

Thinking of applying for a job at Google. Any tips or feedback on my résumé? - benhoyt
http://benhoyt.com/cv

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patio11
I think that if you're going after a job in our field these days, you
ABSOLUTELY should have a resume like this. Actually, it is less a resume and
more a carefully crafted sales pitch for yourself. You can do so much selling
it isn't funny -- links to your OSS contributions, etc. (I would have surfaced
the code more quickly than you do in your resume, but this is a _very_ minor
nitpick. Oh, and if you have a blog, you have at least one or two articles on
it which are exemplars of your best work. Link those directly.)

My one suggestion is that your sales presentation says an awful lot about you
and not that much about Google. That goes against pretty much everything I
know about sales. ("But its a resume! It should be about me!" No, that is a
meaningless tradition perpetuated by people who are much less savvy than you
are.)

If I wanted to get a job at Google, I would make it obvious that I understand
Google's business about as well as I understand Ruby, or better. Talk about
how your experience with MicroPledge prepares you to deal with web-scale
computing. (Even if it doesn't, demonstrate that you understand the
differences.) Talk about how your e-commerce experience at Gifty gets you
inside the head of Google's customers, and how you understand Internet
advertising on a deep level because it determined whether you ate or not. (The
truth that I advise you to keep at the foremost of your mind and not say out
loud: _Google is an advertising company._ )

~~~
benhoyt
That's really thoughtful feedback, thanks. I wasn't quite sure -- is your
third paragraph an explanation of how to put your second paragraph ("saying a
lot about Google") into practice?

~~~
benhoyt
In any case, I've implemented your suggestions -- thanks.

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angusgr
Looks like a nice resume. :)

The following feedback probably isn't google-specific, and it's really just
nitpicking, but I would say:

\- "move to the U.S. for about two years in mid-2010". AFAIK, most employers
(maybe not Google) would probably rather just hear "move to the US in
mid-2010".

\- "Skills: I can... develop web applications". This section can be rephrased
as "Skills: I have... developed web applications", etc. This is a job
application tip I've had drummed into me, to always stress what you have done
rather than what you can do.

\- It might sound better to slap a better title than "long-time friend" on
your third reference. Maybe you two collaborated on a project at some point?

\- Hehe @ the Fermat reference. Nice touch.

Just my myopic 2c, and like I said it's really mostly nitpicking. :).

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thegoleffect
I didn't see anyone else mention it (sorry to repeat if someone does before or
while I write this).

But it REALLY helps if you have a friend who is already in there refer you. If
you have none atm, either network or use [http://steve-
yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-goog...](http://steve-
yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-google.html)

Having a referral pretty much lets you skip the majority of the line at most
companies. It also lets you get by even if your resume is not particularly
stellar but your skills are. Google, in particular, makes an effort to do
onsite interviews with most referrals (unless you disqualify yourself via a
variety of different ways).

Having a friend there also means you get a lot of help along the way, advice
about what to study for, hints, etc. So all around, its a good idea.

~~~
benhoyt
Thanks for the link to that Steve Yegge post -- do you know if he's still
batching up and submitting resumes as per the bottom of his post? Do you have
any other suggestions for networking into Google (I don't know anyone directly
who works there)?

~~~
blinks
Or ping me; I work there. :) (There are quite a few of us on HN, afaict.)

