

Ask HN: Help a Highschooler with His Resume - SlyShy

learninfreedom.org/resume.pdf<p>I'm looking for a job or internship to hack at this summer. I'd like to get feedback from this group, because I'd enjoy being at a start-up or similarly challenging technical environment.<p>Right now my resume is tailored more to seeking a typical summer internship at a large company, I feel, but I'd like to know what you want to see more of. I was weighing mentioning skills like Rails and Node.js but I feel like just about anyone can claim experience. I'm leaning towards only listing skills I can currently demonstrate with a code sample.<p>To that purpose I'm working on open sourcing a handful of the components I've written for my project/start-up idea. The first of these is a high accuracy sentence tokenizing library, but it's of limited use until I release the HTML text sanitizer that goes along with it. (The full capability is taking Markdown or Textile and tokenizing those into fully formed sentences with the markup intact. There is a good amount of contextual logic that makes sure inline &#60;code&#62; and such niceties are recognized as part of the sentence, and correctly interpreting links, etc.)<p>I'm still working on open sourcing more of my code, but meanwhile I think I need to get into the job market for this summer. What do you think I should do?
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patio11
Your resume is all about you. Successful sales is all about them. I'd focus
less on what classes you're taking (of rather less intense interest to other
people than it is to you) and more on what you can do for them. Give higher
billing to the fact that you have Actual Shipping Products With Code You Wrote
In Them. ("Code I wrote actually executes in a production environment! And it
doesn't explode!") This is a signal of ability to complete tasks, maturity,
and a bit of professionalism sadly lacking in most academically inclined
programmers.

(And I say that as somebody who was 25 before he started using, e.g., source
control and routinely writing things that successfully executed the first time
I pronounced them "done".)

~~~
SlyShy
Thanks, that's encouraging to hear. There's a group of people who give me
advice that make it sound like all companies care about is GPA and the likes.
My response was skepticism, because there have to be people who have the
experience to evaluate past that surface level.

I'll definitely be emphasizing the code I've written then, because I think
that is a strong point. And to be fair to you, I think version control was
probably more difficult when you were younger. Git has been a joy, especially
compared to SVN, which was my first exposure to source control.

~~~
patio11
If you were being fair, you'd describe my younger self as lazy and ignorant.
(My present self is slightly less ignorant -- still lazy, though.)

SVN is an adequate version control system, _especially_ as compared to
nothing. Heck, _anything_ is better than nothing.

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alexgartrell
Work on an open source project. A real one. Mozilla is super-friendly to new
guys, and working on Chromium means working with Google Engineers and other
smart people.

Also, go to an epically good college. That'll be a huge help down the line.

You should probably consider working for a medium-sized company. Large
companies have a tendency towards being soul crushing places for interns. A
strong, almost-all-of-the-time tendency. The only exceptions might be Google
or Facebook, but your odds of getting in there with only introductory
programming. Most big companies want interns that they can recruit.

~~~
Locke1689
_Also, go to an epically good college. That'll be a huge help down the line._

Seconded. Going to Northwestern has been a big leg up so far. Attending a top
20-30 school (especially in CS) may be the difference in getting an interview
or not (where you can really show off ;)).

~~~
tokenadult
_Attending a top 20-30 school (especially in CS)_

Informational question here from an onlooker:

What's the recent consensus about which schools are the top twenty or thirty
schools in CS, especially for a young person with an interest in start-up Web
service work as contrasted with Wall Street or Big Company work?

~~~
wallflower
Starting a list: Brown, CMU, MIT, Waterloo, BYU, UWashington, Stanford, RPI,
Cornell, Cal

~~~
python123
LOL BYU?? Is that a joke? Or are you just clueless?

~~~
RevRal
Even if wallflower made a mistake, that would be no reason to be
disrespectful.

------
weaksauce
I would put the projects and job experience above the classes. Classes are
easy and everyone with a (decent) brain can do well in them but spearheading a
project and working without getting fired are two things that employers like
to see.

Most employers do not care about your research interests. They are selfish
beasts. All they are thinking about is can this person help me with a problem
I have.

Do not send out a resume without a personalized coversheet. I know this is a
pain but you NEED to do some research on the company and show them that you
can craft a few sentences that pertain to a solution to a problem that they
are having.

Also, If you know how to code, which it looks like you do, you should have no
problem getting a job. Most employers are overwhelmed with terrible candidates
who do not know how to program at all.

Good luck, I'm sure you will do fine.

