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Joel Rants About Resumes 1010
rbrandis writes "Mr. Spolsky's latest rant is about writing a resume that will be read "Please do not use cover letters that you copied out of a book. If you write 'I understand the position also requires a candidate who is team- and detail-oriented, works well under pressure, and is able to deal with people in departments throughout the firm' then at best people will think you're a bullshit artist and at worst they will think that you were not born with the part of the brain that allows you to form your own thoughts and ideas.""
Another day, another batch of applications (Score:3, Interesting)
But thanks for "keeping my resume on file" anyway...
Re:Another day, another batch of applications (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Another day, another batch of applications (Score:5, Funny)
Humor Challenged. But don't worry, you'll go far in Management...
Re:Another day, another batch of applications (Score:5, Funny)
Sending a perfumed resume is never a good idea. Many possible employers are allergic to perfumes. It's the perogative of the smart job-hunter to find a substance with a strong, memorable odor that nobody is allergic to and that will create a strong impression. This also must be cheap and easy to obtain on a job-seeker's limited budget, since you may be sending it to many people.
Once you have succeeded in filling a small cardboard box with such a material, print multiple copies of your resume and tape these to the box, covering it. Set the box on the employer's doorstep, light it on fire, and run away. This is a sure way for your resume to garner some attention.
Another batch? Yes! (Score:5, Interesting)
Gees. I gotta disagree, here.
First of all, what does my prospective employer have to do with what other positions I apply for?
And second, I think that shows a sign of determination and, in these times, you seem to need just that to get a job. Gone are the "one phone call to the recruiter" days of finding 50 job offers. In fact, my last recruiter called ME a few months ago looking for a position for herself...
Go ahead, apply for every job THAT YOU'RE QUALIFIED FOR, and sort through the results yourself. Get out, get noticed. If your prospective employer thinks you should sit around on your ass and pretend that you're qualified and live off of Ramen and potatos for months while you wait, then you probably don't want to work for him.
Re:Another batch? Yes! (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think you're disagreeing all that much, really. If you're sending out 100+ resumes a day THAT YOU'RE QUALIFIED FOR, then you should have NO trouble finding a job, determination or not.
If, on the other hand, you're sending out 100+ resumes to places you're not qualified for, all you're doing is wasting everybody's time, yours included.
Re:Another batch? Yes! (Score:4, Insightful)
I could be god's gift to engineering, but if I happened to be in the unlucky half, I'd probably still be searching...
Re:Another batch? Yes! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Another batch? Yes! (Score:3, Interesting)
Personally, I created 5 resumes and cover letters for specific positions, and then I looked for those positions online and slightly altered my resumes and cov
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Another day, another batch of applications (Score:3)
If what you're sending out reads anything like what you just posted here, it's not at all amazing you're getting consistently shit-canned.
Re:Another day, another batch of applications (Score:5, Insightful)
According to Joel's article, there's two reasons why he wouldn't consider you for a job if you did that. First:
And second:
I've known career counselors that have told me to do the same things you've described, but I have to admit Joel is making a lot of sense here. His company runs on very few employees, and he's always been extremely selective, so perhaps his hiring process is not the norm. However, in these times when every employer is getting hundreds of resumes for even the lowliest position, they can afford to be every bit as selective (some might say arbitrary) in their hiring processes.
Let the content of your resume do the talking, not the presentation. Follow the instructions the employer gives for applying, and proofread your application several times for clarity and spelling. Beyond that, there's not much you could that that would serve any purpose beyond annoying a potential employer. IANAHM, though. Just a schmuck who recently landed a job.
That suggests a good idea (Score:3, Funny)
Instead of bringing in candidates and quizzing them with stock questions to find out how bright they are, make the world's hardest instructions for applying and then just bring in the ones who follow them. I see a lot of people who are incapable of reading and following directions and I believe that they generally are not good employees, so it seems like a fair part of the selection process.
Re:Another day, another batch of applications (Score:5, Insightful)
The real solution is to learn some Perl before you apply, even if it is only a few hours of experience. With me I kept seeing jobs requiring applicants with experience in X. I ended up setting up my own little IT department at home and I spent some time learning how to use X. If you want to be honest on your resume, say proficient in A, B, and C and then some experience with X, Y, and Z. Everybody, even the recruiter, knows that some experience could be a 1 hour class or a year of working experience. Hopefully they'll choose to clear it up in the interview (be honest if they ask).
Cover Letter = Fluff, Who Cares Anyway? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, it's amazing this skill set is not available, because now they'll have to export the job offshore where apparently all the IT workers have this skill set.
Honestly, I'm surprised people look at cover letters at all, it's all fluff anyway.
Re:Cover Letter = Fluff, Who Cares Anyway? (Score:3, Interesting)
Sometimes I think the real purpose of such postings is to be able to show that they can't find any qualified people in the US.
Re:Another day, another batch of applications (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Another day, another batch of applications (Score:4, Insightful)
College is not a guarantee of employment nor is it proof to employers that you know what you're doing. I spent 4 years of college learning how to communicate and process information (we called it a literature and rhetoric program) and now I write software. Not because I was trained for it, but because I was good at it and had a passion for it (and thus was willing to start at a lower salary). At the same time, most of the cats I hung out with were majoring in CS, and spent most of their time talking about all the money they were going to make in CS.
Guess what? Most of the guys who wanted to get rich didn't (at least not in software). Most of the guys who actually wanted to write software are doing so (some are rich).
Moral of the story is this: if you are sending our resumes, hoping for some hring angel to heed your prayers and install you at IBM like a fax machine, you'll go wanting. But if you're going to get out there and work with computers, whether you're getting paid or not, you'll find yourself getting money for it. Just like anything else, it's about PASSION, not education. The parent article is TRYING to tell people to treat their job applications like something they expect to get, and not like a chance in a million -- and if you do this, you have a chance that is orders of magnitude higher than if you act like a sycophantic salaryman. Hell, I've got a friend who after only a year on the scene is working as a journalist. Nobody is or was hiring -- hell, freelancers are fighting for their lives and newsroom staff are getting cut left and right -- but the Powers Tha' Be realized that he was a passionate writer. He got courted by two competing national newspaper groups and an independent.
