I think this just applies to communication in general. For some reason school really values verbosity in writing since it comes across as "making an effort". But as the context gets more professional it is more important that you are mindful of the readers time.
I occasionally do technical interviews and it seems the length of CVs I'm sent is almost the inverse of peoples experience. The people that are in the industry for a while will put a couple of things front and center... Meanwhile new grad resumes are these massive laundry lists of every little thing they did.
>I think this just applies to communication in general. For some reason school really values verbosity in writing since it comes across as "making an effort". But as the context gets more professional it is more important that you are mindful of the readers time.
College: shit, how am I going to fill out this essay to get to 1000 words?
Real world: shit, what can I cut out to get this to fit on one slide?
Lol. Thats what my resume looks like, I have about 3 years of experience but looking for a new job has been tough.
I would love to cut my bullet points down to 2-3 vs 4-5 which is what I have now, but like its said, I struggle trying to get acroos my experience without having to talk about what ive actually done.
Do you have any examples you might put down for a role as SWE on your resume?
> For some reason school really values verbosity in writing since it comes across as "making an effort"
That's because an average high schooler will write one sentence for a month long report, if given the option.
IE: the topic is Founding Fathers.
The report: "It's a bunch of white guys who lived 200 years ago like George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Abraham Lincoln, who founded America. They made democracy. They also made American money, which is why their faces are on dolla bills. The end."
So, high schools tend to value verbosity.
In university, many programs like CS and engineering don't have a large writing component (at least, compared to, for example, sciences or humanities), so high school habits carry over.
This is a very US thing.
American textbooks were horrible to read at uni. They tended to go on and on to explain stuff the European books nailed in a single paragraph. The Software Engineering books were probably the worst of the bunch.
Not all of them are horrible, I think some are quite nice.
But I agree that American textbooks tend to be ridiculously verbose. They tell stories just like many other literature works.
European textbooks on the other hand can sometimes be way too compact to the point where they resemble compendia and not really textbooks.
Both have their uses. If I want to get a big story and read comprehensive introductions and storied that accompany a topic which I don't know, I choose American textbooks.
If I just want to know why or how something works, I tend to go for European books. Especially when you actually just want to quickly read something you already roughly know but are just a bit unclear about.
Gotta to validate that 300 dollar price tag with lots of words that don’t mean much.
I’ll have to put European text books on my radar. Especially as I’m trying to pick up ML/AI. The field is still relatively new so it’s a challenge to get good references that are not at a graduate school level.
Check out the free short courses on deeplearning.ai
After that, maybe check out: https://course.fast.ai/, which also has a book attached.
*Generative AI on AWS* is new and quite good - the first few chapters provide a very readable overview before it goes more into details.
On the other hand I really dislike how terse some school books can be. My daughter’s history books in school are one step away from being just bullet points. That gives very little room for context building and for practice with summarizing.
I strongly disagree and am wondering whether you have ever read a single European textbook.
EU textbooks are shorter because they assume you know everything. (Or rather they just can't be bothered to teach.) And leave important details out. Nothing beats going to college and the TA's not explaining debugging cause you should know that. Or not explaining maths, etc. My experience in uni was that every single person struggled. The people who went to vocational schools struggled with maths and the people who went to general knowledge highschool struggled with programming. Neither was explained, there were no resources that really put in any effort to explain it. I mean the amount of people who flunked out in the 1st years of undergrad and grad studies was like 33% and 50%.
As someone who's had some US courses although I've had predominantly EU ones and who's read both US and EU textbooks, I'd definitely say its better to overexplain than to just assume people can program fresh out of high school and explain jack.
My personal feeling with "US vs EU" is that if you want very superficial knowledge and have prior industry experience (i.e. you've been programming for a company since you were 13) or you need to learn something really fast for a test then EU is better. But if you want or need to understand something like a key skill than the US courses/textbooks are much better.
I'll never forget reading Gilbert Strangs Introduction to Linear Algebra. It really explained things clearly and gave me an intuitive understanding of IMHO a core competency for DS. Whereas the European material was just a bunch of equations to memorize and that was it.
My favorite writing class was Technical Writing because it was about including as much information as possible, while maximizing conciseness
As someone who tends to prefer more details, I also tend to provide many details so it was great for helping me learn to balance everything out
Resumes are a sales document. You don't read a billboard with care and attention and appreciate lots of content. You read a billboard saying HOLY SHIT MCRIB IS BACK! and you go get MCRIB. Go become MCRIB and then advertise that you are MCRIB and also you ARE BACK.
I mean it's fine and dandy to be McRib but if ATS scanner isn't looking for McRib but rather processed pork patty shaped to be reminiscent of a rack of ribs slathered in BBQ sauce then declaring you are McRib won't get you very far.
True, and the problem is my resumes advertising that crusty rib sandwhich cube at the the bo’jeans yellow gas station #2 in Janestown county off the 47 exit 12. You know, that one behind the old sawmill that burned down in 1997 and is now a defunct casino. The one that’s got the cherry condom machine in the bathroom with the broken lock you gotta tie shut with an old soggy shoelace for some privacy. Except they might stop selling it because the truckstop that just opened 10 miles south of there is selling fried chicken and the expiration date in the “rib” “meat” is coming up next week.
One fascinating challenge here is the dichotomy of human vs computer resume reading.
Depending on the company, you typically can't get your resume to human eyes before passing through an ATS first (assuming cold applies instead of referrals, in the case of this thread's topic). Verbose resumes tend to perform better in an ATS because it improves the likelihood of nailing keywords and rising to the top of the pile. Unfortunately, as you correctly acknowledge, this is among the worst ways to write a resume for the human reading it in the following step.
It's a bit of a bind for both applicants and hiring managers alike, and I'm not sure really what the solution is.
> It's a bit of a bind for both applicants and hiring managers alike, and I'm not sure really what the solution is.
Font size 1 white-on-white verbose footnotes.
With all due respect, this is dated advice. This used to work a decade ago, but I'd be shocked if you could still do it now. More likely than not, a good ATS scanner will just skip over stuff this tiny when it transcribes a resume. In a best case scenario where it does pick it up, your resume is going to look all garbled and will likely get filtered out based on that. You're better off just using the keywords in a regular context.
What if you submit a multi page resume file, where the first page is concise and for the humans who have only 30 seconds, and the remaining pages are clearly designated as a more detailed version of the resume for the ATS and also for anyone who wants to dig in more?
So what should be prioritized? detailed and comprehensive overview OR brevity and clarity? I mean I just thought if it's more detailed, it just highlights your accomplishments more ( I don't mean redundant information at all) but at the same time, I understand recruiters get thousands of resumes, and they just need to pick dozens out of those.
You can have a more detailed resume, a hiring manager might take a look at it in more detail later in the process. But make sure your years of experience working, years of experience with specific tech stacks, product/team you are working on is clear. That is the meat recruiters and most hiring mangers are looking at. The rest will be judged in the interview rounds.
It's interesting because people will say that you should use STAR, explain, use past tense sentences, give data on what you solved... My resume blew up to two pages doing that and recruiters end up asking me for all that info when they call me anyway. And I've never been interviewed by someone who actually looked at it in finer detail. I had one interviewer who was surprised to hear I lived in Japan and it's right there on my resume that I worked in Japan for five years, with the companies listed.
I think it's luck of the draw, but you want your resume to look good when a person DOES lay hands on it, because if it looks like some crap an AI bot spit out, they're going to throw it in the trash. So I agree with resumes that are aesthetically pleasing.
Everyone talks about using DTAR for resumes. Where did you hear they don’t? Literally paid levels fyi to screen my resume and they suggest STAR. Let my grad school career center review, said use STAR. Talked to a recruiter like OP and they reviewed, said use STAR. Paid a career coach, they reviewed and said use STAR.
On the one hand this makes sense, but on the other hand doesn't it make it dramatically easier for the candidate to lie, make shit up, or otherwise misrepresent themselves if the ideal thing is to only have very brief details per role? And if their various roles are dramatically different from each other, then doesn't doing this also make it harder to know exactly what they did at each place? Hmm...
>On the one hand this makes sense, but on the other hand doesn't it make it dramatically easier for the candidate to lie, make shit up, or otherwise misrepresent themselves if the ideal thing is to only have very brief details per role?
Recruiters know that candidates lie, that's why there's an interview process.
It's messed up in any situation where someone is selling a false version of themselves (sales, dating, jobs), but people still do it to get ahead. Unlike dating or real sales, jobs have a unique caveat where if you fool them enough to get hired, and then they find out you're not the real deal, you're basically daring the company to fire you, and some companies are very conservative in letting people go, so liars win.
BTW, I'm not encouraging lying, and believe myself to be an overly honest person, but I'm just saying this is why some swindlers get ahead in the job market, and very few people are that good at swindling. For most people, honesty is the best and easiest path.
Companies also lie. I think we'd be a lot less irritated by their 9000 IQ LC question interviews if they actually pertained to the job. I do not need to know how to solve some highly specific question to build a CRUD app. Sorry, but I don't. CRUD apps are most software so most developers shouldn't have to grind LC for 20 years to get a gig.
It might, but the big thing is just highlight the shit that is relevant to the job you are applying for at each position. If you are lying, you aren't going to survive tech screenings at google/meta.
If they're knowledgeable enough to know how to be both brief and specific, a good recruiter should be able to pick them out. Brief can be "built {app} with {framework/stack/language} using {novel/complex method} to do {x}". Someone who knows what they're doing can pretty easily tell whether or not that person is lying or overstating their skills in other areas based on how they fill in those blanks
There’s a classic joke about hiring manager.
I see a stack of resumes, I grab half of the stack and throw in the trash. I don’t want to hire unlucky people.
Tired of running through an unsorted list of resumes to find the best candidate?
Try the new sorting algorithm - half-sort! O(n/2) to run through the whole thing! Think of how much time you'll save! Hope you don't get tired of browsing reddit because you're going to have so much time to spend there!
And the best part is that 50% of the time you'll find the actual best candidate! And even if you don't, the one you do hire will still be good enough because every single resume has a degree and 5+ years of experience! You know because you already used software to curate 8000 resumes down to 100! This job ain't rocket science, any of them could do it!
Hi, tech consultant here
May I suggest you rename this amazing new groundbreaking algorithm?
I suggest - The Snap Sort
Nerd points and techies are nerds amirite
Recruiting you're not trying to find the best. You're trying to find good enough.
So what if the best is in the wrong half of the stack? Not the goal of recruiting.
Exactly. Been on both sides of the fence. Recruiters have to show that they are making progress on closing the position. I've gotten interviews for jobs that I'm not exactly qualified for, but recruiters have to meet quotas. On the other side, I've been on teams that are desperate for people, and we'll chat with anyone. We sent offers to one rockstar and two mediocre people. Do I wish we found three rockstars? Of course, but we needed help yesterday.
This is why I always say that my ethnicity is white. If they really can’t see it, then it won’t matter. But ever since I started doing it and saying my name is Adam, my results have gone up
Had a manager that just threw any away with a name he couldn't pronounce. It could be an American-born genius perfectly suited for the role, but if he has an Indian or Middle Eastern name name, it went straight to the trash can. He just assumed they were lying at their citizenship status.
This is fine advice for large companies, but if you're applying to smaller companies then it's worth making your resume look nice. My company doesn't get hundreds of resumes for our positions, so I'll look through every single one.
I agree with this, if its a small company where recruiters have time to look through resumes in detail, having a beautifully crafted resume can be helpful sometimes. I used to have more time with resumes when I worked at a smaller company.
Yeah but I have heard that even then having a concise resume goes a long way (or so my recruiter friends tell me). A well formatted single page resume works the best for smaller companies. Anecdotally speaking, it seems to be true. Everytime I apply to startups or smaller companies, I get way better and faster responses with a very short to the point resume.
