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Measuring accomplishments for OP isn't likely to be easy, but for more senior candidates that's the ideal situation.

You're correct about generalizing duties and skills. Bullet points on resumes that talk about non-specific day-to-day responsibilities are mostly filler.

The biggest thing with projects is that they're 'finished'. Most young devs have 20 sloppy repos or apps/sites with incomplete functionality that sends the message that the person is not able to finish something.

Of course you can go back and refactor old code (which you probably will if you keep repos public as your career advances), but have at least a few completed and fully functional projects to show.

I write resumes and coach job seekers who have difficulty in finding work or navigating career issues (my HN profile has links). My background includes nearly 20 years in recruiting for east coast startups.

You have a few things going 'against' you in most cases. I haven't seen a resume yet, but based on your site and post:

1 - You're relatively junior (at 23).

2 - You now live in France and want either remote work or to come back to the US. (remote junior work isn't easy to get).

3 - You're applying to a million jobs, which likely means you are sending out rather anonymous letters instead of something even remotely targeted.

I encourage my clients to apply to less companies, but to make those applications more targeted. Write a cover letter (or just the body of an email) that demonstrates that you've actually read the job spec and maybe even a page of their website.

Saying things like "I learn fast" and "I'm a good communicator" don't get a recruiter's attention.

The good news is that you have some projects that will look good on a resume.

Your messaging should focus on your accomplishments and projects, and not on how hard you'll work or how much you love to code. When you stop talking like a junior dev dying for work, you'll start being treated that way.

My guess is that the problem is the resume or the messaging.

My email is in my profile, feel free to send me what you've got and I'll take a look (you may not need resume help at all, so don't order anything).

This could be a number of things. For context, I've been in recruiting for ~20 years (mostly software startups) and I also write resumes and consult/coach job seekers on a number of topics.

Getting rejected without getting to the interview stage could be for several reasons.

Ageism - not all that likely in your early 30s, depending on your audience.

Resume - if your resume doesn't convey your background well enough for the job you applied for, obviously nobody is going to interview you. If your resume is too bulky, nobody is even going to read (or skim) it. If you'd like it looked at by a professional, I'm easy to find.

Overqualified/not a fit is often code for something else. It's much easier to tell a candidate "you're overqualified" (i.e. our work is below you) because that is flattering. It's much harder to tell someone "the team genuinely didn't like you", as that is not only insulting to some people but also may cause you to ask follow-up questions. Tell someone they're overqualified and it's hard to follow-up - tell someone they "aren't a fit" and they don't usually ask "why?", because it's rather ambiguous.

Sometimes overqualified means "paid above what we can afford".

You mention twice you're in a niche industry, so I am guessing it's pretty niche. Your problem is likely a marketing issue. How do we package your background in order to make it attractive to a wider audience? What are the elements of your background that we can make more 'universal' to people out of your industry? Does your resume speak too much to the people in your industry, and does it assume that readers will understand some of the terms and acronyms that may not be part of the wider tech lexicon?

Could be tons of things.

Recruiter and resume writer here. I'm at least somewhat surprised, and I assume his resume had references to his PR campaign, and I'd think that in itself (along with the somewhat limited qualifications he seems to have) would at least warrant a phone screen. Even if that phone interview was to feel him out a bit.

I am genuinely curious to see his resume (I didn't see it on this site or his other blog). Again, I'd have to assume it was at least somewhat littered with references to his dream of working for Google (the GitHub repo gives that away, and maybe he linked to his blog).

His current LinkedIn profile starts with a Projects section (I'd have recommended a summary) and the first project listed is "Google Interview University", so I assume any recruiter vetting him would have immediately seen that, then noticed that his experience section starts with "in training for a software engineer interview, April 2016 - present", and then perhaps into the rabbit hole of all his posts.

This might be a case of someone "trying too hard/pandering" to one audience. If we take away the Google-related content on LinkedIn, we've got a guy who has 5 years of experience running what appears to be a light tech startup, ~ 15 years of demonstrated web dev experience, several Coursera courses, and an active GitHub.

If you only gave his GitHub 5 seconds (without opening any of the repos themselves), I'd think most recruiters would think he'd be worth at least a quick phone call. Maybe they dove in and didn't like what they saw.

More questions than answers on this one.

To me, intellectual curiosity is basically "learning for the sake of learning". In other words, picking up a skill or researching a topic that interests you without having a real need to apply said skil/knowledge professionally or personally.

Often the research may be tangentially related to their work, but it doesn't have to be in order to be 'credited' as intellectual curiosity.

Outside of CS, demonstrating curiosity can be almost anything. A non-CS person learning a technical topic is actually a decent example. Non-programmers that buy Arduino and do some home automation project.

It can be almost anything I'd think. Many people don't dedicate much personal time to learning. Demonstrating that learning can be challenging.

I have clients that require interviewees to do a presentation on anything at all during the hiring process (both non-tech and tech employees). Some have demonstrated game strategies they've studied.