Re:Another day, another batch of applications (Score:5, Insightful)
No job I've gotten has ever come from following up on an advertisment, anyway. They all came from networking. In each case, somebody at the company reccomended me to a hiring manager, and I sent a simple resume with nothing more than an e-mail talking about why I think I would be right for the job (and vice versa) instead of a cover letter.
Stay in touch with people you enjoy working with, even after changing jobs. That's the best advice anybody can give you. If you have connections, you will never need to mess with all this "what is the right way to write a cover letter?" nonsense, because any hiring manager who has already been out for a beer with you is not going to care about that B.S. any more than you do.
Re:Another day, another batch of applications (Score:5, Insightful)
I've ranted, er, posted, about this in the past. Geeks need to learn how to network! The crap IT guys know how to network, and that's how they end up getting the jobs for which the real geeks are far more qualified.
Networking does NOT mean calling up everyone you know and asking them for a job.
Networking means that you:
1. Spend time developing a good 30 second description about the type of job you want and why you will be good at it.
2. Make a list of people you know who might know something about the jobs you want OR know someone else who knows something about the jobs you want.
3. Contact these people, give them your SHORT description of what you're looking for, and ask them if they have any advice or know anyone else that you should talk to. If you hat making cold calls, e-mail is fine for the initial contact. Just make it short, to the point, and use the spell checker.
4. Since you didn't waste their time or make them feel uncomfortable by asking for a job, they are likely to refer you to people they know.
5. Repeat as necessary.
This really works. I have gotten every job I've ever had via networking. The parent post is right: once you have an "in", you don't have to agonize so much over the cover letter. Your time is far better spent on networking than on sending out hundreds of resumes to every company you think might possibly hire you.
If you're fresh out of school and don't have many contacts yet... try your alumni association. Really. I occasionally get contacted from my alumni association, and I'm always happy to try to help. Heck, some weeks, if it gives me an excuse to get out of the office and have a nice lunch, I'd give job hunting advice to my arch enemy. I'll certainly do it for some kid fresh out of school, and I'll probably even pay for lunch.
Re:Another day, another batch of applications (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously though, I took my Dad's advice early on and it has helped me immensely: "Don't burn your bridges." No matter how much you think someone is an a-hole or a moron, be careful what you say to them, you might bump into them at your next job interview.
Re:Another day, another batch of applications (Score:5, Funny)
And remember that spell checkers won't catch misspellings that spell another word.
I hat it when that happens.
Not just in IT and business (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not just the trite "it's not what you know, it's who you know" philosophy... it goes deeper than that.
What can distinguish you from the clamoring masses, all wanting the same job or position? Personal recommendation... all the way. This is partially how I got a residency slot I wanted, and my current medical job.
I was offered a residency slot based on my qualifications, but also because a department chairman at my medical school was personal friends with the department chairman at the residency site. A letter of recommendation and a phone call later, and the residency site chairman personally came to my interview, asked for me by name out of a room full of faceless medical students (talk about some envious glances... competition can be cutthroat in medicine), thanked me for applying, and told me to thanks his buddy for calling ahead (I knew about the letter, but that was the first I knew of the phone call).
My current job was offered to me long after I applied... my current director approached a mutual acquaintance from my residency program, and asked him about me. His response? "pure gold... you should hire him yesterday." (I don't know about that "pure gold" part... he may have oversold me a bit...).
The point remains... you can be qualified and never be hired if you get lost in the resume` shuffle... but that networking, word-of-mouth contact is money in the bank.
Also, the employer is understandably hedging his bets by not hiring someone sight-unseen, who may or may not play well with others, who may or may not be dishonest, etc, etc... personal confirmation of a person's claimed credentials/ability is key. And for those of you who think this is somehow wrong, we're talking about a good word from a friend, not someone's daddy getting him a job that he's totally unqualified to do. I despise nepotism as much as anyone.
Never, never underestimate the value of a friend...
Re:Another day, another batch of applications (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspect that Mr. Spolsky might have poorly stated his case. Applying for dozens or hundreds of different jobs at the same large employer does look bad--or at least really, really desperate. Your resume is going to get binned becuase they figure if you're too lazy to figure out which positions at a company might be appropriate for you, they're certainly not going to do it for you.
If he did mean to suggest one should only apply for three or four jobs total at a time...yes, that's poor advice for most of us. If you're extremely senior or have very specialized skills that are genuinely in demand then you can afford to be picky--shotgunning resumes looks very unprofessional, even desperate. Besides, someone who is looking for work at that high a level probably shouldn't be doing it without professional help. Wannabe CEOs/CIOs/CFOs don't usually send a form letter out to hundreds of companies.
Still, it's certainly good form to appear to only be sending out a few resumes. Creating the appearance of confidence is good. A custom cover letter for each job at each employer can help tremendously, if only by drawing attention to the key points of your standard resume. Be short, sweet, and to the point. Construct it out out of a pool of boilerplate sentences if you like, but at least change more than the company name at the top. This is particularly important if you apply to more than one job at the same employer--identical cover letters for different jobs is poor packaging. It looks rather lazy if the same HR department screens both resumes.
The great-grandparent poster complained that his experiences have "led me to believe that spending a great deal of time on each application/resume/cover letter I send out for Yet Another Job Opening would consume an amount of time equivelent to a full-time job". Well, yes. Finding a job is a job! You have to work at it. It's a skillset that (hopefully) you don't use very often, so you have to work harder at it than you think! When you get a job, you're going to spend the bulk of your waking hours at it--why aren't you willing to invest the time in getting noticed by a worthwhile employer? Spending half an hour a day browsing Monster.com is a luxury to be enjoyed by the employed.
Re:Another day, another batch of applications (Score:5, Interesting)
He fit most of the qualifications for the position fairly well, but that was the answer that swayed our interview team's vote. He's been an ideal employee since day 1.
Exception? Probably, but his brutal honesty was what really threw the vote his direction over the other candidates.
And if... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:And if... (Score:5, Funny)
don't forget:
Re:And if... (Score:4, Funny)
You know, I'd be pretty amused if I got a resume application where the cover letter states "yes I'm ready to be your grovelling yes-man!".
Heck, I might hire him
Re:And if... (Score:4, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:3, Funny)
Re:We saved the best for last. (Score:5, Informative)
Joel is a big advocate of treating developers well, and is respected for generally being pragmatic and insightful, with a humorous writing style that is informative while remaining entertaining. On the flip side, a couple of his recent posts have been blatant quid-pro-quos with some friends of his, and he's selling out a bit with the Programmer's Paradise gig.