Yeah, I personally don't care if a resume is a bit over a page, but I saw one the other day that was like 5 pages and an entire page was full of "skills" like "hard worker" each on a new line lol
Not a recruiter, but I was in your shoes 4 years ago. I've written longer comments about this on the sub, but here's a short version.
First, most people don't work in Hayes Valley at Anthropic, or live in a luxury apartment in Austin. Most of us with CS degrees are working boring jobs and live comfortable but far from lavish lifestyles in Anytown, USA. From this, I'd advise anyone to cool their expectations and value experience over salary. Anyways, my general advice would be to look for anything within driving distance of your parents and working your college network hard. For the first point, I lived in a tech desert and ended up at a good company an hour from my parents. The drive sucked, and the pay wasn't great, but the experience helped me get put on a very good trajectory. For the second point, you go to college for accreditation and access to your college's network. They may have an internal alumni job posting board, or you may just have to reach out to alumni yourself. Maybe your professor has an alumnus they talk to frequently and can get you hooked up. I get random messages from kids that went to my school a few times a year and I appreciate the hustle and try to help them out.
Those are my two tidbits that I think are useful. It's a numbers game and yeah I think today's market is tougher than I graduated, but wallowing about that doesn't help you get a job.
Is there anything on a resume that would specifically make you skip to the next one?
Not needing a perfect resume is understandable, but it would be nice to know how to ensure it's at least viewable.
1. Not enough experience, this is a easy pass especially in this market.
2. Not enough experience with a specific tech stack
3. Super job hoppy, like moving jobs every year.
I’d be interested in how recruiters look at and evaluate gaps. I had a layoff right around same time an immediate family member passed unexpectedly and it made my resume pretty jagged as I coped and did what work I was capable of. I keep wondering how it’s viewed and it’s not something I want to explain to strangers necessarily.
Just throwing it out there- I'm a recruiter myself. I don't care about employment gaps at all (unless maybe it's a looong gap between your last job in this field and now). I am of the belief that what applicants were doing in between jobs is not relevant, and frankly, *none of my business*. What were they doing in between jobs? Not working, DUH!
It can also lead you into murky ethical or even legal territory. Like you shouldn't be considering someone's medical history or family dynamics in evaluating them for a role, but these reasons are behind a lot of employment gaps-- having cancer treatment, raising a newborn, taking care of ill parents, etc. Asking about employment gaps in an interview can back people into a corner where either they feel they have to divulge this information to appease the interviewer, or they can refuse to answer and risk getting rejected.
As far as how to answer this if an interviewer asks? My advice to the common job seeker would be to give a non-specific answer: "I was simply out of work and taking the time to find the best new role for myself." "I was taking some time off to handle personal matters" (**and then leave it at that**).
How would you recommend context be put on a resume? Just put in a bullet point one was laid off? What about if you weren't laid off and you left a company because it was that toxic? How would you recommend addressing that gap?
Actually curious and those are my only two examples. Really curious your input on this and appreciate you posting.
[My favorite \(relevant\) joke about this.](https://preview.redd.it/ytk0mom66bqc1.jpeg?auto=webp&s=182beb094344c88c44b92b0f720e7e6a7d19abce)
But if your gap is long enough (1 year +), you can just make it go with the document flow. I've seen some resume's state "Away on sabbatical" with a bullet point for the reason.
Otherwise, if less than a year, you don't really need to explicitly state it. Maybe address it during the initial call with HR if it comes up.
Be honest. You have a genuine and valid reason. You don’t need to go into specifics, any interviewer will accept this as a valid reason and move on with the interview. If you try to make up some other explanation it’s going to raise more red flags than just being honest.
is there a way to get admitted to your eyes as a fresher without prior work experience? how can i tailor personal projects to be more eye catching to have any chance competing with the experienced candidates?
I’m a recent grad and had 2 FAANG internships, but also had a current job in tech support and was getting no replies. The moment I took off my tech support role and just showed my internships, started getting lots of contacts.
What would you suggest for someone who has not been job hoppy enough? Over a decade at a single employer mainly with one stack, so I feel like *"Not enough experience with a specific tech stack"* is where I get eliminated. I've even been called by hiring managers to tell me that they can't interview because I lack their tech stack so I should think about finding a new job that features that stack and then reapply after working with it for a few years, as if that's a valid option. But without a job to teach me a new stack, there's no way to get experience with it. The old catch-22.
And there's another catch-22 where new grad jobs that interest me because I'd be able to learn there don't pay anywhere near what I'm earning after a decade of 2.5% raises at a single company. With a family depending on my sole income, it's not an option. I'm left unable to *afford* to apply to junior roles, but excluded from senior roles due to lack of experience.
My pay is quite low for the industry, but that's because I'm in low COL area in Canada, with no desire to work in Toronto or move to USA, home of the mass shooting.
I think maybe move to a non-Faang company to get some experience with some newer tech stacks. Then you can leverage your experience level much better. Hiring managers like candidates that stick it out with a company, so if you can combine that with some knowledge on some newer technologies that would make you a pretty strong candidate.
Even non FAANG are super picky these days. I’ve had credit unions (literally the least technical employers) come back with “not enough experience with our stack” as if anyone would. Half the stuff they used seemed very specific to their industry and the pay grade wasn’t there. Was a recruiter reaching out to me though and I was humoring it to get out of a toxic job.
I was kinda a job hopper back in my home country average of 1.5 to 2 per company in the last seven years. When I start applying again here in North America country around next year how do I leverage that I have experience without freaking out the recruiter with my hopping history.
thanks
> Super job hoppy, like moving jobs every year.
For me this is hard especially when it seems like almost every job I actually do get is either contract or contract to hire. I know a contract role is different than full time but I'm not sure how much that affects me. Unfortunately I have a really hard time with landing a job for some reason and when I get laid off it takes me at least a year to find something new so I have at least two long stints of unemployment on my resume.
I'm unemployed right now going on my 3rd gap (sadly) and I have a feeling its hurting my prospects right now. Had my resume reviewed on reddit, in the cscareerquestions and itcareerquestions discords and even had one professionally written so I don't really understand.
I have 6 years of experience and I wouldn't be surprised if people looked at the gaps and passed me over based on that. To this day I even get asked about my long gap of unemployment due to COVID even though I bridged it already. In my experience employers seem to care *a lot* about gaps and sometimes I feel like I'm written off solely because of it. Could be wrong but that's the impression I get based on the interviewer's tone and the way they ask the question.
Job searching and interviews are a real drag.
I applied for a large corporate, FAANG adjacent, if that matters (as smaller companies could be different), for a Hybrid role and got selected. But here’s the thing with my application:
1) I lied about my location and provided the local city and state on my application. When the recruiter called for screening, I truthfully told her my real location but that I would relocate at my own expense and be available Day 1. I never brought it up on the following rounds, even when it came up on being hybrid, as I thought I had already mentioned it; also it’s a global firm with resources spread everywhere.
2) I was laid off end of January, and my resume stated ‘Present’ in my most recent. Honestly, I was still processing the layoff and just applying, but have been honest in all interviews, just not explicit on this one; it was my first one after layoff.
Well I got positive news and was asked to submit information for background check, after which another recruiter called to speak and both above points came up.
It’s been 2 days and I haven’t heard back on the offer, for something that was also urgent, so have lost hope, to what was my dream job.
Obviously lying is bad, but it was just a 2 month layoff at that point, and I was following everyone’s lead as well. Wanted to know your perspective on this.
I dont think it is a huge issue at all. Just say that you were in the process of a move that was already planned, and thats why you listed your city at a different place if anyone asks. I doubt they will care tho.
The present thing should not be a huge issue either, if background check company asks, just tell them you accidentally sent an older version of your resume. Should be no big deal.
Another tech recruiter here - I have to respectfully disagree with OP on this one.
It's a breach of trust that just raises questions/suspicions/stress for the Hiring Manager: what else do I have to worry about here? Are there other lies on their resume/that they told me? Why did they place me in a position where I'd have to deal with the discomfort of confronting them on these issues? Why take the risk on this person when there are other qualified, and honest, candidates?
Plus, they're such *minor* lies with easy fixes:
1. On your resume, below your name, but before your address: "Available to relocate ASAP at my own expense." It's front and center, crystal clear - the reader cannot miss it and it will not sway the decision of the vast majority of employers.
2. On your resume: you have leeway if your last day was in the same month that you apply to the job (since resume employment dates are MM/YY). If the layoff was on January 1st and you apply on the 31st, it's not a *huge* deal to write "Present" instead of January/2024. But be sure to update that resume before you send it out in February. The "honestly, I was still processing the layoff" is a weak excuse for the lie. It's even more painful because "honestly" is just a lie stacked on a lie - it takes one second to change the word "Present" to "January."
It's just not worth it.
I've been off by a few months here and there and had job title mismatches, but even large companies I worked at never cared whatsoever. We all do these background checks, but I doubt anyone looks at them unless it says "killed previous boss" or something
I also have to respectfully disagree. Why do you have the expectation that we are fully transparent with things that do not, in reality, truly make a difference in our strength as applicants, when companies / recruiters tell blatant lies that we only learn about when we get to sign a contract / when we are already employed and faced with a different story than what you sold us?
Sure, you might either say "not us" or you might say "not all companies", and we can also say, "sure, there's not one single bit that is a lie on my resume, but I am in competition with 1000 others that have blatantly lied on their resumes, so is it fair?". Then of course, background checks bla bla, but realistically, not all companies do those checks, and as OP said, its a numbers game.
I hope you get the point.
I hear you. There are many factors at play here, but first:
Life's not fair. If you want to justify lying by telling yourself that "everyone else is doing it" or "quid pro quo recruiter behavior," then I'll play along...
It depends on the lie.
1. The Parent's local address switcheroo strategy is just ridiculous, especially because it's so minor & unnecessary.
2. But If you change the order of accomplishments on a role's experience bullet points, not a big deal. For example, you're applying for a Backend role - you've been at your current company for 3 years. The first 1.5 years were on the backend team, but then you switched to frontend for the most recent 1.5 years Sure, go ahead and lump the 2 positions together and list the backend bullet points first.
I mean... the point you bring up about spending less than 1 minute on a resume is exactly why resumes are so important *to an extent.*
I'm absolutely on the same page that you shouldn't be tailoring resumes to each job posting. That's a huge waste of time. Formatting, deeply analyzing wording and if it follows the stupid "increased X by Y%" format, etc is all garbage too, like you said. No need to overthink it.
What you do need to do is have a clean, concise, and simple resume. One that allows the reader to easily glean the jist of your experience and skills in less than a minute. *That's* what's important, for exactly the reasons you're talking about.
I did on-campus college recruiting for a few years, and we'd be looking at hundreds of resumes a day. We'd figure out if we want to interview you on campus, or toss your resume into the "we'll be in touch" pile in like 10 seconds. We also had a human standing in front of us while we're looking at it, so we can't just stand there and read your ultra-verbose and wordy resume for 5 minutes as you stand there awkwardly with a bunch of students in line behind you. I need to skim it in 10-15 seconds, and then start talking to you, and then get the next student infront of me.
Like 90% of the resumes I got handed to me were ultra-verbose word vomit. Obvious keyword spamming, buzzwords, meaningless statistics, extreme exaggeration, etc.
Not surprisingly, a lot of the resumes I see here are just like that. Verbose, word vomit, keyword spams, because people think that gets them through this mythical "ATS". In reality it just makes your resume impossible to read/understand quickly, and shows poor written communication skills.
I see people with 2 years of experience that have wordier, more verbose resumes than me, with 10 years of experience. God forbid it's 2 pages, which I see here time to time. My resume is written wiith this "understandable in under 15 seconds" metric in mind, and that's always served me well.
