
Ask HN: What are your best resume tips? - tocomment
Here are some questions I'm coming across, but I'm curious to hear whatever you have discovered in general makes a good resume.<p>Should I include a skills section at the end?  (It looks tacky, but I think a lot of places use automated searches?)<p>For each project I list should I include languages and tools used?<p>If I only have one publication is it worth having a publications section?
======
agotterer
In the last week I have read way too many resumes. Here are some of the things
that I would look to tell all future candidates...

\- Your resume should be no more then 1, if you must 2 pages (1 page per 10
yrs experience). I can't tell you how many 5-7 page resumes I receive that get
a quick skim and thrown aside.

\- Use the cover letter to address the company. Who ever is reading it is
probably reading others as well. The same generic boring BS gets old. Every
letter says "I would be a good fit for your company and my skills match your
job description". That is obvious or you wouldnt be applying, or you didnt
read the job description. Tell the company what you can do for them and not
what they can do for you. Mention why you want to work there and what
intrigues you about the company. Pretend you read the job description and
researched the company. Be personal-able. You are trying to stand out amongst
potentially hundreds of other candidates.

\- A skills section is useful, especially for tech jobs. But you don't need to
mention every tool you have ever used. No one cares that you still know win
3.1 (I see that on resumes sometimes). Give the highlights and worthwhile
list. More is not always better.

\- Definitely include your publications, speaking events anything that shows
your community activity. They dont need to be more then a line or short
description.

\- Some people put what tools and languages are used for every project. It
starts getting repetitive. I think those can be covered in your skills list.
The projects should be short and sweet with a few bullet points. Tell the
reader what the project is and what you contributed. You don't need to list
everything you ever did at a company. Just need to give the reader a taste of
your skill level and ability to perform the job they are filling. If they like
you, you will get an interview or follow up questions.

The goal is not to digest your entire life story and work history into a
resume. Old jobs and projects can fall off the list. I know its hard to part
with some of those things, but it will better your chances that someone will
actually read your whole resume. You want to impress them as quickly as
possible. The goal is to get an interview.

~~~
eru
> More is not always better.

Wasn't there even a study about it, that confirmed your finding?

------
mping
Hard, discrete data such as measurable accomplisments followed by numbers or
equivalent (gave 14 presentations in 3 continents, architect of Apache2 http
server, etc) instead of ambiguous information such as 'gave many
presentations',' founder of many projects',etc.

~~~
dabent
Yes, giving some way of quantifying any accomplishment is a good thing for all
resumes.

After that, I'd go light on keywords if applying to a startup, but rather get
into the tech details of what I'd done at each company. I'd be likely to
describe how I'd deliver software that changed things for the better at each
company.

For a day job, I'm prone to keyword stuffing. I hate to say that, but to get
the resume past HR drones and third-party recruiters, some form of black hat
resume SEO is needed. I have a section at the top that has the keyword and
years of experience for all relevant experience. I also have a roundup of
keywords I'd used at a particular employer. For a startup, I'd be likely to
leave that section off. I only use it for regular jobs because it works. My
resume gets through the filters and to the people who will interview me.

------
eru
On a slightly unrelated note: I use LaTeX and the currvita package for my
resume. It's easy and looks good. Plus the LaTeX source plays nice with git,
and thus helps me keep track of how I customized my resume for different
employers.

The extra-selling point for me is, that the use of LaTeX itself may people in
the know to recognize me as the serious mathematician that I am. (Though
that's no substitute for commercial experience.)

~~~
jbr
Agreed wholeheartedly on LaTeX. It also is a great entry point for a warm-up
conversation at an interview if you format it professionally. I've been asked
a number of times "how'd you do this?" and I'm not doing anything fancier than
a two-column layout.

I think we hackers tend to underestimate the influence presentation has on
perception. A LaTeX-formatted résumé adds a nice touch of professional style
and a little boost of geek cred to academic résumé readers.

Or so I'd like to think…

~~~
eru
And the currvita documentation (e.g. at [http://www.cam.ctan.org/tex-
archive/macros/latex/contrib/cur...](http://www.cam.ctan.org/tex-
archive/macros/latex/contrib/currvita/currvita.pdf)) has actually some nice
general hints on how to write a resume that are applicable even when you do
not use it.

I saw lots of nice and well-presented CV here, where just using LaTeX might
have made them even better. Knuth got something right with TeX.