Deal (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Deal (Score:5, Insightful)
> and bullshit questions like "what is your greatest weakness".
+1 Insightful. If you don't want me to play your interview like a game, then don't make it a game. Questions like that only test my ability to study and come up with my best material before an interview. Is that what you really want, or do you want honest answers? A question like that is like your wife asking you, "Does this dress make me look fat?" The answer can only be honest if it's the truth, otherwise you must lie. If it's a sales position and you want to test my ability to bullshit smoothly, that's fine I suppose.
While I'm ranting, what's with filling out "applications". If I'm applying for a sysadmin or programmer position, you have my resume. It details everything I'm required to copy onto your damn 6 page, small type, not-enough-room, non-online-pen-online-sore-fingers application. I will fill out a life history and anything else you want if you are actually interested in me, but don't make me fill out a phonebook before I'm even issued a first interview.
And what does it matter what high school I attended? I haven't been near that town since I went to college. Who cares where I went to high school?!? It's not like I had much of a choice in the matter. And don't put a 3"x1" space and expect me to write "School Name, Address, and Phone Number" on it. Otherwise, make it an online application so you can easily change the font to 3pt when you print it out.
Re:Deal (Score:4, Insightful)
+1 Insightful. If you don't want me to play your interview like a game, then don't make it a game.
-1 Missing The Point. A question like this isn't intended to force you to bullshit. What it does is force the candidate to (hopefully) be honest and own up to a weakness about themselves. A good answer to this question indicates 1) honesty (duh), and 2) self-awareness. The value of the first quality is, I think, self-explanatory. The second should be pretty obvious, too: someone who is self-aware is capable of improving themselves.
What this question is NOT meant to do is force you to eliminate yourself from the running. I, as an interviewer, don't intend to use your answer as a direct reason to eliminate you. Rather, your answer will help to assess your character (is this person willing to own up to their inadequacies? Are they self-aware enough to understand what their flaws are? Do they have a desire to improve themselves? etc).
Reason for applications (Score:4, Informative)
Applications are great, from an employer's perspective.
If you've ever put up a job posting in any kind of public space/forum/job site, you would know that you will start getting flooded with absolute shit resumes that don't match and by desperate people cutting pasting and clicking send. (I've even seen candidates put up autoresponders to job posting sites.. no shit.)
An application, besides the marginal advantages that other respondents have already pointed out, tells me that 1) you've at least read the fucking post and what we're looking for 2) are not just some jerkoff spamming any job posting he sees and that you 3) will at spend ten minutes actually CONSIDERING and THINKING what you're about to apply for, since reading your resume and phone screening/interview will definitely take up (i.e. waste) a lot of my time (and conversely, if you can't be bothered to fill out a 10 minute app, you're not going to do very good work on the job.)
BostonWorks let me put up 3 simple 'interview questions' beforehand -- loved that feature -- and I made them have easy 2 sentence max responses. It was amazing how many people submitted blank responses or how many I could screen just from reading their absolutely braindead replies. It was GREAT.
And finally, enough people will apply that frankly I only need to consider those who submit a thoughtful, properly formatted app.
I agree though that it wastes time on both ends, which sucks. But realize the root cause, which sucks more; the whole process stems from the fact that you need some way of putting up enough barriers to entry to keep obviously unqualified idiots from wasting your time.
-fren
Re:Deal (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, I've always given an answer like "I have a tendency to give straightforward, detailed, techically answers to people who are really looking for vague management or marketing answers."
They never do get it.
Re:Deal (Score:5, Interesting)
Well put. The Resume/Interview process is like this leftover from when you always called anyone above you 'Sir' and tried to avoid making eye-contact. The workplace has gotten a bit more egalitarian since the 50s, yet the hiring process hasn't.
There are classes, seminars, books etc if not a whole industry giving out these simple pieces of advice on 'how to get a job' but in real life its often much more of an art than it is a science. Some of the advice in this thread is just silly like 'don't use a template.' Do you really want to hire someone whose so compulsive-obsessive about the 'look and feel' of his resume that he'll make a special formatted one just for every application, especially when applying to dozens of jobs? Yeah, that's the guy you want developing software when the deadline approaches. "But I can't get these buttons to FEEL right!" Hey, you hired him knowing how he was.
The worst part is the traditional advice is useless in a world where your resume gets imported into a database and HR simply does searches when looking to fill a position. I doubt your helvecta fonts and tables will do you much good when its been transfered to ascii on some wacky web interface for the HR people.
The more I read in this thread, the more I realize why my co-workers tend to be idiots. If all it takes to get a job is a clean suit and a fancy formatted resume, well no wonder there's so much incompetence. Arguably, the people who put off the 'best vibes' are high-level social engineers who also will use those skills to do as little work as possible, play on the guilt of others, etc.
Re:Deal (Score:5, Funny)
Because it is an easy thing for the interviewer to ask. It shows no ingenuity nor does it reflect highly on the interviewer's intelligence. It is the kind of question a retarded person would ask thinking it makes them look smart.
Not only that, it can be considered an inappropriate invasion of privacy. "...so, what's your greatest weakness..." "I have a vodka and squirrel fetish that I simply cannot shake!" Even then, both the question and answer is completely irrelevant to the job; as long as the guy doesn't show up drunk with squirrels in his pockets, you shouldn't care what his greatest weakness is (given he is a reliable and competent employee).
Greatest weakness? (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, professionally? Well, I work so efficiently that it demoralizes all my coworkers. That's why they had to let me go from my last 4 jobs.
Re:Deal (Score:3, Informative)
EVERY interview book and website states you answer that question with something positive.
Besides, nobody in their right mind will ever answer that question honestly... as they know that you will not get hired if you tell the person in the interview your real greatest weakness.
The resume is a Sales flyers, the interview is a sales meeting, you do EVERYTHING to sell yourself and embellish when you can.
the best thing for people to do to make job hunting easier is to read books writt
Re:Deal (Score:5, Interesting)
"I'm unable to lie on obvious interview screening questions. And I have a vodka and squirrel fetish. I spend way too much time at home doing Fark Photoshop contests, where a certain squirrel is pretty popular."
