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Comment by jon-wood | Hacker News Reader

I’m not sure which trend I dislike more, this one, or the general throwing out of the “two pages or fewer” guideline. I regularly get CVs which are four or five pages long, listing everything the person has ever done back to high school. Learn to tailor your CV people, I don’t care that you worked at Subway for six weeks when you were nineteen. I would however love to hear more than a list of technologies used about the three years you spent working in a similar sector.

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"I don’t care that you worked at Subway for six weeks when you were nineteen."

Unfortunately if you don't, you'll get people asking you "what were you doing in 2009??"

Because apparently the thought of giving someone a job who might have once not had one, regardless of their relevant skills, is the worst thing a recruiter can think of.

>giving someone a job who might have once not had one, regardless of their relevant skills, is the worst thing a recruiter can think of.

Is that not right though? If you had a gap you might decide to have another. Regular employees get offers from competitors and use that to get salary upgrades. Gap-enabled employees do not need the offers and can just leave your company whenever they want.

For a high schooler?

I have a 10 month gap between graduating college and my first permanent full time software job. Nobody's ever asked me about it and I don't have trouble getting interviews.

I have a lot of work experience though.

I think an un-focused resume is more a result of the trend we have in most large companies to constantly be accepting resumes even when they aren't really hiring.

And then of course never contacting or following up with those candidates.

So there is obviously little effort put into the review process, so it makes sense that candidates don't make effort to customize their application for each potential company.

I review hundreds of resumes a quarter, I find most resumes are under two pages for people straight out of college. People with 5+ years of experience will often hit two pages, which IMO is fine. I just expect everything to be on point.

The reality is people with these kind of resumes are trying to game the word search systems, which look for specific experience. It’s a sound strategy for automated systems, not so much for humans.

I personally think 2 pages is enough to get you in the door. So I expect 2 pages or less, but don’t penalize too much for large resumes. I just won’t read past the first page.

lol, I talk to people regardless of what they put in their resume. To me, a resume is more a “please call me” than an expectation that what’s in the resume precisely fits. I don’t expect folks to tailor resume to fit each time they apply to some position. Also, I’ve noticed people (including me) are really bad at writing good resume. Why lose someone who might otherwise be stellar because of their poor resume-writing skills?

Do consider some positions may get 1000s of applications and render your method impractical.

You probably need to be careful about where you put your job adverts. If your job add is on monster and the other job sites with lower quality inventory your going to get a lot of applicants.

In the UK I used to use monster etal as a way to hit my required quota of job applications - in the UK you have to in theory spend x hours a week and submit n job applications or you may lose your JSA (unemployment pay)

You are already screwed in that case without an internal rec. HR/recruiter resume filtering is extremely crude, maybe look at the prestige of your school, the prestige of your former companies, and some keyword matching.

Sometimes all you need is a good toss https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140414044726-2259773-a-guid...

Hopefully they are using screeners before they look at the resumes.

If you spent some time applying clearly it’s only fair I spend some time talking to you?

I have yet to encounter a case where people applied and they weren’t even remotely a fit. When that happens I may consider changing this strategy.

I will add to that that one of the best programmers I've ever worked with had one of the worst resumes I've ever seen. To the point where I asked my manager "why are we even considering this person?"

I was told to interview him anyway since someone working there vouched for him and he turned out to be a great hire.

The advice that I was always given is that the term “CV” generally refers to your unabridged work history and the term “resume” indicates a 1-page executive summary of that work history. They are not the same document; pay attention to which the potential employers asks for.

Unfortunately, most employers are as aware of this distinction as the average applicant. I would not recommend reading too much into the minutiae of job postings, as they have precision approximating a blunt weapon.

The terms also mean quite different things depending on where you are. For example, roughly speaking, a CV in the UK is like a resume in the US, a (hopefully) concise summary rarely exceeding 2 or maybe 3 pages even for the most experienced and qualified of applicants. Certain positions, such as academic research roles, are exceptions to this definition, and providing a complete and therefore often much longer history more like a US-style CV is typical in those cases.

This point of view confuses me. If you single one three candidates I would rather have the entire profile. Sales experience could be a proxy for leadership / sub store experience shows a basic level of dealing with various people and the unexpected.

If the problem is you don't want to read everything by everyone then just read the first three and make your decision. You don't have to physically scroll if you feel you learned enough.

Try asking for a summary of the important information in the job ad. How many years - ruby. last three jobs, school. It will be easier to filter them that way.

For someone mid career I'd expect a resume to cover the last 10 years of employment, which of you've done lots of contracting might take upwards of three pages to cover.

Is this unreasonable?

Yes.

You could adjust the level of detail, maybe covering many clients in a sentence like "developed software systems for Drexler (1956-1957) NASA (1957-1958), Scranton Paper Products (1958-1959)..."

Normally I'd want to include some level of detail about what I worked on at each position, technologies, technical accomplishments, etc

You may want to include it, but most employers won't want to read it. A brief summary should be more than sufficient.

Initially, yes. If you grant the candidate an interview, require a follow-up c.v. with this information.

Yes. I have 10+ years of employment with so many projects it would take forever to list them. I have a 1 page resume. (I've also given up on .pdf and .doc, and just give it out as plain .txt)

Figure out what experience is useful for the job and write a cover letter. Most of the experience a seasoned employee has probably isn't relevant on the surface level to a hiring manager.

Something like:

"It sounds like from the job description you're looking to do <X>. I've done <Y> which is very similar to <X> in most respects."

</C3PO>

I have more than 10 years experience with a LOT of different projects under my belt. My resume is just barely 1 page - obviously it's only the highlights. I also don't even list my first tech job anymore, it was a summer internship and I didn't do anything of any challenge there.

That guideline doesn't exist everywhere. You may just be seeing CVs from non-UK applicants.

I’ve been getting paid to write code since before I finished high school. All that experience feels relevant when looking for a coding job ... I don’t think it’s gonna fit on 2 pages if I want to tell you anything useful about the positions.

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