Rip Your Resume in Half and Other Things You Won't Hear from HR

From that, figure out your true grading criteria. What made you discard others? What sparked your interest? Write these things down.

For example, I recently got to the following criteria:

* more than 2 years in related jobs

* worked with Linux, rather than tossing it in as a keyword

* worked in a process-driven environment

* evidence of having written programs or scripts

and then a bunch of things that looked like minor positives.

Then you can hand the whole pile to a junior and ask them to reject anyone who doesn't have all the real requirements, and write down the number of minor positives on the rest. Sort by that number.

Now you have a handful of resumes, and hopefully a better understanding of what the position really is.

They're doing the best they can with the broken models?

Let's step back and consider some behaviors by recruiters that almost nobody in tech will find unusual:

"Ghosting" - the practice of ignoring and stopping all communications with candidates after they have committed their time have undergone interviews.

Failing to exercise any sense of professionalism in their communications - like sending emails with spelling errors or that lack basic punctuation. One sentence emails without so much as a salutation or using "Hey," as a salutation. Details matter when someone is representing your candidacy.

Not using a calendar app to send out invites for interviews.

Reaching out to candidates to gauge their interest in a role and then never following up with them when a candidate takes the time to speak with them and expresses an interest.

The list goes on and on. These have nothing to do with unrealistic expectations or broken models. These are basic business skills, etiquette and decency.

You might note that my comment resonated with more than a few people considering its position at the top of the discussion.

>"This statement is patently absurd and offensive."

It's odd that rather than consider any merits of another's observations you instead dismiss them as "absurdity" without providing a single argument as to why.

Bad reputations evolve over time. And "recruiting" by the way is not new. It has been a staple in HR since the first dot com boom.

Your claim that there are lots of people out there who are bad at their jobs is nothing more than the moral equivalence fallacy. For someone so offended that's a pretty weak argument.

And lastly if you reread my comment you will see that I said it is not all and recognized that there are some excellent recruiters out there. Its the third sentence.

I think this is a key point. Layout and presentation are really important. Even 1 page of dense, undifferentiated text is a lot. But 3 pages of well presented, sectioned content is pretty easy to read.

A) Make it dead simple to visually distinguish between jobs/entries.

B) Put your most important things in the first two lines, because that's all I'm reading until I decide you're worth investing time.

Also, do me a favor and collect all your keywords in one spot so I can skim them. Don't make me read line items to even figure out which technologies you've worked with.

Anyone with more than five years of experience who still does a one page resume either has done absolutely nothing useful or is cheating themselves.

> I don’t care about your hobbies, your family, or your GPA.

Do you advertise this to prospective candidates, or do you expect them to read your mind and read every other employer's mind?

That's pretty much what I do.

I essentially have two versions of my resume:

Part 1 is a single page, outlines the basics, plus the last 2 or 3 places I've worked at, etc. Just a summary format, but with enough detail for the reader to understand who I am, what I know, and what I can offer them as an employee. The next 2-3 pages are more detailed overviews of those places I've worked in the past that I listed on the summary, plus maybe a couple more.

I tell my recruiter (I work with a couple of independent recruiters from agencies) to pass along either the single page or all pages to the prospective employer, depending on what they think or know that the employer likes to read. If they are like you, they get the full thing; if not they'll get the summary.

When I go to the interview, I take a copy of my full resume, but I ask my recruiter which version they passed along first. That way I know what kind of person I'm probably dealing with in the interview. Regardless, I always make an offer of the "long form" resume, if they'd like a copy (and I take multiple copies in case I need to hand them out to others who may not have a copy).

I've never had a problem with this system. Even so, I read articles like this, and comments like the ones here on HN, and take them in stride, as I feel that my resume is a living document that can always use improvement and updating (especially as my skills expand).

Then you can submit a large resume with that. Hiring managers get more detail but also help in screening that 1-page resumes give the benefit of.

Even better, we really should get rid of the "make your own resume idea" and come up with a standard resume format by industry. Companies can then add supplements as needed.

That makes it worse than dating and hopefully you don't choose from 3-5 versions of yourself in the closet to bring to a date.