You've just shown them that you (a) know it's a setup question, (b) demonstrated the ability to think on your feet, and (c) let slip that your idea of a good time is working on learning how to operate high-end software suites.
If the job were for a graphic design position, and I were interviewing you, and I got that response, I'd say "Show me". And if your Photoshop was good, I'd hire you on the spot. Because it shows me you're not just looking for "a job", but that you actually enjoy your work.
Re:Deal (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a stupid question because all your doing is testing the ability of someone to lie on the spot. The rest of us who've heard this question a billion times will just give the stock answer we've given in every other interview.
Uhm,
Has it occurred to you to be honest?
When I first started attending career counseling, they warned me about this question, and our homework was to prepare an answer. We all compared in class, and came up with the "good" answers ("I work too hard," "I'm a perfectionist," yada yada yada), and sure enough, on my interviews, I heard the question. So I spat back the "perfectionist" line, they quietly noted my response and showed no reaction. Why should they? They'd asked the question a hundred times before, and they'd heard my answer a hundred times before.
Eventually, I got sick of it. So the next time I was asked, I answered honestly. "I can sometimes have narrow vision. That is, I'm type-A and can focus all my energies on one thing. This often yeilds stellar results for that task, but at the expense of other important things that I may have neglected. However, I'm aware that I have this tendency and am working to improve my multi-tasking abilities."
I got the job. They even commented that they admired my honesty and self-deprecating candor.
Reminds me of a story. (Score:5, Funny)
Hired for what? (Score:4, Funny)
Hired for what?
Oh, I get it. Deceit and stupidity...must have been an HR position!
Re:Reminds me of a story. (Score:4, Insightful)
I've heard about it from section 1.4 (p10) of Bjarne Stroustup's "The C++ Programming language, Third edition." Furthermore it is briefly mentioned here [softcatala.org] and here [cc.or.us] (with an unreliable account of the evolution of c++ which according to Stroustrup is unrelated to C+.)
Re:Reminds me of a story. (Score:4, Funny)
There was a guy that applied for a programming job. He wrote on his resume that he knew C++ and C since he heard about those classes in college. So naturally he figured that there must also be C+ language and wrote it into his resume. The HR looked at his resume and lo and behold .. he was hired.
Heh, that reminds me of one of the funniest resumes I've seen. At my first sysadmin job, a mom and pop startup ISP during the initial phase of the dot com explosion, one of the owners started getting sketchy as the mom and pop ISPs started going under or being aquired. At night he would send out resumes from the support PCs (using support@thisisp.com as his return email address). Every morning we would come in and find "thank you John Smith for submitting your resume" and an attached copy of his resume. In addition to the ridiculous salary requirements (over $1 million) and poor spelling and grammar, he'd list C, C++, VB, VB++, Java, Java++ and add a ++ to everything other language he had heard of just to be thorough. Needless to say right after that most of us left the company, and not long after they went under.
... which is actually an existing language (Score:3, Interesting)
Conform and obey (Score:4, Insightful)
Agreement, and then some. (Score:5, Insightful)
While I never saw an application that said "hire me d00d" from Yahoo, as he seems to be quoting, I saw some pretty awful stuff. The fact of the matter is most jobs will generate far more interest in the position than it is possible to interview through, so a good resume is your only hope of getting to the phone interview in my book.
In my experience, 50% of all applications (or more) are either:
a) Unqualified: why are you wasting your time? If I ask for C++ experience, your VB skills are probably not going to help debug the memory leaks you create.
b) Illiterate: I'm a poor speller too, but I found "spell check" and a proofreader, why can't you?
c) Inflexable: my favorite category. "I work from home in California, and telecommute" isn't going to fill position in southern Arizona. I was shocked by the quantity of these in 1999, heyday of stupid applications.
I do however make some allowances for international applicants. Some of my best finds were people with 80% command of English, but 100% command of C++, architecture and design. I'm willing to work with a language barrier, so I thought he was a bit agressive in that area.
Re:Agreement, and then some. (Score:5, Insightful)
If I ask for C++ experience, your VB skills are probably not going to help debug the memory leaks you create.
These sorts of requirements have always been silly to me - mostly because I attended a good school. A lot of computer science departments realize that the language that is in style changes, so they teach a good amount of theory, rather than specific languages. What this means is that their students can basically pick up a new language by grabbing and book and be useful in a day or two - and be proficient in probably a week or two. Granted, having VB as a first language likely means it's not one of these kinds of people :P
By basing hiring decisions based on specific languages and not the background needed to pick up a new language, companies may be missing out on potentially better employees - those that are flexible enough to still function if say someone were to decide that everything needs to be rewritten in java 6 months down the line. I'll admit that identifying these kinds of people may be difficult.
Perhaps companies should be a little more general about what they want rather than specific programming languages and start asking for conceptual skills. "Must have experience with an object-oriented language, memory management, traversing tree and graph-like data structures. Specific familiarity with C++ and HTML a plus." or "Must have experience with a write-only scripting language" which we all know refers to Perl :P
naive (Score:4, Insightful)
You won't be "useful in a day or two" in C or C++ if you have never dealt with pointers or manual memory management before. But even if you have, C and C++ have enough pitfalls and obscure corners that you really have to spend years learning them.
And the same is true about many other languages. And, in addition to the languages themselves, you have to know their APIs in order to be productive.
A CS degree gives you CS skills. CS skills are not the same as commercial programming skills, much as you may not want to believe that.
Resumes (Score:5, Informative)
Do not lie. Lies are eventually revealed, you waste your time and theirs.
Keep it to what's current and to the subject.
Make it readable and non-technical. It's going to be screened by HR people, they're typically really bad with technical details.
Keep a text copy, some people want to receive resumes through horrible web interfaces.
Nobody gives a crap about your hobbies, unless then involve lots of theft of past employers property, in which case they'll appreciate your candor.
Hobbies (Score:5, Funny)
Not quite
Re:Resumes (Score:5, Interesting)
I've had Firewalking listed in my 3-line Outside Interests section for some time now, and it invariably sparks conversation during the interviews. I'll grant that the HR folks don't generally notice it, but I have yet to see a hiring manager who didn't. That seems to be one of those resume tidbits that gets around the office before your first day, too, and in my mind anything that gets your name around the office without making you look like *too* much of an idiot is a good thing. =)
Dan
Most applicants dont get it... (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, people applying for art positions (like 3D artist) will send a resume but not a portfolio. What's up with that? I could not care less where they went to school, I only care what they can do.
