
Why won't anyone talk to me? What recruiters look for in a resume - bratfarrar
http://dandreamsofcoding.wordpress.com/2012/11/19/why-wont-anyone-talk-to-me-what-recruiters-look-for-in-a-resume/
======
nhashem
While I've never been a recruiter, I've been a hiring manager at some mid-
sized companies and worked closely with their recruiters. Side projects or
attempted startups are great, but I've seen countless resumes where they get
completely overlooked because of how they appeared on the resume.

Ultimately whether I saw a resume was dependent on some sort of subjective
pattern matching done by the recruiter. This pattern matching is usually
primitive and generally is just a check on whether your "years of experience"
is within striking distance of whatever was in the job listing (e.g. "Senior
Software Engineer" that required 5+ years of experience, the recruiter would
filter anyone with less than 3 years), and (sometimes) would check whether
your resume contained enough buzzwords. Yes, this is awful, and no, not every
organization does it this way, although a lot do.

So while listing side projects on your resume is good, it's important to get
it past the recruiter screen _by translating those side projects into years of
experience._ Rather than just a single line in your resume like, "Side
Projects: Enguarde.ly, a Link-Sharing Site for Fencers," find some way to list
Enguarde.ly as experience. For example, list the time you worked on your side
projects as experience as a "Web Consultant," put Enguarde.ly as a 'portfolio
project' and describe the technology you used to build it.

Once your resume actually gets to a hiring manager, everything the OP talked
about is much more relevant, because you'll actually have someone who can
evaluate your resume. Although I think this post overstates how much your
undergrad degree matters. I am a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania,
typically considered a very prestigious school, but the engineering school is
ranked 27th according to US News and World Report rankings[0]. I know many
hiring managers who would much rather interview someone with an interesting
set of portfolio side projects than someone who went to a prestigious school.
Your alma matter can sometimes provide a small bonus as a small signaling
effect, but I consider software engineering a discipline where a formal
education is only loosely correlated with skill.

[0] [http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/engineering-
majors/12136...](http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/engineering-
majors/1213609-usnwr-2012-best-undergraduate-engineering-programs.html)

~~~
idunno246
I've seen good resumes and had my boss say "but he only went to .." And I
didn't even read the college section So education can matter until it gets to
the right people. It's an easy filter, sort of, since rankings are pretty
bogus anyway.

~~~
robeastham
I've always avoided being too elitist when it comes to a candidate's
school/university when hiring people. Partly I guess because I didn't go to a
particularly prestigious one myself. I guess my point is that it depends who
is reviewing your resume and what their background is as to whether this
really matters.

For me I found that the best way to stand out when looking for a new position
was to work on a side project. Sneakily my side project was a resume building
app. Which meant I got a nice new resume out of the deal too. It definitely
got me noticed and people came to me rather than me having to apply for jobs.
I even got some telephone interviews for startups in the Bay despite being
located in the UK.

Overall I think if you build out some form of beta app and execute to a
minimum viable product level of service then that's going to be a good thing
for your chances of employment.

So now for my shameless plug. I'm continuing to slowly bootstrap MightyCV - my
resume creation app with hacker leanings. It has integrations with HN, github
and StackOverflow along with some other cool features. You can see an example
of what one looks like here:

<http://robeastham.mightycv.com>

If you like the look of it you can sign up for a beta invite at:

<http://www.mightycv.com>

I'm hoping to redo the management interface over the next month or two and
push out a largish update to the service along with some bug fixes.

------
aneth4
Wow, if you are skilled technically and aren't annoyed by constant recruiter
outreach, you are doing something majorly wrong. I'd also say technical
recruiters are also doing something majorly wrong if your resume reflects your
abilities.

If you've coded anything that does something interesting, you should have no
problem finding interviews, and frankly offers.

If you haven't coded anything interesting, then why would anyone hire you?
Build something or work on an open source project.

I suggest taking your own project from start to production - this is the type
of general knowledge and competence startups look for.

~~~
shanelja
I'm 19 and skipped college and university to travel, I freelanced for a couple
of years and worked on games and personal hobby projects during this time and
currently work at a small web development company.

I only have 6 months of _commercial_ experience but I get approached
_literally_ daily by recruitment companies because of a single resume I posted
on a website and it is driving me crazy.

They all ring me up and say "Don't trust another company, they will screw you
over, trust us instead" and "The job states it wants 5 years of experience,
but that doesn't matter, I'll send your resume too."

Honestly, I wouldn't mind as much, but it all feels half assed, they don't
want to find me a job, they want to find their company an employee,
telephoning me and pretending to give a crap about my life is all well and
good, but to be honest, when you go cold for a week after that without a
single email it makes the candidate feel worthless.

That and the fact that if a candidate isn't accepted for an interview, the _de
facto_ method of rejection is simply not getting back to them unless they
contact you.

This space really needs to be disrupted, for the love of a God, why isn't
there a _humane_ recruitment company?