~~~
SlyShy
Thanks for the tips. I've been preparing cover letters so I'm glad to hear
confirmation that it's a good idea.

~~~
weaksauce
Do not go overboard with the cover letter. Make it a well edited 2-3 short
paragraph letter that shows that you actually researched the company and you
should be good. In life there are no absolutes so not all Recruiters/HR/Team
leaders will read and value the cover letter but it will not go against you
unless it is poorly constructed.

Also, if you have not been in the job world much you might not know that
filling positions is not the most important thing that most of these people
are doing so it is not really that high on their priority list. So what is
needed is a phone call to the person telling them that you applied recently
and was wondering if you had any questions about the resume. (This one might
backfire sometimes but I think that it is a usual net win. The places that it
might backfire at are usually places that you do not want to work at anyways.)
They may have put you in a pile of possible contenders and if you want to
differentiate yourself a personal call can show them that you are motivated
and will follow through.

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psyklic
Just list the titles of the classes -- they are impressive enough. Put your
GPA instead of your grades if it is good.

Emphasize your projects the most -- if you have a good GPA, you need to
distinguish yourself b/c lots of people have good GPAs. So, startups and
companies will be impressed that you do personal projects and show passion.

Elaborate on the exact role you played in each project. For example, for
ImpishIdeas you say you "run" the community, but this is very vague. Did you
found it and design the website? What specific things (briefly) did you do to
"maneuver" it to a #1 site? Similarly with TactfulTokenizer -- after reading
about it, I'm still unsure about your exact role, whether you were part of a
larger team, etc. You may want a brief bulleted list of major things you did
for each project, just so it doesn't become too wordy.

I would put your honors (which are great but lots of people have them) at the
very bottom.

I'd also get rid of the "Languages" section (unless you're applying for an
internship with unique language requirements). Instead, mention the
technologies you used in the body of each of your projects. The problem with a
"languages" section is that everyone will list a ton of languages, and it is
unclear how well the person knows each of them (even if you say "highly
skilled" or whatnot), thereby making it a useless section for differentiating
candidates.

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aaronbrethorst
Definitely put practical project/job experience above education. That'll help
differentiate you.

When I took Csci 1901 (at the U of MN, see Matthew's resume), I—and the other
200 people in the class—had an end of term project that applied what we'd
learned. I'm guessing you probably had to do the same, right? Mention your end
of term class projects. It'll help make your in-class experience seem more
concrete.

On a vaguely related note: if you have the chance, take anything Loren Terveen
or Joe Konstan offer. The experience you'll gain from their classes will pay
off in spades down the road.

~~~
SlyShy
Yeah, we did a little connect 4 AI project, except that you can drop pieces in
from the left side and they float to the right, in addition to normal dropping
from the top. I actually tied for first place in the tournament. Didn't figure
that sort of thing would be interesting on a resume, but that's a good tip.

I'll be sure to look out for their names, that's a helpful tip.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
Way back in 1999 when I did it while enrolled in PSEO we had a game AI. I
don't think I tied for first place. Definitely worth mentioning that :)

Also, take Chris Dovolis and Phil Barry if you get the chance. They're great
guys, too. I think they both occasionally teach 1902.

~~~
SlyShy
I took 1901 with Dovolis and that was well worth my while. I'd done Lispey
things before, so I was initially skeptical, but that course started a love
affair with functional languages.

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lambdom
My 5 cents, but I don't really like the A, B, A-, etc. Focus on what you know
and what you like.. and if you want to show your grades, just join them on
another paper.

~~~
SlyShy
Can't say I was a huge fan either. And here are your three cents change. ;)

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mpk
Filling a resume at your age (yes, making an assumption here)/level of
experience is tricky, but one the plus side it's easy to stick to the 1 A4
rule.

I'd strip the details of the courses you've followed - people reading the
resume will probably know the general details already and use that space to
add a section on motivation and interests (feel free to tailor that to whoever
you're sending it to). Would front-end development interest you? Backend
scalability? Systems automation? Networking? Security? Don't mention specific
technologies, just some broad problem domains.

Good luck!

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acangiano
As someone who is currently reviewing many resumes for two internship
positions at IBM, I can confirm that you've put too much emphasis on the
classes you've taken (but you are in high school, so that's understandable). I
took the liberty of highlighting the areas that I find interesting in your
resume: <http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1733/slyshy.png>

My advice would be to continue to expand that bottom section with further
projects (the open source world is awesome for this).

~~~
SlyShy
Thank you, that's very concrete.

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harrybr
Your CV is often the primary reference point in an interview. So, it makes
sense to put a number of "conversational hooks" in it that you are prepared to
tell a compelling (true) story about. If you have a series of mini stories
prepared in your head, and you've written your CV in such a way that you're
likely to get asked about them, then you're well prepared.