The cover letter is by far the most import thing in most instances. It needs to say what the applicant is capable of. What they have done that is similar. And why they want to work for the company in question (which they should show some clue about).
Don't use "Resume Writer 2.0", just sit down and write something intelligent. Put yourself in the frame of mind of the person who has to wade through the huge influx of job seekers. Think about you would want to see in a resume/cover letter.
HR Departments (Score:5, Insightful)
The HR people usually don't know the tecnical details about a job all that well, so they filter based on presense of Buzzwords (or so it seems a lot of the time). If you don't put the admittadly moronic "detail oriented, forward-thinking, team player" in your resume, it may not even get to the person who can actually understand what is written on the resume!
Of course this only applies to technical positions. If you are applying to a job that only asks for MS OFFICE skills, HR can probably figure it out.
Another best thing (Score:4, Funny)
Are you a student looking for a great job next summer? Fog Creek Software, a small and friendly startup in New York City, offers summer internships in software development for Computer Science students.
Oh the irony...
funny stories? (Score:5, Funny)
how many people have seen emails like this? they always crack me up:
of course, there was no peter mcdermott at our company, nor did our jobs@ email have any name linked to it. the jackass forgot to remove it when he cut and pasted from some other job posting response.in the words of strongbad...DELETED!
anyone else's gag reflex triggered whenever getting an email beginning with Dear Sir/Madam from @yahoo.com?
*sigh*
-fren
doing it right (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, he understands what you mean if you write "i m interested in your job," but if you don't have the patience or care to make even that one sentence cover letter correct, why on earth would an employer want to take a chance on you?
I'm done apologizing for wanting people to speak and spell and use English correctly. For most of you, this is your native language! Why is it shameful to want to speak it correctly?
(I probably made some grammar errors in there. I'm SURE I did, and I'm sure someone will pounce on them. I proofread this, and I have spellcheck running, and I have a pretty decent working knowledge of grammar in English, so, you know, I'm trying.)
Re:doing it right (Score:3, Informative)
Sorry, I had to do it. =)
Other than that, looks good. And yes, I know my period is outside my quotes. I know it's not the rule, but the rule is stupid, and I don't follow it in informal correspondence.
On a slightly related note, I'm starting to think that I should look into getting a job in the IT publishing industry. Almost every computer book I buy nowadays is positively littered with spelling errors, typos, and poor grammar. I understand that the geek a
Re:doing it right (Score:4, Informative)
As for periods/commas/etc. and whether they should be inside quotes, its a convention and not a rule: according to American MLA format, punctuation occurs always within quote marks, whereas Australian and European equivalents require the punctuation to be outside the quote marks. I personally employ the Australian convention both because of my time spent there, and because I think it more accurately reflects the verbal structure of the language.
Best advice I ever received... (Score:5, Insightful)
Also spell check and let an unemployed English major review it.
One *really* common resume blunder (Score:5, Informative)
Same thing goes for Word's resume wizard. You can use it to get started, but if you stick completely with its format, your resume is going to look just like everyone else's. You and your work experience are different, your resume should reflect that.
Don't be afraid to take risks. One of the best resumes I've seen used color and graphics - it was definitely eye catching, and it worked, because when I called the young man back, he'd already accepted an internship somewhere else!
Yeah; what you need is ... (Score:5, Funny)
In anything much bigger than a 2-person shop these days, resumes pretty much just go unread into a database. They are only seen by a human if they match a retrieval request. For that to happen, you have to have the keywords that the hiring manager typed.
The rest doesn't much matter. If a retrieval doesn't match your resume, it will never be retrieved, and will never be read by a human.
One thing still missing from the databases: They need information on how long a given acronym, uh, I mean product, has been out. This would cut down on managers looking for five years experience on something that was released less than a year ago.
From "The Office", David Brents Theory (Score:5, Funny)
While I understand (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm willing to bet that 99% of people who are looking for work right now are taking a "shotgun" approach. This isn't the *best* way to get your resume out, but it is the quickest. And if you're looking to get your foot in the same door as several hundred others, speed counts. As does as much exposure as possible--hoping that somewhere, somehow, your resume will generate interest.
Ultimately, the best way to generate interest is to carefully research the company you're submitting to, the position, check for networking opportunities (very important!), etc. But this isn't always practical--and it's tough to tell how much extra attention that will generate. From the job seeker's standpoint, sometimes "shotgun" is the most practical, even if it doesn't generate as much interest each time it's sent out.
Re:While I understand (Score:3, Insightful)
What else are the unemployed techies doing? And, the people receiving the resumes are also receiving a ton of resume-cover letter combos. Do you want to rely on luck (shotgun) or a targetted effort (sniper rifle)?
If only the Democratic candidates ... (Score:3, Funny)
* Demonstrated leadership capabilities
* Against special interests
* For the middle class
On the other hand, maybe those writing tech resumes could learn from the politicians and insert a few lines trashing the other applicants?
In all fairness, Joel (Score:4, Insightful)
Or maybe teamwork and being detail oriented are both bad attributes for a software engineer?
Ranting about the other side of the process (Score:5, Insightful)
Again and again, I see job positions for which the applicant is asked to submit a resume via a textbox in a web form. Usually, no mention is given of what format is allowed (Plain ASCII? HTML? PDF? Tex?), so one pretty much has to assume least-common denominator, and submit in ASCII. Then, one has to pray to the line-width gods that the end product (printed out? online?) will not look too horrible compared to what you just put in.
So, for those on the other side of the table, can you please implement a simple web-file-upload protocol, and tell us what format you like?
key learning (Score:3, Insightful)
After my (1st) layoff, I attended a resume seminar paid for by the company. The speaker mentioned this one principle: That your resume was a tool to get the company to interview you. Not only were qualifications important, but your resume had to communicate that you were interesting or unique in some way - the point of the latter being that it would brand your resume into their minds and guarantee you an interview.
If X number of people all have basically the same qualifications and skills, and they all have decent looking resumes, the separating factor then becomes personality or uniqueness (something that would say "hey this guy would make a cool and interesting co-worker/subordinate).