> I don't think curiosity diminishes with age, even if the ability to explore that curiosity may.

Anecdotally I'd assume that intellectual curiosity often increases with age, although that might be attributed to the availability of learning materials now compared to years ago. Some people here on HN would likely be shocked as to how many people in the industry consume almost zero content outside of what is necessary for their jobs.

I think my words may have been clumsy. My reference to "tech outside their job" was meant more about having relevant skills to a current job market (marketability), not the interview itself.

What you do at your job during the day is usually imposed on the employee. Few employees get to choose the languages, tools, etc. that their company uses, so their interests aren't always relevant to their day jobs.

Your reading list on the other hand is entirely up to you. It's likely an indicator of something to the person asking the question. People who don't like math (or aren't skilled in math) aren't reading advanced math textbooks for pleasure.

I see this pattern time and time again in both my recruiting work and in my resume business. Someone gets a rather non-challenging job that pays market rate or better, starts a family, pays little attention to any tech outside their day job, and suddenly finds that their marketability outside the current job has suffered greatly.

As developers get older, they need to be conscious of the relevance of their work in regards to current trends, and if the day job is largely irrelevant they may need to find access to projects (often unpaid) that will serve to impress new employers.

I don't think that the value of experience has truly diminished, but I think what is now classified as 'experience' may have shifted a bit.

Thanks for writing this Aline. As a recruiter for almost 20 years, I wish I had access to all my data and then the time to compile it, and anecdotally I'd expect the finding about MOOCs would be similar.

The most selective of my hiring clients over the years tended to stress intellectual curiosity as a leading criterion and factor in their hiring decisions, as they felt that trait had led to better outcomes (good hires) over the years. MOOCs are still a relatively recent development and new option for the intellectually curious, but it's not much different than asking someone about the books on their reading list.

Unfortunately, demonstrating intellectual curiosity often takes up personal time, so someone with heavy personal time obligations and a non-challenging day job is at a significant disadvantage. One could assume that those who have the time to take MOOCs also have time to study the types of interview questions likely favored by the types of companies represented in this study.

Thanks for continuing to share your data for the benefit of others.

18 year agency recruiter here. The problem with most recruiters today is that they are so concerned with controlling the process that they get in the way of letting two adults have a dialogue, and the recruiting industry is inundated with junior level people who don't know what they are doing.

The theory is that if the recruiter has a high level of control over both candidate and client, the odds of a positive outcome for the recruiter (a fee) increase. The client and candidate are both essentially 'buyers' in the sense that they have to agree to accept the other, and the recruiter is 'selling' to both parties.

But nobody wants to buy from someone who sells too hard, and that's what most recruiters end up doing.

When I started in recruiting, I wanted to be involved in every stage of the process to be sure I had some level of control. More recently I've realized that if the candidate is mature (and not going to make rookie mistakes like asking 3x market rate for salary just to 'test the waters') and the client has a decent hiring process, I'll make the intro and then step away until (if) I'm needed.

A recruiter can be quite helpful as a sounding board for both sides during negotiations to help facilitate a deal or save a deal that is failing.

>I’ve had folks change their mind even after accepting an offer. Hell, to be honest I’ve done it myself (and felt terrible about it).

A recruiter should also be helpful in providing guidance on situations like these. For example, I usually offer my clients a handful of tips to try and guarantee that someone who accepts the job will actually show up on day one. Having lunch with the new team between acceptance and start date is probably the most common.

But today's recruiter is far too interested in control. Make the intro, step away, and step in when necessary - otherwise, let them talk.

Show them how to do it themselves, and teach them "why" I do things the way I do them. I write resumes for clients and do them in Google Docs, and I invite the client into the doc from the very start. They can actually watch (in real-time, if so inclined) the work being done at all stages in the process.

Lots of them will ask why a certain decision was made that seemed unusual, and sometimes the dialogue gets into some rather detailed nuances of how readers interpret bits of information and how it's delivered. I came to resume writing after ~20 years in recruiting, so I am able to provide insight into what the audience for their resume is thinking.

Clients say they like the collaborative approach and appreciate that they learn things that they can apply next time (and not have to pay for the service again).

I think you're confusing tech recruiters with those who recruit students for bootcamps.

The ITT recruiters are aggressive in getting students into the program. You are referencing agency recruiters (or perhaps internal recruiters at companies)'discriminating against candidates without a degree (or with a Bootcamp cert).

Understood. Hopefully the for-profit model can still co-exist with some decency when it comes to wooing students.

>The rule set out in the ITT training materials instructs recruiters to call "a minimum of three times a day for the first three days." This was known as the 3x3 rule.

That is bordering on harassment by most standards. Taking advantage of the underemployed has been happening for years, and in tech I remember when MCSE training programs were mostly marketed towards blue collar employees. Many graduated as "paper MCSEs" who were largely unable to get a job.

I hope that bootcamps and accelerated learning programs for developers don't eventually go this route. They seem to be behaving to this point.

