

Why You Didn't Get The Interview, Part II - fecak
http://jobtipsforgeeks.com/2013/07/10/why-you-didnt-get-the-interview-part-ii/

======
jechmu
The problem is that employers actually believe you can glean something useful
from a resume. In my hiring experience, the quality of a resume is very rarely
correlated with the quality of the candidate.

The majority of the time candidates look much better on paper than in person.
I gave up the belief long ago that resumes can be filtered meaningfully.

~~~
fecak
We are not announced publicly yet, but I'm working with a partner on a project
called GeekRez ([http://geekrez.com](http://geekrez.com)) which is trying to
solve the problem you mention. There is some info up and you can sign up for
notices, and we're planning on a beta soon.

Resumes are not the future of search for devs. Hiring managers want to see
other things beyond your self-assessed experience levels and a laundry list of
buzzwords. GeekRez aggregates data from a handful of places like GitHub and/or
BitBucket, Stack Overflow, Meetup, LinkedIn as well as other relevant links a
job seeker would provide (publications, blogs, etc.).

This is all brought into a single page with collapsible tabs as a public
profile for a potential employer (or even someone you might be doing a side
project with) to review.

Devs can use it as a way to differentiate themselves from the competition and
show off the strength of these accounts - obviously there would be no
advantage for devs that have weak associated accounts to use the service.

It is also set up so a manager could view several profiles side-by-side, to
compare say 5 candidate profiles at once. Instead of looking at 5 PDFs and
clicking on a handful of URLs in each PDF to get the full picture, it's all
brought together on one screen.

Feel free to check it out now, whether you are a dev or someone who will be
hiring them. I'll post about it here on HN when we launch officially.

------
ryandrake
The skills required to get a job: resume writing, professional networking,
interviewing, are often not the same skills that actually qualify you for the
job. One could be a very good resume-writer and interviewer (dare I say
B.S.er?) but not be the right match for the day-to-day job duties. On the
other hand, one may be technically qualified, but just not good at resume-
writing or smooth talking during the interview.

It reminds me of back in high school, where there were always those really
smart kids who were just bad at standardize testing. They risked falling
through the cracks because the testing was the only method used to judge one's
scholastic ability.

Perhaps the standard "personal reference -> resume -> phone screen ->
interview" pattern could use some disruption. Is there a way to match
candidates with jobs that's better than keyword-matching resumes and sitting
in a conference room talking about a time in the past when you learned from a
mistake? Given that there are simultaneously tons of companies saying they
can't find talent and tons of unemployed (and under-employed) talent looking
for work, you could conclude that something about the current job matching
system most companies use is not working.

~~~
fecak
The current system isn't entirely broken, but it needs works, and the work
needs to come from both sides. Candidates need to do a better job of how they
market themselves to employers, and employers need to improve how they select
and evaluate talent both on paper and in interviews.

The news a couple weeks ago about Google and their alleged use of trick
questions and such hopefully raised awareness of the problems surrounding tech
interviews, the value of GPAs and majors, etc., for all the other companies.
Google is one of a handful of shops that shape how others think they should do
things.

As I mentioned in another comment, managers today are more keen on seeing
code. A resume can make whatever unverified claims you want to make. I
mentioned a project I'm working on ([http://geekrez.com](http://geekrez.com))
that is hoping to change how talent represents themselves to hiring entities
and somewhat trying to replace the resume submission process with items
managers want to see.

A Stack Overflow reputation score is not a self-assessed expertise in a
specific technology, but rather something that is assessed by others. Saying
you write good code is one thing, but let's see what you have in your GitHub
or Bitbucket to prove what you are saying. These are the types of things that
will get devs hired in the years to come.

Personal references are a whole other story. If someone can't find 3 people to
say something nice about their work, they shouldn't be in the industry. The
only thing that is valuable about references is when a handful (3-5 usually)
of people provide very consistent information - to be more specific,
consistent with both positive and negative items. I know when I hear a few
people share the same strengths and weaknesses about a candidate that I'm
probably getting a pretty good and honest assessment (or they have all been
superbly prepped).