Objective ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Its very difficult to be objective and to find a "one size fits all" sort of resume guide. Even one that is written by Joel Spolsky.
Joel has some criteria that he considers more important than others.. Fine. He's doing the hiring, it is his perogative (sp?). The thing is, not all hiring managers are ticked off by the same things that Joel rants about.
I have seen resumes with a few (minor) spelling errors that wouldn't have been caught by spellcheck make it into a short list. I've also seen letter perfect ones rejected. Obviously, some managers scan through and look for work experience and qualifications. They don't notice (or care) about "having a space only AFTER the comma" (direct quote from his rant).
I also don't completely agree with his idea that "if you don't have the right qualifications, don't apply for the job". I've applied for a job asking for 4 years experience, but I only had 2 (or a bit less). I still got the job. It is a nitpick, but if you think you're close enough, it's worth giving it a shot. Obviously, asking for a DBA and getting a COBOL programmer applying isn't ideal, but some employers are flexible about years of experience and specific technologies.
Last, but not least, I don't have a domain of my own. I use my Yahoo address and check mail on it regularly. What's wrong with using a free email service anyway ?
Sorry, Mr. Spolsky. You have good points, but I wonder if your rant deserves the publicity that it is going to get with a frontpage Slashdot story. Apologies for the rant of my own :)
It's like any sales process (Score:5, Interesting)
It's no use sending out resumes at random. You need to know who you are speaking to and what they need. Then, try to explain clearly why hiring you will save them money and/or provide other concrete benefits.
The hardest part is getting an interview but normally decent firms will interview several candidates. You can also call before you send your resume, find the person doing the selection, and ask them whether your CV was clear or not. This can help to get it to the top of the stack.
Last piece of advice: this is such a hard time to find tech jobs that you may be better starting your own business one way or another. Ironically, the dot-com boom was better for employees than for businessmen, and this period is the reverse.
Resumes at Job Fairs (Score:5, Insightful)
I am truly amazed at how crappy some resumes are. Some students hand me resumes that are printed off-centered, bad photocopies, wrinkled from the folder they just stuffed it in, etc. If they can't take the time to print their resumes on quality paper and carry them in a resume binder, I tend to believe they are just as careless when they are working.
Spacing and formatting is also a huge problem. Highlight the most important aspects of your resume. When looking at hundreds of resumes in a few hours, you want to be able to easily spot education and skill set (especially when dealing with college students who have little experience).
Many applicants came to the job fair dressed in non-formal attire. This is not good. At least, wear a shirt and tie. Don't roll out of bed and throw on some jeans, take the time to look presentable.
Like Solsky says, do these factors hurt an applicant if they have they meet the necessary requirements, sometimes. When applying for a job, you are selling yourself and must put your best effort in every little detail. From resume to dress, you will be scrutinized and judged. Look your best.
I don't get this (Score:5, Insightful)
See, I don't get this. I wear ties when expected by our dippy culture, but I never understood what the hell they are supposed to mean. As far as I can tell, it's some pointless relic from an bygone era. I'm not saying show up in torn jeans, but why can't people be comfortable in an interveiw instead of tarting themselves up with clothing they will never be wearing on the job? Why can't we have some sort of happy medium?
Some of the most brilliant engineers and scientists have are perpetually casual dressers. It's irrelevant. Drug dealers wear suits. Kenneth Lay wore suits. Saddam Hussein wore suits. It's meaningless.
We hired a guy last year who showed up in an expensive Italian suit (he came from a semi-rich family). He turned out to be one of the biggest screw ups we've ever had, and was fired six months later for accessing porn sites on his work PC.
Pants (Score:5, Funny)
I wear pants when expected by our dippy culture, but I never understood what the hell they are supposed to mean. As far as I can tell, it's some pointless relic from an bygone era.
From Dilbert... (Score:4, Funny)
Job ads are no better (Score:3, Insightful)
And it bugs me, because when I do find a job that looks interesting, I want to write something that they can use.
I have been reading af fair deal of job applications so I know when you have to read through 200 mails, you have to catch people's interest in the two first lines. Don't start with your life story, start with something that tells the reader that you can offer what they need and you are relevant for the job and they will read on. But it is hard to write something they can use when all you got are their marketing speech and you might focus on the wrong things in your application.
Grammarians UNTIE!!! (Score:4, Funny)
What he really needs is an editor to catch his sentence fragments.
As usual, Joel's whines contain some truth (Score:5, Informative)
The trick with resumes is to get noticed, but not for the wrong reasons. A resume (at least in the tech world) has to walk a fine line: you want to get past the HR people who will be looking for keywords, but you also have to prove to the tech person who will end up reading it that you are not a total tool.
My last resume worked pretty well; I sent it to 5 employers and got 3 interviews (the other 2 were, frankly, out of my league but it never hurt anybody to aim high). The 3 interviews got me 2 offers, and I have a job from one of them.
From the resumes and cover letters I've been seing lately, I would offer this advice to job seekers:
Anyways, that's just me and YMMV. Selling is easy it just takes the will to close the guy.
Are you Good Looking? (Score:3, Funny)
Please, please do not fax an 8x10 photo of yourself!
rants on joels rants (Score:3, Insightful)
# Even stupider is submitting two big Word documents with no body text in the email. This just gets you spam filtered. I don't even SEE these.
There so many, seemingly endless ways of doing things, that getting stuff like this shouldn't be an issue for people hiring. The first part above, I see no problem having text in the body of the email that is a cover letter, then attaching a PDF or something of the same cover letter. Why? Text if they can't read a PDF, and PDF if they want a nice printout of it. It's not senseless as Joel puts it.
The next quote above, about 2 attachments and no body. This is something you as the recruiter, HR, or drone in charge of the first round of hiring should have stated in your advertisement. Maybe not if it is a newspaper ad for lack of space, but online definately. Say that you don't accept word documents, or say that you must put your cover letter as plain text in the body of the email, etc. Give the applicants some rules to follow. If they cannot do that, it's a good first filter... not a reason for ranting.
