
What I Learnt From Reviewing 22 CVs - bryanrasmussen
https://youknowfordevs.com/2020/07/04/what-i-learnt-from-reviewing-22-cvs.html
======
marcinzm
>And although I’m not particularly a big fan of LinkedIn, I always quite like
it when I see people who are at the early stages of their career making
connections with everyone they met at last night’s Meetup.

To me this shows people who are more concerned about networking than learning.
I want co-workers who are passionate about technology and not about how to
hack their careers.

edit: More broadly the best engineers I've worked with had horrible social
profiles because they were concerned about making things and learning rather
than social credits.

~~~
bluedino
>> To me this shows people who are more concerned about networking than
learning.

I've always thought of a conference as something to plant the seeds of ideas
in your head. There isn't a lot of detail and you might be one of 100 other
people in the room so you can't really ask about details.

Following up with the speaker or other attendees after the fact is where the
benefits are.

I don't mind a developer that says "I'm not sure how to do that, but _____
said they did something similar, let's give them a call."

~~~
jcims
Lurking the ten minute post-talk scrum at the front of the room is the best
part of conferences for me. 'Ah damn, they are running into the exact same
issue we are'...trade some ideas and contact info.

------
DavidVoid
> One final thing has just occurred to me…I didn’t consider the qualifications
> of _anyone_ , which I imagine is down to the role that the CVs were for.
> You’d certainly be interested in degrees and PhDs if you were hiring a data
> scientist or someone to write an operating system; in these spaces theory is
> a major element. But for fast-moving technologies like front-end
> development, you can probably tell everything about a person from their
> experience.

This feels like a prime example of why applying for programming jobs as a new-
grad is so frustrating. You spend five years getting an MSE degree and then
the recruiters just ignore your application because you don't have any
previous work experience.

edit: Parts of this blog post also reminded me of this awful tweet from a
senior recruiter at Blizzard [1].

 _" I've asked this in interviews at Blizzard for 30 years: What do you
program at home? Many answer they don't have time. Wrong. Program at home.
Every day. If you don't have that passion, programming is not really for you.
Write small games. Do game jams. #gamejobs"_

The "you're not a real/good programmer unless you program as a hobby"
sentiment really needs to die.

[1] [https://i.redd.it/jgiy4rw2ug751.png](https://i.redd.it/jgiy4rw2ug751.png)

~~~
mixmastamyk
> This feels like a prime example of why applying for programming jobs as a
> new-grad is so frustrating.

Or how when you've a decade or two of experience and self-directed learning
but no fancy degree. Apply to any coveted job and resume is in the first group
sent straight to the trash.

It's as if we have no idea how to hire developers. ;-)

~~~
musicale
> It's as if we have no idea how to hire developers. ;-)

Indeed.

------
caiobegotti
> I want to be with people [...] who have weekend projects, or who are
> contributing bug fixes back to open source projects.

These are two sides of the same problem. I happened to be in both kind of
shoes in the past but this is why hiring is fucked up in tech, I believe. This
sentence implies someone is expected to work more than they are paid for if
they want to be recognized at something. That's ridiculous. The brightest and
most talented engineers I ever worked with in the last 20 years had families
with kids (I don't, for the record) and were many years in their careers
already, who got offline during the weekend enjoying dinners, doing whatever
non-tech stuff and posting only personal content online, sharing it with non-
work friends.

If you want me to contribute with bug fixes to OSS while I am doing something
else of personal value or have neat weekend projects to post on HN then pay me
to do so or at least have the decency of not expectating my own life to
revolve around what you think it should. These... "projects"... take time and,
deities forbid it, I'm doomed in screenings if I don't share the same passion
for engineering projects on late weekend nights as you because you are biased?