------
tootie
A lot of times I see a resume with a laundry list of skills at the top like
languages, app servers, CMS systems etc. First I thing I do is check the
experience and make sure the skills are actually mentioned as having been used
on a project. Otherwise, I assume you are padding to meet the req.

~~~
michaelochurch
I'd name the law after the guy who told me this but I don't have explicit
permission (he'd probably be OK with it, but I don't see him often and he's a
well-known CS person) so let's just call it Smith's Nineteenth Rule: the
quality of a candidate is inversely proportionate to the number or
technologies listed on the resume.

One startup idea I've had is a scarce resume system where people are limited
to 7 technologies and allocate 10 points in each for skill and interest (3-5
points means you're really good or really interested). It's like building a
character sheet. More information in that than a typical resume.

~~~
dasmoth
Doesn't that just encourage those who do have a range of technologies at least
somewhat under their belt to tweak their skill-weights on each application to
bring it closer to a presumed "perfect skill vector" for that job?

(...or is that the whole point...?)

~~~
michaelochurch
Also listed would be years of experience, in the first iteration. In a later
one, I'd want to replace that with some way of evaluating directly a person's
general skill level on a scale like this:
[http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/04/22/gervais-
macle...](http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/04/22/gervais-
macleod-23-the-shodan-programmer/) That would take a long time to figure out,
though: how to evaluate programmers in the general case.

3 points of Machine Learning with 20+ years of experience (or 2.0 level skill)
is different from 3 points from a fresh college student. The first means he's
probably an expert; the second means he specialized in it while in school.

Resumes have two purposes. One is to give a list of topics one is willing to
discuss in the interview. The second is to project social status (i.e. lie).
So you have a mix of self-evaluations and lies on a resume. The latter don't
have signal, but the former do. The reason for the 10-point allocation is that
self-evaluation has a great deal of signal _if_ a person is expected to trade
off one claim against another ("i.e. I know Java but I'm really good at
Python" vs. "yeah, I'm an expert in all languages").

~~~
biondim
This can never work. Resume's have only one purpose - they are marketting
materials for folks looking for work. Everything else has to be considered
within that frame reference.

~~~
fecak
To some extent what Michael is saying is already true, but since resumes don't
have a character limit candidates aren't held to it. If you were given a
finite amount of space, such as one page, what would you choose to describe?
What Michael is proposing is essentially limiting what you can say. If you had
an online application that said to list 3 technologies that you use, that
would probably be quite different than the list of 30 you may have on your
resume, and it would send a strong message about how you truly value certain
skills.

------
michaelochurch
Here's what I think is unsaid about the pre-interview stage. Most resumes are
junk (recruiter spam, unqualified candidates, perennial candidates who
continually punch above their weight class). Your job, pre-interview, is to
prove that you're not one of them. Another way to look at it is to establish
that your job searching doesn't reflect negatively on you. (Being employed at
the time helps.) Everyone job searches, but the bad candidates spend a lot
more time doing it.

For example, someone who applies to 5 unrelated positions isn't looking for a
career upgrade or new challenges, but just looking for a job in general.
That's not attractive.

Once you're in the interview process, you don't have to answer for the mere
fact of looking for a job. You've cleared that stigma.

~~~
d23
> Everyone job searches, but the bad candidates spend a lot more time doing
> it.

This sums up what my experience seems to be hiring. I've never really thought
of it that way, but there's a clear selection bias. The good ones get snatched
up quickly; the bad ones spam out to every damn listing they see.

~~~
fecak
Good candidates are rarely on the market for an extended period of time, and
are often much easier for experienced recruiters and hiring managers to
identify than mediocre or below average candidates. When I have a candidate
that I know is in the top tier, I'll advise clients that they need to move
quickly or lose their chance to even see them, because other companies will be
relatively quick and aggressive to hire.

It's not much different than real estate, where if you see a house that has
been on the market for a long time you may be less inclined to give it a look.
Thankfully, job seekers don't have listing dates unless they choose to post a
resume publicly.

------
selimthegrim
I've dealt with Dave a couple of times. I trust his advice.

