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The Resume Is Dead

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Re: The Resume Is Dead

#21

Post by estel »

gaius wrote: post #10
luu wrote: post #2

This is 2011. Resumes are how your daddy got interviews at Dunder Mifflin. HR reps get forwarded hundreds of resumes a day. My friends who work in HR tell me its actually the really crappy resumes that get noticed - but only so they can make fun of them and then toss them in the garbage. The good ones don't even grab attention - they just look like the hundreds of other good ones they've got on file. Apparently, in 2…

How ironic, that anyone working in HR would make fun of the CV of any engineer, no matter how bad.

Feeling superior, much?

Re: The Resume Is Dead

#22

Post by MJR »

The title should have been focused on how the HR department isn't they key to getting a job anymore. HR requires resumes so they can scan them and look for keywords. Then if you pass the keyword test you get to move on to the hiring manager.

Being awesome or having a solid reputation won't help you get through HR. The author is advocating skipping HR entirely, which is a fine proposition. But it's not about the resume. The resume is just part of the established process.

Go, be awesome. But keep your resume updated so that you can keep track of your accomplishments and successes.

Re: The Resume Is Dead

#23

Post by sliverstorm »

ErrantX wrote: post #4

If you put this kind of effort in, opportunities will come to you. People will recognize you and your work. Your well earned reputation will precede you before you even walk in the door. sigh This works for high flying traders, it works for rockstar coders, or people applying at "indie" companies (i.e. ones with renegade hiring styles). And so on. And, typically, someone in that high flying arena misconstrues what he…

Seriously. If the only way to get hired is to be in the top X% (for X We can't all be famous superhero rockstar coders.

That said, this is a viable strategy for getting a job- it just isn't grounds to declare resumes gone and buried, because it's impossible for everyone to secure their job this way.

Re: The Resume Is Dead

#24

Post by [deleted] »

sliverstorm wrote: post #23
ErrantX wrote: post #4

If you put this kind of effort in, opportunities will come to you. People will recognize you and your work. Your well earned reputation will precede you before you even walk in the door. sigh This works for high flying traders, it works for rockstar coders, or people applying at "indie" companies (i.e. ones with renegade hiring styles). And so on. And, typically, someone in that high flying arena misconstrues what he…

Seriously. If the only way to get hired is to be in the top X% (for X We can't all be famous superhero rockstar coders. That said, this is a viable strategy for getting a job- it just isn't grounds to declare resumes gone and buried, because it's impossible for everyone to secure their job this way.

[deleted]

Re: The Resume Is Dead

#25

Post by russell »

I'll share my secret for getting past HR. I have been consulting for the past 30 years, so I get to job hunt more frequently than most of you. I have a good resume, but I am older than most of you and I run into age bias in small startups. So I have most success with young companies with 100 to 300 employees where the first generation product hack has to be rewritten, extended or whatever. I have a resume for buzzword content, job history, and project stories. Experiments with content and style have shown me that it has little impact on securing initial interviews.

It's the cover letter that has the most impact. During the dot com implosion I was having little success with a cover letter targeting technical hiring managers. This was after all San Francisco and I was competing with laid off dotcomers and programmers for all the infrastructure companies.

I changed it to target HR and technical directors. I rewrote it to show a little wit and to soften the jargon. I even quoted a Johnny Cash song, "been everywhere". Immediately the interviews tripled, which is good when you are middle aged and expensive (putting three of your cohorts through college).

Re: The Resume Is Dead

#27

Post by retube »

This is bullshit. There's only one thing a prop desk cares about when hiring a new trader: how much money did you make at your previous shop? This translates _extremely_ well on a CV. In fact, I can't think of anything better any prospective employer could ever hope to see on a CV. Thanks to the quantifiable nature of your performance, trading is one industry where you really can keep to yourself and don't need to build some kind of personal brand.

Of all the traders I know not a single one of them has a public web presence. Far from it. They are all extremely private and what they think and know they are not broadcasting on twitter.

Re: The Resume Is Dead

#28

Post by shay »

luu wrote: post #2

This is 2011. Resumes are how your daddy got interviews at Dunder Mifflin. HR reps get forwarded hundreds of resumes a day. My friends who work in HR tell me its actually the really crappy resumes that get noticed - but only so they can make fun of them and then toss them in the garbage. The good ones don't even grab attention - they just look like the hundreds of other good ones they've got on file. Apparently, in 2…

People who are actively looking for work -- and especially those who haven't yet built up a solid network for referrals -- will increase their chances of making it through the primary gatekeeper (be it a startup CEO, HR rep, or dev director) if they are GENUINE and ORIGINAL.

People responsible for hiring (esp. in today's market) are inundated with TONS of resumes. It's completely logical that a great (and efficient) way of vetting them is by (A) looking for any errors because, if such errors exist, it's an immediate dismissal and (B) automatically taking notice of the non-boring ones.

I think the "standard" resume -- the ones that have language akin to "I am seeking a position at an established organization..." are dead. And they should be. Because they're such a snore. (I mean, I almost fell asleep while typing that sentence up there.)

But a running record of achievement that tells a story of how awesome you are, how you think/approach challenges, and what you've accomplished (from business-level results through granular, specific technical learning) is very much alive and well.

Re: The Resume Is Dead

#29

Post by randallsquared »

gsivil wrote: post #15
wtn wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hahaha... if there's a finite number of people, there's a finite amount of attention.

As he rightly points zero sum would mean that whenever something attracts our attention something else is losing its share to fame. But the 'axiom' that fame is a zero sum quantity is be now measurable way true. In some cases if something excite as that means that we will loose interest in something else. But this is not general true. And this is the beauty of new ideas. They can generate interest from zero. In addit…

> > there's a finite amount of fame

> I'm calling bullsh#t on this one. How in the world can you justify there's a finite amount of fame?

Re: The Resume Is Dead

#30

Post by estel »

burgerbrain wrote: post #26
estel wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feeling superior, much?

The implication of your comment being that feeling superior is somehow wrong?

Pretty much. Of all the excuses people make to judge themselves superior and better than others, profession must surely be one of the most asinine.
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