So under ConsultingCo, there was: 12, 13, 15, 21, 28, 34.
You were expected to flip a couple of pages to learn that 12 was JavaScript, 13 was HTML, 15 was .. and I stopped caring at that point & binned it.
Here is a perfectly fine resume that can be half a page for a lead role or higher. Let's say this is a role for a webapp developer and the candidate has 10 years experience. With this resume, which is only half a page, you are probably way ahead of the competition. This is all the info a hiring manager needs.
position
Name/email address
Languages: Java, Python, C++, JS
Experience:
Foo Corp: 2017-2020. Lead Engineer to Principal Engineer. Web App developer for Foo Authentication System and other microservices. Used standard LAMP stack and then Spring Boot.
Bar Corp: 2012-2016. Sr. Engineer to Lead Engineer. Worked on backend order fulfillment logic, developed new test infrastructure for WebApps, client side test harnesses, security test suites, and related work.
Baz Consulting: 2010-2012. Engineer. Worked as consultant for primarily B2B clients, primarily in Java. Delivered over 30 successful projects to spec.
Bat Heavy Industries: 2007-2010. Associate Engineer to Engineer. Started as QA hire and migrated to development, responsible for metrics gathering app, qa infrastructure code, worked in python, java, and other languages.
Education: B.S. Chemistry, Foo State University.Especially those with 13 years experience. Delivering 30 projects is the only item that stood out for me, but everyone with a few years can make that claim depending on what they choose to call a project.
The number of languages listed is laughably small for a 13 year candidate, but I guess they have picked out the ones they think you want to see.
From that resume, I cannot tell even one thing that the person is particularly good at, or any qualities they could bring to the company that would set them apart - other than their decision to write a short resume and avoid telling you much about themselves.
Correct, this is how all resumes work. Remember, nothing on the resume is verifiable apart from the dates and companies the candidate worked for, unless you do a phone screen or panel interview. So the resume selects the candidates suitable for the skills based interview. I know some people think the candidate needs to write "I am passionate about quality" or "I love collecting butterflies and have all of Nabokov's first editions" but those are primarily creative writing exercises that don't end up telling much that is reliable or reproducible across candidates.
> The number of languages listed is laughably small for a 13 year candidate, but I guess they have picked out the ones they think you want to see.
Correct, and one would understand that for someone with 10 years of experience it's not hard to pick up a new language, nor is language particularly important in this role. Neither is framework.
> I cannot tell even one thing that the person is particularly good at
No, you can't tell that from a resume, but you can tell what a person worked on (perhaps poorly). In this case, there is plenty of QA, webapp, and some security experience. This gives you avenues to drill down during the in person interview.
Remember, the only thing you know is true on a resume is the list of prior work experiences. Then you look for a collection of claimed skills. So when reviewing the resume you check whether the claimed skills match your needs and then drill down to verify the claims during the in person interview. That's pretty much all the info you can ever get.
Why would you expect a dev have more languages listed? Many jobs involve only 1-2 languages, so why should they have more? (Assuming you don't list languages you've used for a project once years ago, which you're unlikely to have much relevant benefit in vs learning them fresh)
There is variation, so it's a numbers game - you have to send out without knowing if you're doing the right thing in each case.
I've spoken with recruiters about this, and like hiring managers, some of them favour a short resume that says very little ("less is more"), others favour a detailed one ("your experience will impress").
However there is a consistent aspect. They pretty much all need:
- Something that fits what HR is looking for in a few seconds skimming early in the first page. Bear in mind HR rarely understands any of things they are looking for, and are easily led astray if they think you are in category X when they are looking for Y, even if you can do X and Y equally.
- Something that fits what the hiring manager is looking for in a few seconds skimming early in the first page, and doesn't look onerous to read through.
- Something that passes keyword matches.
- Depending on the company, or how you get in, something that passes an ATS's assessment of experience (not just keywords but duration working, level of things like did you do management), and doesn't get tripped up by things like column formatting.
One of the things to remember is that almost nobody will read the entire resume or CV, unless it matches what low-effort pattern matching they are doing in a quick initial skim.
There's also quite a lot of variation in whether they are looking for "exact matches" to named skills ("although you have listed CSS, Webpack, ES6, Typescript, HTML5... we're can't proceed because we're looking for someone who knows JavaScript"), or quite fuzzy ("we know any good developer can learn a new language fairly quickly, what we're looking for is evidence that you know software").
Again, you just have to guess and play a numbers game, because they rarely say what they are looking for, and they are looking for different things.