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cmars232
Google likes to ask lots of algorithmic questions in rapid succession. At
least they did when I interviewed. Knowing of a solution or library was not
good enough (they seem to reinvent their own 'everything' anyway, perhaps for
good reason?). If I wanted to work there, I would practice doing classic CS
problems on a whiteboard in front of friends beforehand, it's much different
than real life where you can look stuff up, mull things over a cup of coffee,
take a walk, etc. They were in my face the whole time.

~~~
pz
i second this. know basic data structures and algorithms. they are not going
to ask you to implement red-black trees but they'll probably ask questions
that require you to use hash tables or priority queues. know how to implement
these and their running times.

and definitely practice solving problems on the whiteboard. its completely
different. if its within the realm of comfort also get used to thinking out
loud in the interview. some people really can't do this but i've found, both
as an interviewer and interviewee, its really helpful.

your resume will basically get you a phone screen, beyond that i suspect its
irrelevant.

(for the record, i've interviewed with the GOOG and was offered a job)

~~~
Imprecate
My friends have all had similar experiences, though most of them were
interviewing straight out of undergrad, so it may have been a little
different. Have seriously in-depth knowledge of the languages you claim to
know, practice solving problems under pressure, and have a strong algorithmic
foundation. They seem to have a reputation for being rude, but it's a
competitive market and they're looking for the best.

Things are pretty similar where I work. We will look at most people if their
resume lists the relevant technologies, but the phone screen and in-person
interviews are very tough. There are so many liars out there that resumes
aren't a very good filter. Even academic pedigree doesn't seem to count much
in the software development world, though it counts more if you're doing more
research-y/academic things like machine learning.

------
kowen
The first thing that caught my attention was the bit about "U.S. born".

In the USA it is illegal to ask about country of origin (as well as age,
gender, religious beliefs, marital status).

I've heard of hiring managers discarding CVs outright if they contain
information that is illegal to ask about, though I have no idea what the
practices at Google are.

Recommended reading: "Land the Tech Job You Love" by Andy Lester, published by
The Pragmatic Bookshelf.

~~~
benhoyt
Hmmm, interesting point. I wonder if it really matters. I put that there only
so they know I'm a U.S. citizen and hence have legal right to work there. Can
you suggest a succinct alternative?

~~~
tokenadult
_Can you suggest a succinct alternative?_

"Authorized to work in the United States." Yes, I am a lawyer, and I used to
practice immigration law.

~~~
benhoyt
Thanks -- I've updated it.

------
adatta02
I'd be weary of plastering a cell phone # of one of your references all over
the internet...

~~~
algorias
You mean _wary_. The person in question will be _weary_ of being called.

------
JoelPM
I'm late to the party, but I'll provide my two cents as someone who worked at
Google and interviewed candidates (most engineers there are trained to do
interviews):

1\. Your resume looks good and should get the recruiters attention, and

2) that's about all your resume is good for, in my experience. Interviewers
will look at what you've done in the past to help decide what questions to
ask, but your answers to those questions are far more important than your past
experience.

As others have said, review your basic algorithms and data structures. Be
prepared to write _correct_ code on the white board (not pseudo-code, at least
not as your final product).

Finally, if things don't work out at Google - why not submit your resume to
OpenX (<http://openx.org/jobs> or email me joel at openx dot org)? We're also
hiring :)

~~~
Gmo
Off topic, but there is no stylesheet loaded when accessing your website
without a www subdomain ...

~~~
JoelPM
Were you using Chrome? In FF and Safari4 the stylesheets load regardless of
whether or not there's a subdomain, but in Chrome I see the behavior you
describe.

~~~
gregg_
Stylesheets are not loaded for me either. I'm using FF 3.5.7.

------
Ras_
Strip I, me etc. Time is of essence (resumes are not read but skimmed).

How about adding some things from business perspective? I mean when you talk
about what you've done, it's good to know that you gained experience. But it
would be even better if you could show where your efforts led. Like
"redesigned shopping cart process, which reduced the number of support calls
by XX %"

Watch out for ambiguous text: "the clean UI and weather graphs really made
Harvest’s product stand out." It's better to be able to say something solid
like "new design led to XX % better user retention" or "new UI was awarded by
XX".

I'd also advice against placing your education with the rest of "about me".
Some might skip the whole chapter. This will not happen if education has a
heading of its own.

I would also place "experience" just after the summary. Best stuff first.

------
aaronbrethorst
500,000 lines of Python and SQL?