~~~
aneth4
I feel you. For sure, most recruiters are basically trying to fill a position
- they work for commissions, and the hiring company, not you. Expecting a
recruiter who contacted you to represent your interests is like expecting the
lawyer for a company suing you to give you legal advice.

I think your expectation is a little off, and you may view it differently if
you viewed them as someone you are doing business with, not an advisor. When
someone is trying to sell you a car, they will butter you up the same way.

There ARE humane recruiters who can be more representative of your needs, but
they don't usually cold call with specific positions in mind. They build a
network of good candidates and people who would have good referrals, then
reach out to them when they have a position that's a good fit.

Of course, you've proved my point above :) It doesn't take much to get
smothered by recruiters.

Frankly I think the original article is linkbait. It presupposes a problem
that does not exist.

------
paupino_masano
Surprisingly, I have the opposite trouble: how do I stop recruiters trying to
recruit me? I have about 15-20 recruiters contacting me per week however what
I put it down to is:

1\. Location. Since I moved to SF the job offers have increased
_substantially_.

2\. Skill set. Fortunately I'm skilled in some "popular" languages.

3\. Years of experience. I'm in the "hot spot" - not too old, and not too
young (sorry - it does seem to be a factor...)

What I find however that recruiters don't necessarily look for anything BUT
the above things. I've been approached for the weirdest jobs (considering my
experience) from what I believe as a simple keyword search. When it comes to
interviewing, the recruiters typically have no idea what they're talking
about. This means that they're more interested in forwarding the resume from a
brief "do you know this, have you had experience in this" as opposed to really
understanding the position. Fortunately, I have had enough experience to
interview the recruiters as opposed to them interviewing me.

My advice for developers struggling to get jobs (from how I hire...):

1\. Have experience - whether professional or hobby. If it is a hobby: open
source it.

2\. Show initiative. You need to show you have the ability to actually
_think_.

3\. You don't need to know the answers. It's all about the approach to the
problem.

4\. Try to stand out amongst the resumes. I feel bad to say this: but
unfortunately it's true. Given 100 resumes, you're probably only going to
really look at 10.

5\. Show charisma

I'd recommend other's to add to this: it's just a list I made from what is off
the top of my head. But in regards to the article I disagree with:

1\. Startup experience. It depends on what type of job you're going for - some
will admire the drive, some will fear it (will you leave after a year)

2\. School. I don't give a flying f* if they're from MIT or the University of
Waikato. However I would give SOME preference to them studying at a school
which includes algorithms and memory management (but that is me). Believe me:
that (unfortunately) isn't a given...

I'm sure I'll probably get down votes for this; but please comment if you do
disagree :) I'm only speaking from my experience as both a student (always)
and as an employer.

~~~
JoeCortopassi
I've actually had a similar struggle with the incessant but spammy recruitment
emails, that I was able to fix almost perfectly. In the "Summary" section of
my LinkedIn[1], I have a sentence that says this:

    
    
      "If you wish to contact me, please put the word 'Waffles' 
      in your message. It sounds silly, but it lets me know that 
      you have taken a little time to asses my profile, rather than 
      mass messaging people based on a keyword search."
    

"Waffles" will never be added by coincidence, so if I ever see that in the
subject line of an email, I know that the recruiter has actually read my
profile, and took the time to write a custom email to me. If it doesn't have
the word "Waffles", I just ignore/delete it. It has dramatically improved the
quality of emails I get from this vector

[1] <http://www.linkedin.com/pub/joe-cortopassi/24/76b/5b9/>

~~~
gregpilling
I see you worked for Jardine. I own a company that is also a SEMA member, and
for those programmers out there looking for work, most of the members of SEMA
could use advanced technical help. SEMA.org is the automotive aftermarket
industry group and is for the most part not very technical. In other words
they need a lot of help. They just launched a big initiative this year that
has the bold goal of standardizing industry data, so they are just now getting
into the computer age with gusto (to be fair, many larger companies have been
using EDI for years).

Sorry for wandering off topic. I have used a method similar to your "waffles"
technique when hiring for positions. It reduces the 100's of applicants for a
job down to a few, simply because most people won't read your postings
clearly. It has saved me hundreds of hours in the recruitment process.

