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Comment by ndr | Hacker News Reader

    Increased server query response time by 15% by restructuring API

... is that a good example?

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Well, you probably want to decrease response time but otherwise yes. It's good to give objective metrics for your accomplishments. Also helps to frame the interview. "I see here you improved the response time of an API by 15%, tell me about that".

Even if your current employer let's you talk about specific numbers, without context they don't tell the recruiter anything.

"The API latency was 10 seconds, now it's 8.5 seconds."

"I reduced the p99.9 latency from 1 sec to 400ms" (by removing input validation)

If the best thing you did was take an API from 10 to 8.5 it's probably best to tell the recruiter as little as possible.

Your second line is improvement for sure. But it follows the same basic advice to give numbers

A recruiter doesn't understand technical terms, to them that is an as good explanation as any other. And the interviewers later typically don't care about your resume, so it doesn't matter there either.

However the people deciding if you get hired and what level you get hired at, and the engineering managers who decide if they want you on their team, they understand that it is a bad explanation and care about it. Now there is such a lack of candidates passing the interviews that you will probably get a position anyway, but the position you get might be shit.

The candidate is under pressure to impress the recruiter so they might put in fluff, but the recruiter is also under pressure to make sure their services get retained too. At our company, we stop working with agencies/recruiters who send us a large number of junk resumes. I imagine its the same situation at many companies.

Google only has inhouse recruiters. Although the churn of those is extremely high, I'm not sure exactly how it works but I think they get fired after 6 months if they haven't managed to hire enough candidates or if they waste interviewers time with too many bad candidates. You could think that the process means they have good recruiters, but since the churn is extremely high Google has a ton of inexperienced recruiters working there at all times.

I see.. I was not aware of the internals at Google. Thanks for pointing it out.

No, and it really shows quite how detached from the tech these recruiters are...

Source: I invented the flux capacitor equivalent of the retro encabulator, so should know a thing or two about this!

Follows the STAR method, which they likely look for too.

15% quantifies the Resulting impact of your work succinctly.

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