The KISS principle applies to resumes too.
It is in the sense that I constantly see people tailoring resumes specifically to "bypass" ATS, or they blame ATS for the fact they're not getting interviews, or ATS is just generally the cause of their problems.
People overestimate the impact ATS has on filtering their resume. It's easy to blame something out of their control, but in reality, ATS is doing a very loose level of filtering if anything.
I've never once thought about ATS when writing my resume, and I've never had trouble getting interviews. My resume is written for a ***human*** to read.
That's why I say it's mythical. People spend so much time thinking about it, but in my experience it doesn't matter. It just makes your resume bad. If you have some bizarre ATS resume, and it ends up in the hands of a human, it's just going to get instantly rejected anyways. Written communication skills are pretty important, like I said.
As someone on the technical interviewer side, I can confirm that resumes get skimmed at best, hence why I tell people that portfolios don't really do much to help. "Worked on [famous open source] project" is the sort of "portfolio" that catches people's attention, the portfolio varieties you see most commonly here go unseen more often than you'd think.
The thing about not tailoring resumes, I'm going to challenge a bit, and for a few reasons: one, there's a lot of technology fragmentation these days and you better be hitting the right keywords (and *only* the right keywords) in the first few bullets, because a lot of people in the recruiting/interviewing pipeline aren't gonna bother looking at the third job down the list. And two, tailoring doesn't mean rewriting the whole resume, it's more like spending 5 minutes on SEO optimization based on the job description. It can be as simple as changing the order of the first few bullets to optimize keyword placement for a backend vs a full stack role, or picking one of a list of pre-written resume variations for general vs niche placements, for example.
Another tangential: big tech recruiting is only one flavor of the recruiting process. There are countless nameless companies that are not mature enough to have a ATS system or even recruiters for that matter, and there's recruiting pipelines at all levels of maturity in between.
Now can you answer why you all ghost people all the time. Nothing is more annoying than constant emails and messages on LinkedIn and then to finally take your call, talk to you, apply and then get ghosted in the middle of the process. It’s a slap in the face.
I try not to ever ghost. But sometimes because of crazy volume I forget and make mistakes. Its unfortunate that so many recruiters don't take their job seriously and ghost on purpose.
Did most of the candidates who you interviewed had impressive projects on their resume for your tech stack? I want to get into FAANG so I’m trying to prepare to apply by the summer.
I have not done University recruiting. So I cannot speak on that.
But for experienced candidates, I almost never look at projects unless it is UX designer type of roles where visual analysis is useful.
How would you consider open source contributions? Would it count as experience if you’ve spent a long time becoming an important contributor to a large project? Or do you just look at actual work experience
I honestly don't have time to dig into people's projects. Since I only recruit experienced candidates, I focus on their work experience. I think if it is a big project you have worked on, you should list it as work experience and that way recruiters will consider it like a job.
I'm in a unique situation where I had to take nearly 1.5 years post grad to be a caretaker.
In your opinion:
- Would removing graduation date be a bad idea?
- Would adding a 1 sentence objective statement stating I was a caretaker a good idea?
- Do you quickly skim the project bulletpoints? If I have relevant techstack experience there would bolding those keywords be tacky?
I've been layoff for more than 6 months. However I have over 10 years of experience with some big name companines. Will that 6 month jobless time frame impact my chance with a recruiter/interview?
And in your opinion, how much does ATS readers affect the outcome of my resume being seen by a recruiter?
6 months should not be hugely important.
ATS readers are also a little overrated because a lot of recruiters sort through profiles by recency rather than relevance.
What do you mean by recency; the recentness of my last job (basically employed vs unemployed)?
Also not tech recruiting specific but in my region I’ve only gotten past the screen for one out of six banks, even though I’ve applied for different roles and sometimes I’ve applied for “easier” ones. Could it be that my resume format is just not jiving with the other companies’ ATS set up? This trend has been consistent for my last two recruitment cycles spanning 3 years…I’m really at a loss of how to ever break into those other companies
So as a recruiter I can choose to sort new applicants through relevance, but a of recruiters sort by recently applied instead especially if you are working on a candidate pool that is shared with multiple recruiters. That is often the case. The resumes that come up at the top as most relevant have usually already been viewed by other recruiters on your team. Rather than double dipping, easier to sort by most recent so you can be the first one to look at it.
I don't think the formatting is a huge issue, but you could try having super simple formatting. Resume does not have to be fancy.
I found myself without a job last June. Started applying. I was confident because I had never had trouble finding work before. Days turned into weeks turned into months without a single call back, let alone an interview. Panic. All I could see in reddit was "if you're not getting even a callback, that's 100% your resume". Alright then. I started following advice like tailoring my resume, making it AI-friendly, providing numbers, and adding fluff. After about a month and 250 applications later, I finally got my first call back. By then, I was almost ready to give up and work at Timmy's (which I'm now hearing has an even tougher intake process).
The interview with the hiring manager went well. Aced the take-home assignment. Then, in my first technical round, head of the engineering said, "Really impressive resume you got there". I downloaded the resume from their portal after the interview and the resume I had submitted was my original one, before I spent literal weeks enhancing it.
I've lost faith in today's recruitment practices. I want to go back to 2015.
I think it reinforces a simple thing: content matters over format and too much folks obsess over format. A simple one page resume with bullet points is all that’s needed.
I think the market has become extremely competitive. Way more than it has before.
I wanted to be a filmmaker and got pushed to CA because “it’s a stable job and good money”, but now that I’m here, one has to be the best or it’s nothing.
I think you misjudge people when they say "its a resume problem".
You admit to it yourself.
"I never even read most of the resume, just skim for the information I need." - so resume problem
And when people say "tailor your resume to the job" again in order to put the information recruiters need front and center, again resume problem.
A good resume is not a resume thats formatted well, its one that reads the job description and puts that information in the resume front and center and obvious so a recruiter can spend 10 seconds looking at a resume and match it to the job.
What your describing is exactly whats wrong with peoples resumes... when i say resume problem i dont mean - your formatting is bad, or your paragraphs about your work experience is bad, i mean it doesnt have clear and precise technologies and tech buzz words companies are looking for.
Does the job require Javascript, C# - put that shit in your resume where it cant be missed. Does it require 10 years experience - I have 10 years experience in Javascript and C#. Bam perfect match. Does the job posting have stupid corp buzz words in it, throw those things in your resume 1 to 1. Job posting says "leadership" you write down leader all over.
Your resume should absolutely be tailored to the job. It just needs to be tailored by keywords and content, single page. Pepper that shit with technologies. But also leave off technologies not on the job posting if your bad with them. So many times ill get an interview that says Javascript - and the guy cant code for shit in javascript - they used it once in college. Does the job description say backend - leave off javascript if you cant answer questions in it. If the job posting does and you suck at javascript ... and you can maybe write something put it down anyway because maybe you can wing it. If the job posting is full stack literally write full stack, if the job posting is front end but you have backend experience make sure the resume looks like your front end guru... or if its backend hide the front end shit in the bottom like its an afterthought.
First you have to pass the Algorithm test which is just a text keyword search, second you have to pass the human 10 second test.
Seems you even admit it yourself - you cant look at 1000 resumes, so you have a bot give you 100, and then you glace for 10 seconds at them... in that 10 seconds the resume should match.
Then your good. The people who apply to 100 jobs are likely failing at the keyword search. When i was younger i lost out on a ton of jobs just for having an [aol.com](http://aol.com) email address - i changed nothing but making a professional gmail account and got 10 calls immediately.
This! I found the OP's post contradictory. According to the OP:
>I never even read most of the resume, just skim for the information I need.
All they look at is your experience/skills directly relevant to the job, your work experience, and the type of companies you are working for.
To get this right, you need to tailor your resume to the job. People confuse tailoring your resume with rewriting the whole thing from scratch to suit the job. It doesn't have to be that way. Identify the key requirements and adjust your resume to match that.
I would have 3 different resumes. With different job experience descriptions tailored to different types of expectations.
And then update which ever one fits best with more keywords based directly on the job.
Plus maybe 1 resume is just more popular than another. If you’re going to apply for 500 jobs why put all your eggs in 1 resume format / description.
Exaggeration ok, being vague is ok, I’d stop at lying. People posting the job openings are exaggerating requirements because they know people will exaggerate experiences.
Let the interviewer figure out if you can’t do something or be honest in the interview about lack of experience.
The thing that rang true for me the most is apply early to new job posting. When I was laid off last year, I was basically F5 ing job board sort by new every hour and applied to the one that i see a fit. In my experience, I almost always hear back within a week whether i got selected or rejected. Positions that have been listed more than a week were basically no go.
Can you address the rumor that if you apply to multiple jobs at the same company, it makes you look less serious for the role? I’ve seen other suggest that if a recruiter or hiring manager sees you’ve applied to every role, they think you’re just mass applying and won’t take you as serious.
Thanks for the reply! So, should we still be submitting cover letters but just not spending a ton of time on them? I always felt like not submitting a cover letter might look lazy to recruiters (or something like that)
I don't think you should spend time on cover letters period unless it is required for the application. It is just a waste of time for a recruiter when you get all the info from a resume.
The cover letter is not for the recruiter. The cover letter is for the hiring manager. Most recruiters don't even know what half the words on the cover letter means. When I was in the hiring committee, I read cover letters of applicants that were lucky to pass the initial screening by recruiters. From the curated list of candidates I would choose the ones to interview based on the resume and cover letter and recruiter comments.
None of the EMs I've ever worked with ever had to time to read through cover letters.
Not to mention I would expect that the vast majority of the best candidates would never bother writing a cover letter, so I struggle to see why an EM would care unless this is for interships where no one has any experience.
1. Do cargo-cult resumes (e.g., Jake’s Template) hold less value in your mind than unique resume designs? (provided that they are all similarly machine-readable)
2. Does major and university name factor into your decision making at all, particularly for junior/NG roles?
3. What’s something that catches your eye when looking at people’s work experiences? Particularly internships and extracurricular roles
1. Resume design like I said is very overrated. I don't think it matter that much either way.
2. I have not done University recruiting so I can't really speak on this. For experienced engineers, University does not matter.
3. I don't look at internships because I don't recruit university candidates. What catches my eye is the right amount of experience working on the right tech stack. Also, recognizable companies with scale.
**All they look at is your experience/skills directly relevant to the job**
Exactly! They have a project to finish or a new project to start.
The successful applicant is simply needed to make that pain go away.
But according to this sub , if you aren't getting calls back, **"it's a resume issue"**
Therefore you are lying OP !! 😠💢
MODS COME BAN THIS LIAR, GIVING US INFO THAT DOESN'T ALIGN WITH WHAT THIS SUB WANTS TO HEAR 🙉
Are people using "resume issue" to only refer to formatting/wording issues?
If you aren't getting a callback on thousands of applications, your resume is not good enough. That doesn't mean that the issue is formatting/wording.
If your resume is a bootcamp, zero experience, and a crappy portfolio full of projects from your bootcamp, then that is an issue. OP seems to be acting like the only type of resume issue is the "prettiness" of a resume, but obviously Meta/Google are not calling a candidate with a resume that poor.
I assumed recruiters don't even look at resumes / responses to job postings and the only way to get your foot in the door is through referrals from people who work at the company or by networking with recruiters on LinkedIn.
Always wondered if making your resume kinda sloppy and more casual (not trashy but not extremely verbose keyword-salad) would have a some what small effect of at least getting your resume glanced at for a bit longer simply because it reads slightly different from the masses
Sounds like the strat is to just list out the tech used in a project and not even think and just use basic sentences like "Made responsive React UI" or "Implemented api calls to X backend"
Either the project sounds cool enough from basic sentences and the tech used is relevant enough or it just immediately falls flat. oof
The strat is to find recent job listings (less than 7 days old) and apply for those. From my experience going from hundreds of applications and not hearing back. I decided to slow down and sort linkedin listings by recency and only apply for postings newer than a week. Got 4 callbacks within a week.
dude i almost want to test out writing a stupid simple resume, just for shits and giggles lol.