------
jowiar
The resume review process isn't intended to find the single best candidate.
It's intended to whittle a big pile of resumes down to one that can be
reasonably covered by the next stage of the process. Coming from public
listings, the pile of resumes is enormous, and most of them are utter garbage.
There may be thousands of resumes where the goal is to find a couple dozen
candidates. At some point, the only way to do this is to apply really broad
filters: "Went to Stanford, MIT, CMU...", "Worked at MS, Google, FB,
Apple...", "Proficient in Scala, MongoDB".

I didn't really appreciate this until I was on the other side of the massive
pile-o-resumes, but it's really the only option.

I hate saying this, because I generally believe that "problems solved" are far
more indicative of success than any specific school, company, or technology. I
have at times used a resume that doesn't do the whole buzzword-bingo game with
very limited success - It basically never got pulled from a big pile-of-
resumes unless I had a friend on the inside, or was applying to a job on my
school's job board (where clearly everyone passed this "filter").

------
cllns
I'm not sure UIUC and UT-Austin are great examples for second-tier schools, as
both are top 10 for graduate CS departments.

~~~
batgaijin
I disagree entirely. Graduate school has nothing to do with the undergraduate
curriculum. I went to a school with an amazing graduate program but I had a
terrible watered down education that barely went passed Java and did not push
me or many of the other students.

It's an excellent opportunity for summer research jobs and the such, but
otherwise does not translate well into the lower curriculum unless you want it
to.

~~~
cllns
I agree: a good graduate school can offer a good undergraduate education _if
you want it to_. The ambition to get a good education when it's available (but
not necessary) is highly desirable, no?

------
redguava
I think the single best thing you can do is tailor your resume/cover letter
for the job you are applying for.

Every company wants to think that you really want to work for them and only
them. If you send out an obviously standard cover letter and resume, it's very
easy to get brushed over.

Spend 10 minutes on their website/blog reading about them and tailor your
application to match. Include some comments that show you have done so.

You can't change what education/experience you have (well you shouldn't), but
you can definitely show that you made an effort.

------
EricDeb
Articles like this tell me there is a strong need for improvement in tech
recruiting. If a candidate truly is "a great coder, easy to work with, and
knows data structures and algorithms backwards and forwards" then he/she
should have no problem landing a job regardless of his/her background.

I only hope there are firms that see through this elitism and realize that
there are undervalued tech wizards out there waiting to be given an
opportunity.

~~~
davs
bravo, nicely written !

one would think that great coders grow on trees or something, heh?

------
louischatriot
Very sound advice. Having been to a top school is indeed important (even
though not necessary). A while ago, I was offered a very well paid freelance
gig just because I went to a French top engineering school. I didn't know
anything about the technologies I had to use but they didn't give a damn.

Of course not everyone thinks like that, but it's puzzling that some people
actually do.

------
moocow01
Yeah these points are valid (although it should be noted that they align with
the author's background - sorry the TripAdvisor mention made me curious)

I think they are more applicable to early career.

In my experience, connections and relationships are way more powerful than any
of the stuff mentioned with the baseline that you are competent and relatively
easy to work with.

~~~
bratfarrar
True (I hope), true, and VERY true. :)

------
rrmm
Does anyone have some examples of resumes they've used successfully; or from
the hiring side, resumes that stood out to them?

Anyone A/B testing their resumes?

~~~
Trezoid
As current student trying to come up with a good resume at the moment, this
would be extremely useful.

~~~
warrenm
This is my _personal_ method of phone screens, but I've seen/heard it used
similarly elsewhere: [http://antipaucity.com/2011/10/03/doing-technical-phone-
scre...](http://antipaucity.com/2011/10/03/doing-technical-phone-
screens/#.UKu-eodlH00)

------
Ologn
During hiring, I have looked through dozens, if not hundreds of resumes over
the years, mostly for Unix systems administrator positions.

You can tell a lot about what someone knows just by how they put together
their resume, over and above the work experience. A question I used to ask on
interviews was, "Have you ever worked with Gnu programs, like gcc, Gnu make
etc.?" Hiring Unix admins in 1998, when you couldn't get your hands on an
experienced one, you'd be surprised how many blank looks I got at that
question. Once I got a resume which was very well-written, and he even had the
Gnu tools he knew listed. Considering how dismal prior candidates had been, I
almost wanted to hire him sight unseen just seeing that. We did make him an
offer, which he turned down. It's more than just what buzzwords to put, it's
knowing what buzzwords to put and not to put. Most of the time, people who
don't know what they're doing don't even know what will sound good on a
resume, even if their resume is BS.