My bigest pet peeve in my 9 months of unemployment before finally getting a job, is that the ads hardly ever stated what kind of documents they wanted. If they didn't say, I usually sent the stuff as plain text, hoping that it would be legible on their end. Other times based on the company, I would try to make a judgement as to whether they would know what to do with a PDF and would send the resume as that. Sometimes with cover letter attached as plain text with a brief note in the body of the email say why i'm sending this email. Sometimes with the cover letter as text in the body. If they said "WORD DOC ONLY" I would usually reconsider sending them anything.
Everyone should just say how they want it, and it would minimize these wastefull rants from Joel.
The worst part about resumes, is that you never get feedback from the company you sent it to. And by never I mean 1 out of 50 might send you back a canned, automated email response. Fog Creek does this if I remember correctly, I applied there last summer. Atleast it felt canned. Which was great though, because it was the first response I got back from anyone or anything over the course of many months. That after having my resume and and cover letters reviewed by english majors, parents, people in the software industry and former coworkers.
There is no One Right Way (Score:4, Insightful)
I had praises about my reseme at one place (although it was not enough to get me hired but not because of the resume), and a few weeks later a recruiter told me to completely redo it.
The people who read resumes and cover letters are as diverse as the people who write them. Anyone who claims there is One Right Way is a bigger bullshit artist than those who write fluffy cover letters.
Shareware vs. MIT (Score:5, Interesting)
In my 15 years of hiring new college grads for entry level engineering positions, I've seen some total fucknuts come out of MIT. I mean complete mouth-breathers who couldn't solve a problem without their hands being held from start to finish.
I'm not putting MIT below any other school, I'm just surprised that it had an equal percentage of dead wood as the local state school.
However, I do find that the students who excel from MIT, generally do so to a much higher degree than the top performers from other schools.
I'd immediately pounce on an applicant who started and finished a big project, on their own time, during high-school. Hardware, software, organization: the simple fact that you have problem solving skill and care about something is a HUGE plus. Can't stress that enough.
GPA and SAT scores are the LAST things I look at.
Entirely wrong. (Score:3, Informative)
In several cases I've created different resumes for the HR department, interviewer, and hiring manager, all of them definitely discussing the same things, but each one with a different focus. HR was interested in database scanning for buzzwords, the interviewer was interested in understanding my social interactions with other people, and the hiring manager was interested in the social skills + raw technical capabilities.
After this, despite several experts saying I had the best resume/application materials they'd ever seen, along with a solid technical background, it took almost two years to find another technically oriented job.
Some of it might have to do with visible disabilities that make it difficult to share space with me until you're used to it. Some of it might be due to the fact that I'm not the _best_ in the world at what I do, and neither am I an A-type alpha-male personality that so many people tend to look for these days. Yet more if it has to do with the fact that probably 75% of the "jobs" out there are for companies without a shred of collective morality or benevolence to temper greed.
But in the end, it's a fact that there just aren't many jobs out there, and those that are available just aren't desirable, and no amount of research can help you accurately represent yourself if the company in question willfully lies to you about the hiring process, or uses a poorly informed HR department to scan for technical requirements it doesn't understand. Let these companies die the death they deserve.
The real problem is incompetent employers (Score:5, Interesting)
The real problem here are incompetent, rude, and stupid employers. I've been through enough interview situations to know that the real incompetent factor in the job interview process is usually the employer. What burns me up these days are employers who can't even bother to contact you after you've gone in and interviewed with them. Think about it. You go out of your way to dress up for an interview, get your butt to the interview, spend an hour or two answering questions, and then the potential employers can't be bothered to contact you about the outcome of the interview.
Here is a short list of rude and stupid behavior that I have experienced from potential employers:
1) If you are contacting me to set up an interview, I assume that you have noticed the fact that I live halfway across the country from your office. Do you understand what a *phone interview* is?
2) It is rude behavior to leave an interviewee in a room so you can go get some cake at the department birthday party (Aspen Sytems in Washington, DC).
3) When you ask me stupid questions like "What are your greatest strengths and weaknesses?" I make a mental note that I will not work for your company.
4) I sent you a nice resumer, cover letter and thank you letter after the interview. The least you can do is send me a rejection letter when you have made your decision.
5) Please don't spring "tests" and "homework assigments" on me when I show up for an interview. Please have some respect for my experience, skills, and time. Just because you think that it is a cute idea to send me home with "homework," doesn't mean that you are finding out anything more than you could have learned from my resume and interview. Stop wasting my time!
6) If the interview is going to take more than an hour, please tell me ahead of time so I can adjust my plans accordingly. It really sucks to show up for an interview only to be handed an "itinerary" for three hours of interviews.
7) It says a lot about your organization when you interview me once, then interview me again three months later, and never bother following up with me with a phone call or letter (ACLU).
8) Don't assume that I will leave the job because I am "overqualified." If I bothered to show up for the interview, then I have solid reasons to want the job. Did it ever occur to you that I might want a part time job so I can have time for the family or other projects or jobs?
9) Where do I see myself in five years? Probably in your job, if this is the most intelligent question you can throw at me.
Yeah, people write bad resumes, but let's talk about stupid employer tricks!
Real boners... (Score:5, Interesting)
Worst cover letter boner:
"I have good communicationing skills. As you seeing from cover letter, I can speaking and writing very well English"
Okaaaay... look, I don't need a James Joyce clone for an entry level engineering job so this kind of English is not a disqualifier by itself, but I try to avoid the delusional. Don't fib.
Worst resume boner:
Some guy got past the screeing process with a resume that looked quite good. Lot's of relevant experience items. So, naturally, I thought I'd pick one and let him expound, you know, give him a chance to show his stuff. First one fizzled. Second. Third. So, about the fifth try I decided to pick one a drill down to the bedrock, what did this guy really know? He listed experiece with SPICE. So I asked him some basic SPICE questions. Deer in headlights. It turns out, the "experiece" this guy had with spice, is that when he was a lab monitor some grad student had needed SPICE on a workstation, so he had tar'ed it off the tape. THAT WAS IT. He ran tar to pull SPICE off a tape. His entire resume was just as inflated as that item. His interview day ended shortly after.
Don't inflate, don't stretch. It will bite you in the ass, big time.
Joel has it all figured out (Score:4, Insightful)
His strategy seems to be: rant like a lunatic and behave like a jerk. Then, only people with low self-esteem will apply and management will become really easy. Great idea.