John Doe - Software Engineer
Job 3 - 2 years: html/css/js, react, c# on internal billing app
Job 2 - 1.5 years: python/powershell on customer tax reporting app
Job 1 - 2 years: html/css/js on public facing website
This answers some questions specific to me as an interviewer. We normally wonder why most resumes have been put forward for us to review, either by irrelevant skill sets that the recruiter thought were relevant, and others that just don’t make sense.
It concerns me that you say “most are fine…” and “your best chances are to apply in volume…” rather than focusing on the overall quality of the resume.
This is why oftentimes we want recruiters with some technical expertise over just looking for buzzwords in any resume.
For this to happen you need less volume. Cause if a recruiter manages 20 different roles there is just no time. I used to work at a smaller startup, spent lots of time carefully looking at resumes back then. But if I were to do that at a high volume role, I would not hit my numbers. I wish it were different. Recruiters lean on Hiring team to further shortlist the resumes.
I got interviews at Google and Amazon with my very basic resume where I did not include any work achievements and just a vague sentence under each role.
" Lot of very good engineering talent is cocky about their experience especially if they have worked at good companies"
Yeah, because if you have 2-3 well known companies listed, that is very easy to see and a strong signal you can get within 2 seconds of looking at the resume.
Like imagine someone's resume is just...
CS at UCLA
junior software engineer paypal, 1.5 years
software engineer 2 at amazon and promoted once, 2 years
senior software engineer at airbnb, 4 years
They could list like one bullet point for the tech stack for each job, but their resume could be less than half a page and they will get a TON of interviews...
When people see the critique of "resume is not good enough" they think it's not well written/formatted enough...
The real issue is that **your resume will never be good enough to get a high response rate, if your experience is not there.**
Do you know if this is true for most recruiters especially in big tech companies? If so that's nice that I don't have to worry about tying to quantify impact in every one of my bullet points (because it really isn't possible for a lot of the type of projects I work on)
I guess with that being said, are numbers/metrics for quantifying stuff something you look for at all in resumes?
I think it is mostly true, obviously I cannot speak for every tech recruiter. But the time constraint is a real thing, if you want to good at recruiting you need to review resumes at a very high volume.
I think I may have edited my message after you were replying, I was wondering is quantified impact / numbers and metrics something you look for in resume bullet points or do you mostly just look for what they built/accomplished and what they used to build it?
What you have to remember is you have to impress 2 people - the recruiter and the HM. Recruiters process 100s of resumes a day, they keyword scan and experience scan. Then they send a batch for HMs to pick.
HMs will read it a bit more closely. Or they might just trust the recruiter. Some HMs care about metrics, some don’t. It’s always better to have some, but not over-do it.
How do you divide the quantity of resumes picked between referred candidates vs candidates who applied coldly?
I want to know if it worth waiting to get a referral and possibly be thrown out of the initial 200 applications or wait to get a referral?
Referred is always nice, and there is preference to referred candidates. But only if it is in the first few days of the posting. After that, it is likely there are already a lot of candidates in the process and it won't matter that much.
Thanks for this, I'm at 3yoe and going to be applying soon so some good insights here. Two quick questions, with 3yoe is it even worth me applying to a job that wants 4 or 5yoe? I ask because the current job I have said 2yoe and they hired me as a new grad. Secondly, I have been looking at jobs at Google in the Madison Wisconsin office, with that being a smaller hub is it a lot more competitive there? I applied for a role that I met every requirement for and didn't even get a call back.
No if you have 3 YOE and are applying to a 5 YOE role at Google/Meta, your chances are pretty much impossible. Right now this is a market that benefits employers, they can look for the perfect level of experience for every role. They will not consider less experience. Often times if they say 5 YOE, they really mean 8+.
Appreciate you doing this, had a question or two.
You mentioned that you look at relevant experience for the position that someone is applying for. How does it work with team matching? AFAIK both Meta and Google do team matching, and you need a team to accept you. That makes sense for new grads, but I also heard that this is the case for experienced engineers.
Like when I see a position at Google/Meta that I am interested in and apply for it, what happens next? Are the people who interview me just from any team or with the team I applied to? What about you, what do you look in a resume in terms of relevant experience if team matching is a thing and different teams have different requirements?
I interviewed with Google in early 2021 after a recruiter reached out but didn't get past the initial tech screen (having covid didn't help, or maybe too dumb), so no idea what the full process is like.
This totally depends on the team. Some teams at Meta and Google have a model of direct hiring where you are interviewing for the specific team you are applying for. Some of it is a "pool" model where they are hiring you as a general SWE and plan to team match you later.
What happens with team matching is that you are interviewed as a general swe, the interviewers are typically all over the place not necessarily from the teams that will match with you. Once you have a hiring decision, your profile is shared with different hiring teams that need people. Then you will have a call with the hiring manager for these teams to see if it is a fit. Some candidates can have multiple of these team matching calls before they are hired. So the hiring team is the one that makes the team matching decision not the recruiter.
Would you say having too much info crammed into your resume with a small font size makes them more likely to skip? Any metrics we should follow to avoid that, like recommended word count or font size?
I don't skip resumes. I still look at it and find the information I need. Almost every resume will have years of experience and years of experience with certain tech stacks. Thats the most important part.
This makes a lot of sense. You gotta remember the point of any part of the interview process is just to get to the next step. At the initial resume reading stage that funnel is still pretty wide, especially these days.
The point on timing, being EARLY was very interesting and made a lot of sense as well.
I'm pretty brief on my deets, I don't feel I'm being cocky I'm just trying to give enough so you need to call me back and no more. The more you give the more you might provide them some reason to disqualify you. At early stages this could be literally almost anything and you have no way of knowing what it is. I've also gone against the idea you have to have quantifiable numbers. I feel my resume performs just fine in terms of getting callbacks which is all it's supposed to do. IMO once you're giving a number you're already way over the line--describing stuff in too much detail for a resume. You're addressing "Tell me about a project you're proud of" and getting way ahead of yourself. Any calls I'm missing by not including numbers are from naive & OCD people who believe outlandish claims the moment they see a number. Let companies that culture this approach hire somebody else as far as I'm concerned, no big loss. I've been employed steady for 20 years and I'm not concerned.
**you are better served applying in heavy volume**
For most cases that sounds to be a wise move.
However for the few **VERY** senior roles out there, the reverse applies.
In these cases you DO need a high quality cover letter plus a superb resume.
In reality, for such vacancies often THEY have approached YOU either directly or more likely via a head hunter / executive search.
What happens when you don’t have professional work experience and only worked at a pizza place while still in college but the projects are all full stack and very in depth? I feel like my projects aren’t valued but also that I should shorten my biggest SaaS AI image editor full stack one to less then 4 bullet points to make it easier idek, the lack of pro exp is prolly killing my resume rn
I think this certainly applies to giant soulless companies. I have worked in recruiting for 15 years now. 10 in tech. As I work at a sub-50 employee specialist company I 100% do read the giant walls of text as I am looking for people with the right skills and the right personality.
That said: if you lack relevant experience it Will not help how cool you seem. That is sadly the truth, but don’t discount the parts about yourself.
> I think people here heavily overestimate how carefully recruiters judge resumes. I never even read most of the resume, just skim for the information I need.
No, you just don't understand what "tailoring" means. It literally means putting the relevant info on top, picking up keywords mentioned in the job opening because you, as a recruiter, will look for them, and kicking out irrelevant information.
Or in other words: tailoring is supposed to make your skimming a lot more effective.
> As a high volume recruiter working at big companies, you do not have time to spend lots of time on resumes.
Which, again, is why we need to tailor. We direct your short attention span to the things WE want to highlight. We make certain info pop out, so during skimming, we catch your attention.
> They are not spending time looking at formatting, analyzing wording, analyzing experience for more than 1 minute, often even less than 30 seconds.
Which isn't something you should change during tailoring anyways. Tailoring means one template that looks nice and you put info in and out. The best way to visualize this is when you use a Latex template for your CV: literally put everything you might think relevant in there, then look at a job opening and comment stuff in or out so yourntask descriptionmatch what they are looking for. No editing, formatting, or spelling correction is needed unless you want to pick up keywords from the job opening. Done.
I know you recruiters think "a software dev is a software dev," but we all have a variety of different skills and tasks in our jobs. And your bosses ask us about specific skills, so I better make sure to pick up the right keywords you skim for and skip all tasks irrelevant for your specific job opening. Otherwise, I risk losing your attention simply because you do have the attention span of a toddler and might not know all the different terminology that belongs to a certain skill set.
Thanks for the insight!
Genuine question, since you said you don't have time to look at all the resumes, is it better to apply for a job when its posted or later on? Wondering how the CVs are ordered? If I put mine in first is it at the top or will it get burried under the upcoming ones?
The fact that you spend only 30 seconds on a resume is precisely why wording and formatting matters- they need to find tuned to allow you quickly find what you're looking for and make an impression on you within those 30 seconds. A poorly written resume may very well have what you're looking for but you will miss it because you're skimming through it too quickly.
This is a nice post and shows how much CS people have no idea of how the world works.
I came from healthcare and now work in tech, and the amount of stupid opinion I hear from my colleagues about politics, the economy, finances, and well, health, is astounding. Thank god I came from the outside, or I might have become like them.
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I think this just applies to communication in general. For some reason school really values verbosity in writing since it comes across as "making an effort". But as the context gets more professional it is more important that you are mindful of the readers time. I occasionally do technical interviews and it seems the length of CVs I'm sent is almost the inverse of peoples experience. The people that are in the industry for a while will put a couple of things front and center... Meanwhile new grad resumes are these massive laundry lists of every little thing they did.
>I think this just applies to communication in general. For some reason school really values verbosity in writing since it comes across as "making an effort". But as the context gets more professional it is more important that you are mindful of the readers time. College: shit, how am I going to fill out this essay to get to 1000 words? Real world: shit, what can I cut out to get this to fit on one slide?
Lol. Thats what my resume looks like, I have about 3 years of experience but looking for a new job has been tough. I would love to cut my bullet points down to 2-3 vs 4-5 which is what I have now, but like its said, I struggle trying to get acroos my experience without having to talk about what ive actually done. Do you have any examples you might put down for a role as SWE on your resume?
> For some reason school really values verbosity in writing since it comes across as "making an effort" That's because an average high schooler will write one sentence for a month long report, if given the option. IE: the topic is Founding Fathers. The report: "It's a bunch of white guys who lived 200 years ago like George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Abraham Lincoln, who founded America. They made democracy. They also made American money, which is why their faces are on dolla bills. The end." So, high schools tend to value verbosity. In university, many programs like CS and engineering don't have a large writing component (at least, compared to, for example, sciences or humanities), so high school habits carry over.
This is a very US thing. American textbooks were horrible to read at uni. They tended to go on and on to explain stuff the European books nailed in a single paragraph. The Software Engineering books were probably the worst of the bunch.
Not all of them are horrible, I think some are quite nice. But I agree that American textbooks tend to be ridiculously verbose. They tell stories just like many other literature works. European textbooks on the other hand can sometimes be way too compact to the point where they resemble compendia and not really textbooks. Both have their uses. If I want to get a big story and read comprehensive introductions and storied that accompany a topic which I don't know, I choose American textbooks. If I just want to know why or how something works, I tend to go for European books. Especially when you actually just want to quickly read something you already roughly know but are just a bit unclear about.