The problem with short resumes is that it is easy to hide shallowness. While that is easy to fix in face-to-face interviews, that takes up a lot of time and $$$. If you have to give details about jobs and projects, it becomes more difficult to hide shallowness.

I once interviewed at "7 year C Developer". We brought the person in and after a bit of a chat, asked some basic interview question - build a linked list, or something. We said that you could assume you have a pointer only to the beginning of the list. The person stated, "well, I don't know much about pointers."

Interview over!

This is for entertainment or marketing purposes, though.

End the email with the question in the subject asked again.

EDIT: If you find that you need to have a conversation, either walk over to their desk or pick up the phone.

I also try to eliminate parentheticals. Branching lines of thought are very difficult for most people.

If your question has multiple parts, break them into separate, sequential questions.

Lastly if the question is so complex that this doesn't work, and for whatever reason you can't talk to them in person, present them with what you believe the answer is and let them critique it. This won't always work for every scenario but it might be worth trying.

Once that's done, you can ask if they have the time to answer another question, and continue with the interaction.

1. Place most important piece at the top. Answer the following question to your audience: What is the purpose of this email and how does it apply to me?

2. Bulleted or numbered lists are ideal for multiple questions/points. It visually divides, gives you ability to order most to least important and also allows someone an easy way to respond inline to each question.

3. Iterate on your first revision with goal of reducing length and maintaining intention. This takes practice and forces you to ask do I really need this line of text.

4. If you distribute to a large list, identify at the top the scope so those it doesn't apply to can discard.

5. If you are emailing a group and you need replies or action items for different people call this out. You can do this by calling each name out: @Joe - Can you help identify x? @Jane - Can you follow up with so and so? etc. This way their name is attached to it.

Some people will understand what you mean with very little. Others likely won't understand regardless of how much explanation you provide.

Make everything that is critical super obvious. Bulleted questions is a great suggestion.

- Make each bullet point actionable/respondable

- Condense the bullet points/trim the fat

- Use sub-bullets as an aside or to provide narrative/opinion/background

Now people have essentially been informed up front that you expect X number of things for them to respond to and they’ll be less likely to miss the stuff in the middle.

You’ll also find that you’ll get the same information and intent across with your TL;DR bulletpoint summary, but in a way that doesn’t cause the reader to bail out.

It’ll also make it easier for them to respond because you’ve essentially given them references names for each point they’d respond to.

Yeah, that really depends on the content of the conversation, but I have seen that tactic used in so many situations (including non-email) that I assume it as the default reason. So I limit myself to one question per email.

I've since started tagging people in the body for specific items I need from them. Varying levels of success, if people are on the email and see themselves tagged in a specific part of the email, they know where to read carefully and what response I expect from them.

2. Read The Elements of Style, by William Strunk and E. B. White (< 100 pages).

3. Read the first several chapters of On Writing Well, by William Zinnser (< 100 pages).

(Don't like reading? Oh :)

1) The appropriate metric for 'well written' is that you can read the whole thing aloud and understand the findings in the time it takes a person to eat a sandwich, a bag of chips, and drink a medium coffee. About 75 minutes. Anything more may be 'read' but not understood and anything less means you should have done more work.

2) Everyone loves jargon. The more obscure words the better. The more complicated and obfuscated, the better. I find that I want to grok the research. Most of my compatriots do not want to do that. However, we all think the same thing about everyone else. More complicated papers result in a 'treasure hunt' mentality that many researchers actually enjoy, it seems. The journal club evolved into a 'tennis game' of sorts where the submitter would lord over the others about their knowledge of the paper. i don't want to generalize too much, but I think this behavior of 'one-up-man-ship' and 'I-know-more-than-yoooou-dooo' is core to academia.

Some personalities like long explanations, some do not.

Beware that your personality will often miss important details that would be in the verbiage.

Those or like reading often waste too much time reading unnecessary details.

There are pros and cons of both.