~~~
benhoyt
Oh dear! Good catch, that's embarrassing. I did a recursive "wc" but then read
the wrong column. It's only 21,000 lines. :-| Fixed now: at 21kLOC, is it
still a figure worth including?

~~~
Imprecate
I don't really think so. You're really trying to measure the scale of your
work. Better metrics would be what specifications you implemented, features
you added, scalability (# of users or servers). You wrote 21k lines of code,
but code wasn't your end result. That code did something beyond getting piped
into wc, I hope. :)

------
byrneseyeview
As a rule, if you're going to make someone feel ignorant, do so in a way
that's relevant to the job. That rule would imply cutting the link to
Chesterton (if they get the reference, they'll appreciate it) and possibly the
Hofstader's Law reference, too.

In general, very nice. I used to be a recruiter, and I wish I'd gotten more
résumés like this. (Keep in mind that the average recruiter, perhaps even at
Google, will prefer a résumé that lists jobs, education _maybe_ skills, and
nothing else. The filters in recruiting are designed to suppress originality,
since there are far more original ways to make the wrong decision than to make
the right one.)

~~~
nandemo
_As a rule, if you're going to make someone feel ignorant, do so in a way
that's relevant to the job._

Agreed, but...

 _That rule would imply cutting the link to Chesterton (if they get the
reference, they'll appreciate it) and possibly the Hofstader's Law reference,
too._

I wonder why do you assume people who know Chesterton would appreciate the
reference. Just saying that you like Chesterton might suggest religious and
philosophical beliefs that aren't necessarily appreciated by your average
young liberal geek. I'm not saying people will dismiss OP right away just
because of this, but unconscious discrimination does happen.

On the other hand, Hofstadter is both well known and generally liked among
geeks.

------
IsaacSchlueter
Yeah. It's spelled "resumé" or "resume", not "résumé". (That would be pron
"ray-zu-may" rather than "reh-zu-may".)

~~~
benhoyt
Actually, all three are correct. From
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/r%C3%A9sum%C3%A9#Usage_notes> \-- "In the US,
there are three major spellings of this word: résumé, resumé, and resume. All
three are in common usage and all three are occasionally contested. The usual
justification for each is usually as follows..."

Update: Being pragmatic, I should probably use "resume", because that's how
Google Jobs spells it.

~~~
IsaacSchlueter
Hm, "protégé, émigré, née, and élan" all bother me, too. The diacritic means
"pronounce this", imo, but English is as she is spoke.

Yeah, it's the web, it's probably safest to stick to ascii ;P

------
fretlessjazz
Sorry to answer a question with a question, but what is it that you want to do
for Google?

~~~
benhoyt
Fair question. Develop web apps, really. But I'm pretty open, and plan to
leave my "what I want to do for you" for the cover letter when applying for a
specific job.

~~~
fretlessjazz
Cool. I can't speak for their current interview process, but I went through
the phone screen mechanism a few years back. My problem was that I wasn't
sufficiently focused in one area; I tried to market myself as both a Systems
Engineer and a Software Developer (which is common for start-up-prone types
such as myself). My biggest take-away from the interview process was that that
was a bad idea. I suggest that you focus on a particular area; web apps alone
is still possibly not specific enough. They'll perhaps want to know what
specific technologies or facets of modern web apps you are into and proficient
in.

Of course, that was then and this is now. Some other HNers probably have
better advice:)

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ganley
It doesn't really sound like this is what you're looking for, but Google has a
really nice branch in Sydney. Sadly, immigration issues kept me from joining
them, but I think (?) that a New Zealander wouldn't have that problem.

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zellynhunter
Not quite related, but I highly recommend reading
<http://courses.csail.mit.edu/iap/interview/materials.php>

------
dotBen
Are you looking for jobs at startups, who want to build web-apps. We're a Ruby
+ Rails shop, but there are many python startups doing wonderful things in SF.

