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The Startup Resume

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Re: The Startup Resume

#11

Post by phillmv »

karterk wrote: post #10
heretohelp wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The generalist is the CTO, if they're bothering to hire somebody, they're looking for something in particular you're strong at that they need even if you'll be wearing multiple hats.

Things change very fast in startups. As your problem space emerges, you will be changing technology also to fit that picture. Strict specialists are rarely good in that kind of environment.

If you're doing a standard web app stuff that doesn't push any boundaries of science, you probably won't need a specialist until after you've hired four or five engineers anyways.

Re: The Startup Resume

#12

Post by lennyburdette »

mustafa0x wrote: post #6
kevingadd wrote: post #5

Am I correct in interpreting this post as saying that generalists don't get hired at startups, and that you should optimize your resume to look like a specialist? That seems pretty counter-intuitive, since at an early stage startup, employees end up wearing many hats.

> Overall, startups are looking for employees who are exceptional in the one key thing that they will be doing Key - in my opinion - being the operative word. In other words, you may be doing many things, but how good you are at those things aren't as relevant as how good you are at this key thing.

Much like the idea of the "T" shaped employee from Valve's employee handbook. Broad set of capabilities with depth in a specialty.

Re: The Startup Resume

#13

Post by mattdeboard »

zackzackzack wrote: post #4

Sounds like an excellent in-comment writing exercise. Zack's Resume (ala Justin Kan): If I could, I would spend all day rolling around in data. I have fond memories of spending a weekend graphing the comments of top posters on Hacker News[0]. In the next week or two, I will be opening a pull request for d3.js for an easy way to do fisheye distortions on geographic maps[1]. I got a beating over winter break trying to…

That's a cover letter.

You're not helping an overworked/exasperated resume reader by writing prose in your resume, IMO (for what it's worth...). Resume should be bulletized chronological work history with most relevant/interesting stuff getting a sentence or two of explanation.

Leave long-form prose to the cover letter. And that is a pretty good cover letter, zackzackzack.

Re: The Startup Resume

#14

Post by heretohelp »

karterk wrote: post #10
heretohelp wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The generalist is the CTO, if they're bothering to hire somebody, they're looking for something in particular you're strong at that they need even if you'll be wearing multiple hats.

Things change very fast in startups. As your problem space emerges, you will be changing technology also to fit that picture. Strict specialists are rarely good in that kind of environment.

I didn't say strict specialists, I said someone who had something they were strong at but still able to adapt.

I'm a CTO hiring this sort of person right now.

Re: The Startup Resume

#15

Post by jsprinkles »

mattdeboard wrote: post #13
zackzackzack wrote: post #4

Sounds like an excellent in-comment writing exercise. Zack's Resume (ala Justin Kan): If I could, I would spend all day rolling around in data. I have fond memories of spending a weekend graphing the comments of top posters on Hacker News[0]. In the next week or two, I will be opening a pull request for d3.js for an easy way to do fisheye distortions on geographic maps[1]. I got a beating over winter break trying to…

That's a cover letter. You're not helping an overworked/exasperated resume reader by writing prose in your resume, IMO (for what it's worth...). Resume should be bulletized chronological work history with most relevant/interesting stuff getting a sentence or two of explanation. Leave long-form prose to the cover letter. And that is a pretty good cover letter, zackzackzack.

Sometimes I'd much rather have a little bit of detail on an accomplishment or point than a couple sentences of a bullet point. If I end up confused because of someone sticking to this rule, I get annoyed.

Re: The Startup Resume

#16

Post by jaredsohn »

One thing to keep in mind is that the resumes looked at were for YC's "Work At A Startup" event. This means that while it is possible to tailor your resume based on the kind of job you want or your strengths, you can't at this stage tailor it to a specific company.

Re: The Startup Resume

#17

Post by birken »

kevingadd wrote: post #5

Am I correct in interpreting this post as saying that generalists don't get hired at startups, and that you should optimize your resume to look like a specialist? That seems pretty counter-intuitive, since at an early stage startup, employees end up wearing many hats.