(I hope I wrote that in the style you would like to read)

1) emphasize the most important verb by putting it first, and favor more-active and more-specific verbs over very general or passive ones, as in putting "increased" ahead of "utilized" and "leveraged", and

2) favor simple language ("leverage" or "utilize" can often just be "use", for example) because, counterintuitively for middling or poor writers, simpler language usually comes off as more forceful, confident, and authoritative than fancier fluff.[1] It's also easier to read, and you're less likely to make small blunders that will bother some readers.

improves most writing significantly.

[1] Incidentally, I think high school and university paper length requirements that reward such flabby writing without without sufficiently punishing weak style choices are part of why people write that way, especially when they're trying to write "formally".

I have one of these five pages resume. I usually get a job offer after an interview.

It's like direct mail marketing - expect a very low response.

I've always done that and I have far less experience than you.

Many places shy away with dealing with non-local applicants for various, often silly, reasons:

They don't want to offer/negotiate relocation expenses, don't want to deal with long distance interviews, don't have the setup/infra to give good long distance interviews, not willing to pay for travel for an in person interview, not willing to conduct only phone/video interviews, not willing to feel responsible for having an applicant pay their own expenses to travel for an interview.

Many places are not willing to consider/interview someone with those moving parts because if they don't hire them, or things don't work out after hiring them then the company/manager will feel responsible and the applicant might bad mouth the employer. Granted bad mouthing an employer after a bad hire experience can and does happen, it doesn't often have as much weight and drama as when someone "moved across the country".

It's easier for an applicant to shout "I flew across the country to interview and this company is/was a joke... they didn't hire me, and I had to pay to travel to the interview!" or "I was hired by this company and I 'moved across the country' for it and then they canned me for [stupid] reasons a, b, c, they are a joke! They 'ruined my life' Avoid them!".

Unfortunately you need to move then look for a [local] job or conceal that you are not currently a local applicant at least until to are at an in person interview.

When I turn up for interviews, nobody bats an eye, and all interview questions that touch on previous jobs talk about what I've been doing in the past 3 years.

From this comment I assume you've put your resume in a giant pile 40 times. Unfortunately that's probably not going to get you the job you'd really want but you probably know this already (apologies in advance).

In general, I'd always recommend engaging with potential employers at MeetUps, email / Twitter saying you like their business and want to put your skills to use, etc - something that differentiates you from the normal "applicant." You don't need to ask them for a job - just ask them for an informational interview / discussion and if you can help. If so, they'll refer you and you'll have at minimum an inside track to the application process. If not, you're still better off than you were before.

How about picking the top 5 that you are the best culture fit for and most excited about. After that, create well written 100% custom cover letters and relevant resume. You will get a 100% response, this has worked for me in the past and is a win/win for you and the employer.

In the long run it takes about the same amount of time. Now wear the employers hat...which one are you more likely to read and then engage with?

Informal writing gets anything and everything. I'll mix it up all over the place, but I don't differentiate between the various dashes: You'll get a single dash and like it, dang it!

:D

I had some great recruiters to work with, but they move up fairly quickly.

So I'd agree with only the middle of your last sentence.

When I run across an outlier, I’ll let you know; seriously. But after twenty-five years, I wouldn’t get my hopes up.

(Remember that parent said “screener”, not “VP of HR w/25 years experience”. And even the VP can be a waste of good office space sometimes.)

Careful where you think you're wasting time and effort.

About 1-2 page, nothing forces you to read through all the 6 pages. If the first page is not a fit, then move on. In my experience, a single page often lead to me to have to dig way more on the person to try to find anything related to this one -- not sure that a time saver.

Not all skills and experiences wither at the same rate. This industry has a bad habit of assuming all skills last about as long as your average JavaScript framework. I'm sick of being typecast based on what I have been doing for the past few years.

Markdown can be used to output to LaTeX, but I haven't built a build-chain that takes markdown and puts it into my prefered resume style yet.

I'd like to build one, though, but I'm still not sure what type of markdown to use.

If you're a developer applying directly to a hiring manager who is also a developer, and you're going to bypass traditional HR, you might try a resume preformatted as markdown, which seems to be what you thought I meant, but I think that would be a bit nichey - meaning it probably won't work in most situations.