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Resumes suck for hiring engineers

blog.alinelerner.com

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Re: Resumes suck for hiring engineers

#71

Post by Spearchucker »

nnnnni wrote: post #68

You know what's frustrating? When you don't even make it to the interview stage because hiring managers think that "Red Hat" and "Linux" are two different things. I was recently passed over because my 15 years' of experience with Linux has been with multiple distributions (including RPM-based ones) and my resume didn't have a line that just said "Red Hat" on it. Them: "Oh, I'm sorry, we can't hire you because you don…

Had the same experience. These days I tailor my resume for every single job application. I make sure it uses the language the job description uses. If it says Red Hat, my resume says Red Hat. If it says JavaScript, my resume says JavaScript. It takes time, but its been worth it.

Where a skill is required that I don't have, I don't mention it. Where a skill applies to a version I'm not experienced with, I leave the version number out. When the job spec requires experience of say, Red Hat, and I have experience of multiple distributions, I lie and call it Red Hat. The point of the resume is to land the interview, so I make sure my resume doesn't fail me in achieving that objective.

Re: Resumes suck for hiring engineers

#72

Post by ddebernardy »

vonnik wrote: post #42

The startup where I serve as in-house recruiter, FutureAdvisor, recently ran an experiment in hiring without resumes. It was called StaffupWeekend. The Chronicle's careers blogger wrote about it here: http://blog.sfgate.com/gettowork/2014/10/31/staffup-offers-a... We recognized that resumes were poor indicators of performance. In fact, we believe that the only thing that correlates with performance -- is performance.…

> The solution we came up with was to invite people to work on projects for a weekend at no cost other than their time.

As in working for you for free, and on a WE to boot?

For a student or someone who is unemployed, that might work.

For someone with a job and a family life, I don't think so. Especially if that person can command a $120k+ salary.

Re: Resumes suck for hiring engineers

#74

Post by kabouseng »

eigenvector wrote: post #51
kabouseng wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since technical writing is part of an engineers job requirements, I would argue that an engineer incapable of writing a decent resume is already at a disadvantage.

Resumes are inherently hard to prepare because the requirements are often deliberately withheld. Granted, if a resume has basic formatting, spelling or grammar problems that's a big red flag, but other than basic linguistic elements it's not really a fair way to evaluate someone's technical communication skills. Some companies treat the job posting itself as a type of puzzle you're expected to guess at with your cove…

"Granted, if a resume has basic formatting, spelling or grammar problems that's a big red flag"

I agree. The same could also be said about a companies job posting. If the job posting is "vague or problematic", it also indicates the company has no idea of what skill set they need.

This has many parallels with a client not properly being able to specify his requirements. Usually if a client cannot properly specify his requirements, he also underestimate the amount of work / cost it will require to develop.

The same with a job posting, if they cant properly specify a job posting, an employer also might think the job is easy or he can pay someone peanuts to do it.

Re: Resumes suck for hiring engineers

#75

Post by DanBC »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #70
mbesto wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? I think you're confusing the concept of "top of the funnel". Are you suggesting that I randomly select people to interview from a pile of resumes? What if I get a marketing person who has no software experience in the pile for a software developer job?

>Are you suggesting that I randomly select people to interview from a pile of resumes? What if I get a marketing person who has no software experience in the pile for a software developer job? Well, yeah. If you don't have any better metric, the best result comes from filtering out everyone who just blatantly submitted a resume for the wrong job entirely, and then selecting from the remaining pool at random.

dragonwriter suggested "don't use resumes, just seldect at random". You're suggesting "use resumes, then select randomly". You appear to be agreeing with mbesto.

Re: Resumes suck for hiring engineers

#76

Post by CmonDev »

nnnnni wrote: post #68

You know what's frustrating? When you don't even make it to the interview stage because hiring managers think that "Red Hat" and "Linux" are two different things. I was recently passed over because my 15 years' of experience with Linux has been with multiple distributions (including RPM-based ones) and my resume didn't have a line that just said "Red Hat" on it. Them: "Oh, I'm sorry, we can't hire you because you don…

Treat CV writing as a SEO task: "JavaScripted the JavaScript scripts using the JavaScript MVC framework Angular.js (JavaScript)." instead of "Implemented using Angular.js".

Re: Resumes suck for hiring engineers

#77

Post by stared »

The experiment looks flawed. It seems that ALL (or almost all) resumes are, at least, OK.

Resumes can work for weeding out bad fits, or people doing things clearly out of the scope of interest. They are not, and cannot, be a tool for choosing the best. (Unless success is so spectacular, that you know the person by name anyway.)

It's HR's delusion that previous -perceived- presented achievements written on one's resume can serve well for predicting future achievements in our company. So, don't overoptimize it an do technical interviews with people actually working on a given technical problem.

Re: Resumes suck for hiring engineers

#78

Post by threatofrain »

TTPrograms wrote: post #2

I would think that the other interpretation of this result is just that many engineers suck at writing resumes, which is totally plausible. In fact, one could analyze this in the current data set by looking at the total number of correct predictions versus the different resumes in the set. A well-written resume would then be one which results in correct predictions most frequently. You'd then have two dimensions for…

I propose an alternative or complimentary idea. That cultural inertia guides not only that employers expect the same kinds of data, but also that employees do the same.

If employers wanted to, they could start the ball rolling by simply requesting for more predictive data up-front. Candidates often make specific designs to the company they are applying to. Then companies can filter these candidates out to control the load on expensive interviews.

I'd also say that if a company wants an introspective hiring system, they would naturally pursue a strategy where you identify the kinds of predictors (exclusive or inclusive) you want and request them in resume or some screening test that goes with the resume.

Re: Resumes suck for hiring engineers

#79

Post by hessenwolf »

stared wrote: post #77

The experiment looks flawed. It seems that ALL (or almost all) resumes are, at least, OK. Resumes can work for weeding out bad fits, or people doing things clearly out of the scope of interest. They are not, and cannot, be a tool for choosing the best. (Unless success is so spectacular, that you know the person by name anyway.) It's HR's delusion that previous -perceived- presented achievements written on one's resum…

But can we have technical interviews instead of brain-teasers?

Maybe it is just me, but I don't do puzzles. I solve big problems, and I have a track record of being very successful at it. I juggle people, and tools, and objectives, and timelines, and get things done.

I like projects, and I am not afraid of hard work. If I like the objective of a project, I will wade through human vomit to get it done.

Brain teasers are none of that for me. They are some kind of parlor-trick brain-test. I am not necessarily bad at them... but I am just a bit better than okay. I do not want to have to practice them just to get past an interview.

Re: Resumes suck for hiring engineers

#80

Post by hessenwolf »

vonnik wrote: post #42

The startup where I serve as in-house recruiter, FutureAdvisor, recently ran an experiment in hiring without resumes. It was called StaffupWeekend. The Chronicle's careers blogger wrote about it here: http://blog.sfgate.com/gettowork/2014/10/31/staffup-offers-a... We recognized that resumes were poor indicators of performance. In fact, we believe that the only thing that correlates with performance -- is performance.…

You root through 15 candidates for a job. All equal, I have a 1 in 15 chance of getting a job from an individual interview.

15 weekends of hard work just to change job? Yes, very efficient.

The arrogance of your approach makes my blood boil.

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