
CV Compiler is a robot that fixes your resume to make you more competitive - Lexandrit
https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/21/cvcompiler-is-an-robot-that-fixes-your-resume-to-make-you-more-competitive/
======
Balgair
I took the dive and let them hack away at my LI. No telling what kind of spam
I'm going to get now. That said, wow! This is _terrible_.

The first thing that they say I should improve on is: Must-Have-Words. Here is
their list of those words: Deployment Security API Scalability OOP Continuous
Integration (CI) Availability Docker SOLID NoSQL Configuration Management (CM)
Robust Tuning Algorithm Web services Networking Design Patterns Unit testing
Open Source AWS Hadoop Continuous Deployment (CD) REST Big Data Agile TDD
Machine Learning Microservices Artificial Intelligence GitHub.

They also say that after I pay for the service I'll get access to the other
fields of things I am missing. Those include: Niche IT Skills, Numbers, Online
Presence, Technological Proficiency, Typos, Soft Skills, Your Old Projects,
URLs.

They do say that I have a good amount of 'Action Verbs'. But that I need more
of them and give the examples of: Devised Debugged Utilized Upgraded Assembled
Overhauled Redesigned Coded Rebuilt Maintained Initiated Solved Investigated
Developed Architected Trained.

Again, once I pay, I'll unlock a few more categories, which are listed here:
Resume Size, Accomplishments, Your Most Recent Roles, Abbreviations, Outdated
Tech, File Format, Summary/Objective, Employment History, Short-Term Jobs,
Marital Status, Religion, Broken Links, References, Teams

In case you haven't really read through that list I'll highlight the 2 most
INSANE items there that should make any HR department dive for the pepto-
bismol: Marital Status, Religion. Now, I don't know if they are warning
AGAINST including those fields or encouraging including them. However, that
they are items that are there at all speaks to the 'demographic' that they are
targeting: complete numbskulls. Not a single person that can fog a mirror
would ever include those 2 fields in a CV in the English speaking world.

~~~
isoskeles
> Utilized

lol

One of the only people I've ever interviewed where I cut it short was a guy
who admitted he lied and put "MongoDB" on his resume to get it past any robots
that were screening.

Anyway, that massive list of must-have-words reminds me of the old days on the
internet where web pages would have a block of content near the bottom that
contained many keywords written in the same color as the background. Now I am
wondering if that's the direction resumes go for some short period of time.

~~~
komali2
>Anyway, that massive list of must-have-words reminds me of the old days on
the internet where web pages would have a block of content near the bottom
that contained many keywords written in the same color as the background. Now
I am wondering if that's the direction resumes go for some short period of
time.

That's essentially the purpose of my "Technical Skills" section.

~~~
Al-Khwarizmi
> Now I am wondering if that's the direction resumes go for some short period
> of time.

It is. I have (reliable) reports of CVs listing words like "Stanford" in white
on white background, to pass the automated filtering at some companies.

~~~
rdiddly
I'm tempted to do this, but openly. Like a bold heading that says "Buzzword
Section." Maybe with a parenthetical explanation that although it makes no
sense, there are no lies in it.

~~~
marssaxman
I've been doing that for years - my resume has a block labeled "buzzwords"
immediately after the contact info and just before the job history.

My resume is also kind of aggressively old-fashioned, a single page of
80-column ASCII text, because that's the kind of person I am and I figure
anyone interested in hiring me ought to know what they're in for. :-)

~~~
sleavey
How's that working out for you?

~~~
marssaxman
It works really well. I've never had to spend more than a couple of weeks
looking for a job.

~~~
gota
Cold-search or are you consistently being referred to by friends and former
co-workers? Because if the latter you CV document might not even factor in
your success rate

~~~
marssaxman
It is mostly the latter, as you'd imagine, and therefore most people
encountering my resume already have some reason to pay attention. I think that
lets me get away with being more opinionated in the way I present myself.

------
yks
Slightly tangential but I believe the resume situation is another part of the
"broken hiring in tech":

1\. There is a whole cottage industry of resume writers. My CV got me mostly
where I wanted and then some, but of course the professional "resume
reviewers" told me it's awful and I need to pay them $50 to make it noticeable
at all.

2\. The "importance of results" makes people willing to bend the truth and
then resumes start looking very sleazy. I saw CVs of interns from Silicon
Valley darling companies who claim in every line how they saved millions of
dollars here and there. Hard to believe frankly.

3\. And what do those results even give us? If resume A says "Implemented ETL
tool that improved customer acquisition 420%" and resume B says "Implemented
ETL tool to work with customer data in Java", there is no reason to believe
candidate A is at all better than candidate B. Well, they are better at resume
writing or hiring resume writers. Or maybe they are good at office politics
and were able to put themselves on impactful projects. But will they pass the
FizzBuzz?

