

Ask HN: Turned down for job at a few companies but unable to find reason - sidcool

I have been applying for technical job positions at various companies including Amazon, FlipKart, Morgan Stanley, Google, Microsoft, MeetUp, Groupon, Zynga etc., but have been rejected without even interviewing.  Probably my resume is too thin, but I can&#x27;t be sure.&lt;p&gt;Has anyone faced such a problem earlier?  If so, what did you do?
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lucozade
A few comments.

You're applying to companies that are going to receive thousands of technical
resumes. If you look at yours from their point of view what do you see? Why
would they want to hire you rather than another person?

You have java and javascript. Great. So do thousands of others. What did you
do with them that would make you stand out? Did you deploy an innovative use
of rule-based tech on Google/Amazon cloud to launch a new product/increase
revenue by $X?

Formatting aside (I presume you cut and paste from Word or whatever), your
resume is primarily a set of general statements and a list of technologies
(I'm also assuming the elided pieces are a list of companies/promotions you've
had). These tell me some things about you but I don't know anything about what
you've actually done with those technologies nor do I get an appreciation of
the passion that you state.

For a resume, although you need to include some basic fact (college, employers
etc), a laundry list of things, be it technologies or employment history or
whatever, makes for dry reading and doesn't paint the picture of a passionate
technological achiever that I assume you want.

My suggestion is to take each stage in your career and give an example of how
you used technology to solve a problem/create an opportunity. Be specific and
keep each one down to a few short sentences but try to ensure that you've
captured at least some of the key moments that you've been proud of. BTW if
you have contributions in the public domain, these can work just as well (or
better).

One final point. People don't just use the resume when they recruit. They'll
Google you. Is your online profile, esp the first few entries, what you want
to project? If you blog, are they rants or thoughtful discussions on the
subjects that you've said you are passionate about? Are your public
tweets/posts libelous?

Good luck

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sidcool
Thanks for your honest advice. I will work on those aspects and update the
results.

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sidcool
A rough resume from my original one.

[http://sidgaming.neocities.org/CrackResume.html](http://sidgaming.neocities.org/CrackResume.html)

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PaulHoule
Why don't you post your resume and then we can tell you something more
specific.

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sidcool
Posted a link to resume, any suggestions?

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PaulHoule
I agree with @lucozade.

This resume does not stick out at all. It needs more smak and pow.