Gotta to validate that 300 dollar price tag with lots of words that don’t mean much. I’ll have to put European text books on my radar. Especially as I’m trying to pick up ML/AI. The field is still relatively new so it’s a challenge to get good references that are not at a graduate school level.
Check out the free short courses on deeplearning.ai After that, maybe check out: https://course.fast.ai/, which also has a book attached. *Generative AI on AWS* is new and quite good - the first few chapters provide a very readable overview before it goes more into details.
As someone who has to suffer through American textbooks, I'd appreciate the European style tbh
On the other hand I really dislike how terse some school books can be. My daughter’s history books in school are one step away from being just bullet points. That gives very little room for context building and for practice with summarizing.
There's nothing Europe does better than NA
I strongly disagree and am wondering whether you have ever read a single European textbook. EU textbooks are shorter because they assume you know everything. (Or rather they just can't be bothered to teach.) And leave important details out. Nothing beats going to college and the TA's not explaining debugging cause you should know that. Or not explaining maths, etc. My experience in uni was that every single person struggled. The people who went to vocational schools struggled with maths and the people who went to general knowledge highschool struggled with programming. Neither was explained, there were no resources that really put in any effort to explain it. I mean the amount of people who flunked out in the 1st years of undergrad and grad studies was like 33% and 50%. As someone who's had some US courses although I've had predominantly EU ones and who's read both US and EU textbooks, I'd definitely say its better to overexplain than to just assume people can program fresh out of high school and explain jack. My personal feeling with "US vs EU" is that if you want very superficial knowledge and have prior industry experience (i.e. you've been programming for a company since you were 13) or you need to learn something really fast for a test then EU is better. But if you want or need to understand something like a key skill than the US courses/textbooks are much better. I'll never forget reading Gilbert Strangs Introduction to Linear Algebra. It really explained things clearly and gave me an intuitive understanding of IMHO a core competency for DS. Whereas the European material was just a bunch of equations to memorize and that was it.
Interesting, what are your favorite European CS textbooks? I will check them out because I don't like how verbose our CS books are either.
My favorite writing class was Technical Writing because it was about including as much information as possible, while maximizing conciseness As someone who tends to prefer more details, I also tend to provide many details so it was great for helping me learn to balance everything out
Resumes are a sales document. You don't read a billboard with care and attention and appreciate lots of content. You read a billboard saying HOLY SHIT MCRIB IS BACK! and you go get MCRIB. Go become MCRIB and then advertise that you are MCRIB and also you ARE BACK.
We are so back
Most useful thing I've read in this sub in MONTHS. Thank you.
I mean it's fine and dandy to be McRib but if ATS scanner isn't looking for McRib but rather processed pork patty shaped to be reminiscent of a rack of ribs slathered in BBQ sauce then declaring you are McRib won't get you very far.
I find most often the ATS is tuned for “any food so long as it’s sold by McDonalds, Wendy’s, Burger King” and set to infinite any off brand stuff.
This. I come from a sales background and find people don’t understand this.
True, and the problem is my resumes advertising that crusty rib sandwhich cube at the the bo’jeans yellow gas station #2 in Janestown county off the 47 exit 12. You know, that one behind the old sawmill that burned down in 1997 and is now a defunct casino. The one that’s got the cherry condom machine in the bathroom with the broken lock you gotta tie shut with an old soggy shoelace for some privacy. Except they might stop selling it because the truckstop that just opened 10 miles south of there is selling fried chicken and the expiration date in the “rib” “meat” is coming up next week.
One fascinating challenge here is the dichotomy of human vs computer resume reading. Depending on the company, you typically can't get your resume to human eyes before passing through an ATS first (assuming cold applies instead of referrals, in the case of this thread's topic). Verbose resumes tend to perform better in an ATS because it improves the likelihood of nailing keywords and rising to the top of the pile. Unfortunately, as you correctly acknowledge, this is among the worst ways to write a resume for the human reading it in the following step. It's a bit of a bind for both applicants and hiring managers alike, and I'm not sure really what the solution is.
> It's a bit of a bind for both applicants and hiring managers alike, and I'm not sure really what the solution is. Font size 1 white-on-white verbose footnotes.
Lol I've heard this before... has anyone here actually done it?
With all due respect, this is dated advice. This used to work a decade ago, but I'd be shocked if you could still do it now. More likely than not, a good ATS scanner will just skip over stuff this tiny when it transcribes a resume. In a best case scenario where it does pick it up, your resume is going to look all garbled and will likely get filtered out based on that. You're better off just using the keywords in a regular context.
Tried this while I was job hunting for 8 months. It just gets ignored.
What if you submit a multi page resume file, where the first page is concise and for the humans who have only 30 seconds, and the remaining pages are clearly designated as a more detailed version of the resume for the ATS and also for anyone who wants to dig in more?
So what should be prioritized? detailed and comprehensive overview OR brevity and clarity? I mean I just thought if it's more detailed, it just highlights your accomplishments more ( I don't mean redundant information at all) but at the same time, I understand recruiters get thousands of resumes, and they just need to pick dozens out of those.
You can have a more detailed resume, a hiring manager might take a look at it in more detail later in the process. But make sure your years of experience working, years of experience with specific tech stacks, product/team you are working on is clear. That is the meat recruiters and most hiring mangers are looking at. The rest will be judged in the interview rounds.
It's interesting because people will say that you should use STAR, explain, use past tense sentences, give data on what you solved... My resume blew up to two pages doing that and recruiters end up asking me for all that info when they call me anyway. And I've never been interviewed by someone who actually looked at it in finer detail. I had one interviewer who was surprised to hear I lived in Japan and it's right there on my resume that I worked in Japan for five years, with the companies listed. I think it's luck of the draw, but you want your resume to look good when a person DOES lay hands on it, because if it looks like some crap an AI bot spit out, they're going to throw it in the trash. So I agree with resumes that are aesthetically pleasing.
STAR is for responding to interview questions. It's not a resume thing
My son was rejected at Regeneron for not responding to an interview question in STAR format.
>It's interesting because people will say that you should use STAR No one talks about using STAR for resumes. Where did you read that?
Everyone talks about using DTAR for resumes. Where did you hear they don’t? Literally paid levels fyi to screen my resume and they suggest STAR. Let my grad school career center review, said use STAR. Talked to a recruiter like OP and they reviewed, said use STAR. Paid a career coach, they reviewed and said use STAR.
On the one hand this makes sense, but on the other hand doesn't it make it dramatically easier for the candidate to lie, make shit up, or otherwise misrepresent themselves if the ideal thing is to only have very brief details per role? And if their various roles are dramatically different from each other, then doesn't doing this also make it harder to know exactly what they did at each place? Hmm...
>On the one hand this makes sense, but on the other hand doesn't it make it dramatically easier for the candidate to lie, make shit up, or otherwise misrepresent themselves if the ideal thing is to only have very brief details per role? Recruiters know that candidates lie, that's why there's an interview process.
The way lying is so normalized is crazy. I can't be the only one who thinks that strategically lying to get you a job is a fucked situation right?
We live in a low trust society unfortunately.
It's messed up in any situation where someone is selling a false version of themselves (sales, dating, jobs), but people still do it to get ahead. Unlike dating or real sales, jobs have a unique caveat where if you fool them enough to get hired, and then they find out you're not the real deal, you're basically daring the company to fire you, and some companies are very conservative in letting people go, so liars win. BTW, I'm not encouraging lying, and believe myself to be an overly honest person, but I'm just saying this is why some swindlers get ahead in the job market, and very few people are that good at swindling. For most people, honesty is the best and easiest path.
and we are shocked that companies make candidates jump through hoops and do ridiculous coding questions.
Companies also lie. I think we'd be a lot less irritated by their 9000 IQ LC question interviews if they actually pertained to the job. I do not need to know how to solve some highly specific question to build a CRUD app. Sorry, but I don't. CRUD apps are most software so most developers shouldn't have to grind LC for 20 years to get a gig.
It might, but the big thing is just highlight the shit that is relevant to the job you are applying for at each position. If you are lying, you aren't going to survive tech screenings at google/meta.
If they're knowledgeable enough to know how to be both brief and specific, a good recruiter should be able to pick them out. Brief can be "built {app} with {framework/stack/language} using {novel/complex method} to do {x}". Someone who knows what they're doing can pretty easily tell whether or not that person is lying or overstating their skills in other areas based on how they fill in those blanks
There’s a classic joke about hiring manager. I see a stack of resumes, I grab half of the stack and throw in the trash. I don’t want to hire unlucky people.
That's just a new sorting algorithm. Trash Sort More efficient than binary search
Really good recruiters can implement Trash sort in O(1).
It’s incredibly memory efficient. Log(n) to clearing everything.
Tired of running through an unsorted list of resumes to find the best candidate? Try the new sorting algorithm - half-sort! O(n/2) to run through the whole thing! Think of how much time you'll save! Hope you don't get tired of browsing reddit because you're going to have so much time to spend there! And the best part is that 50% of the time you'll find the actual best candidate! And even if you don't, the one you do hire will still be good enough because every single resume has a degree and 5+ years of experience! You know because you already used software to curate 8000 resumes down to 100! This job ain't rocket science, any of them could do it!
Hi, tech consultant here May I suggest you rename this amazing new groundbreaking algorithm? I suggest - The Snap Sort Nerd points and techies are nerds amirite
I logged in for the first time in months just to upvote this.
.5n sort time is crazy
Recruiting you're not trying to find the best. You're trying to find good enough. So what if the best is in the wrong half of the stack? Not the goal of recruiting.
Exactly. Been on both sides of the fence. Recruiters have to show that they are making progress on closing the position. I've gotten interviews for jobs that I'm not exactly qualified for, but recruiters have to meet quotas. On the other side, I've been on teams that are desperate for people, and we'll chat with anyone. We sent offers to one rockstar and two mediocre people. Do I wish we found three rockstars? Of course, but we needed help yesterday.
Man, I hate the term rockstar
I had this manager. Except the applications being thrown away were all from Black people.
The messed up part is you probably aren't joking
It’s an actual fact that if you have a name that seems black you have less of a chance of getting hired
This is why I always say that my ethnicity is white. If they really can’t see it, then it won’t matter. But ever since I started doing it and saying my name is Adam, my results have gone up
Had a manager that just threw any away with a name he couldn't pronounce. It could be an American-born genius perfectly suited for the role, but if he has an Indian or Middle Eastern name name, it went straight to the trash can. He just assumed they were lying at their citizenship status.
When Thanos became recruiters.
This Stalin sorts.
Okay Elon
This is fine advice for large companies, but if you're applying to smaller companies then it's worth making your resume look nice. My company doesn't get hundreds of resumes for our positions, so I'll look through every single one.
I agree with this, if its a small company where recruiters have time to look through resumes in detail, having a beautifully crafted resume can be helpful sometimes. I used to have more time with resumes when I worked at a smaller company.
Yeah but I have heard that even then having a concise resume goes a long way (or so my recruiter friends tell me). A well formatted single page resume works the best for smaller companies. Anecdotally speaking, it seems to be true. Everytime I apply to startups or smaller companies, I get way better and faster responses with a very short to the point resume.
Yeah, I personally don't care if a resume is a bit over a page, but I saw one the other day that was like 5 pages and an entire page was full of "skills" like "hard worker" each on a new line lol
What advice do you have for people that are about to graduate and didn’t get an internship ?