~~~
Humdeee
We hire interns and co-ops regularly. Often times, the local university forces
them to redo their resumes in such a cookie-cutter way that they appear near
identical to eachother. It's utter garbage to boot.

First question we ask: do you have a copy of your ORIGINAL resume? The ones
who understand what we mean and actually have it are off to a great start.

~~~
vfulco2
In my resume writing business, I get a ton of kids who've taken their cues
from the student books put together by university career centers. Everything
possible is jammed onto one page in as small a type as can be minimally read.
Real disservice to the applicant.

------
olegious
If you're still sending in resumes cold you're doing it wrong.

You need to either apply through connections or turn "cold" job postings into
warm leads by finding someone in the company to refer you. How? You can find
people on Twitter, LinkedIn, I've even found employees of companies I'm
interested in on HN and reached out to them to establish rapport and get
interviews. Get creative. I've also written blog posts about companies I'm
interested in that lead to job opportunities.

~~~
nikhizzle
Strongly disagree. I got my first job at apple, and a job at another unicorn
by cold submission. I find as an engineer, cold submission on a website will
often get me in contact with a recruiter quicker than any other method.

~~~
jrockway
My experience is similar to yours. I found a couple jobs I was interested in
the last time I did a search. I submitted my plain-text resume with no
buzzwords (other than maybe "Go") and immediately heard back from both. My
interviews were done within a week or two. I took one of the jobs.

My advice for engineering candidates with some experience is to just talk
about your past work in paragraph form. If Docker or whatever was an important
part of your work, it will probably come up. If it's not mentioned, you're
probably not the expert in that area that they're looking for. Saves everyone
some time.

------
dooglius
“We found that many job applications were being rejected without even an
interview, because of the resumes. Apparently, 10 seconds is long enough for a
recruiter to eliminate many candidates"

What exactly does he think the purpose of a resume is? If someone does not
have the necessary background or experience for a job, moving forward to an
interview is a waste of time for all parties involved.

~~~
komali2
When I was an engineering recruiter, 10 seconds hit the nose.

If anybody wants to writeup a ruleset that mirrors the (definitely fallable)
process I used to use, here's the rules:

1\. Candidate probably local? {check address, if listed, else check location
of previous roles} (required by our clients)

2\. Candidate doesn't need sponsorship, probably? {check address, if listed,
else check location of previous roles to ensure >5 years working in US,
compare against university location} (required by our clients, and saturated
market anyway. didn't like this one but that was the job)

3\. Candidate has proper job title? {check last job title, ensure it's not >1
year ago, check previous job titles, ensure has had job title for some
required amount of time}

4\. Candidate has clean work history? {check for gaps between roles, or length
of each individual role, look for big gaps or many short jobs} (not
necessarily a disqualifier, but will be asked about)

5\. Candidate has specific keywords required by position? {scan each job in
earliest->oldest chronological order, ensuring recent and decent time spent on
{{TECHNOLOGY}}}

If I've gotten to bullet point 5 I'm probably already tapping their phone
number into my phone, and doing a final scan for

6\. Red flag? {look for political opinions on the resume, opinions of their
previous bosses, proudly listed membership of organizations like the KKK (it's
happened), too many spelling errors, rants about the job hunting process, odd
demands surrounding salary or compensation or work style, or just general
signs of weirdness/assholeness/difficult-to-deal-with-ness}

~~~
outworlder
What’s with this obsession with “gaps”? What are you trying to screen for? Is
everyone supposed to be working non stop from their first job until they
retire or die?

I can sort of understand if it’s been years since the last position and the
individual is applying for your company after being away from the market. But
a gap in the middle of the job history? Why do you care ?

