

Ask HN: Too specific? Too arrogant? Too sparse? - bengl3rt

I was updating my resumé today (because, as a student hopping from internship to internship, the job hunt is an almost constant process) when I realized that it was a very poorly designed and visually unappealing document that did not convey especially well what I've done or what I want to do. I decided to start from scratch and create something new that sums up those two fairly succinctly.<p>This is only my first attempt after looking at some similar "un-resumés" created by colleagues and friends. I'd like to get HN's feedback on it. It's here (warning, PDF):<p>http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/benglert/concept1.pdf<p>I have a couple of questions:<p>a) Do you feel like you got the same amount of information (if not more) out of this document that you would have gotten from reading a traditional resumé containing "EXPERIENCE" and "OBJECTIVES" and so on?<p>b) Does my dream job even exist?<p>c) Am I at a point where I get to ask for it?<p>d) Does my description of my abilities/interests/experience strike you as honest and sincere?<p>Don't be afraid to be brutal, HN. I have some time to iterate on this before I'd dream of trying to use it in a professional setting in place of or in addition to a traditional resumé.
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pdx
I don't like it. There's no information here. It's like one of those sales
brochures that you open up, hoping it's a technical datasheet full of
specifications, and close two seconds later, when you see there's no meat in
it.

Where's the meat? What open source packages? Windows and Linux drivers for
what? Using what toolset? What mobile apps, for which platforms?

I get that you're trying to have a resume that's different, but even a
different resume needs to provide some actual information.

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chr15
It would help to know what kind of position you are looking for. I think the
style of résumé depends on the type of position. I'm assuming a software
engineering internship?

In general, you have to think about the audience for your résumé. More than
likely it will be a recruiter. Once it's picked out of hundreds or other
résumés it will be forwarded to a hiring manager. Recruiters are probably
looking for very specific criteria provided by the hiring manager.

I'm not sure how effective an un-résumé is. It's a gamble, but you'll
definitely stand out of the pile of other résumés. A recruiter might take a
look at it and admire your creativity and give you a shot, or they will trash
it because they don't want to spend time figuring it out. More than likely it
will be the latter since yours leaves a lot of unanswered questions (see
below).

I would be more specific on your résumé in the following ways:

1\. You mention over 4000 hours of development experience. What languages?
When? For what companies? What did you build and what value did you bring to
the table?

2\. What's your GPA? Many recruiters filter by looking at GPA. What is your
expected graduation date and what degree will you receive upon graduation?

3\. Which independent albums? Be as specific as you can to show that you
actually did work.

Also, I'm not sure about including the "is looking for section." You have some
very specific criteria with little leeway. A recruiter might look at this and
say "Well, this kid looks bright and motivated, but we can only provide 1 out
of the 4 things he's looking for" then move on to the next one. Also, the
phrase "a job" might ring a wrong bell. Companies don't want to hire you for
"a job" but for "a career."

With that said, maybe a traditional résumé format will work better. Either
that or you're going to have to redesign your résumé to quickly answer the
above questions.

If you're going into a technical field, I think a traditional format is
better. Managers won't really care about your design skills, but they will
care about your experience and your ability to solve problems.

If you're going into a creative field, then this format may work. But it's
still too broad. Try to be more specific.

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czwolf
So I checked out your resume. And as a graphic designer, I found it a little
jarring. But your not applying for design jobs, so thats not a huge deal. It's
an interesting idea, a great idea probably. But if you're going to do
something like this you need to establish a flow of information.

Here is my resume: [http://www.zevdesigns.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/czh-
res...](http://www.zevdesigns.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/czh-resume.pdf)

It's not the avg business person's resume, cause I'm not a business person.
Anyone can have a resume like this tho.

a) I feel like a sentence/phrase formatted layout for your resume is
interesting and effective if they read it. If they read it, they'll get the
info they need.

b)Yes

c)Why not?

d)I have no reason to assume otherwise, imho. Nothing seems out of the
ordinary.

I just worry about a TL;DR. sentiment when seeing this.

If you're gonna go with the phrase format, then you need to follow through the
pattern throughout the piece. dont capitalize first letters. And add periods
at the end.

here's my version of your resume:
<http://www.zevdesigns.com/dev/images/benglert.pdf>

dont look if you dont wanna see it completely reworked.

~~~
huhtenberg
Very nice resume. Swiss grid for the win :)

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nandemo
I like the general look of it.

You shouldn't say you're a "competent traveler", whatever that means. In case
you're applying for a job that involves travel, the company will be happy
enough to know that you're _willing_ to travel.

The "does" and "is looking for" parts are too sparse.

On the "does": there are dozens of real-time and mobile OSes, tell us which
you know and what did you do with them. Can you build a device driver from
scratch? Are you a Debian maintainer, or you just maintained a customized
local package during an internship? Maybe if you answer all of this your un-
resume will turn into something more like a resume, but so be it.

It's not clear what you're looking for. Do you want to be a developer, a
product manager, or would you be just as happy to do customer support if
there's travel involved? There's nothing wrong with not knowing what you want
to do in that stage, but I think your description could be clearer.

You probably should not garble your email address; just write a "@" instead of
"AT". No need to make the HR person think. If you're really worried about spam
then either don't put that version online or make the address an image.

------
bdr
a) Says more about your personality than the typical "objectives", but says
less about your experience than the typical "experience". I don't care how
many hours you've spent "working profesionally" (using MS Word?), I care what
you've made or accomplished. This resume only lists some very broad areas.

b) I don't know. If you left off the last one I'd say "probably", but I really
don't know.

c) Never hurts to ask for it. :) Whether you can get it is unclear.

d) Absolutely.

A couple minor things: "A competent traveler" is not really impressive. "Ben
is... along with possessing" is ungrammatical. "Customer support, training,
and debugging" sounds like you debug and train customers -- which I want to be
true.

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bengl3rt
Thanks all for the feedback. Looks like I was running away from dense,
cluttered text so fast that I went too far in the other direction and
sacrificed specificity.

Can someone remind me, what is the figure for the average amount of time
someone spends looking at a single resumé while they are shuffling through a
stack? Is it 30 seconds? That seems almost optimistically high.

Following some of the comments here I am looking at cleaning up my old resumé
and adding a "Summary" or "Quick takes" section at the top for people who are
just skimming/browsing. What do folks think of that?

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pbhjpbhj
>I realized that it was a very poorly designed and visually unappealing
document that did not convey especially well what I've done or what I want to
do

I was expecting a high-graphic presentation when you said that. This is clean
and crisp for sure, but I wouldn't call it visually appealing.

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lhorie
a) "Experience" is really supposed to be "Accomplishments". Rather than saying
you worked X hours (which anyone can do), say what value you brought in those
hours. The objectives section should ideally be tailored to the company you're
applying.

b) network like crazy and you'll find out

c) rather than asking, you should focus on offering to do something. Ask in
the interview.

d) to be honest, no. You say you have ~2 years full-time experience being a
developer on bunch of fairly different platforms, plus an audio engineer, and
customer support, and you're still a student. That has Dunning-Kruger written
all over it. Show what you worked on (e.g. by linking to them)

------
RiderOfGiraffes
Clickable: <http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/benglert/concept1.pdf>

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Online viewable <http://viewer.zoho.com/docs/mPWtg> (expires in 1 week).

~~~
pbhjpbhj
People prefer to download random bods CVs rather than view them?