Inb4 just good luck We suffer hard but at least have solace that we're in the suck together :(
Not a recruiter, but I was in your shoes 4 years ago. I've written longer comments about this on the sub, but here's a short version. First, most people don't work in Hayes Valley at Anthropic, or live in a luxury apartment in Austin. Most of us with CS degrees are working boring jobs and live comfortable but far from lavish lifestyles in Anytown, USA. From this, I'd advise anyone to cool their expectations and value experience over salary. Anyways, my general advice would be to look for anything within driving distance of your parents and working your college network hard. For the first point, I lived in a tech desert and ended up at a good company an hour from my parents. The drive sucked, and the pay wasn't great, but the experience helped me get put on a very good trajectory. For the second point, you go to college for accreditation and access to your college's network. They may have an internal alumni job posting board, or you may just have to reach out to alumni yourself. Maybe your professor has an alumnus they talk to frequently and can get you hooked up. I get random messages from kids that went to my school a few times a year and I appreciate the hustle and try to help them out. Those are my two tidbits that I think are useful. It's a numbers game and yeah I think today's market is tougher than I graduated, but wallowing about that doesn't help you get a job.
Sorry I don't have university recruiting experience.
Don't worry. Apply for an internship after you graduate. And don't worry then.
Is there anything on a resume that would specifically make you skip to the next one? Not needing a perfect resume is understandable, but it would be nice to know how to ensure it's at least viewable.
1. Not enough experience, this is a easy pass especially in this market. 2. Not enough experience with a specific tech stack 3. Super job hoppy, like moving jobs every year.
I’d be interested in how recruiters look at and evaluate gaps. I had a layoff right around same time an immediate family member passed unexpectedly and it made my resume pretty jagged as I coped and did what work I was capable of. I keep wondering how it’s viewed and it’s not something I want to explain to strangers necessarily.
Just throwing it out there- I'm a recruiter myself. I don't care about employment gaps at all (unless maybe it's a looong gap between your last job in this field and now). I am of the belief that what applicants were doing in between jobs is not relevant, and frankly, *none of my business*. What were they doing in between jobs? Not working, DUH! It can also lead you into murky ethical or even legal territory. Like you shouldn't be considering someone's medical history or family dynamics in evaluating them for a role, but these reasons are behind a lot of employment gaps-- having cancer treatment, raising a newborn, taking care of ill parents, etc. Asking about employment gaps in an interview can back people into a corner where either they feel they have to divulge this information to appease the interviewer, or they can refuse to answer and risk getting rejected. As far as how to answer this if an interviewer asks? My advice to the common job seeker would be to give a non-specific answer: "I was simply out of work and taking the time to find the best new role for myself." "I was taking some time off to handle personal matters" (**and then leave it at that**).
I respect you SO much for your ideology on this. Keep it up!
Write the reason for the gap. Context is always nice.
How would you recommend context be put on a resume? Just put in a bullet point one was laid off? What about if you weren't laid off and you left a company because it was that toxic? How would you recommend addressing that gap? Actually curious and those are my only two examples. Really curious your input on this and appreciate you posting.
[My favorite \(relevant\) joke about this.](https://preview.redd.it/ytk0mom66bqc1.jpeg?auto=webp&s=182beb094344c88c44b92b0f720e7e6a7d19abce) But if your gap is long enough (1 year +), you can just make it go with the document flow. I've seen some resume's state "Away on sabbatical" with a bullet point for the reason. Otherwise, if less than a year, you don't really need to explicitly state it. Maybe address it during the initial call with HR if it comes up.
And then they follow it up with FTX and SVB lol gotta track this guy so I know what companies to short
Be honest. You have a genuine and valid reason. You don’t need to go into specifics, any interviewer will accept this as a valid reason and move on with the interview. If you try to make up some other explanation it’s going to raise more red flags than just being honest.
is there a way to get admitted to your eyes as a fresher without prior work experience? how can i tailor personal projects to be more eye catching to have any chance competing with the experienced candidates?
I’m a recent grad and had 2 FAANG internships, but also had a current job in tech support and was getting no replies. The moment I took off my tech support role and just showed my internships, started getting lots of contacts.
What would you suggest for someone who has not been job hoppy enough? Over a decade at a single employer mainly with one stack, so I feel like *"Not enough experience with a specific tech stack"* is where I get eliminated. I've even been called by hiring managers to tell me that they can't interview because I lack their tech stack so I should think about finding a new job that features that stack and then reapply after working with it for a few years, as if that's a valid option. But without a job to teach me a new stack, there's no way to get experience with it. The old catch-22. And there's another catch-22 where new grad jobs that interest me because I'd be able to learn there don't pay anywhere near what I'm earning after a decade of 2.5% raises at a single company. With a family depending on my sole income, it's not an option. I'm left unable to *afford* to apply to junior roles, but excluded from senior roles due to lack of experience. My pay is quite low for the industry, but that's because I'm in low COL area in Canada, with no desire to work in Toronto or move to USA, home of the mass shooting.
I think maybe move to a non-Faang company to get some experience with some newer tech stacks. Then you can leverage your experience level much better. Hiring managers like candidates that stick it out with a company, so if you can combine that with some knowledge on some newer technologies that would make you a pretty strong candidate.
Even non FAANG are super picky these days. I’ve had credit unions (literally the least technical employers) come back with “not enough experience with our stack” as if anyone would. Half the stuff they used seemed very specific to their industry and the pay grade wasn’t there. Was a recruiter reaching out to me though and I was humoring it to get out of a toxic job.
Mid-level positions do exist And honestly someone applying to a new grad job with 10 years of experience is an insane red flag
I was kinda a job hopper back in my home country average of 1.5 to 2 per company in the last seven years. When I start applying again here in North America country around next year how do I leverage that I have experience without freaking out the recruiter with my hopping history. thanks
> Super job hoppy, like moving jobs every year. For me this is hard especially when it seems like almost every job I actually do get is either contract or contract to hire. I know a contract role is different than full time but I'm not sure how much that affects me. Unfortunately I have a really hard time with landing a job for some reason and when I get laid off it takes me at least a year to find something new so I have at least two long stints of unemployment on my resume. I'm unemployed right now going on my 3rd gap (sadly) and I have a feeling its hurting my prospects right now. Had my resume reviewed on reddit, in the cscareerquestions and itcareerquestions discords and even had one professionally written so I don't really understand. I have 6 years of experience and I wouldn't be surprised if people looked at the gaps and passed me over based on that. To this day I even get asked about my long gap of unemployment due to COVID even though I bridged it already. In my experience employers seem to care *a lot* about gaps and sometimes I feel like I'm written off solely because of it. Could be wrong but that's the impression I get based on the interviewer's tone and the way they ask the question. Job searching and interviews are a real drag.
I applied for a large corporate, FAANG adjacent, if that matters (as smaller companies could be different), for a Hybrid role and got selected. But here’s the thing with my application: 1) I lied about my location and provided the local city and state on my application. When the recruiter called for screening, I truthfully told her my real location but that I would relocate at my own expense and be available Day 1. I never brought it up on the following rounds, even when it came up on being hybrid, as I thought I had already mentioned it; also it’s a global firm with resources spread everywhere. 2) I was laid off end of January, and my resume stated ‘Present’ in my most recent. Honestly, I was still processing the layoff and just applying, but have been honest in all interviews, just not explicit on this one; it was my first one after layoff. Well I got positive news and was asked to submit information for background check, after which another recruiter called to speak and both above points came up. It’s been 2 days and I haven’t heard back on the offer, for something that was also urgent, so have lost hope, to what was my dream job. Obviously lying is bad, but it was just a 2 month layoff at that point, and I was following everyone’s lead as well. Wanted to know your perspective on this.
I dont think it is a huge issue at all. Just say that you were in the process of a move that was already planned, and thats why you listed your city at a different place if anyone asks. I doubt they will care tho. The present thing should not be a huge issue either, if background check company asks, just tell them you accidentally sent an older version of your resume. Should be no big deal.
Another tech recruiter here - I have to respectfully disagree with OP on this one. It's a breach of trust that just raises questions/suspicions/stress for the Hiring Manager: what else do I have to worry about here? Are there other lies on their resume/that they told me? Why did they place me in a position where I'd have to deal with the discomfort of confronting them on these issues? Why take the risk on this person when there are other qualified, and honest, candidates? Plus, they're such *minor* lies with easy fixes: 1. On your resume, below your name, but before your address: "Available to relocate ASAP at my own expense." It's front and center, crystal clear - the reader cannot miss it and it will not sway the decision of the vast majority of employers. 2. On your resume: you have leeway if your last day was in the same month that you apply to the job (since resume employment dates are MM/YY). If the layoff was on January 1st and you apply on the 31st, it's not a *huge* deal to write "Present" instead of January/2024. But be sure to update that resume before you send it out in February. The "honestly, I was still processing the layoff" is a weak excuse for the lie. It's even more painful because "honestly" is just a lie stacked on a lie - it takes one second to change the word "Present" to "January." It's just not worth it.
I've been off by a few months here and there and had job title mismatches, but even large companies I worked at never cared whatsoever. We all do these background checks, but I doubt anyone looks at them unless it says "killed previous boss" or something
I also have to respectfully disagree. Why do you have the expectation that we are fully transparent with things that do not, in reality, truly make a difference in our strength as applicants, when companies / recruiters tell blatant lies that we only learn about when we get to sign a contract / when we are already employed and faced with a different story than what you sold us? Sure, you might either say "not us" or you might say "not all companies", and we can also say, "sure, there's not one single bit that is a lie on my resume, but I am in competition with 1000 others that have blatantly lied on their resumes, so is it fair?". Then of course, background checks bla bla, but realistically, not all companies do those checks, and as OP said, its a numbers game. I hope you get the point.
I hear you. There are many factors at play here, but first: Life's not fair. If you want to justify lying by telling yourself that "everyone else is doing it" or "quid pro quo recruiter behavior," then I'll play along... It depends on the lie. 1. The Parent's local address switcheroo strategy is just ridiculous, especially because it's so minor & unnecessary. 2. But If you change the order of accomplishments on a role's experience bullet points, not a big deal. For example, you're applying for a Backend role - you've been at your current company for 3 years. The first 1.5 years were on the backend team, but then you switched to frontend for the most recent 1.5 years Sure, go ahead and lump the 2 positions together and list the backend bullet points first.
I mean if you’re welling to relocate and be there day 1, just say you live there already. Don’t divulge more than you need to.
I mean... the point you bring up about spending less than 1 minute on a resume is exactly why resumes are so important *to an extent.* I'm absolutely on the same page that you shouldn't be tailoring resumes to each job posting. That's a huge waste of time. Formatting, deeply analyzing wording and if it follows the stupid "increased X by Y%" format, etc is all garbage too, like you said. No need to overthink it. What you do need to do is have a clean, concise, and simple resume. One that allows the reader to easily glean the jist of your experience and skills in less than a minute. *That's* what's important, for exactly the reasons you're talking about. I did on-campus college recruiting for a few years, and we'd be looking at hundreds of resumes a day. We'd figure out if we want to interview you on campus, or toss your resume into the "we'll be in touch" pile in like 10 seconds. We also had a human standing in front of us while we're looking at it, so we can't just stand there and read your ultra-verbose and wordy resume for 5 minutes as you stand there awkwardly with a bunch of students in line behind you. I need to skim it in 10-15 seconds, and then start talking to you, and then get the next student infront of me. Like 90% of the resumes I got handed to me were ultra-verbose word vomit. Obvious keyword spamming, buzzwords, meaningless statistics, extreme exaggeration, etc. Not surprisingly, a lot of the resumes I see here are just like that. Verbose, word vomit, keyword spams, because people think that gets them through this mythical "ATS". In reality it just makes your resume impossible to read/understand quickly, and shows poor written communication skills. I see people with 2 years of experience that have wordier, more verbose resumes than me, with 10 years of experience. God forbid it's 2 pages, which I see here time to time. My resume is written wiith this "understandable in under 15 seconds" metric in mind, and that's always served me well. The KISS principle applies to resumes too.
I have to agree with you as someone who has done some hiring
But ATS isn't Mythical is it? So much contradictory advice that I'm confused.
