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Comment by melle | Hacker News Reader

In the experience part of my resume I provide a reverse chronological list of jobs, with bullets that explain my responsibilities and achievements.

Thanks for your suggestion on planning and leading, those are easy to forget (as is elicitation of requirements I guess)

Wouldn't mixing tech/skills with job positions make it more confusing?

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Remember that you're writing a sales brochure about yourself, not a biography or index card. Nearly every CV that comes in will look identical. You stand out by making your selling points easy to find, instead of forcing me to look for them.

Examples:

* Used Angular and Rails to build an intranet application used every day at Acme Inc by over 200 people, increasing efficiency at the company by 150%. Features included uploading and sharing documents, with commenting system and email notifications.

* Optimised a Java algorithm in the backend of Foobar Corp's service to increase response time by 200%, delivering business value of $60,000 per year.

Here's my fairly up-to-date CV if you want a complete example: http://dblo.ws/cv You sound like you're a better programmer than me, so you should have plenty of good achievements.

Thanks for sharing!

But a question: Is your CV battle tested? What I mean is, having significant experience already and I assume industry connections, do you find that your CV is what gets your foot in the door for an interview?

To put it another way, do you find that after a certain point, CVs simply don't matter?

I can't say definitively as I haven't done any kind of "split-test analysis", and clearly there's a lot of selection bias in that I tend to speak only with recruiters who like my CV. Also, when going for a specific job, I edit it to prioritise the relevant bits.

For the type of jobs I want, in London, I do need a good CV. I also need a StackOverflow profile, industry connections (which I tend to make through meetups and conferences) and a portfolio. I should really have a blog as well. But I'm simply too small a fish in too big a pool to get by without a good CV.

I agree about making selling points, however, the examples you provided there with metrics can't be easily derived and I see them often as being emphasized. One could work in a multidisciplinary large team, or help implement a test automation framework whose value cannot be expressed in dollars, however, for the team and the product owner it's of the tremendous importance and value. This is especially valid for any large, long term project that's starting from scratch.

edit: extra word

If they could be easily derived, we'd all be doing it all the time. Spend some time doing it before you apply for your next job (or salary review) and you might be pleasantly surprised at how well the conversation goes. I linked to "How to Measure Anything" in another comment, and that's a good read - https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Measure-Anything-Intangibles-Bu....

If you really can't find a way for your current job, then say how many downloads your open source project has got. Or how many comments or page views your blog gets. For some reason, employers get excited when I tell them "I'm in the top 3% on StackOverflow". (Yes, I know how ridiculous that sounds.)

But that guy who earns twice as much you and does half the work? This is what he does. He talks in the language of the people who decide his salary, and that language involves specific numbers that matter to the business.

> increase response time by 200%

"Increase"? So now getting the response takes 2x as much time as before? Hardly an achievement... ;-)

EDIT: Also, things like these are hard to quantify (and verify) and even harder to come by - you can work for years without ever being in a situation where your work "increased something by 200%". I have a feeling that many people will read your advice as bullshitting your way through the CV-based selection, to maximize the chance of getting an interview, where you can explain all the details. Which, unfortunately, is not that bad a tactic - but I don't think it's what you had in mind.

You're absolutely right! That's another thing - always get someone to proofread for you.

> bullshitting your way through the CV-based selection ... I don't think it's what you had in mind.

That's _exactly_ what I had in mind, though I might phrase it as "honing your sales pitch". On something like a CV, you should always be happy to lose a little accuracy and completeness to gain some clarity. That doesn't mean you can make stuff up, but you do need to phrase yourself carefully to highlight your strong points.

You'd be surprised at what you can quantify. See "How to Measure Anything (https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Measure-Anything-Intangibles-Bu... for some ideas. Measurables are the language of those who hire you (and decide your salary) so learning how to show this kind of stuff is essential.

* What was the conversion rate on that page you made before and after?

* How long did it take staff in your company to complete that process before and after you rebuilt it? How many hours have you saved the company?

* How many bugs were reported per day for that module before you fixed it, and how much did it cost the business to process them?

Bullet unique achievements. Responsibilities will be better in a few sentences in paragraph form before the bullets.

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