~~~
komali2
> What are you trying to screen for?

People that can't keep a job, or get a job, often. It was Oil and Gas, so
turnover was expected (projects finish, everyone goes away), but if
consistently over the last decade or 2 they couldn't get on another project,
it was a red flag. Not disqualifying, but a red flag.

If it was a big gap ten years ago, nobody cares. If it was a single big gap
less than 5 years ago, probably nobody cares, I'd just have to ask about it,
because my client would want to know.

~~~
Carpetsmoker
How big of a gap is a "big gap"? I have a 6 month gap before my current
employer (of 2.5 years) because I spent some time doing stuff other than work
with my savings. Should I fill that with "freelance, travel, and open source"
or some such (even though I didn't do all that much freelance work)?

~~~
komali2
I would leave off the months on your resume so that it doesn't look like a
gap.

Or, put "2016 - Present," and then if they ask about what kind of notice you
need to post, say "oh, I actually don't work there anymore, woops, I forgot to
take off the 'to present' on my resume, thanks for bringing that up."

------
ricardoreis
TODO: write a counter-compiler that recognizes resumes based on the stylistic
"improvements" suggested by this tool - and mark them for rejection
accordingly.

~~~
drngdds
Why? The whole interview process is a dumb game full of bullshitting and half-
truths. What does it matter if a robot helped you come up with them?

~~~
Aeolun
To be honest, looking at resumes now is a bit like ‘find the bullshit’ from a
hiring perspective.

------
fecak
Professional resume writer here that comes with 20 years of experience in
recruiting and hiring for tech startups. I have no fear of being replaced by
AI anytime soon, and I don't have any knowledge of this company but can
certainly vouch for their statement about other resume firms trying to upsell
a service based on a shoddy review.

I often have clients that come to me with perfectly good resumes that tell me
some online rating system said it was terrible. A resume can be somewhat
accurately 'scored' for fit based on matching keywords, but the tech isn't
mature enough yet to say if something is simply good or bad.

Not to mention the different tastes from different companies. I write a bit
differently depending on who the target audience is for a resume. I don't know
if these review companies account for that at all, but they don't seem to.

------
zimpenfish
Tried it with my current PDF. Didn't really manage much other than "use more
keywords that employers like!"

~~~
komali2
Are you comfortable sharing your resume so we can compare this report with the
output? I'm gonna give it a shot and will do a write-up after my 9am.

~~~
zimpenfish
Sure - [https://rjp.is/resume.pdf](https://rjp.is/resume.pdf)

~~~
nimblerabit
Shouldn't the period go outside the parens?

> Capable of understanding business requirements and working with the team to
> achieve the best solution (technologically or pragmatically.)

~~~
jimsmart
I'm no expert. I've no idea with regards to parens, but with quotes, this is
definitely a UK/US difference.

In the US, a terminating/trailing period or comma goes inside the quote, "like
this." — Whereas in the UK we do it "like this".

Personally, and as a programmer, parsing the UK usage makes more sense to me
logically, and I find the other way to be mentally jarring. Just my 2p.

------
quotemstr
Great. Now everyone will juice his resume with something like this and we'll
all end up in the same relative positions we were before, except 1) actual
resume information density will be lower, as we'll have decreased the SNR
through keyword juicing, and 2) anyone not paying attention to these tools
(and focusing on work instead) will be unfairly penalized in early-stage
hiring filter.

