wrote: post #90
tikhonj wrote: post #46

First of all, I definitely agree that resumes are woefully overused and overrated. They have structural problems and incentivize people to use "negative selection" criteria where people are eliminated based on not having a specific feature rather than selected for excelling on something¹. This article neatly demonstrates that resumes are not necessary and that not using them can unlock new sorts of candidates. Howeve…

However, I don't think there's a conclusion to be made about the actual method used here. I suspect that it worked because it was different, not because it carried a fundamentally strong signal. If everyone did this, project descriptions would be gamed even more than resumes—it would select for people who prepared for the selection process² more than anything else. I find myself almost irresistably drawn towards the…

> I don't know a solution. What strikes me is that as broken as the system seems, we still manage to hire good people most of the time.

Interestingly, the simplest conclusion would be that everyone is good, most of the time. So if we throw hiring out the windows and pick employee randomly, we might still get to the same result.

Which actually isn't too outrageous, since if we have 10% unemployment, wouldn't it mean 90% of people (or more, actually) have to be value added?

Re: What happens when you stop relying on resumes

#145

Post by jckt »

NhanH wrote: post #144
analog31 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, I don't think there's a conclusion to be made about the actual method used here. I suspect that it worked because it was different, not because it carried a fundamentally strong signal. If everyone did this, project descriptions would be gamed even more than resumes—it would select for people who prepared for the selection process² more than anything else. I find myself almost irresistably drawn towards the…

> I don't know a solution. What strikes me is that as broken as the system seems, we still manage to hire good people most of the time. Interestingly, the simplest conclusion would be that everyone is good, most of the time . So if we throw hiring out the windows and pick employee randomly, we might still get to the same result. Which actually isn't too outrageous, since if we have 10% unemployment, wouldn't it mean…

Would that completely backfire once everyone knows the selection process is random?

Re: What happens when you stop relying on resumes

#146

Post by ionforce »

tikhonj wrote: post #46

First of all, I definitely agree that resumes are woefully overused and overrated. They have structural problems and incentivize people to use "negative selection" criteria where people are eliminated based on not having a specific feature rather than selected for excelling on something¹. This article neatly demonstrates that resumes are not necessary and that not using them can unlock new sorts of candidates. Howeve…

This is kind of like the Google/Python effect.

Early in Google's hiring, they heavily selected for Python, which was a relatively new language at the time. It's debatable if there was something technically unique or strong about Python at the time. But many of the people who knew it at the time also happened to be programming enthusiasts, Google's right kind of crowd.

It's similar how ingredient X isn't as important as X's relationship to the status quo. Almost... hipster hiring in a way.

Oh no!

Re: What happens when you stop relying on resumes

#147

Post by pbreit »

m3talridl3y wrote: post #134
pbreit wrote: post #116

What surprises me is how many people dislike cover letters. When I go through applicants, a decent cover letter demonstrating some enthusiasm about the company and a unique point or two is appealing.

It surprises me how many employers think that any of their engineers give a crap about the actual business. The better ones have some form of passion for creating good code, the actual business is an implementation detail.

I guess I've only worked for businesses that I gave a crap about.

Re: What happens when you stop relying on resumes

#148

Post by tempestn »

> Resumes don’t have an explicit section for building rockets or Minecraft servers, and even if you stick it somewhere in “personal projects”, that’s not where the reader’s eye will go.

That's true, but a good cover letter can go a long way toward helping with this. Most cover letters are generic, bland, and obviously copy-pasted from a template. (Or more often from a previous application, sometimes with info about the previous company left in!) A cover letter that talks about something exciting you've done recently, and ideally how it might be related to the job, or even just how it demonstrates skills you'll use in the job (and describes exactly how), is awesome in comparison. A letter like that would absolutely get you an interview with me, almost regardless of experience. One of our current co-op students actually had almost no programming experience on paper; he had actually switched out of a theatre degree iirc. But his cover letter was awesome (the theatre degree probably not being coincidental). Got him the interview, which got him the job, and I haven't regretted it. Just a co-op of course, but the point stands. The cover letter is probably the most important part of your application. Take the time to write a good one.

Re: What happens when you stop relying on resumes

#150

Post by rwallace »

tikhonj wrote: post #46

First of all, I definitely agree that resumes are woefully overused and overrated. They have structural problems and incentivize people to use "negative selection" criteria where people are eliminated based on not having a specific feature rather than selected for excelling on something¹. This article neatly demonstrates that resumes are not necessary and that not using them can unlock new sorts of candidates. Howeve…

Yes, it logically follows from simple economic principles: if you're competing with other companies for good candidates (which you are), your hit rate will go up if you look for signals that your competitors ignore or reject, because that gives you access to a pool that hasn't already been picked clean. So if most companies prefer candidates who have a college degree, look for candidates who haven't. If most companies are looking for experience in some mainstream language, look for candidates who have experience in something quirky and unusual. If most companies discriminate against candidates outside the age range of 20 to 39, look for candidates outside that age range.

I'll add a note that it's not necessary for every company to do something different. It's perfectly okay for your company to copy the way this one did things. It's perfectly okay for five or ten companies to do that. Only if a large fraction of the market starts copying a particular strategy, do you need to switch to something else.

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