Seconded. I always write a summary even though many writers don't, and my emphasis on summaries is also to define my client before a junior recruiter or inexperienced screener does it incorrectly on their own.

I was hoping not to seem pedantic on this, but it's potentially a key detail to a reader and I wouldn't want anyone to think they have 5 minutes to make an impression when the reality is much closer to 5 seconds to make an immediate positive impression. Then you likely get some more review time once the initial gut reaction is over.

Nicely written article BTW.

Resume writer and ~20 year tech recruiter here. Just a comment to readers about the author's estimate that your resume is being reviewed for 5 minutes. It's not, so be sure not to write your resume as if it is going to get that much attention.

Don't save the good stuff for the ending, thinking "the reader will get to that." Interview or delete decisions are often made in under thirty seconds, at least for things like a quick phone screen. If you start out the resume too slow, many readers are not getting to page two.

Tech recruiter here. 85K even seems like an outlier to me for a bootcamp graduate unless you had lots of other credibility that came along with the bootcamp experience. I don't think I could get 85K for a new bootcamp grad in Philly, which is a couple tiers below NY/SF in terms of salary. More like 60-70K I'd expect.

>Unfortunately, a lot of younger workers are paid lower than less skilled, but older workers simply because of lack of seniority and/or negotiating skills.

I'd say that younger workers were exploited a bit historically because they were largely unaware of their own market rates and didn't have a viable way to find out. That is changing remarkably fast through sites like Glassdoor and self-reported salary data on various other sites.

I'm not quite sure I follow - how is ageism leading someone to leave?

A four year gap in employment is a much more logical conclusion to a reduction in salary than your 44th birthday. Even if it was something like an accident (I'm glad you are better now BTW), candidates are sometimes reluctant to share medical issues on resumes/cover letters (and rightfully so in some instances) which can lead to the reader making all sorts of assumptions about why you haven't had a job in n years.

They find companies that value their experience and don't just hire those who already know how to use all the shiny things. They do independent consulting after spending years building their reputation as someone who delivered for past co-workers and managers. They go to mature mid-market or large companies where those in management and hiring are perhaps a few years older as well. Sometimes they need to retool

Anyone thrust into the job market for the first time in several years (say 10+) might find it somewhat unrecognizable. Job search has changed significantly in the ~20 years I've been in recruiting.

I've developed a bit of a niche business in helping older programmers (I'm 44) "rehabilitate" themselves and prepare to enter a job search (writing/reviewing resumes, consult on job search strategy, etc.). It's mostly people who don't want to go into management and still want to stay in the code.

I can only think of a few people that left the industry entirely, out of thousands (I also ran a Java Users Group for 15 years, which has a large contingent of older programmers).

If you are willing to share, I'd be curious to hear more about your situation. I've seen salary plateau at certain career levels and ages (40s usually), but saying salary goes down at all (let alone sharply) is something that I expect is not a general truth about the market at large. My anecdotal data comes from ~20 years in recruiting engineers.

There are several reasons you could see a salary drop (stagnating skill set no longer in demand, move to company that pays less, move to industry that values programmers less, etc.), but age alone isn't likely to be one of them.

If you're writing your own resume, I'd maybe sit down every six months to a year and think about things you accomplished, and write then down (problem solved, how it was solved, data if possible, impact, etc.). At some point you'll have a list of accomplishments, and you can select the more impressive of them to put on the resume.

(As an aside - this also helps with career stagnation. If you're having a hard time deciding what to write, it's time to move on.

Once you've got some accomplishments, refactor to the most efficient use of words. How can I say everything necessary is as few words as possible? This is where a professional might come in handy if you're not a good writer.

You can run your accomplishments by a friend and say "which two or three are most worthy of a resume inclusion?" - gives insight into what is impressive.

I think that covers most of it. The rest is mostly formatting and summarizing (if you choose to write a summary).

Right. My point was that a new form of delivery doesn't help if the content isn't "right".

The 'in practice' part might have some non-human readers involved, but even an ATS scoring a resume isn't likely searching for a huge number of buzzwords that couldn't be contained in the average skills section - a list of maybe 3-4 lines of an entire page.

I definitely agree on the benefit of sending a short resume direct to a human like those on a "Who's Hiring" post, but I don't think a human reader went through your entire 5 pages, and I'm pretty sure you could have achieved the same positive result with 1-2 pages if optimized properly. Maybe not though.

>As I've gotten older my resumes have gotten shorter.

That's refreshing to hear. I hear too many people claiming "I have so much experience and accomplishments that I simply can't fit them all in under four pages". The problem there is just an inability to assess what is the most impressive or relevant experience.

Many people do get emotionally attached to the work they've done. I've worked with people transitioning into tech from other fields, and it is hard for them to swallow the thought of distilling their 10 years as a litigator and law school into maybe 2 lines on a resume. If you can detach yourself from the work, are efficient with words, and you know what employers are looking for, it's not difficult to create a one or two page resume even with lots of experience.