This is the best timeline.

~~~
guitarbill
I don't think this follows. To a degree, it's already true, because a lot of
tech interviews just boil down to "have you learned all the pet CS questions
in Cracking the Coding Interview?". A CV just gets you the interview.

Of course you're right, some companies have software to filter CVs by
keywords, and often it's as dumb as if the ad says "experience with Puppet",
you need to say "experience with Chef, which is like Puppet". This is just
playing the game, like everything is.

Why do they do this? If you've been involved with hiring, you know the number
of terrible CVs even a small company will get is shocking, so I'm sympathetic
to automating things a bit. A lot of them are minimal effort, but that's the
best case. Worst case is a flat out lie, because it takes more effort to catch
- usually during the interview.

So if we accept that CVs aren't just useful for raw information, but also
convey some kind of measure of diligence (e.g. spelling), which you want in a
programmer, then knowing about tools is also a useful measure. So I don't
think it's going to be as bad as you make it sound.

------
Reason077
This seems like a great way to harvest lots of resumes to sell to recruiters.

If you're working on your resume, you're probably open to a new job, right?

------
komali2
Ok, I gave it a shot. For reference, here's my resume (google doc link so I
don't have to PDF bomb people, and because I never bothered to transfer this
thing to HTML):
[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1A3Ns93sbE8v70hCt7yWJigoi...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1A3Ns93sbE8v70hCt7yWJigoiL0sQZNTtMPr9zVtkoqM/)

Apparently I have only 7 of 30 "Must Have Words." I have TDD, Open Source,
API, AWS, GitHub, REST. I should include, according to this site:

, Security , Scalability , OOP , Continuous Integration (CI) , Availability ,
Docker , SOLID , NoSQL , Configuration Management (CM), Robust, Tuning,
Algorithm, Web services, Networking, Design Patterns, Unit testing, Hadoop,
Continuous Deployment (CD), Big Data, Agile, Machine Learning, Microservices,
Artificial Intelligence.

I use "enough" action verbs that "emphasize my tech skills":

engineer develop architected engineered code built

But I could add some more:

Debugged Upgraded Assembled Rebuilt Investigated Trained Devised Programmed
Maintained Designed Redesigned Applied Utilized Overhauled Initiated Solved
Reduced

Now it's got some freaky little pie chart thing that I don't understand, but
it says that to applicant tracking software, I look like a "Other 16%, Back-
end (Javascript), QA, Cloud Computing, Front-end" guy.

Looks like I have to pay to unlock some other things, like it says it found
typos, something about soft skills, something about resume size, dunno. Mildly
interesting, though I find this fairly useless compared to just having someone
professional look at your resume. I'm not sure adding the word "Unit Testing"
to my resume increases my chances at getting into netflix, I already list my
unit testing frameworks and my testing experience at electric imp, though I
suppose it will be missed by a non-programming recruiter just scanning for
keywords, so that keyword stuff is probably the best advice this thing gives.

------
mattnewton
Next episode of Silicon Valley: we find out that they are literally using
“machine learning” - adding those words to resumes to get them picked up by
recruiters.

In all seriousness I think it would be interesting to explore the latent space
of their model, and try to explain it- what does it think the magic words are?

------
turbografx16
Given how this thread is going I thought I'd mention a resume review robot I
actually like.

I use Novoresume.com to build my resumes and I find it's resume suggestions to
be pretty useful. It's free for one page resumes too. I am not associated with
novoresume in any way, I just like the product.

------
perpetualcrayon
Ever since I had a run in with an extremely "motivated" team of head hunters
my belief has been that resumes are almost useless.

I was responsible for hiring a team a while back and, in retrospect, believe I
put way too much faith into my practice of filtering candidates by resume
content.

------
rohanm93
Thought I'd shout out my product,
[https://resumeworded.com/score](https://resumeworded.com/score), here. Gives
a similar, but much more detailed analysis of a resume.

~~~
Aeolun
I do not care about signing up until I see the value your product would bring.

------
LeonM
So the more successful this company gets, the less effective it becomes?

~~~
komali2
Wait, I don't get it, why?

~~~
nameless912
Because as resumes coalesce around their (admittedly, really fucking terrible)
conception of what a good resume looks like, they all start becoming
completely indistinguishable from each other, which makes them worse. As
someone who's sat on both sides of the table (screening resumes, interviewing,
hiring, and applying/being interviewed) a lot recently, the worst thing you
can be isn't being inexperienced, it's being boring.

------
Bedon292
It seems like they just analyzed a million resumes and then try and make your
resume match theirs. Doubt they graded all million of them thoroughly, so
whats to say the quality was good? Why should you want to match those million
resumes?

Also, if you are using ML to try and make your resume closer to the ones that
are analyzed, aren't you making the resume more average, not making it stand
out more? If everyone uses the service, and adds all these keywords to it,
then how are they of any value?

~~~
Carpetsmoker
More importantly, every job posting or resume may mention stuff like "git",
"CI", "Docker", "OOP", and whatnot. But I would argue that for many roles it's
hardly an important thing to list on your resume. Just because it's mentioned
doesn't mean it's important.

------
shadowtree
Microsoft Office just added this capability via LinkedIn, fully automated.

Open a resume in Word, an assistant pops up.

Good luck agains _that_.

