
Is a resume relevant in the age of online courses and open source projects? - dbh937
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/09/is-a-resume-relevant-in-the-age-of-online-courses-and-open-source-projects/
======
dfc
_"The problem is that I have no idea how to tell employers that those (SO, GH,
etc) are the places to look if they want an accurate description of what I can
do."_

So you are looking for a concise and centralized resource for listing your
qualifications for a job. And you are asking if a resume is still relevant? It
seems like the way to tell employers about your github, SO, udacity, etc,
profiles is to list them on your resume.

------
ismarc
I am actually a fan of well written resumes. The problem is that a resume is
not a CV or even a listing of all skills/qualifications of an applicant. A
resume should be a highlight reel of the skills/experience/qualifications of
the applicant THAT PERTAIN TO THE JOB BEING APPLIED FOR. The cover letter then
explains how those skills go together and what the applicant is looking for.
Github, open source projects, web sites, examples, etc. are supporting
evidence once they've gone from an unqualified lead to a qualified lead. But
that's the difference that people seem to forget, a large majority of job
positions are filled from unqualified leads and spending 20 minutes per
applicant with nothing indicating they even have the minimal skills necessary.

------
sebastianmarr
A resume is a listing of what you have done in your life that could be
relevant to the job you are applying for. If that is an online course and a
couple of open source projects, then this can be just as helpful to your
future employer as a list of companies you have worked for.

To resume means to summarize. Your GitHub profile is not a summary, it is a
raw dump of everything that you have done without weighting.

So, of course a resume is still relevant today. And it is still up to the
applicant to present himself to the employer, because most of the time the
applicant is looking for a specific job when the company is not looking for a
specific employee.

------
_red
For what its worth, one of the last hardware devs we hired happened
exclusively online. We were adding some biometric hardware to our current
software stack and came across a small project online of someone who wrote a
java library for the hardware in question.

After a series of emails, we proposed that we should pay him a few months
consulting fee - to help us integrate. As a bonus of course, he could take the
improvements and fold them back into his his open-source project.

Things continued like this and eventually he proved useful in other ways, so
he is permanent hire now.

In this day and age, there really is no excuse for having "no experience" (in
the software world at least). Moreover, who really cares about what university
you went to if you can prove your immediate usefulness in other ways?

------
gorbachev
I work for a company that makes recruiting products to fortune 500 companies.
They don't offer online courses to cashiers working for big retailers, or to
truck drivers working for transportation companies.

Jobs at technology companies might be what ArsTechnica and Hacker News readers
go for, but those jobs are such a small percentage of the jobs filled every
day in the US.

------
janardanyri
As one data point: a resume has never been relevant to my career. I've never
gotten a job or a contract through a resume.

Completed live projects instantly visible on any browser or smartphone with a
quick technical explanation have always been far more valuable for me.

You don't need to ask anyone's permission to build amazing software.

(Unfortunately, you continue to need permission to build many other things.)

------
tluyben2
As someone who screens a lot of resumes; it's a good short overview and it's
relevant. Github/open source projects/online qualifications don't show all
there is to experience. Sure if someone started a bunch of projects to try to
right the wrongs in the software world then this is a good sign. But if that
person doesn't have or believes he/she doesn't need a resume then that's not a
good sign. A resume is often a first line of defense; there will be a stack of
them and those are screened pretty quickly at most companies. Something needs
to attract enough attention to even _check out_ your github and online
qualifications. Your github account right there in your list
mobile/email/skype/github is a pre, even if it's empty though :)

------
adrianhoward
GitHub et al only provide a very small part of what I'm looking for on a
CV/Resume. It's an vital small part - but a small part nevertheless.

The biggest unanswered questions I'm trying to figure out are:

* what value are you going to bring to the organisation (from the value you demonstrate bringing to your previous positions)

* how well you're going to fit into the team (from how you talk about your previous roles)

* how well you understand the position and the organisation (from how you target the information you present)

GitHub et al don't really help with these much.

What GitHub et al do is make fact checking / reference chasing easier. You
include some links to github and lanyrd and your background looks more
credible - but by themselves they're not going to get you the job.

------
spitfire
Some of the most interesting developers can't talk about what they've done.