Hiring folks, through tech managers' perspectives, talk about freedom but they
expect others to exercise their own liberty in accordance to what the company
think is best, it seems. Bullshit.

~~~
raghava
Nobody every asks "so, how many sales gigs do you do on the sides, during
weekends?" or "oh, how many teams do you lead/mentors, during the weekends?"

All this BS "weekend-extra-open-source-labour-tax" must be borne by the
members opting for tech streams. The innate, simple truth is that all that
"weekend extra effort" is a way to see if the person can take up more work off
hours without so much of a complaint and not demand overtime pay - in the name
of "passion".

Passion is overrated. There are many who play the passion card, while trying
to showcase their role-playing fantasies in a very skewed way. Hiring based on
such appearances is at best just a gamble. There are many such "social
profiles" which are either crafted for befooling the spectators, or inane
content which just about passes the "100 for effort! value, best left unsaid!"
types.

~~~
musicale
> Passion is overrated

"Passionate employees" seems to be code for "compliant human robots willing to
sacrifice their personal lives, health and sanity for the company's bottom
line, and to work extensive overtime without compensation while we recruit
their cheaper replacements."

~~~
disgruntledphd2
I dunno, it doesn't always mean that (though I have encountered this kind of
abuse).

Passion for what someone does is awesome, in that they'll actually notice (and
speak up) when sh*t is messed up. I love working with people who care about
this stuff.

It's entirely orthogonal to whether or not they have side-projects, so I would
always try and get signal for this in the interview itself, rather than
looking for a GitHub or whatnot (although I almost always look at someone's
code when it's on their CV, which isn't all that common in data science).

~~~
raghava
> I love working with people who care about this stuff.

Yes, absolutely. However, when orgs start using that against the individual to
drive down pay or eke out more from the person, is when that show starts
becoming to cliched and downright exploitative.

A civil engineer who is good at what he does and loves construction will not
(easily) let anyone in his team have wrong proportions of concrete and sand,
cause he understands the ramifications. But that passion in him towards the
trade should in no way be constitued by his employer as a notion indicating
that he could work for lesser pay cause "he seems to be loving that work
anyway, so that actually is a perk!" (IT IS NOT!)

------
secondaryditto
Recently worked with someone who... gotta say, it was a bit strange after a
while. We're all remote, but he had no picture of himself, ever. Now...
granted - there may actually be some visual reason - some disfigurement, for
example - that the person is self-conscious of (hadn't originally thought of
it).

However - we had no social media profile at all for this person. No pics of
the person, alone or with friends.

We had no programming profile - no bitbucket/github/etc. I did find, later, a
couple of public bug fixes from 2014 (this was in 2020) attached to this
person, but no pic or any other work to tie it to.

The person was no more than a voice on a phone/webex.

It was just a strange experience, because the rest of the team - probably
another 6 people or so - all had some degree of personal whatever - picture,
blog, repo, camera during Webex for facial expressions.

Over time, it was just... odd. Then ... off. The person was recently let got
from the project, but had communicated some weird stuff to me in private,
which was troubling (moreso to have been told in the first place, because then
I have to make a decision how to act on it).

I completely agree that we don't have to live online 24/7, people should have
separation between work/life, we shouldn't judge people just based on a GitHub
profile, and private life can (and should) be private. But taken to an
extreme, where you end up just working with a faceless voice... had its
drawbacks.

~~~
DanBC
> but he had no picture of himself, ever. Now... granted - there may actually
> be some visual reason - some disfigurement, for example - that the person is
> self-conscious of (hadn't originally thought of it).

> However - we had no social media profile at all for this person. No pics of
> the person, alone or with friends.

People who are fleeing domestic abuse or controlling parents may have very
locked down social media profiles, and may even be using different names for
different parts of their life.

------
cheez
The author says he would ignore a nice looking resume for c++ developers but
not frontend developers. This is only because he's consciously aware of it.

When I used to look for jobs, I was one of the only to use LaTeX and it was
most definitely a point of discussion when I was called in.

Sadly the LaTeX resume templates now look like something out of MS Word.

So whether or not you're a frontend Dev, every non cringy thing you can do to
stand out is important.

