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Joel Rants About Resumes
rbrandis writes "Mr. Spolsky's latest rant is about writing a resume that will be read "Please do not use cover letters that you copied out of a book. If you write 'I understand the position also requires a candidate who is team- and detail-oriented, works well under pressure, and is able to deal with people in departments throughout the firm' then at best people will think you're a bullshit artist and at worst they will think that you were not born with the part of the brain that allows you to form your own thoughts and ideas.""
make sure you don't write exactly the same letters. I, as the owner of a medium sized webhost often compare them to those of others in the same business and it is not considered good practice to simply copy it over and over again. At least adapt a few words.
Do not lie. Lies are eventually revealed, you waste your time and theirs.
Keep it to what's current and to the subject.
Make it readable and non-technical. It's going to be screened by HR people, they're typically really bad with technical details.
Keep a text copy, some people want to receive resumes through horrible web interfaces.
Nobody gives a crap about your hobbies, unless then involve lots of theft of past employers property, in which case they'll appreciate your candor.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Same thing goes for Word's resume wizard. You can use it to get started, but if you stick completely with its format, your resume is going to look just like everyone else's. You and your work experience are different, your resume should reflect that.
Don't be afraid to take risks. One of the best resumes I've seen used color and graphics - it was definitely eye catching, and it worked, because when I called the young man back, he'd already accepted an internship somewhere else!
Blogging Weight Loss, Distance Education, and more at verlin.com
A cologne-laced envelope isn't a good idea. I myself am allergic to many perfumes, as are most members on both sides of my family. I also have known a number of other people who are allergic to perfume outside of my family. The last thing you want is for your resume to cause an allergic reaction in the resume reader. Also bear in mind that a cologne you may personly like may not be one that the reviewer will like.
Personally, I tend to use the "what is your greatest weakness?" question fairly often in my hiring. Why do you call it a "bullshit question"? What would be a better question?
I'm serious.
Joel, as I'm sure you know, was one of the technical guys behind VBA in Excel, along with some other fairly big projects. He apparently made enough money from these gigs that he went off and started his own company, initially focusing on consulting (at the most unfortunate time to be in consulting...), and then moving into shrink wrap software. Apparently they're doing okay as they recently moved into a pretty impressive new office, still in swanky (and expensive) New York City.
Joel is a big advocate of treating developers well, and is respected for generally being pragmatic and insightful, with a humorous writing style that is informative while remaining entertaining. On the flip side, a couple of his recent posts have been blatant quid-pro-quos with some friends of his, and he's selling out a bit with the Programmer's Paradise gig.
From Dictionary.com (emphasis mine) -
:)
stupid ( P ) Pronunciation Key (stpd, sty-)
adj. stupider, stupidest
I thought that Mr. Spolsky had made a mistake too, until I noticed that the word stupider _does_ exist as an adjective
The trick with resumes is to get noticed, but not for the wrong reasons. A resume (at least in the tech world) has to walk a fine line: you want to get past the HR people who will be looking for keywords, but you also have to prove to the tech person who will end up reading it that you are not a total tool.
My last resume worked pretty well; I sent it to 5 employers and got 3 interviews (the other 2 were, frankly, out of my league but it never hurt anybody to aim high). The 3 interviews got me 2 offers, and I have a job from one of them.
From the resumes and cover letters I've been seing lately, I would offer this advice to job seekers:
Anyways, that's just me and YMMV. Selling is easy it just takes the will to close the guy.
All's true that is mistrusted
He has a successful software house with what most people here would view as ideal programmer working conditions. If he were unix-centered instead of a Microsoftie, he'd probably be considered a god here. That's why you should give a shit.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
you forgot one thing....
EVERY interview book and website states you answer that question with something positive.
Besides, nobody in their right mind will ever answer that question honestly... as they know that you will not get hired if you tell the person in the interview your real greatest weakness.
The resume is a Sales flyers, the interview is a sales meeting, you do EVERYTHING to sell yourself and embellish when you can.
the best thing for people to do to make job hunting easier is to read books written by Zig Zigler, read how to make friends and influence people, and learn to be a salesman/person/thing... That is more important than anything else short of getting an inside track by networking.
The guy that is easy to talk to, sounds sharp, dressed nice, was polite but was slightly underqualified will be hired over the prima-donna jerk that is perfectly qualified.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Plural possessive should be spelled " peoples' ".
:-P
Sorry, I had to do it. =)
Other than that, looks good. And yes, I know my period is outside my quotes. I know it's not the rule, but the rule is stupid, and I don't follow it in informal correspondence.
On a slightly related note, I'm starting to think that I should look into getting a job in the IT publishing industry. Almost every computer book I buy nowadays is positively littered with spelling errors, typos, and poor grammar. I understand that the geek authors may either not know English well or not care too terribly much, but it pains me to read things like "Also, Python's error handling is a helpful for the programer to" in a (presumably) proofread, edited, spellchecked, and PUBLISHED book that I paid good money for.