In terms of my own resume, in 2000 I had a lot of buzzwords on the top. But
then people would ask me detailed questions about some of that software, some
of which I had not touched for three years. So I removed those words from the
top of the resume so as to avoid those questions. But then I stopped getting
as many calls. So I put them back. Better to look dumb in an interview then
never get the interview I figured.

For you young ones - tech guys like me generally just care if you know the
stuff or not. Managers, HR etc. are generally more formal - they want to know
what degrees you have, they like to see buzzwords and several years of
experience, especially at large companies, hear from references, know why you
have a gap of two months in your employment record and so forth. Non-techies
have no gauge to tell how well you know your stuff.

A caveat about large companies - at startups, an older person who has worked a
long time at a big company - this can be held against you. You have to make
clear you'll be OK with the fact that there is not yet a backup system, or
code revision control system, or whatever. You have to say, "I understand you
don't have this stuff, and I am fine with you not having it yet, I'll help you
build it out as the company grows".

~~~
monksy
On the flip side of the coin, I've seen Unix Admin positions that ask for C++
experience. A sys admin being able to develop? Come on..

~~~
warrenm
If you can't write at least _some_ kind of program/script, you can't sysadmin.

And, in many places (especially smallish shops), the sysadmin is also a
developer is also an interviewer is also is also is also...

------
takrupp
Technical recruiting is hard, but I think good technical recruiters approach
things differently than this. Its not as black and white, everything lives in
the nuances:

We are looking for some sort of external validation: A really popular module
on CPAN? Graduated with a 4.0? Graduated from Stanford? Hired full time by
Google? That is all external validation, and it is something that shows me
that other people / organizations think you are good. I really need just one
piece of solid validation for me to speak with a candidate and this can take
on a lot of forms. In lieu of this, we can administer a coding test if someone
is on the cusp.

The second thing I look for is passion: Is this person a 9 to 5 code monkey in
it for the solid and consistent paycheck? Or do they love the work they do and
constantly push themselves to further their craft? You can almost always get
to the bottom of this question on the phone. Journeymen programmers are fine
for a lot of jobs, but not for the jobs we are talking about here.

If both of those line up then the candidate is good, and we will represent
them. We can't promise a placement, but I would be surprised if someone with
both of those boxes checked didn't get at least one offer. They are really
hard to find.

~~~
warrenm
If you're recruiting by people who "love what they do" - that's awesome .. but
don't forget they need to have a life and a family they're likely taking care
of, too: if you're recruiting for the positions wherein 50 or 60 hours is
"normal", then I hope you're only getting single folks who don't care if they
have a life :)

The occasional long week is fine - but I'm going to be a lot more interested
in someone who is good but expects a "normal" amount of work.

------
shrikant
I'm not so sure about this bit:

 _> Resumes should be summaries, with more detail for recent positions, less
detail for more distant ones. If you’ve been in industry for ten years, you
can have a second page. No one needs more than two._

I agree with this in principle, and strongly 'implemented' this approach as
well in an earlier version of my CV.

[To be fair, I'm looking for a product management role, and not a dev job, so
maybe it's different here?]

But recruiters just kept asking me for a more detailed version so often, that
I just gave up and made a 2-pager. I personally believe it goes into far too
much detail than is necessary, but the difference in response is quite stark
from both startups and BigCos alike.

From the other side of the issue, when recruiting PMs or analysts, I always
made a conscious effort to ensure that CVs that fell afoul of 'industry
standard guidelines' weren't overlooked solely for those reasons. As in, I
honestly didn't give a shit if it was one page, or two, or six, as long as it
gave the information I was looking for. (However, I suspect I may have been in
a minority then..)

~~~
jiggy2011
Every single person, whether they are a recruiter and project manager , a
guidance counsellor or your mother has a different opinion about how long your
CV/Resume should be and will have all sorts of reasons justifying why they are
correct.

So the only sensible thing to do is go with the length that you feel sells you
best.

~~~
warrenm
I can't agree more!

Mine has 'relevant' experience on the first couple, then 'other' experience on
the last howevermany.

A fixed length is one of the __worst __things you can do, in my opinion: it
needs to be how I heard an English professor describe her writing assignments:
"It should be like a girl's skirt - long enough to cover everything, but short
enough to keep it interesting"

------
monksy
I'm not sure what the deal was about the schools. An expectation of a top tier
school is mostly useless. Yes a solid education is important, however just
because you have credentials from a "top" school doesn't mean you'll be: 1. a
good worker 2. motivation to perform the tasks 3. experience. Secondly, anyone
who depends on a big name school to get by fails to understand economics. Yes
you might be able to get a small premium for the name. However, the market
can't afford to choose only the top names. Theres more work that is needed
than the small group of "top school" names can fill.