------
lpolovets
Instead of listing your responsibilities, talk about concrete numbers and
achievements. If you list things like "interfaced with QA", "participated in
planning with product management", or "used JSPs and Servlets to write web-
based mail client", you will not stand out much from other applicants. You
should focus on (preferably quantifiable) results. Examples: "designed and
implemented QA testing plan that raised code coverage of a 100 KLOC email
service from 18% for 63%", "wrote web-based mail client that handles 8000
users and up to 50 requests per second", etc. Try to show what you have
achieved, not what you have worked on.

Along with making your resume stronger, specific points often help guide your
interview predictably. I have 1-2 bullet points that everyone asks about, and
it's great to have a few interview questions that you know you will ace.

------
Uchikoma
As a technical recruiting manager I'd say:

Yes, add skill section, it will get you through most HR filters. Skills should
be plausible and based on experience in job section. Otherwise skills look
fishy to me.

The major tools for each project helps me cross check the skill section with
the jobs. I'd say yes. But do not add all tools and all languages. The most
important ones used are enough. PLEASE: Only add those you've used, not all
tools used by others on a project. This is a warning sign for recruiting
managers should they discover this during an interview. Clearly state your
part of the project. It's too common that candidates describe projects in
wonderful colors and then only have written XML files - which they did not
state in the resume.

I'd drop the publications if you only have one. I do prefer shorter resumes.

Hope that helped.

~~~
sokoloff
It depends on that publication.

If you proved P = NP* and that was your only publication, I'd still include
it.

*-other than the joke "for P = 0 or N = 1"

------
btilly
First I think that anyone who is offering advice on resumes should be willing
to present theirs. Here is mine: <http://elem.com/~btilly/BenTilly.pdf>

I believe that a good resume is one that makes people look twice at you. It
should lay out the facts in as compelling and concise a way as possible.
Whenever possible you should demonstrate to prospective employers that you
provide value, and you understand how much value you provide. Details about
format, layout, and so on should be chosen to highlight your strengths in the
most compelling way possible.

The first trick is that you must hook people fast. Yes, you need a bunch of
keywords for the bots. But you don't want that to be the first thing the
humans read. You want people to read something that can make them dream about
what you could do for them.

The second trick is that a resume is not the time for modesty. When else is it
socially acceptable to sit down and say the nice things about yourself? Don't
hold back, have fun with it!

The third trick is that no matter how much work you put into your resume, you
need your most honest friends to read it and give critical feedback. You don't
want the friend who will say nice things. You want the one who will look at
it, tear apart, let you know why it doesn't work and make you rewrite it. I
don't know how many times I rewrote my resume, but I do know that it is a lot
better for having been rewritten.

I'm starting to ramble now, so I'll stop. So in closing, good luck.

~~~
tocomment
I really like that. BTW where you look for part time consulting jobs like
that? Everything online seems to be full time w2 type work.

~~~
btilly
Networking, networking, networking. I hit up everyone I had worked with in the
previous few years, and several came up with projects that they wanted done
which I was an ideal candidate for.

It helped a lot that I maintained connections and have an unusual combination
of useful skills. Therefore people have things they want done which they know
I can do, but don't know who else could.

------
RiderOfGiraffes
I've written about this before:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=728863>

I freely admit I'm unusual, but then again, so are you.

Here it is again:

If you apply for a job with me, I want to know why I should employ you. I want
to know how you will add value to my company. I want to know that you will
bring skills and abilities.

Do you know what I want? You should. You shouldn't just read the ad for the
job - you should find out what my company does, then read the ad, and work out
how your skills will help me meet my goal of making money. If you can't or
won't do those things, I probably don't want you to work for me.

What skills do you have? _How can I tell?_

Can you work on your own? _How can I tell?_

Can you work in a team? _How can I tell?_

Will you get things done? _How can I tell?_

I don't really care about your education, or your recent jobs, unless they
show me why you are the right person for me. And I want to read that on the
first page, preferably in the first paragraph, and preferably without typos,
grammatical errors, or anything else to distract me. I don't at this stage
really care what your name is, or how to contact you, or whether you can
typeset 16 different fonts on the same page.

Why should I employ you? What do you think I want, and why should I think you
have it.

------
jgrahamc
I like to receive well researched cover letters to go with resumes.

~~~
tocomment
What kind of research? What impresses you in a cover letter?

~~~
jgrahamc
Someone who has researched the company and shows me the relationship between
their resume and the position we are hiring for.

~~~
known
Doesn't it depend on JOB or CAREER the company is offering?

------
dhyasama
Always remember the goal of a resume is to land an interview not land the job.
Your resume should make the employer want to meet you and learn more about
you.