~~~
jimsmart
"Hey, it looks like you're writing a CV"

------
ravenstine
We're gradually getting to a point where the hiring process is merely about
bots outsmarting other bots.

------
larrik
"allowing you to shine to recruiters at Google, Yahoo and Facebook"

Wait, Yahoo? People still try to get hired there?

------
rddedpythondev
Improving your resume is a nice tag for also getting competitive intelligence.

------
stilley2
Does it drive anybody else crazy when resume and CV are used interchangeably?

~~~
chrisseaton
In the British English 'CV' and 'resume' _are_ interchangeable.

I know in US English 'CV' means something more in the academic community, but
it doesn't here.

------
PavlovsCat
I once made a buzzword generator thingy, so here's some suggestions, use them
wisely.... and by wisely I mean in the form "I like to $A $B $C of $D, $A $B
$D $C and use $D to $A $B $C", if you want to refer to past positions simply
add a "d" to the verb. But before you do, _put on a seatbelt_ , your career
might just go vertical! (up, I mean vertical in the upwards direction)

$A:

appropriately, assertively, authoritatively, collaboratively, compellingly,
coherently, competently, completely, continually, conveniently, credibly,
distinctively, dynamically, efficiently, generally, holistically,
horizontally, interactively, literally, objectively, organically, practically,
professionally, progressively, provably, quickly, radically, rapidly,
seamlessly, strategically, synergistically, theoretically, totally, uniquely,
vertically, sequentially, non-sequentially

$B:

actualize, administrate, aggregate, architect, benchmark, brand, build,
communicate, conceptualize, contextualize, coordinate, create, cross-
pollinate, cultivate, curate, customize, deliver, deploy, develop,
disintermediate, disrupt, disseminate, drive, e-enable, embrace, empower,
enable, engage, engineer, enhance, envisioneer, evisculate, evolve, expedite,
exploit, extend, fabricate, facilitate, formulate, foster, generate, grow,
impact, implement, incentivize, incubate, initiate, innovate, integrate,
iterate, leverage, maintain, maximize, monetize, negotiate, network, optimize,
orchestrate, pontificate, position, productivate, productize, productivize,
promote, pursue, re-engineer, recaptiualize, reconceptualize, recontextualize,
redefine, reinvent, repurpose, restore, revolutionize, scale, seize,
strategize, streamline, syndicate, synergize, synthesize, target, transform,
transition, utilize, visualize, whiteboard, ideate, update

$C:

abstraction, analysis, application, aquisition, archival, assessment,
benchmarking, certification, clustering, computation, computing, convergence,
conversion, correction, counting, debugging, decentralization, definition,
demonstration, deployment, development, diffusion, discovery, display,
distribution, enforcement, engineering, enhancement, exploitation, extension,
fusion, identification, indexing, integration, interaction, interfacing,
marketing, processing, production, protection, recognition, redefinition,
research, response, separation, solution, support, tracking, transaction,
transfer, transportation, updating, visualization

$D:

addiction, advice, alignment, authority, bandwidth, big data, bullshit,
certificate, change, chemicals, clients, coherence, communication, confusion,
content, convergence, data, deniability, e-business, e-commerce, education,
encryption, energy, entertainment, estimation, eyeballs, equity, exposure,
fear, feedback, greed, health, ideas, information, intelligence, knowledge,
mindshare, music, networks, partnership, plausability, privacy, productivity,
public relations, quality, quality assurance, reduction, relaxation, research,
sales, security, software, space, speculation, stability, standards, storage,
sustainability, synergy, technology, traction, traffic, transparency, trust,
vacation, visibility, warfare

------
hunglee2
lovely looking website. Interested to see what segment of the engineering
community this service will prove greatest value to.

Likely a lot of connected, visible, high profile engineers won't need this,
but they are the 'conspicuous minority'....suspect a lot of folks will find
this useful

------
rs86
Tech Crunch looks like advertising.

------
samfisher83
So seo for resumes?