~~~
warrenm
The only thing a "top tier school" can really provide is the _potential_ for a
'better' set of initial contacts in your network (eg startup founders and
investors if you go to MIT, Rice, or Stanford).

Beyond that - it's all pretty much the same: can you get the job done? Can you
think? Can you communicate coherently? Those are the real biggies when I
interview.

------
marcofucci
"If you’ve had five jobs in the last five years, why should the recruiter
think this time will be different?"

Maybe because who is hiring is supposed to be better than the others? There
are far too many terrible companies, especially the big ones, and honestly I
would never stay in a company just for the sake of it.

If recruiters think that this is a problem, it means that who is hiring is not
confident enough or worse, the company IS really terrible like the others.

IMHO, nobody leaves a company if he feels good, stimulated and paid enough.

~~~
smm2000
If it's only one short term job, it's totally ok. Two is ok but I will ask
why. Three+ is a negative. 5+ short term jobs is pretty much no hire unless
there is a very good explanation. There are no perfect companies and people
have to compromise.

~~~
marcofucci
Well, I totally agree with you that there are no perfect companies but for the
rest, I believe you don't have very good arguments.

I do understand that recruiters have to place people and they don't really
mind/understand if the company is good or not but I can't see why this should
be our problem.

------
andyjsong
This is great advice. As a person that is normally labelled as a job hopper (6
in the past 5 years) I finally settled down and got into tech by attending
hackathons and helped ship apps (mostly android) it has given me the
opportunity to work for a YC company and I am very happy here. It's just
ironic that startups have been the most stable positions rather than corporate
or bigger tech companies.

Hackathons are relativity cheap (time wise) investments, but make you stand
out from the crowd.

~~~
tiramisucode
It sounds like you are pretty savvy at getting hired. I am a computer science
student who is graduating this December, and I would love to get hired as soon
as possible! Do you have any tips for someone like myself? The only experience
I have is interning at a very small shop where I build custom Google maps for
other schools and companies.

~~~
andyjsong
I'm helping running this hackathon that is live right now:
hackerrank.com/thanksgiving, show off your skills and get noticed. It ends
today @ midnight PST and the winner gets a meeting with a YC Partner and
Thanksgiving meal delivered to their door.

------
Xcelerate
Just out of curiosity, does the undergrad/grad ranking apply to other (non-CS)
engineering careers as well? I ask because I went to a top 5 undergrad but
never did any research so I'm not attending a top 5 grad school. However, I
think the research I am doing now is possibly eye-catching, so how much does
what-research vs. which-grad school matter?

(By the way, I actually like my grad school significantly more than my
undergrad so ranking of course isn't everything).

------
Uchikoma
I mostly - for seniors - look in the experience and what projects the person
did. I don't believe any skills in a skill section.

This is the first screening, followed by a programming task during the the
telephone interview, interview with me, interviews with developers, followed
by practical programming work.

So yes it is important to get through the CV screen (have experience), but
it's only the first step.

Side note: Hiring for Junior positions is different, for me the CV here is
mostly irrelevant.

~~~
polymatter
How do you select Juniors then if the CV is mostly irrelevant? Do you go by
github profile?

~~~
Uchikoma
Sorry, didn't see your question.

I invite more of them.

------
eLobato
I’m wondering what’s your opinion about how does it affect to have on your
resume some great places to work at, but that might not be so well known in
the US tech world as they’re not the usual Google, FB etc.. I’m talking about
places like CERN, Fermilab, Max Planck Institute for Physics or the MIT
Medialab. Do you think these matter as much as Google on a resume?

How about having ‘old boring’ companies like IBM or Oracle on your resume?

------
derekerdmann
A lot of this advice goes for those who are looking for their first co-ops and
internships, too. If you haven't built experience yet, your GPA becomes a
critical flag for how you dedicate yourself to the work you've been given.
Combine that with interesting projects, and you'll be well on your way to
getting the internships that will make you stand out later.

~~~
numo16
What got me in easy for my internship was a decent GPA (3.8 at the time) +
working full-time as a shift manager from when I turned 18 until the company
hired me. GPA + maintaining some sort of responsibility definitely helped

------
autarch
I've been on the hiring side many times and I never look at a resume's
education section. I suppose if I were hiring someone fresh out of school
that'd count a little more, but experience is much more important than what
school they went to or what they studied.

But maybe I'm biased because I have a grad degree in music, so I just assume
other degrees are equally worthless ;)

------
known
[http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-
company/cor...](http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-
company/corporate-trends/whats-the-shelf-life-of-a-techie-
just-15-years/articleshow/17251620.cms)