Of course, lots of big organizations had figured that one out long ago, having a long tradition of degrading application and hiring procedures of their own.
Dispelling a popular myth. (Score:5, Interesting)
A job advertisment is NOT a lottery, it is an invitation to enter into a BUSINESS NEGOTIATION with them in which you exchange something they need (your skills) for something you need (dollars). You should ALWAYS have the view that they are on trial by you just as much as you are by them and you will walk away from the table if they aren't the right fit for you. NEVER adopt the demeanor of the supplicant or job-beggar.
Another thing I have to take exception to is this statement: If you don't have the right qualifications, don't apply for the job. That depends on who wrote the qualifications and how reasonable they are. Often the list is written by some HR drone who doesn't know shit from shinola, much less what UNIX is or what a router looks like or that you can't possibly have 5 years experience deploying Windows 2003! Maybe you don't exactly meet their qualification list...so what? If you think you can do the job and offer them something of value, by all means apply! I've applied for (and landed) jobs that I wasn't fully qualified for. Who knows? The other guy they're considering might be a super-qualified asshole. I'd rather train somebody I can get along with than have to deal with an asshole any day! And if some HR dork gives you grief for "wasting their time" because "you don't meet their list", politely remind them that your time is valuable too.
Joel's right, but there's alot more to it (Score:4, Funny)
I've been doing alot of interviewing over the past several years and there's one thing that far too many people just don't get:
KNOW WHAT YOU PUT ON YOUR RESUME!
Seems like a pretty obvious thing, eh? No that I can prove. Not telling blatant lies on your resume is also important, but regardless of the truthfulness of what you've written, you need to remember it's on there.
Me: (seeing AIX experience on resume) What kind of experience have you had with AIX?
Applicant: Um, AIX?
Me: What platform does AIX run on?
Applicant: What's AIX?
If you put it on your resume at least know what the hell it is and remember it's on there. Even if that means you bring a copy of the resume with you and you look at it. I'm not even going to touch how I feel about the recruiter who brought this person in to waste the time of 4 different people who can't afford it because we're understaffed and trying to find someone to pick up the load. You know, the reason we're hiring in the first place? ARGH!
Re:Spaces? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Spaces? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Ranting (Score:3, Informative)
stupid ( P ) Pronunciation Key (stpd, sty-)
adj. stupider, stupidest
I thought that Mr. Spolsky had made a mistake too, until I noticed that the word stupider _does_ exist as an adjective
Re:whateva (Score:4, Interesting)
Many people believe this saying. More correctly its "not what you know, but who knows you". Think about it for a sec. Someone like Linus could easily have a 1 line resume:
- I created Linux in 1991.
The person reading this probably knows who Linus is (or should), Linus, more than likely, does not know the person reading the resume.
Re:whateva (Score:4, Funny)
We don't care about a college software project you did over a decade ago. At a minimum, we require a work history for the last three years.
Regards,
Human resources
Re:A Few Quick Bits of Wisdom for Mr. Spolsky (Score:5, Insightful)
Indians aren't a race. They are a nationality. There are a wide variety of ethnicities in India.
To point out that a large number have in common a particular grammatical mistake isn't racist. It's just observation.
"Stupid Indians" might be getting closer - at least it's prejudice of some sort.
There are a lot of problems that could be solved more easily if there wasn't always someone jumping out to call "racist" anytime someone points out a statistical truth about a demographic. Hey, is it racist to say that American Jews are better educated than the general population? No? Then how can it be racist to say that American blacks are less well-educated than the general population? If we can't even say it out loud, how can we solve it?
If Joel can't tell his Indian candidates (albeit in a somewhat snotty way), hey, I pay attention to grammar and punctuation, so don't give me a resume that looks like you pasted it from AIM, than how are they going to learn that his standards, and those of American employers generally, may differ from the standards to which they are accustomed?
Re:A Few Quick Bits of Wisdom for Mr. Spolsky (Score:4, Insightful)
I think that one needs to be careful to be extremely precise when making such statements. A statement like, say, "men are better at math than women" is often taken to mean any of:
Etc., etc.; some of these versions are more or less true (or, more importantly, more or less testable) than others. It's in the slipping between all of these than I think people often unknowningly cover up what is essentially sexist thinking. So I think it's important to make sure you say precisely what you mean.
--Bruce Fields
Re:For the multitudes... (Score:3, Informative)
Scumbucket's successful karma-whore (Score:5, Interesting)
...Hey,
Congrats on a VERY successful Karma-whore. +5 insightful, very well done. When I originally wrote it, it only got +4, informative.
Just in case anyone else cares, however, I posted this comment originally in response to "Have You Personally Used an Honest Head Hunter?" on September 30, under the subject line "Guess I've been lucky..."
All in all, this doesn't bother me too much, I figure you know you've "arrived" on /. when the whores start plagarizing your comments.
Rock on!
Re:Joel: master of misinformation (Score:4, Funny)
Easy enough, check!
What techniques do you find work best for this? Do you cold call random people in the company? Hang out suspiciously outside the building? Constantly hang out in outside places (restaurants especially) where employees hang out? I've been trying it, and all I get are restraining orders for stalking.
Interesting. So you're skipping the whole "job listings" idea where a company advertises the help that it needs, instead chosing to apply for theoretical jobs that might not exist.
A traditional recommendation, check.
I'm a software engineer. How exactly do I apply this? I've been breaking into their computer systems and snooping on their email, but it's hard to identify the key problems. Should I break into the office and rifle through their paperwork? Should I question the contacts I made in step 2? That would show that I had enough drive to convince a potential future co-worker to break their confidentiality agreement. Maybe I should only apply to companies that publically advertise their future plans and current problems? I have been thinking about stealing a copy of their source code so I could actually be prepared to solve problems today.
Another benefit of taking control (And not providing a resume, as you suggest later), is that it's hard to actually question me on my qualifications and prior experience, another advantage for me!
Check.
Aaaaah, here's the key! Not five minutes after I've finished the interview (in which I presumably thanked them for asking me in), there will be a note in their inbox, full of thanks, ready to blow fresh smoke up their asses. Shall I follow it with flowers and perhaps some chocolates? Here I
Ah, only apply to companies whose hiring departments are so bored that they'll schedule an interview without even glancing at a resume in advance!
Thanks, I look forward to applying your tips in my future job searches!