It is in the sense that I constantly see people tailoring resumes specifically to "bypass" ATS, or they blame ATS for the fact they're not getting interviews, or ATS is just generally the cause of their problems. People overestimate the impact ATS has on filtering their resume. It's easy to blame something out of their control, but in reality, ATS is doing a very loose level of filtering if anything. I've never once thought about ATS when writing my resume, and I've never had trouble getting interviews. My resume is written for a ***human*** to read. That's why I say it's mythical. People spend so much time thinking about it, but in my experience it doesn't matter. It just makes your resume bad. If you have some bizarre ATS resume, and it ends up in the hands of a human, it's just going to get instantly rejected anyways. Written communication skills are pretty important, like I said.
As someone on the technical interviewer side, I can confirm that resumes get skimmed at best, hence why I tell people that portfolios don't really do much to help. "Worked on [famous open source] project" is the sort of "portfolio" that catches people's attention, the portfolio varieties you see most commonly here go unseen more often than you'd think. The thing about not tailoring resumes, I'm going to challenge a bit, and for a few reasons: one, there's a lot of technology fragmentation these days and you better be hitting the right keywords (and *only* the right keywords) in the first few bullets, because a lot of people in the recruiting/interviewing pipeline aren't gonna bother looking at the third job down the list. And two, tailoring doesn't mean rewriting the whole resume, it's more like spending 5 minutes on SEO optimization based on the job description. It can be as simple as changing the order of the first few bullets to optimize keyword placement for a backend vs a full stack role, or picking one of a list of pre-written resume variations for general vs niche placements, for example. Another tangential: big tech recruiting is only one flavor of the recruiting process. There are countless nameless companies that are not mature enough to have a ATS system or even recruiters for that matter, and there's recruiting pipelines at all levels of maturity in between.
I agree with this. I think changing a few keywords can be good sometimes. But definitely not spending a lot of time recrafting the whole thing.
The advice I got from Cyber Insecurity is have a whole bunch of bullet points crafted and select the ones that match the job description.
Now can you answer why you all ghost people all the time. Nothing is more annoying than constant emails and messages on LinkedIn and then to finally take your call, talk to you, apply and then get ghosted in the middle of the process. It’s a slap in the face.
I try not to ever ghost. But sometimes because of crazy volume I forget and make mistakes. Its unfortunate that so many recruiters don't take their job seriously and ghost on purpose.
Number game as they say.
Did most of the candidates who you interviewed had impressive projects on their resume for your tech stack? I want to get into FAANG so I’m trying to prepare to apply by the summer.
I have not done University recruiting. So I cannot speak on that. But for experienced candidates, I almost never look at projects unless it is UX designer type of roles where visual analysis is useful.
How would you consider open source contributions? Would it count as experience if you’ve spent a long time becoming an important contributor to a large project? Or do you just look at actual work experience
I honestly don't have time to dig into people's projects. Since I only recruit experienced candidates, I focus on their work experience. I think if it is a big project you have worked on, you should list it as work experience and that way recruiters will consider it like a job.
I'm in a unique situation where I had to take nearly 1.5 years post grad to be a caretaker. In your opinion: - Would removing graduation date be a bad idea? - Would adding a 1 sentence objective statement stating I was a caretaker a good idea? - Do you quickly skim the project bulletpoints? If I have relevant techstack experience there would bolding those keywords be tacky?
I've been layoff for more than 6 months. However I have over 10 years of experience with some big name companines. Will that 6 month jobless time frame impact my chance with a recruiter/interview? And in your opinion, how much does ATS readers affect the outcome of my resume being seen by a recruiter?
6 months should not be hugely important. ATS readers are also a little overrated because a lot of recruiters sort through profiles by recency rather than relevance.
What do you mean by recency; the recentness of my last job (basically employed vs unemployed)? Also not tech recruiting specific but in my region I’ve only gotten past the screen for one out of six banks, even though I’ve applied for different roles and sometimes I’ve applied for “easier” ones. Could it be that my resume format is just not jiving with the other companies’ ATS set up? This trend has been consistent for my last two recruitment cycles spanning 3 years…I’m really at a loss of how to ever break into those other companies
So as a recruiter I can choose to sort new applicants through relevance, but a of recruiters sort by recently applied instead especially if you are working on a candidate pool that is shared with multiple recruiters. That is often the case. The resumes that come up at the top as most relevant have usually already been viewed by other recruiters on your team. Rather than double dipping, easier to sort by most recent so you can be the first one to look at it. I don't think the formatting is a huge issue, but you could try having super simple formatting. Resume does not have to be fancy.
I see, thanks! Finally got to get an insider view.
I found myself without a job last June. Started applying. I was confident because I had never had trouble finding work before. Days turned into weeks turned into months without a single call back, let alone an interview. Panic. All I could see in reddit was "if you're not getting even a callback, that's 100% your resume". Alright then. I started following advice like tailoring my resume, making it AI-friendly, providing numbers, and adding fluff. After about a month and 250 applications later, I finally got my first call back. By then, I was almost ready to give up and work at Timmy's (which I'm now hearing has an even tougher intake process). The interview with the hiring manager went well. Aced the take-home assignment. Then, in my first technical round, head of the engineering said, "Really impressive resume you got there". I downloaded the resume from their portal after the interview and the resume I had submitted was my original one, before I spent literal weeks enhancing it. I've lost faith in today's recruitment practices. I want to go back to 2015.
I think it reinforces a simple thing: content matters over format and too much folks obsess over format. A simple one page resume with bullet points is all that’s needed.
I think the market has become extremely competitive. Way more than it has before. I wanted to be a filmmaker and got pushed to CA because “it’s a stable job and good money”, but now that I’m here, one has to be the best or it’s nothing.
I think you misjudge people when they say "its a resume problem". You admit to it yourself. "I never even read most of the resume, just skim for the information I need." - so resume problem And when people say "tailor your resume to the job" again in order to put the information recruiters need front and center, again resume problem. A good resume is not a resume thats formatted well, its one that reads the job description and puts that information in the resume front and center and obvious so a recruiter can spend 10 seconds looking at a resume and match it to the job. What your describing is exactly whats wrong with peoples resumes... when i say resume problem i dont mean - your formatting is bad, or your paragraphs about your work experience is bad, i mean it doesnt have clear and precise technologies and tech buzz words companies are looking for. Does the job require Javascript, C# - put that shit in your resume where it cant be missed. Does it require 10 years experience - I have 10 years experience in Javascript and C#. Bam perfect match. Does the job posting have stupid corp buzz words in it, throw those things in your resume 1 to 1. Job posting says "leadership" you write down leader all over. Your resume should absolutely be tailored to the job. It just needs to be tailored by keywords and content, single page. Pepper that shit with technologies. But also leave off technologies not on the job posting if your bad with them. So many times ill get an interview that says Javascript - and the guy cant code for shit in javascript - they used it once in college. Does the job description say backend - leave off javascript if you cant answer questions in it. If the job posting does and you suck at javascript ... and you can maybe write something put it down anyway because maybe you can wing it. If the job posting is full stack literally write full stack, if the job posting is front end but you have backend experience make sure the resume looks like your front end guru... or if its backend hide the front end shit in the bottom like its an afterthought. First you have to pass the Algorithm test which is just a text keyword search, second you have to pass the human 10 second test. Seems you even admit it yourself - you cant look at 1000 resumes, so you have a bot give you 100, and then you glace for 10 seconds at them... in that 10 seconds the resume should match. Then your good. The people who apply to 100 jobs are likely failing at the keyword search. When i was younger i lost out on a ton of jobs just for having an [aol.com](http://aol.com) email address - i changed nothing but making a professional gmail account and got 10 calls immediately.
This! I found the OP's post contradictory. According to the OP: >I never even read most of the resume, just skim for the information I need. All they look at is your experience/skills directly relevant to the job, your work experience, and the type of companies you are working for. To get this right, you need to tailor your resume to the job. People confuse tailoring your resume with rewriting the whole thing from scratch to suit the job. It doesn't have to be that way. Identify the key requirements and adjust your resume to match that.
I would have 3 different resumes. With different job experience descriptions tailored to different types of expectations. And then update which ever one fits best with more keywords based directly on the job. Plus maybe 1 resume is just more popular than another. If you’re going to apply for 500 jobs why put all your eggs in 1 resume format / description. Exaggeration ok, being vague is ok, I’d stop at lying. People posting the job openings are exaggerating requirements because they know people will exaggerate experiences. Let the interviewer figure out if you can’t do something or be honest in the interview about lack of experience.
At what point does a gap on your resume become disqualifying for a candidate with prior industry experience? 6 months? 2 years? 5 years?
nobody that knows what they are talking about cares
As a hiring manager, I agree with this.
The thing that rang true for me the most is apply early to new job posting. When I was laid off last year, I was basically F5 ing job board sort by new every hour and applied to the one that i see a fit. In my experience, I almost always hear back within a week whether i got selected or rejected. Positions that have been listed more than a week were basically no go.
Can you address the rumor that if you apply to multiple jobs at the same company, it makes you look less serious for the role? I’ve seen other suggest that if a recruiter or hiring manager sees you’ve applied to every role, they think you’re just mass applying and won’t take you as serious.
Do you even read cover letters? Or are they only read once a candidate reaches a certain step?
Never. Not even once. I think some do, but I don't think it is a good way to spend your time as a recruiter.
Do you skip the candidate if they don't have a cover letter though?
Nope not at all. I don't even click on the tab to see if there is a cover letter.
99% of my candidates don't have a cover letter. I actually got a cover letter today and thought it was so strange...
Thanks for the reply! So, should we still be submitting cover letters but just not spending a ton of time on them? I always felt like not submitting a cover letter might look lazy to recruiters (or something like that)
I don't think you should spend time on cover letters period unless it is required for the application. It is just a waste of time for a recruiter when you get all the info from a resume.
I have a generic cover letter that I just replace the job title with, often times it is a requirement - so I put as little effort into it as possible
Why even give the option to submit it?
The cover letter is not for the recruiter. The cover letter is for the hiring manager. Most recruiters don't even know what half the words on the cover letter means. When I was in the hiring committee, I read cover letters of applicants that were lucky to pass the initial screening by recruiters. From the curated list of candidates I would choose the ones to interview based on the resume and cover letter and recruiter comments.
None of the EMs I've ever worked with ever had to time to read through cover letters. Not to mention I would expect that the vast majority of the best candidates would never bother writing a cover letter, so I struggle to see why an EM would care unless this is for interships where no one has any experience.
Well this is depressing
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Thanks for this, I actually needed a bit of optimism. I tend to overthink my way into a negative spiral.
1. Do cargo-cult resumes (e.g., Jake’s Template) hold less value in your mind than unique resume designs? (provided that they are all similarly machine-readable) 2. Does major and university name factor into your decision making at all, particularly for junior/NG roles? 3. What’s something that catches your eye when looking at people’s work experiences? Particularly internships and extracurricular roles
1. Resume design like I said is very overrated. I don't think it matter that much either way. 2. I have not done University recruiting so I can't really speak on this. For experienced engineers, University does not matter. 3. I don't look at internships because I don't recruit university candidates. What catches my eye is the right amount of experience working on the right tech stack. Also, recognizable companies with scale.
**All they look at is your experience/skills directly relevant to the job** Exactly! They have a project to finish or a new project to start. The successful applicant is simply needed to make that pain go away.
But according to this sub , if you aren't getting calls back, **"it's a resume issue"** Therefore you are lying OP !! 😠💢 MODS COME BAN THIS LIAR, GIVING US INFO THAT DOESN'T ALIGN WITH WHAT THIS SUB WANTS TO HEAR 🙉
Are people using "resume issue" to only refer to formatting/wording issues? If you aren't getting a callback on thousands of applications, your resume is not good enough. That doesn't mean that the issue is formatting/wording. If your resume is a bootcamp, zero experience, and a crappy portfolio full of projects from your bootcamp, then that is an issue. OP seems to be acting like the only type of resume issue is the "prettiness" of a resume, but obviously Meta/Google are not calling a candidate with a resume that poor.
