Hacker News Reader

Comment by fecak | Hacker News Reader

I was trying to be simple and now we've reached the pedantic stage.

If it was a team effort, we may use "Contributed to development of an iOS game that earned $10M in revenue.".

If it was an individual effort, the bullet I wrote earlier could included a term to clarify that, like "Independently...".

As for 'us on HN', about 100 HN users hire me every year. I even have a discount code for HN users on my HN page here (I got 3 HN orders in the past two days, probably from people reading this thread). I'm familiar with how to write accomplishments on resumes, for HN users and others.

View on HN

I said at the beginning that there's two camps who equally hold opposite beliefs. Just because you've made a career catering to one camp doesn't mean the other camp isn't out there.

I've been in the resume game in one way or another for 20+ years, have published countless articles about resumes on various websites, and written for thousands of clients from all over the world. I've never witnessed anything resembling "the other camp". I've never had a client question the "I" advice - not once.

You can say it exists, but it would be nearly impossible for me to spend an entire career in this field and not ever come across it.

Your clients by definition don't have strong feelings on the format for a resume and accept what you tell them.

You writing countless articles about what you think doesn't preclude the idea that people out there think differently.

Meanwhile I've personally seen it in hiring committees in every job I've worked for about 15 years now. I actively shut down that line of thinking in said committees (from both directions), and it's not difficult to do because you get a group of five people or so together in a committee and that's normally enough for there to be differing opinions on the matter. "Look, even in this small group, of people we've hired and trust to make good hiring decisions, there's mutually exclusive ideas on what you're 'supposed to do'. So obviously we throw out both ideas and accept whatever in this case since it's completely orthogonal".

I personally take your approach since it's around 75%/25%, and the numbers work in favor, but there's absolutely the other camp out there.

You're making some assumptions about people you know nothing about. Some of my clients do have strong feelings on various resume topics, but they know I'm good at what I do and want my opinion. They don't always agree or accept what I tell them.

I'm really not sure what you're talking about with hiring committees, but if you're saying that some people are eliminating candidates because they did or didn't use personal pronouns, I think that's well beyond the scope of what I've been saying. I'm not suggesting applicants who use "I" should be eliminated from contention.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com