------
wdewind
I'm going through the hiring process now so from my perspective:

Keep your resume short, and tailor it for the specific job. If the job doesn't
say anything about a specific skill, take it off your resume (unless its a
general skill like UNIX) - include no more than 6-10 skills. I definitely
include skills and don't think it's tacky in our applicants, but it is tacky
to include a huge list of acronyms and makes people think you actually know
less (less about more, instead of more about less). Cover letters are nice,
but in my view they are just a paragraph to know how well the person speaks
english (many hackers don't speak english well). I like short, casual, cover
letters ('hi, saw the post on craigslist, heres 4 bullets why im good for the
job, hope to hear from you soon, DONE.) Number one thing for me is to keep in
concise, don't make the reader read through a giant paragraph description of
your work, just bullet points and tailor the bullet points to the job (you're
trying to say "heres my experience at abc123 corp. and heres why its relevant
to you").

cover letter is exponentially more important if you aren't replying to a job
posting, and less if you are (we use craigslist so get a ton of applicants and
we weed people out based on bad english in the cover letter, but we dont
really see many cover letters so good that they sway us positively)

------
cwinters
1) Languages and tools should be highlighted if they're exceptional -- e.g., I
probably don't need to hear that you used SQL to interact with a database, but
if you implemented a set of complex views in T-SQL that's useful.

2) ...which means you need to list your skills somewhere. I tend to categorize
mine for easier scanning (languages, databases, frameworks, build
infrastructure) but YMMV. If something sticks out there I'll ask about it --
"how did you find the experience of implementing a maven plugin?"

3) In the vein of not annoying people who read your resume, name the file you
send "FirstName_LastName_resume.pdf" rather than "resume.pdf". Attention to
detail matters, and people wind up dumping resumes into a directory with
others.

------
DanielBMarkham
As a consultant, I have a sales pipeline that starts out with people searching
for me on LinkedIn or getting a reference from somebody I know.

The next step is for them to look at my resume. If that goes well, then the
next step is a phone interview.

It's all a pipeline, and my resume's main job is to get the phone interview.
That's it. While technically the resume is supposed to be a history of what
you've done, that's what a resume is, not what it's used for. It's used for
screening, therefore it should be good at surviving various screening
processes.

~~~
tocomment
Is your resume much different being designed for consulting instead of a
regular full time job?

~~~
DanielBMarkham
I don't think so.

It's all about showing capabilities. For full-timers, there might be more
interest in "culture fit", but you can't really tell that from a resume.

------
tsestrich
Side note: I have been told by the person in charge of recruiting at my
company that explicitly stating references as "available on request" is really
unnecessary, and just takes up space. Obviously your references should be
available upon request if they aren't on there.

Other tips: \- Avoid using italics, it apparently can cause problems if
someone tries to scan your resume and have a machine read it. \- Keep things
left-aligned as much as possible, so someone quickly glancing down doesn't
have to jump across the page on every line of the resume (this is actually
similar to web design, in that you can assume the reader will spend a very
minimal amount of time reading your resume unless they quickly find something
they like)

------
fogus
General rule of thumb:

Even Steve Jobs' resume is one page, so what makes you think that yours should
be 4?

<http://homepage.mac.com/steve/Resume.html>

(this is an incorrect quote, but I cannot seem to find the original)

~~~
boucher
I was always told in college that hiring managers won't read past the first
page. So I don't.

Having a concise resume is an exercise in good communication and editing
skills. Give me the _most important_ facts, not every single thing you've ever
done.

~~~
ivyirwin
The rules ares changing for length of resume. In college, yes, it should just
be one page, but that's because you most likely don't have any experience. The
one page limit works because it makes you focus on the meat of who you are.

However, as you gain experience, then the one pager can become an artificial
limiter. As many people have explained above, tailor it to the job you are
applying to. But in the hacker community it will be important to show things
you work on for fun as opposed to things you do to pay the bills.

My resume is currently 3 pages. First page is what I love to do (projects I am
working on and consider important). Page two is how I get paid. Page three is
education, skills, references.

~~~
dreish
I can tell you as a hirer I would most likely not seriously consider your
resume. You might think that is unwise, but you clearly don't know what it's
like to wade through a pile of crap from people who are obviously just
spamming every job opening they can find, trying to find the few people who
are _actually_ reasonable candidates, before even trying to figure out which
ones might be any good. Even using a recruiter is of limited use -- you can
give them criteria, but they often just don't know to tell the difference
between a real programmer and someone who has put "programmer" on a piece of
paper.

Three pages, with skills on the third page, is roughly as rude as walking into
my office and unplugging my computer.

------
mgrouchy
I think one of the things that I have found that have worked well on my resume
is a summary of qualifications at the top. Helps you leave out a generic
skills section(which can look cheezy) and lets you highlight whatever you want
to highlight for a particular position.

I make sure that I tailor that summary for every position I apply to make sure
I highlight my relevant skills/experience.

