Comment by unflxw | Hacker News Reader

Comment by unflxw | Hacker News Reader

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A resumé is a tool for you to guide the interviewer, and you should use it for your advantage.

If you stuff your CV with a contextless list of random tech keywords, half of which are things you did a "hello world" with years ago, the interview is now a game of Russian roulette, and the gun is aimed at your face. Sure, you'll pass the resumé screening, but at what cost? You're leaving a lot to the interviewer's imagination, and what they imagine you should know is not necessarily what you know.

"So, your CV mentions you have MongoDB and DevOps experience. We're actually having some weird issues with it recently, it seems that under very intense loads, some of our nodes get locked and time out, and then the cluster loses quorum. Do you have any thoughts on what we could do?" It sucks to get a question like this, when all your previous experience in the matter is that you pressed the "create instance" button in the Atlas UI three years ago, and decided that was enough MongoDB-ing and DevOps-ing for a CV bullet point.

You can prevent this by showing those tech keywords in the context in which they're relevant. "Created and deployed an online application for candy bar enthusiasts, using React, NestJS and MongoDB on the cloud". Now you might get questions like "I see on your CV that you worked on an app for... candy bar enthusiasts? Could you tell me more about it?", or, "Your CV mentions that you built an app using MongoDB and NestJS, how was the experience of using MongoDB in a Node application?", which you are more qualified to answer. By adding relevant human context to what you did, you guide the interviewer towards the questions you'd want them to ask.

At least in roles where I have sent out a resume, including keywords was less about the interview, and more about passing the not necessarily tech savvy hr or external recruitment process.

In an interview I would hope to talk more about the more detailed parts, but it feels like I need the tickbox stuff to get to that point.

Why are you even in a position where you are dealing with HR as a filter? By the time my resume gets to the ATS, someone who is in the hiring chain already knows to look for it or at least I’ve gotten an internal referral.

Perhaps doublespanner is applying to positions where they haven't gotten an internal referral.

That works great when you already have a personal network and/or some cachet.

And once you break the can’t get a job <-> don’t have experience cycle, you should be forming a network from day one. That network can start with third party recruiters who you reach out to on LinkedIn.

Because I have not had a personal contact within every company that has had an interesting job listing....

Only moving to companies where I can get an internal reference seems very limiting...

What are interesting jobs for you?

I specifically look for companies where they want someone to be hands on. But also lead initiatives as an individual contributor. It traditionally has been at smaller companies (since 2008).

Those types of jobs don’t come from submitting my resume to an ATS. I have to either use my existing network or reach out to someone directly at LinkedIn.

To be clear, the keywords to tick the boxes are all still there, just presented in the context in which you used them, which adds additional meaning and qualifies what you mean by "having experience with X" to an informed reader. My CV has them in bold so that the HR person won't miss them on a quick scan.

That said, if you optimise your CV for success in recruitment processes where no one understands what you're talking about, you will get jobs at places where no one knows what they're talking about.

FWIW, at least in my corner of the world, nobody is actually looking at your resume let alone being "guided" by it.

FAANG dependent, of course, but at mine, we've got competencies assigned ahead of time, we drill into those, ask our pe-fab questions, and move onto the next interview. There's just no time to thoughtfully read resumes.

I particularly love these hour long interviews where I've had to fly half way around the world to spend an hour answering shitty questions from some completely unprepared lazy asshole like you who hasn't spent 5 minutes reading each resume.

You should be ashamed of yourself.

My first boss in tech made us all perform interviews. He always used to say that if it's on their resume, it's fair game passcode. We wouldn't judge you for not knowing something, but we would judge you for saying you need something that you didn't know.

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