Of course you don't _copy_ verbatim another resume you found. But you _must_ use the langage expected by the person who is going to read it, and for HR folks, that almost invariably means groupthink speak that can easily be scanned into a database.
In several cases I've created different resumes for the HR department, interviewer, and hiring manager, all of them definitely discussing the same things, but each one with a different focus. HR was interested in database scanning for buzzwords, the interviewer was interested in understanding my social interactions with other people, and the hiring manager was interested in the social skills + raw technical capabilities.
After this, despite several experts saying I had the best resume/application materials they'd ever seen, along with a solid technical background, it took almost two years to find another technically oriented job.
Some of it might have to do with visible disabilities that make it difficult to share space with me until you're used to it. Some of it might be due to the fact that I'm not the _best_ in the world at what I do, and neither am I an A-type alpha-male personality that so many people tend to look for these days. Yet more if it has to do with the fact that probably 75% of the "jobs" out there are for companies without a shred of collective morality or benevolence to temper greed.
But in the end, it's a fact that there just aren't many jobs out there, and those that are available just aren't desirable, and no amount of research can help you accurately represent yourself if the company in question willfully lies to you about the hiring process, or uses a poorly informed HR department to scan for technical requirements it doesn't understand. Let these companies die the death they deserve.
I've got karma to burn, so here goes.
Joel's article is 100% non-Scottish. Think your shiny resume and cover letter with perfect formatting and punctuation will get you a job? Think again. You're just one paper amongst the other hundreds; you're competing with Bernard Shifman and the guy who paid $3k to send his resume to 3,000 companies. You're not competing with people who know how the system works, and how to make it work for them. Those people already have the jobs while you're stuck filling out applications for HR.
Let us remember why a company is hiring: to use labor to make money, NOT to distribute jobs for charity. Tell me how, on god's green earth does a dead piece of paper prove that you're going to make that employer money?
It doesn't.
By submitting your past list of accomplishments, you're in effect saying, "Hey, Mrs. Employer, here is what I did in the past. Please figure out how this applies to the problems you're having right now, and then pay me to solve them."
So, one, you've added extra work to that hiring manager's plate (on top of her regular job), and two, you're asking her to do your job to figure out if you can make them money! No wonder most managers make the mistake of using HR do all their hiring---it is "easy(ier)"! Too bad it doesn't work very well. Would you have someone who knows nothing about the position you're trying to fill screen out potential candidates? Hmm?
Now then, let us look at how Safety gets a job:
No resume necessary (except as a security blanket for managers who don't know how to conduct an interview...but you'll never use it). Want to know more?
Yeah, right.
You didn't capitalise your title.
I'm amazed at everyone here complaining about how unfair, mean, or Joel is being about the resumes he gets and what he does with them.
Frankly I think Joel is being nice. Most people's resumes I've seen suck- really suck. It boggles my mind what people think constitues a "good resume". Most have misspelled words (my spelling sucks, hence I use a spell checker for important documents), have horrible formatting, or look like a laundry list of acronymns/skills with no way for me to determine how well you know things or what experiance you have.
And don't get me started with those people who send a CV (long ass resume that I'll never read) when applying for a development or IT position. If you've got more then 1 page of resume for each 5-10 years of work experiance then your resume is too damned long!
Oh, and don't lie on your resume. It's amazing how easy it is to figure out when someone does and trust me, you've been black-balled for life by me if you do that. <sing>It's a small world</sing>
Basically a resume/cover letter is one thing: a paper representation of yourself which will cause the person to read it to want to get the real you.
A few recommendations:
1) Customize your resume/cover letter for the company/job requirements. This is more useful once you've got a lot of work experiance and you need to trip crap out so that it's not too long.
2) Your resume should show not just what you did, but what positive impact you had on the company. Did you save them lots of $$$? Keep difficult/high paying customers happy?
3) Show confidence, but not arrogance. It's a hard line to walk, but walk it you must.
4) Show that you've grown/improved and that you're interested in continuing to do so.
5) If you're in a technical field, don't worry about showing you're a "team player" in your resume, they'll figure it out in the interview. Good written communication skills however is what your resume/cover is all about. Be clear and to the point.
Actually, you're mistaken. If you're referring to the possessed object[s] of several individuals, it would be "people's", whereas if you're referring to the possessed object[s] of several groups of individuals, it would be "peoples'". The distintion is this: "people" means a collection of individuals, whereas "peoples" means a collection of several groups that would be identified as a "people".
As for periods/commas/etc. and whether they should be inside quotes, its a convention and not a rule: according to American MLA format, punctuation occurs always within quote marks, whereas Australian and European equivalents require the punctuation to be outside the quote marks. I personally employ the Australian convention both because of my time spent there, and because I think it more accurately reflects the verbal structure of the language.
"Stumble before you crawl"
get your head out of your ass man - there is nothing inherent about C++ that makes it any harder/easier than any other mid/high level language to master.
maybe if you're doing a ton of low-level/real time stuff you may have a point, but christ - you're quite the C++ snob!