~~~
JangoSteve
I usually summarize qualification as they apply to the job in question in the
cover letter.

Another thing I do, rather than taking up space in your resume with a separate
summary, is to simply make the important words/qualifications bold in your
resume. That makes it easy to skim without using up more resume real estate.

------
alphaBetaGamma
Put in the least amounts of skills that will still land you an interview.

Writing "basic knowledge of Java" adds a lot of credence to "expert in C++".

~~~
eru
So you suggest understatement, to make the dynamic range sound broader?
(Writing "expert in everything" definitely won't work.)

------
tocomment
How do you list an achievement where you were part of a team?

It sounds dumb to me to write: "helped build X". Any ideas?

~~~
jamesbritt
"It sounds dumb to me to write: "helped build X". Any ideas?"

Not all that dumb. But try to include concrete numbers about the value added
to the company because of the team.

Rather than "helped build X", write "helped reduce operations costs (numbers
if possible) by (whatever it was your team did)."

The goal of a resume is to get an interview, so you need to pique the interest
of the reader. Showing that you were at least part of a process that made
money or reduced costs suggests you can help do the same for someone else.

Also, pointing out how your contributions (if even via a team) affected the
bottom line should indicate you have an important awareness of business needs.

------
mapleoin
I've always liked the way this guy's CV is structured(it's on his front page):
<http://www.zeroflux.org/static/resume.pdf>

Btw: he's the guy who created ArchLinux, though he's no longer the lead
developer.

~~~
michaelcampbell
It's nicely laid out. I don't think I'd put education up top (in fact, I
don't). Maybe you would if you're closer to just having graduated, and/or from
a particularly renown University.

~~~
jeffcoat
You're hinting at a general rule that goes something like "the most salient
facts go at the top".

When I was trying to get my first job out of college, the fact that I'd
graduated from a well-known school with a decent GPA was really important, and
mentioned at the top. Ten years later, the fact that I went to school is just
barely interesting enough to sneak in at the very bottom of the page, and my
grades aren't worth mentioning at all.

------
j_baker
I typically turn in my resume using a a flat text file (usually using
restructured text). It's really helpful because you really have no idea how
the company's HR systems will mangle your resume. Plus, doing a resume in ReST
just screams "hacker".

~~~
eru
Yes, text files are among the best choice, when you are actually applying for
a hacker post and know that a hacker will read your resume. If you are not so
sure about your reader, I'd use LaTeX and produce a nice pdf.

It will still be recognized, but it also looks kind of pretty to the mere
mortals.

------
mtholking
Instead of having a skills section at the end of your resume, try showing how
you utilized those skills in the 'work' section. The keywords will still get
hits, and it will give context to how you use those skills, and your
proficiency with them.

~~~
scottyallen
Let's face it, doing interviews can be boring when you do a lot of them, and
so interesting resumes jump out of the stack pretty quickly. Your story should
tell me why, if I choose to have a discussion with you, our conversation is
going to be really engaging and interesting, and how it will convince me that
you're the right person to do the job.

Some characteristics of engaging interviews:

\- They're with people with people who are smart. Show your smart on our
resume either by listing academic achievements if you're just out of school,
or by describing hard problems you've solved.

\- The candidate has done something interesting in their previous experience.
Your resume gives you the opportunity to tell me what the most interesting
thing you've done is. If I agree, you'll get to tell me all about it.

\- The candidate has enough experience to get through my technical questions
in style. I think this is less about knowing specific buzzwords (at least for
how I interview), and more about having solid fundamentals and good hands-on
experience. This suggests it's probably better to talk about hard things
you've worked on, rather than playing buzzword bingo.

------
elbac
The resume is important, but what grabs me every single time is a insightful
and thoughtful cover letter. Honestly 75% of resumes look the same. If you can
get me with the cover letter 9 times out of 10 you'll at least get a phone
screen.

------
tocomment
Side question. I'm also considering doing consulting or contract work so I
figure I should have a separate resume for that.

Does anyone have good examples of a resume geared towards consulting?

(Are they even much different from regular resumes, do consultants need
resumes?)

~~~
HistoryInAction
I haven't done consulting, but I have a basic resume for each job type (public
policy, campaigning, engineering (now out of date), and finance) that I've
been looking for recently that then gets geared towards the specific company
in question.

I'll second the "restate the job posting in the cover letter" thought, though.

------
Edinburger
I like to see a strong, concise introduction/objectives section which (a)
isn't full of buzzwords or B.S. and (b) helps me get a feel for the candidate
and what makes them tick.