I spend quite a bit of time reviewing resumes, interviewing and hiring engineers, and I am not looking for specialists. If a candidate has an in depth knowledge of a particular subject, that is awesome, but completely optional. The requirements are: Strong problem solving ability, a love for writing high quality code, and the ability to learn fast and work independently.

One thing I do agree with in the original post is that the resume is a really bad way for me to learn about candidates, and most candidates resumes are much too long. A blog, open source contributions or stackoverflow answers are much more helpful and really make candidate stand out from the crowd for me.

Within the last couple months we also started requiring all candidates to do a coding challenge before applying (http://thumbtack.com/challenges), and it has been an epiphany for us. My current process is to look at the challenge submission without seeing anything else about the candidate, grade it, at which point I'll then look at the resume to see how many years of experience (I have higher expectations for the solution the more years of experience the candidate has). For borderline submissions I'll dig deeper into the resume, but 90% of the decision comes from the challenge submission and maybe 10% from everything else.

Re: The Startup Resume

#18

Post by justin »

kevingadd wrote: post #5

Am I correct in interpreting this post as saying that generalists don't get hired at startups, and that you should optimize your resume to look like a specialist? That seems pretty counter-intuitive, since at an early stage startup, employees end up wearing many hats.

Generalist programmers get hired all the time at startups; as someone else mentioned, requirements are always changing and it often doesn't make sense to specialize immediately. At Justin.tv, we hired a ton of generalists before we ever hired any specialists.

What I meant in the post was that if you are going to be programming then you need to demonstrate that you are a good programmer, hopefully with some specific abilities or experience that demonstrates you'll be able to work on the actual problems of the company. We hire people all the time that don't have massive experience in web development, but they demonstrate skill in some related way (e.g. maybe they talk about how they've used Python for scripting in their phd work). Anyways, the point is that even a generalist has specific projects that demonstrate they are a good programmer, and this goes beyond just listing a ton of languages they've dabbled in. Good programmers are generally very good at specific stuff they have experience in, and aren't necessarily good yet but can become good in other areas.

Re: The Startup Resume

#19

Post by mattdeboard »

jsprinkles wrote: post #15
mattdeboard wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a cover letter. You're not helping an overworked/exasperated resume reader by writing prose in your resume, IMO (for what it's worth...). Resume should be bulletized chronological work history with most relevant/interesting stuff getting a sentence or two of explanation. Leave long-form prose to the cover letter. And that is a pretty good cover letter, zackzackzack.

Sometimes I'd much rather have a little bit of detail on an accomplishment or point than a couple sentences of a bullet point. If I end up confused because of someone sticking to this rule, I get annoyed.

Yeah but it's so hard to tell when it's appropriate. It's subjective. I think everyone just has to find what works for them and go with it, hopefully achievements speak for themselves (with the help of a good cover letter).

Re: The Startup Resume

#20

Post by SkyMarshal »

kevingadd wrote: post #5

Am I correct in interpreting this post as saying that generalists don't get hired at startups, and that you should optimize your resume to look like a specialist? That seems pretty counter-intuitive, since at an early stage startup, employees end up wearing many hats.

In addition to other answers, there's a linguistic element as well. Generalist language is generic, overused, hence relatively meaningless and uninteresting, and won't get you very far. Concrete, specific, original, and niche terms are much better at catching attention, sticking in people's minds, piquing interest.

Aside from knowing this intuitively, witnessing it in everyday life (and on HN), I've seen internal adsense A/B testing demonstrating it.

Another tip I've recently learned from watching a friend make this mistake is, if you have the opportunity to see a writing sample of the people you're applying to, even just email - mirror their writing style. Among the SV crowd that tends to be:

1. Short paragraphs, no walls of text.

2. Direct, Concise. Every sentence should be as simple as possible, but no simpler.

3. Your best skills only. Ref #2.

4. Your best work examples only. Don't elaborate, just a sentence.

5. What the article says.

6. What Swizec says above (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3907717)

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