... hi bingo
My best advice to add to the list is:
Don't come across as being a wanker.
When I have done interviews in the past, the most important factor was: "Could I sit next to this guy for 40 hours a week?". This was more important than anything else, including qualifications. At the end of the day, you could be God's gift to programming, but if you are an arragant SOB in the interview/cover letter, you aren't going to get the job.
Last time I was out of work, it was because I'd been laid off. My severance package included outplacement services. At the "how to get your next job" class that was part of those services, they said that ~70% of the time people land jobs via networking. The remaining 30% is split between things like Monster, applying to newspaper ads, and the like.
They didn't cite a source, but I don't think they really had any reason to lie to us. They already had my former employer's money, so the only other reasons to point everyone towards networking are (1) it is in fact the most successful way to get a new job, or (2) they are sadists who enjoy telling techie types to make phone calls to people they hardly know.
of course jobs are easier to get via networking and knowing the right folks.
however, i did submit my resume to monster.com for a linux sysadmin. two days later, i received a phone call for an interview for said position.
i was hired on the spot at $75,000 a year (and this was after the dotboom).
i have been in a position reading resumes and trying to find the winning one for a position. let me tell you, the one thing that many resumes lack is personality.
put your picture on there or write a witty summary at the end describing your ideal position and why.
remember, these are people reading these things and not a machine!
C++ really is a huge language, and it's very easy to think that you know C++ because you know both java and C and can sort of mix them together.
Common LISP is, from what I tell, in a similar situation - you may think you "know lisp" because you know scheme and think that that includes knowing CL, but... it doesn't.
For what it's worth, "Effective C++" is an excellent starting point for upgrading your C++.
(N.B. I interviewed candidates for tech jobs at a startup. With companies with a large HR dept, the experience may be slightly different.)
Applications are great, from an employer's perspective.
If you've ever put up a job posting in any kind of public space/forum/job site, you would know that you will start getting flooded with absolute shit resumes that don't match and by desperate people cutting pasting and clicking send. (I've even seen candidates put up autoresponders to job posting sites.. no shit.)
An application, besides the marginal advantages that other respondents have already pointed out, tells me that 1) you've at least read the fucking post and what we're looking for 2) are not just some jerkoff spamming any job posting he sees and that you 3) will at spend ten minutes actually CONSIDERING and THINKING what you're about to apply for, since reading your resume and phone screening/interview will definitely take up (i.e. waste) a lot of my time (and conversely, if you can't be bothered to fill out a 10 minute app, you're not going to do very good work on the job.)
BostonWorks let me put up 3 simple 'interview questions' beforehand -- loved that feature -- and I made them have easy 2 sentence max responses. It was amazing how many people submitted blank responses or how many I could screen just from reading their absolutely braindead replies. It was GREAT.
And finally, enough people will apply that frankly I only need to consider those who submit a thoughtful, properly formatted app.
I agree though that it wastes time on both ends, which sucks. But realize the root cause, which sucks more; the whole process stems from the fact that you need some way of putting up enough barriers to entry to keep obviously unqualified idiots from wasting your time.
-fren
"Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?"
- You need to be genuinely interested in your fellow man.
- You cannot start networking when you're already in need; it's too late then.
- You need to be networking even during the times when you are employed, are doing well in life, and can help others.
People frequently point how resume-spamming and other actions contribute to "appearing desperate." Well, guess what? Coming out of the blue and starting to network once you're already in need absolutely reeks of desperation!Call it wrong, call it bad, whatever -- by in large, people don't like to help desperate people. Additionally, you must remember that subconscious greed drives a lot of hiring decisions: if you're already employed, you're more likely to get that shiny new job you're interested in than your fellow unemployed people.
Why?
Simple. You're already employed, viz., you obviously must be more experienced and more qualified than the people who are unemployed.
It's ugly, but that's the way it is. But I digress.
Back to the networking issue: it really only works if, when your time of need comes, you can call upon friends and network contacts who you've known and shown a genuine interest in long before you need them. Even better, if some of these networking contacts "owe" you, because of past favors you've done for them, or for ways you've been able to help them in the past, then they'll feel obligated to give you a leg up.
Conversely, if you appear out of nowhere and starting trying to network 'em, and rapidly get to the point of the matter and say "I need a job!" then they will be disinclined to help. In fact, you'll probably piss 'em off.
I speak from personal experience, from both sides of the employment fence. You must take a genuine interest in your fellow creatures, become a good listener, and be willing to help out your friends in their time of need.
And believe me, if you're doing all this purely with a motive of "gotta appear to be interested and caring, so I can ask for something in return someday!" people will see right through it and resent you.
we usually ask a number of unexpected stupid or BS questions. we don't really care what the answer to the question is, what is important is that they answer the question at all and don't just blow it off.
it is used mostly to show that the person can think on their feet.