~~~
Ragib_Zaman
I used to use a LaTeX resume until a recruiter told me their ATS couldn't scan
it properly :(

~~~
newen
Don't know why but I've had much better luck with XeTeX and resume scanning.

------
raghava
Imagine, biases like "good formatting => better; no typos => better; social
profiles => better;" etc being put within an AI/ML based resume parser, with
an intent to mimic human behaviour of sourcing a resume out of a bundle of
resumes, and scoring against a job description. Now, what might go wrong, when

\- more such biases creep in to the models, thanks to groupthink, multiple
developers/groups and their biases

\- such systems end up gating the applicants before a human view is cast on
the resume

This is happening now, at scale. And only a very few in the industry seem to
be really tuned about such dangerous bias perpetuation engines.

------
vincent-manis
I'm retired now, so thankfully don't have to look at CVs any more. I was a
university/college instructor, so over the years I reviewed many, many CVs of
applicants for computer science teaching positions. Some comments on the blog
post and the other comments here.

a) If I saw a CV with a picture, I'd call up HR and ask why they let the
picture through. Pictures, and even names, give information that can be (and
has been) used to discriminate on racial and gender grounds, among others. I
always wanted to hire the best candidate, based on track record. Pictures
provide no useful information here.

b) When I got the CVs, I'd look primarily at what they say the applicant has
done, rather than formal qualifications. CVs then went into 3 piles: worth
interviewing, worth interviewing if nobody in the previous group pans out, not
worth interviewing. I would tend to give each CV about 1 minute of attention
in doing this, because in my experience the interview tells you a lot more
than the CV.

A CV is primarily for getting one's foot in the door, and announcing interest
in the position.

My alltime favorite CV was one I reviewed for hiring a successor when I was
leaving a university teaching position. The job posting specified “Masters or
PhD in computer science required”. The applicant's CV detailed some very low-
level education in a field completely distant from computer science. The cover
letter said “I recognize that I may not have all the background needed for
this position. If so, could you please tell me where I could get it.”

------
beardedwizard
All of the biases present in the article are why I avoid reading CVs (leaving
it to recruiters) and focus on an interview process that demonstrates whether
you have what we need.

~~~
bryanrasmussen
the thing that I found interesting about it is he's a developer who was told
to look over CVs, and these are the feelings he noticed himself having after
looking over 22 of them.

Given that makes me wonder what it's like for HR looking over CVs, gotta be
worse I figure, and if I wouldn't have the same reaction - I mean sure, I
don't believe you need a LinkedIn account, GitHub account etc. but if I see a
bunch of resumes and one doesn't have it will I be able to see that point as
inessential or will it make me cautious.

We all like to talk a good game about how we would handle hiring, but maybe we
wouldn't handle it as well as we hope.

------
corytheboyd
Glad to see others bringing up concerns about the obsession with
extracurricular learning in the industry. It’s pressure on people to do work
at home, cleverly worded to not sound like a requirement. Yes, in depth
learning takes a lot of time and is needed to become a better engineer, but
that qualifies as WORK which should be compensated for, just like how
delivering features is work. Throughout my career I have actively encouraged
teammates to slow down and really understand problem domains, because the
industry default they tend to be used to is to rush to completion.

All that being said, you just have to play the game a little bit too if you
want to maximize your hireability. Find some dumb errors in doc sites for
popular projects to check off the “OSS contributor” box. Have code in your
GitHub account be public, hell just go fork some projects and never do
anything with them, better than nothing and takes zero time. Add tasteful
color and styling to your resume, etc. Feels superficial, it is! But in a
competitive market it’s worth it and all of the above is mostly one-off work,
not a “code is my lifestyle” transformation. Be honest if asked about it
though, don’t lie about being a Rails core contributor because you forked
Rails.

------
sharadov
People don't always use their real names on their stack overflow and github
acccounts, I certainly don't.

------
NKosmatos
This: >typos really jump out at you when you are looking at a lot of CVs

I've seen a couple of CVs professionally and I've helped a few friends with
theirs and it really leaves me with a bad taste when I see spelling/typo
mistakes. Perhaps it's my OCD with symmetry and order :-)

------
zwieback
Wow, all the emotion in the comments, what's going on? I thought it was a
pretty balanced observation and clearly a personal opinion, not a "39 ways to
find the perfect candidate" type of post.