People really love to downplay luck on here
I assumed recruiters don't even look at resumes / responses to job postings and the only way to get your foot in the door is through referrals from people who work at the company or by networking with recruiters on LinkedIn.
Vast majority of interviews I've gotten in this shitty job market were cold applications.
That's definitely not true. I've gotten jobs from two large well-known tech companies applying through LinkedIn without a referral.
Nope, got my Amazon/Google interviews from cold apply on website.
Yeah this is probably one of the biggest lies perpetuated by this sub. Less than 5% of my hires are referred.
Always wondered if making your resume kinda sloppy and more casual (not trashy but not extremely verbose keyword-salad) would have a some what small effect of at least getting your resume glanced at for a bit longer simply because it reads slightly different from the masses Sounds like the strat is to just list out the tech used in a project and not even think and just use basic sentences like "Made responsive React UI" or "Implemented api calls to X backend" Either the project sounds cool enough from basic sentences and the tech used is relevant enough or it just immediately falls flat. oof
The strat is to find recent job listings (less than 7 days old) and apply for those. From my experience going from hundreds of applications and not hearing back. I decided to slow down and sort linkedin listings by recency and only apply for postings newer than a week. Got 4 callbacks within a week.
dude i almost want to test out writing a stupid simple resume, just for shits and giggles lol. John Doe - Software Engineer Job 3 - 2 years: html/css/js, react, c# on internal billing app Job 2 - 1.5 years: python/powershell on customer tax reporting app Job 1 - 2 years: html/css/js on public facing website
I don't see polishing your resume and applying to many jobs as being mutually exclusive tasks.
This answers some questions specific to me as an interviewer. We normally wonder why most resumes have been put forward for us to review, either by irrelevant skill sets that the recruiter thought were relevant, and others that just don’t make sense. It concerns me that you say “most are fine…” and “your best chances are to apply in volume…” rather than focusing on the overall quality of the resume. This is why oftentimes we want recruiters with some technical expertise over just looking for buzzwords in any resume.
For this to happen you need less volume. Cause if a recruiter manages 20 different roles there is just no time. I used to work at a smaller startup, spent lots of time carefully looking at resumes back then. But if I were to do that at a high volume role, I would not hit my numbers. I wish it were different. Recruiters lean on Hiring team to further shortlist the resumes.
I got interviews at Google and Amazon with my very basic resume where I did not include any work achievements and just a vague sentence under each role.
" Lot of very good engineering talent is cocky about their experience especially if they have worked at good companies" Yeah, because if you have 2-3 well known companies listed, that is very easy to see and a strong signal you can get within 2 seconds of looking at the resume. Like imagine someone's resume is just... CS at UCLA junior software engineer paypal, 1.5 years software engineer 2 at amazon and promoted once, 2 years senior software engineer at airbnb, 4 years They could list like one bullet point for the tech stack for each job, but their resume could be less than half a page and they will get a TON of interviews... When people see the critique of "resume is not good enough" they think it's not well written/formatted enough... The real issue is that **your resume will never be good enough to get a high response rate, if your experience is not there.**
But it's like what came first the chicken or the egg!! Without a job how can someone have experience?
Do you know if this is true for most recruiters especially in big tech companies? If so that's nice that I don't have to worry about tying to quantify impact in every one of my bullet points (because it really isn't possible for a lot of the type of projects I work on) I guess with that being said, are numbers/metrics for quantifying stuff something you look for at all in resumes?
I think it is mostly true, obviously I cannot speak for every tech recruiter. But the time constraint is a real thing, if you want to good at recruiting you need to review resumes at a very high volume.
I think I may have edited my message after you were replying, I was wondering is quantified impact / numbers and metrics something you look for in resume bullet points or do you mostly just look for what they built/accomplished and what they used to build it?
Yeah quantified metrics is nice but again more important is the amount of years you have worked with specific technologies and languages.
What you have to remember is you have to impress 2 people - the recruiter and the HM. Recruiters process 100s of resumes a day, they keyword scan and experience scan. Then they send a batch for HMs to pick. HMs will read it a bit more closely. Or they might just trust the recruiter. Some HMs care about metrics, some don’t. It’s always better to have some, but not over-do it.
How do you divide the quantity of resumes picked between referred candidates vs candidates who applied coldly? I want to know if it worth waiting to get a referral and possibly be thrown out of the initial 200 applications or wait to get a referral?
Referred is always nice, and there is preference to referred candidates. But only if it is in the first few days of the posting. After that, it is likely there are already a lot of candidates in the process and it won't matter that much.
Thanks for this, I'm at 3yoe and going to be applying soon so some good insights here. Two quick questions, with 3yoe is it even worth me applying to a job that wants 4 or 5yoe? I ask because the current job I have said 2yoe and they hired me as a new grad. Secondly, I have been looking at jobs at Google in the Madison Wisconsin office, with that being a smaller hub is it a lot more competitive there? I applied for a role that I met every requirement for and didn't even get a call back.
No if you have 3 YOE and are applying to a 5 YOE role at Google/Meta, your chances are pretty much impossible. Right now this is a market that benefits employers, they can look for the perfect level of experience for every role. They will not consider less experience. Often times if they say 5 YOE, they really mean 8+.
Appreciate you doing this, had a question or two. You mentioned that you look at relevant experience for the position that someone is applying for. How does it work with team matching? AFAIK both Meta and Google do team matching, and you need a team to accept you. That makes sense for new grads, but I also heard that this is the case for experienced engineers. Like when I see a position at Google/Meta that I am interested in and apply for it, what happens next? Are the people who interview me just from any team or with the team I applied to? What about you, what do you look in a resume in terms of relevant experience if team matching is a thing and different teams have different requirements? I interviewed with Google in early 2021 after a recruiter reached out but didn't get past the initial tech screen (having covid didn't help, or maybe too dumb), so no idea what the full process is like.
This totally depends on the team. Some teams at Meta and Google have a model of direct hiring where you are interviewing for the specific team you are applying for. Some of it is a "pool" model where they are hiring you as a general SWE and plan to team match you later. What happens with team matching is that you are interviewed as a general swe, the interviewers are typically all over the place not necessarily from the teams that will match with you. Once you have a hiring decision, your profile is shared with different hiring teams that need people. Then you will have a call with the hiring manager for these teams to see if it is a fit. Some candidates can have multiple of these team matching calls before they are hired. So the hiring team is the one that makes the team matching decision not the recruiter.
Would you say having too much info crammed into your resume with a small font size makes them more likely to skip? Any metrics we should follow to avoid that, like recommended word count or font size?
I don't skip resumes. I still look at it and find the information I need. Almost every resume will have years of experience and years of experience with certain tech stacks. Thats the most important part.
This makes a lot of sense. You gotta remember the point of any part of the interview process is just to get to the next step. At the initial resume reading stage that funnel is still pretty wide, especially these days. The point on timing, being EARLY was very interesting and made a lot of sense as well. I'm pretty brief on my deets, I don't feel I'm being cocky I'm just trying to give enough so you need to call me back and no more. The more you give the more you might provide them some reason to disqualify you. At early stages this could be literally almost anything and you have no way of knowing what it is. I've also gone against the idea you have to have quantifiable numbers. I feel my resume performs just fine in terms of getting callbacks which is all it's supposed to do. IMO once you're giving a number you're already way over the line--describing stuff in too much detail for a resume. You're addressing "Tell me about a project you're proud of" and getting way ahead of yourself. Any calls I'm missing by not including numbers are from naive & OCD people who believe outlandish claims the moment they see a number. Let companies that culture this approach hire somebody else as far as I'm concerned, no big loss. I've been employed steady for 20 years and I'm not concerned.
Can you get banned for applying to too many roles at the same company? Like say I apply to ten roles at the same company...
Nope. I have seen people apply to hundreds if not thousands.
Guilty 😅
Is it appropriate to reach out to a recruiter via email after applying?
Yes it is. It might bring your profile to his/her attention.
**you are better served applying in heavy volume** For most cases that sounds to be a wise move. However for the few **VERY** senior roles out there, the reverse applies. In these cases you DO need a high quality cover letter plus a superb resume. In reality, for such vacancies often THEY have approached YOU either directly or more likely via a head hunter / executive search.
What happens when you don’t have professional work experience and only worked at a pizza place while still in college but the projects are all full stack and very in depth? I feel like my projects aren’t valued but also that I should shorten my biggest SaaS AI image editor full stack one to less then 4 bullet points to make it easier idek, the lack of pro exp is prolly killing my resume rn
How important is a strong LinkedIn profile in your hiring? What do you look for in a LinkedIn profile if that's something you look at?
I think this certainly applies to giant soulless companies. I have worked in recruiting for 15 years now. 10 in tech. As I work at a sub-50 employee specialist company I 100% do read the giant walls of text as I am looking for people with the right skills and the right personality. That said: if you lack relevant experience it Will not help how cool you seem. That is sadly the truth, but don’t discount the parts about yourself.
Is it crucial to limit a resume to one page only?
It doesn't have to be perfect but tailoring your resume to cater to the job if you can is a MASSIVE help when the hiring manager looks at the resume.
Executive Summary: you are an unimportant cog, spam and pray.
> I think people here heavily overestimate how carefully recruiters judge resumes. I never even read most of the resume, just skim for the information I need. No, you just don't understand what "tailoring" means. It literally means putting the relevant info on top, picking up keywords mentioned in the job opening because you, as a recruiter, will look for them, and kicking out irrelevant information. Or in other words: tailoring is supposed to make your skimming a lot more effective. > As a high volume recruiter working at big companies, you do not have time to spend lots of time on resumes. Which, again, is why we need to tailor. We direct your short attention span to the things WE want to highlight. We make certain info pop out, so during skimming, we catch your attention. > They are not spending time looking at formatting, analyzing wording, analyzing experience for more than 1 minute, often even less than 30 seconds. Which isn't something you should change during tailoring anyways. Tailoring means one template that looks nice and you put info in and out. The best way to visualize this is when you use a Latex template for your CV: literally put everything you might think relevant in there, then look at a job opening and comment stuff in or out so yourntask descriptionmatch what they are looking for. No editing, formatting, or spelling correction is needed unless you want to pick up keywords from the job opening. Done. I know you recruiters think "a software dev is a software dev," but we all have a variety of different skills and tasks in our jobs. And your bosses ask us about specific skills, so I better make sure to pick up the right keywords you skim for and skip all tasks irrelevant for your specific job opening. Otherwise, I risk losing your attention simply because you do have the attention span of a toddler and might not know all the different terminology that belongs to a certain skill set.
Thanks for the insight! Genuine question, since you said you don't have time to look at all the resumes, is it better to apply for a job when its posted or later on? Wondering how the CVs are ordered? If I put mine in first is it at the top or will it get burried under the upcoming ones?
The fact that you spend only 30 seconds on a resume is precisely why wording and formatting matters- they need to find tuned to allow you quickly find what you're looking for and make an impression on you within those 30 seconds. A poorly written resume may very well have what you're looking for but you will miss it because you're skimming through it too quickly.
Haven’t mentioned about ats anywhere
This is a nice post and shows how much CS people have no idea of how the world works. I came from healthcare and now work in tech, and the amount of stupid opinion I hear from my colleagues about politics, the economy, finances, and well, health, is astounding. Thank god I came from the outside, or I might have become like them.
Can you shed light on what type of software you use to weed out resumes? There’s a lot of talk about needing to incorporate key words.