You'll never see the flight computer system of an F-16, but it's probably a
much cooler project to work on than an iPhone app. Or nuclear reactor
engineering.

Is a resume relevant in this day and age? As a device to portray the best of
what you've accomplished yes. For a few people, the answer will be no, that's
best done through portfolios like github and open source projects.

In the end, everything old will be new again but with a twist.

------
rayhano
A London-based start-up is working on future-facing CVs. The premise is you
say what you're going to do, and then do it. Over time you build up something
stronger, with social proof. It's called WikiCV: <http://WikiCV.me>

------
jonbischke
This is exactly why we started Entelo. We felt that online sources are quickly
becoming the "new resume" and that if you draw the trend lines on the data, if
it's not obvious now, it will be very soon. Remember, none of the sites
referenced in the post (Github, Stack, Coursera, etc.) existed five years ago.
What will exist five years from now?

Also, an emerging trend is "Github for X". You have sites like Grabcad (Github
for Mechanical Engineers), Dribbble and Behance (Github for Designers),
Benchling (Github for Biology), Proformative (Github for Accountants), etc. As
these professional communities grow they'll increasingly be looking at by
employers.

It's early for this trend but we believe deeply in it.

------
DrStalker
How many people can look at a github project and tell how good a coder you
are, how well you work with others, what sort of team you mesh well with, what
industries you've worked in and so on?

And how many of those people are the ones making hiring choices?

~~~
cpt1138
And how does a resume do any of those things?

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coliveira
Employers will not retire resumes because they know better than anyone else
that online activity is classified as marketing rather than individual
achievement. If you generate this kind of online activity, good for you, it
makes it _easier_ to find a job or to sell a product. It may even replace a
traditional job. But having a degree from a top university, having a position
in a well know company, receiving a prize recognized in the industry, these
are things that really count as achievement. Unless you're talking about
internet marketing positions, these are the things that really matter to an
employer.

~~~
knieveltech
"having a degree from a top university"

If you're applying for a position at a company that has HR minions guarding
the gates to the hiring manager, then yeah this is great. If you're being
hired by an individual with development experience this isn't likely to cut a
lot of ice.

Here's why: several of the best developers I've ever met do not have degrees.
Some didn't even bother graduating from highschool. I've worked with many
developers that had degrees from name brand schools that couldn't find their
ass with both hands and a map. Everyone I know in industry has had similar
experiences.

"having a position in a well known company"

This at least gets you some name recognition and opens the doors to quality
networking opportunities, but there's no guarantee that Name Brand Corp.
didn't make a hiring mistake when they brought you on in the first place, so
again, time for some healthy skepticism from the hiring manager.

"receiving a prize recognized in the industry"

Either this kind of opportunity is so rare that it's effectively out of reach
for the overwhelming majority of developers in $industry_segment OR it's a
valueless rubber stamp (see also: MS certifications).

"Unless you're talking about internet marketing positions, these are the
things that really matter to an employer."

Your talking points imply that you define "employer" as medium to large
corporation with a formal HR department and it's hiring practices stuck in the
90's. Typically a great gig if you're into grinding B2B middleware code for
industry median pay and two weeks vacation. If that's what you're into that's
cool I guess.

Compare/contrast an experienced FOSS contributor for a well-known project.
Fending off recruiter calls and getting cold called for consulting gigs three
or four times a week is the norm. Tech interviews are typically pared down to
seeing if your personality will fit with the rest of the team because they
already know you can code.

Resume? No thanks. Show me your code and then let's have a beverage and chat.

~~~
jebblue
>> Resume? No thanks. Show me your code and then let's have a beverage and
chat.

What is this hipster hiring? Give it 10 or 20 years bud you'll be singing a
different tune or afraid to try to get hired as a coder and just pulling
manager duty 3 or 4 levels up in the middle quietly re-assuring yourself that
you could code and get a job in that new language eebbityfribitz ... if you
really wanted to.

~~~
knieveltech
So you assert a couple pieces of paper that contain a view of someone's career
from 30,000 ft (assuming it's even accurate) is some how preferable to being
able to download, run, debug and in general interact with a potential hire's
code? If you say so.

