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Comment by yamtaddle | Hacker News Reader

Have a relative who's quite accomplished in HR and recruiting and, can confirm, they don't encourage outright lying but they do insist you have to stretch everything to the max and freely imply a lot more than a very honest person might be inclined to.

Judging from the results for people I know who've had this person re-work their résumés, it's extremely good advice. Non-braggy résumés seem to just get round-filed for not knowing how to play the game, even if they're otherwise very well-written. I'm sure there are a few folks hiring—probably almost all at relatively small enterprises—who have the opposite reaction but they're instead rejecting good people who are simply playing their hand the best possible way, given the rules. Those who fluff up their résumés get much better results.

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One of the twists in the software industry is that something that looks braggy to a non-technical recruiter can look irrelevant to someone in the know, or from the other direction something that looks braggy to a tech person can be meaningless to a non-tech person.

For example, if you say that you "developed software that saved the company $X million/year," that might look good to a non-tech person but a tech person will understand that could mean nothing. Maybe you spellchecked comments in a sub-subcomponent of a project a thousand people worked on. On the other hand you might say you "worked on v1 of the Frobnicator library" which might look like nothing to a recruiter but which is a legendary accomplishment in the field.

In my case I just say what I did in plain language that includes a bunch of keywords and hope that's enough.

I'd say it depends on the company. Silicon Valley likes to promote on impact. So being able to communicate that impact is a valuable skill.

The company and the position, so a good idea for an employee #1 position, less so if you're the tenth IC on some random team at some random company.

> Non-braggy résumés seem to just get round-filed for not knowing how to play the game

That doesn’t make sense, there must be a different causality.

I guess it's also possible that HR people actually believe all the stuff on résumés is accurate and think those candidates are worse than someone presenting the exaggerated version of the exact same work history and abilities. I was trying to be generous and assume they simply think those are amateurish or are some kind of non-conformist or lack-of-social-awareness red flag.

Why? People expect it to effectively be a sales document. So if you have a bullet item like "One of 100 people peripherally involved with only modestly successful $PRODUCT," readers would be forgiven for discounting that experience.

To be clear, per parent, I'm not saying to lie but things can generally be presented in a positive way.

My objecting is against “for not knowing how to play the game”. You’re arguing for a more plausible causality.

I can say that I have generally been a modest person who has performed well in the past.

The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

People can have fewer accomplishments and make a big deal out of them and get more out of it. I would rather not make a big deal out of meaningless stuff. I recently certified as an AWS practicioner after my associate level certs expired. My manager wants to send an email out to the department about that accomplishment. I don't get it - it's just practicioner.

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