
Why bother having a resume? - comatose_kid
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/03/why-bother-havi.html
======
mixmax
How things are in Seth's world:

"A resume is an excuse to reject you. Once you send me your resume, I can say,
"oh, they're missing this or they're missing that," and boom, you're out."

How things are in the real world:

"No resume attached? Boom, you're out."

~~~
tptacek
Give me a break. If Godin's argument is that the places that demand resumes
are places that you don't want to work, the rest of his argument falls apart:
what good is a defense mechanism that keeps you from getting screened out of a
company lame enough to keyword-screen resumes? If Godin's premise is valid,
then the conclusion should be _exactly the opposite_ \--- resumes are early-
warning signals, attracting valuable early rejections from companies that
would otherwise be a waste of your time.

All I can add is, refusing to provide a resume will make you sound like a
douche. CEOs have resumes.

~~~
apathy
> CEOs have resumes.

You could have condensed your entire (quite good) post to this. Great pull
quote, and it obliterates Godin's argument.

~~~
yters
Good point, but not necessarily a defeater. Maybe that's because they are
competing with other CEOs, whereas an uber hacker is already the top of their
competition.

~~~
apathy
> an uber hacker is already the top of their competition.

Those guys are called CEOs. Or rockstars. If you're Bill Joy, you'll know it,
and you won't be asking anyone for a job.

------
hugh
Why bother wearing pants? By wearing pants you just communicate to the rest of
the world that you're a B-player who needs to wear pants to be taken
seriously. Look at Einstein. He always wore pants, but if he didn't, do you
think they would have fired him? Hell no, he was Einstein.

Great people shouldn't wear pants. If you go around wearing pants, it sounds
to me like you've been brainwashed into thinking you're kind of ordinary.

~~~
wallflower
>Great people shouldn't wear pants. If you go around wearing pants, it sounds
to me like you've been brainwashed into thinking you're kind of ordinary.

In the 4-Hour Work Week, the author says it is good to be different only when
it makes you more productive or effective. If it's just to be different, then
you might look silly

------
mynameishere
I got out of college at the worst possible time, early 200x. Knowing that the
job market was tight, I came up with some sample applications that I put on a
webpage, in order to have a "programming portfolio". Well, the professors
seemed to think it was a good idea. So, I wrote the URL prominently on my
resume and sent out a bunch of copies to companies. I'd estimate that about 2
or 3 percent of employers actually went to my "portfolio."

I didn't understand it then, and I still don't. When I look at other people's
resumes, the first thing I look for is a website. Oddly, it seems pretty rare.

~~~
mixmax
Unfortumately HR people are as lazy as all other corporate drones. They just
want to get it over with so they can go home.

That's the sad reason, and it is all there is to understand about it.

~~~
brk
I would venture that most people reading this site are looking to join
companies that haven't had to create an HE department yet. (side note: one of
my personal factors for determining when a company is no longer worth joining
is when HR becomes a specific department/person, there are exceptions to this,
but they are few).

I agree with the spirit of what Seth is saying here. My last several jobs
found ME, based more on the reputation factor than on the "read my blog" or
"look at my portfolio" factor, but they weren't from sending a resume into a
black hole.

~~~
mixmax
Maybe it would be possible to turn this around to your own advantage:

I agree that I wouldn't want to work for a company that doesn't bother to look
at the links that you provide in an application or a CV - it shows they are
not engaged in what they do.

Now suppose you put up your projects (or whatever you want your potential new
employer to see) and monitor who is looking. With large companies it should be
possible to trace the IP adresses so that you will know exactly which
companies have enough interest to actually click the links and look at what
you have done.

------
icey
Well, I can't really speak to the facts about a resume being there to offer an
excuse for rejection; but I can speak anecdotally about resumes over the
course of my career.

For the past 5 years or so, I haven't had to touch a resume or even interview
for any of the gigs I've worked at. At a certain point in a hacker's career,
your reputation _should_ precede you enough that people either know you, or
know someone you know. At least, that's how I've found things.

The development field is a fairly small community due to the amount of job-
changing people do.

That being said, until people know who you are, you'd better have an amazing
resume ;)

------
ardit33
Not a bad idea. Resumes are mostly for HR. I have interviewed a lot of people
for both junior and senior positions on my company. You can't believe the
amount of people, with "good looking" resumes, that can't frickin code. Not
even simple problems.

There are many, many people that put things in their resume that shouldn't be
there. Too many people inflate their resumes so much, that they almost become
irrevelant, b/c there is so much noise out there. I am afraid, our HR
recruiters are filtering out good people people with honest resumes.

Hence the resume is more becoming a tool to game the HR. Honestly, I always
read a resume before interviewing the person, but don't put too much weight on
them. Actually I mostly use them to ask questions on skills/languages the
interviewee claims to know.

Sometimes it it is a good story, and the person actually knows their stuff,
but too often it is not.

------
tonyvt2005
I can agree with the spirit of what he's saying. Resumes just make things
easier for the bigger companies with HR departments. Most companies wouldn't
waste time reading through your blog or looking up your contributions to some
open source project. If they end up making a bad hire, that's no big deal to
them. Chances are they'll still end up making money by having you as an extra
person to bill for.

In a startup / smaller company, making the right hire can be critical to the
company's success. I'd expect the hiring process to be more thorough in that
environment.

While there's no way getting around the limitations of the traditional paper
resume, online resumes could be a good middle ground. VisualCV is working on
this. <http://www.visualcv.com>

LinkedIn is also a good supplement. I know a lot of people who make use of the
recommendation system on there.

------
pius
Maybe a useful takeaway is to try to build a reputation, not a resume.

~~~
pchristensen
Like Steve Martin said - be so extraordinary that you force people to notice.

~~~
mixmax
Be funny, or have an extraordinarily large nose?

~~~
pchristensen
I believe that was a prosthetic. :)

------
henning
Has Seth ever had to hire anyone?

Is he actually going to review 800 people by hand? Mr. "no one has time
anymore"?

~~~
brk
I think that's his point... He's NOT going to review 800 people by hand. He's
going to review 50 people that actually put forth the time and effort to apply
via a non-traditional channel.

------
ingas
Total bullshit. Resume is not even about HR. Resume has value itself.

"Genius is a man knowing limits of self" Albert Camut (read in russian,
originally in french and now translated by me in english! =) Yeah! I know my
English is terrible!)

------
rms
I think the main difference here is that Seth Godin is willing to read four
pages worth of material per applicant. A resume is one page.

------
bfioca
I agree with this - but I guess I don't count because I don't ever want to
work for anyone but myself ever again.

------
robg
Sell yourself, not your soul.

------
noodle
because there are a lot more average, well-paid positions that require resumes
than there are "Great jobs, world class jobs, jobs people kill for" that
don't.

------
sabat
How easy it must be to pontificate bullshit when you don't have to live in
reality.

~~~
staunch
Easy to be sure, but not as easy as a one line ad hominem.

~~~
sabat
Like the one that you just laid down?

------
mironathetin
"...jobs people kill for..."

For an european, this gets out of balance. You americans use kill, nuke, bomb
etc. far too much. Think about your life!

~~~
dmoney
I think he's talking about jobs people actually have to kill the incumbent to
gain the title. Like Santa Claus or those guys in Stargate.

~~~
yters
Hmm, and here I was thinking this was standard practice. This does raise a few
conundrums.

On another topic, can I interest you in some fine grade meat?