2nd assertion, that at some point in the next 10 to 20 years I'm going to run
into some unspecified difficulties with the hiring process, resulting in me
shifting career tracks to management? Would you mind unpacking the thought
process behind all of this?

------
nsxwolf
All my work is on code I don't own and isn't public facing. I can't take our
proprietary code, wrap it up, and put it on GitHub. I also can't provide
logins to our proprietary systems for employers to look at.

I certainly hope a resume remains relevant for people in my position, because
it's really all I have.

~~~
danielweber
Yes, "show me the github" is one of the worst trends for software developers'
careers.

I'll always ask for live code from people at interviews, if only to filter out
the total posers.

~~~
kanzure
> Yes, "show me the github" is one of the worst trends for software
> developers' careers.

On the other hand, there are benefits to posting code online that they can
review. Instead of spending hours writing code for each company that you're
interviewing with, you can just write code that you're actually interested in
and throw it online.

Say you're talking with 20 companies. Each of those 20 interviews have an
associated overhead of 3 hours (if you're lucky): 1 hour screening call, 1
hour technical call, 1 hour live coding call. So 60 hours of screening, versus
writing some code that might actually be usable by others in the future.

Don't be afraid to say no to live coding interviews. Unless you have nothing
to show :-).

~~~
danielweber
Some people are completely useless. Remember, there are people out there who
can't write Fizz Buzz yet still apply for jobs. They can easily fake a GitHub.

Someone who won't write code upon request is an instant no-hire.

~~~
kanzure
> Some people are completely useless. Remember, there are people out there who
> can't write Fizz Buzz yet still apply for jobs. They can easily fake a
> GitHub.

So you're saying they can use git-filter-branch, but not write Fizz Buzz?
Sounds fishy to me.

------
droithomme
These arguments that the only worthy developers have tons of public facing
open source projects are tiresome.

Probably less than 1% of developers have GitHub repos and there's no
correlation between skill level and having a GitHub repo.

If you have extensive and current open source contributions, for most people
it means you're unemployed, or you're violating your employer's contract
terms.

Evaluating a GitHub repo for a summary of skills in not a trivial task, as
scanning a resume is.

When all of your work is online, it suggests you are not spending much time
contributing value to whoever is employing you.

Companies that can't find developers often have bizarre and useless criteria
such as "must have GitHub repository" or "must have LinkedIn" or "must have
FaceBook", none of which is correlated with ability.

We hire lots of capable people without GitHub repositories.

~~~
hansef
Depends on what stack you're working with, and the associated broad
engineering culture. I haven't hired anyone who didn't have a Github repo in 2
years, out of 18+ FTEs and contractors - but we're a Rails/Scala/node shop
building fancy web apps for startups. Not having a huge OSS track record is
fine, but not having a Github account at all would be kinda weird these days.
If we were doing embedded systems stuff or financial modeling software or game
development, probably a lot less relevant. The "show us your Github, not your
resume" line in a lot of job posts is more about the specific engineering
culture in a particular kind of startup development, not a hard and fast rule
for every software firm everywhere.

That said, if you're a Rails developer and you don't have a Github account,
I'm still probably not going to read your resume.

~~~
jeremyjh
Do you expect Rails developers to have their own pet projects that they put a
lot of time into? I agree it would be strange if no one had any forks, had
never done a pull-request etc.

~~~
hansef
Pet projects? Absolutely not, although never a minus. ;) More: are you engaged
with the community enough to be aware of the current ecosystem, (handwaving)
"best practices", libraries/gems, etc. If someone claims to have been building
Rails apps for 5 years, but has never heard of Devise and Carrierwave, it's
definitely a red flag for me. If you're trying to get a job on the Google
search team and can't whiteboard a quicksort it's going to be an equivalent
red flag for them. I'm trying to attract a specific type of developers for a
specific kind of programming work where caring about this kind of stuff is
useful as a signaling factor to me.

It's not about requiring everyone who works for us to be a 23 year old with no
family or life who spends every night hacking on shit, just about a baseline
standard for community engagement. Lack of Github account with some level of
activity (even if that's just starred repos, forks, etc) is a pretty strong
indication someone wouldn't meet that level of engagement, and so wouldn't be
a good match.

