I've written about a few things on my blog (http://blog.debugmyresume.com/2018/04/11/quality_over_quanti...), but any time someone lists more than 3-4 programming languages, I'm immediately skeptical.
Ask HN: What do you consider resume red flags?
41–50 of 138 posts
Re: Ask HN: What do you consider resume red flags?
#421. Some links on the resume (github, portfolio, linkedIn) return 404 or access denied. This is suprisingly common. 2. Little facts / actual performance data, and over use of words such as "passionate", "strong", "self-motivated", "success", "thrive", etc when describing themselves in the resume. 3. Changing jobs very frequently and no consistent theme in jobs, say 5 jobs in 5 years, one in A.I., one in e-commerce, on…
> 2. Changing jobs very frequently and no consistent theme in jobs, say 5 jobs in 5 years, one in A.I., one in e-commerce, one in gaming, without specific pursuit of interest.
If my resume contains many short stints, what's the best way to paint this in a positive light? I've already removed the months of my job history so that only years are on there, which makes some of my positions appear longer.
Re: Ask HN: What do you consider resume red flags?
#43As someone who has just gone through over 100 resumes for a developer position, these are some of my observations.These aren't exactly red-flags per se, merely markers that would give one pause.
- Heavy Java stack experience, with no significant experience in other programming languages. One of the signs of a production programmer with no passion for the craft of programming.
- Huge listing of school projects involving many different technologies. This is a sign of lack of experience, and resume padding. When probed deeper, not many truly understood the tools they were using for their projects.
Re: Ask HN: What do you consider resume red flags?
#44I used to hire at a startup. Following are the things I usually looked at. These are not sorted by severity, some are red flags but others are just irrelevant. * not following instruction in the job advert * CC resume to many recipients * weird sender name in email * compressed resume * begging for job in the cover letter * photo * "career objective" * personal information * broken links * clear lack of personalizati…
I'm sorry, but some of my github activity is best be kept private.
I understand. I mean that some candidates create a github profile and upload a couple of projects- just to be able to link that in the resume.
Re: Ask HN: What do you consider resume red flags?
#45Lies
Re: Ask HN: What do you consider resume red flags?
#46I see a lot of resumes from people who talk a lot about the techs they've used, but talk not at all about what they used them for. I no longer give these people phone screens.
Also, be kind about formatting because HR software is rarely kind to it, but some formatting errors can't be attributed there. The text on the third of someone's four bullet points has extra leading space? They're not going to be able to find why the YAML they wrote doesn't compile.
Re: Ask HN: What do you consider resume red flags?
#47I used to hire at a startup. Following are the things I usually looked at. These are not sorted by severity, some are red flags but others are just irrelevant. * not following instruction in the job advert * CC resume to many recipients * weird sender name in email * compressed resume * begging for job in the cover letter * photo * "career objective" * personal information * broken links * clear lack of personalizati…
Be careful with the "photo" bit. Some parts of the world include photos on resumes as a default, along with age and marital status. I still dislike seeing them on principal, same reason I liked Hired.com's "hide name" option to help remove biases in the resume screening process.
I agree with you. If it is a part of the resume submission system then that's fine. I just mean that personally photo and personal information are irrelevant to me.
Re: Ask HN: What do you consider resume red flags?
#48I used to hire at a startup. Following are the things I usually looked at. These are not sorted by severity, some are red flags but others are just irrelevant. * not following instruction in the job advert * CC resume to many recipients * weird sender name in email * compressed resume * begging for job in the cover letter * photo * "career objective" * personal information * broken links * clear lack of personalizati…
> "career objective" is interesting to me because that's usually one of the first things I'm asked when interviewing.
I should say boilerplate career objective statements ;)
Re: Ask HN: What do you consider resume red flags?
#491. Some links on the resume (github, portfolio, linkedIn) return 404 or access denied. This is suprisingly common. 2. Little facts / actual performance data, and over use of words such as "passionate", "strong", "self-motivated", "success", "thrive", etc when describing themselves in the resume. 3. Changing jobs very frequently and no consistent theme in jobs, say 5 jobs in 5 years, one in A.I., one in e-commerce, on…
> 2. Changing jobs very frequently and no consistent theme in jobs, say 5 jobs in 5 years, one in A.I., one in e-commerce, one in gaming, without specific pursuit of interest. If my resume contains many short stints, what's the best way to paint this in a positive light? I've already removed the months of my job history so that only years are on there, which makes some of my positions appear longer.
I think you probably want to have a short blurb / cover letter paragraph in the beginning of the resume, and explain why you were doing the stints.
Re: Ask HN: What do you consider resume red flags?
#50Lots of comments here about buzzwords. I get it, without context they are meaningless. I think people tend to do that to try to pass the "recruiter filter". Usually recruiters filter by either searching on linkedin by keywords/companies or when they receive resumes by trying to do pattern matching with their opening roles. (Source: I'm a hiring manager in SF and I've been hiring on/off for the past 5 years. I get the pile of CVs after the recruiter screen phone, which is a filter after the visual filter)