------
ahartmetz
"A public Git account" \- that is not really a well-defined concept. Did you
mean GitHub? Open source software exists outside of GitHub. If we want to be
pedantic, even outside of Git.

~~~
wazzaps
A static site hosting a git server with your projects could be considered a
"Git account" of sorts

------
Insanity
FWIW, recently I had to interview a fair number of candidates and screen their
CVs. The point made about having a github profile definitely resonates with
me. With the small caveat that if it was empty, I considered it silly to put
something on your CV that you're not using. For frontend developers some kind
of portfolio also stands out, and many did seem to have some.

I know it's bias and many good developers don't have side projects. It's just
my "gut reaction" towards the CVs.

~~~
throwaway98797
Identifies bias. Changes nothing.

Snarky comment aside, that’s the challenge that even if you see a flawed
thinking in yourself it’s hard to change your bias. We give ourselves a pass
too often.

Maybe we shouldn’t be so forgiving.

~~~
corytheboyd
Yeah, it’s something I catch myself doing all the time too, confirming a bias
I have but then just moving on anyway. As if confirming the bias somehow made
it okay to just have it.

~~~
Insanity
In the moment itself I manage to move away from the bias - but a lot of times
it probably happens subconsciously.

It's tricky to overcome, not sure if it is even possible to overcome it
entirely.

------
blizkreeg
We know that having people vouch for you goes a much longer way than self-
reported accomplishments on a resume. I keep wondering why isn't there a
platform where your specific accomplishments in a job are validated by your
former co-workers? Effectively, a peer-validated resume. Not LI style
testimonials but more specific like say "yes, Jack worked on this feature and
did a great job!"

~~~
munchbunny
It’s because such a system will be gamed by the networkers, not the most
competent. The people who are vouched for most will be the people who are most
shameless about asking.

------
thoraway1010
22 CV's.

Anyone doing hiring would love if their life only involved 22 cv's. I'd
interview half of them :)

If you hire regularly at least in some fields, the total flood of cv's is a
bit crazy (obviously something is scraping and auto or one click submitting
them).

------
musicale
> There were other technologies that were similarly indicative, such as
> mention of ‘microservices

I will never mention microservices on my CV. Except maybe as an anti-pattern
that I can assist with avoiding.

------
klondike_klive
>an important criteria

In a section of the article about typos, this is annoying to see.

------
MattGaiser
Resumes are a marketing document with a heavy focus on signalling, simply
because you can’t stuff much in there.

------
jiveturkey
just another knowitallogist

------
bb123
> I want to be with people that are sharing links to things they’ve read,
> people who are trying out new technologies and languages, people who have
> weekend projects, or who are contributing bug fixes back to open source
> projects.

I hate this culture in software engineering. There are many excellent
engineers out there who work to live, rather than live to work. Why do we have
this expectation that programmers want to spend every waking second coding
something? I'd hire someone who appears to have balance in their life with
other interests and hobbies besides computers (all other things being equal).

~~~
lmilcin
Let's be honest. The guy reviewed 22 CVs and went to write a blog post about
it.

I have interviewed hundreds of candidates, not just red their CVs (typically
around 1 candidate a week for the past 15 years, currently 3 candidates a week
on average).

What I have learned is to be very cautious when looking through CVs lest you
select for candidates who can make good looking CVs.

I have met many nice and competent people who don't write blog post and who
can't make nice CV. They don't make projects for show because they have enough
work at... work and they don't do ten other projects because they want to
focus where it really matters for them. They might have other non-technical
hobbies like riding a bike or picking up girls at the bar. They may not feel
the need to impose their interests and thoughts on everybody else or they
might think their thoughts and experiences are not at all valuable to general
public.

A person who writes blog posts, for-show github repos, who creates public
image, is just one of many types of developers. If you select for this you are
missing out on many excellent people.

~~~
mesaframe
But issue is the people you are talking about rarely gets noticed.

~~~
mstade
I don't know about that, most of the people I've ever worked with (and hired
or helped hire) seems to fall in to the category of not writing blogs, etc. A
silent majority, if you will. I may well be wrong of course, and I don't doubt
that being better at marketing gets you noticed more easily but that's not the
same as everyone else rarely getting noticed.

~~~
lmilcin
Exactly.

Not every act of noticing must be noticed by general public, if that makes
sense.

You might be doing a good job and get promoted and be part of 99.9% of
population who will never make headlines.

