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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.""
Maybe the problem is that after sending out 6000 resumes and cover letters only to receive rejects letters from about 40% while being completely ignored by the rest has led me to believe that spending a great deal of time on each application/resume/cover letter I send out for Yet Another Job Opening would consume an amount of time equivelent to a full-time job? The amount of time I spend on a resume/cover letter package depends on how much I want the job. If it's a job I would use just to pay the bills, I e-mail it to you. If it's my dream job that I have no chance in hell at every getting, I send it out printed on cotten with a calogne-laced envelope.
But thanks for "keeping my resume on file" anyway...
...you find yourself even *thinking* of using the word "proactive" - just give up now.
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Deal, no more generic bullshit answers. Now when to the bullshit questions and requirements stop? I've seen job requirements that required experience in products less than a week old (W2K3 Server), and bullshit questions like "what is your greatest weakness". Cut it all out, sounds great to me.
There was a guy that applied for a programming job. He wrote on his resume that he knew C++ and C since he heard about those classes in college. So naturally he figured that there must also be C+ language and wrote it into his resume. The HR looked at his resume and lo and behold .. he was hired.
Sometimes they do look for a conformist that will work hard and implement company policy without asking to many questions. In those cases a well written and not to bold resume/CV could help. Unfortunately you dont have much chance of knowing that until after the interview.
This is my sig, show me yours
Having been responsible for the interview process, I have to agree with 95% of Joel's comments. I also used e-mail as the principal method of communication, because it allowed me to drag and drop organize an otherwise unruly pile of paper.
While I never saw an application that said "hire me d00d" from Yahoo, as he seems to be quoting, I saw some pretty awful stuff. The fact of the matter is most jobs will generate far more interest in the position than it is possible to interview through, so a good resume is your only hope of getting to the phone interview in my book.
In my experience, 50% of all applications (or more) are either:
a) Unqualified: why are you wasting your time? If I ask for C++ experience, your VB skills are probably not going to help debug the memory leaks you create.
b) Illiterate: I'm a poor speller too, but I found "spell check" and a proofreader, why can't you?
c) Inflexable: my favorite category. "I work from home in California, and telecommute" isn't going to fill position in southern Arizona. I was shocked by the quantity of these in 1999, heyday of stupid applications.
I do however make some allowances for international applicants. Some of my best finds were people with 80% command of English, but 100% command of C++, architecture and design. I'm willing to work with a language barrier, so I thought he was a bit agressive in that area.
Sig under construction since 1998.
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
It is amazing how poor most resume submissions are. They follow the common pattern, but in doing so manage to not stand out at all.
For example, people applying for art positions (like 3D artist) will send a resume but not a portfolio. What's up with that? I could not care less where they went to school, I only care what they can do.
The cover letter is by far the most import thing in most instances. It needs to say what the applicant is capable of. What they have done that is similar. And why they want to work for the company in question (which they should show some clue about).
Don't use "Resume Writer 2.0", just sit down and write something intelligent. Put yourself in the frame of mind of the person who has to wade through the huge influx of job seekers. Think about you would want to see in a resume/cover letter.
David Whatley
Joel's comments may be applicable when applying straight to a person within a dept. But unfortunately for many companies, the resumes are sent through HR first.
The HR people usually don't know the tecnical details about a job all that well, so they filter based on presense of Buzzwords (or so it seems a lot of the time). If you don't put the admittadly moronic "detail oriented, forward-thinking, team player" in your resume, it may not even get to the person who can actually understand what is written on the resume!
Of course this only applies to technical positions. If you are applying to a job that only asks for MS OFFICE skills, HR can probably figure it out.
So after several pages of bashing pretty much each and every applicant and resume they ever had, the little note at the bottom says (emphasis mine):
Are you a student looking for a great job next summer? Fog Creek Software, a small and friendly startup in New York City, offers summer internships in software development for Computer Science students.
Oh the irony...
Sig? What sig?
how many people have seen emails like this? they always crack me up:
of course, there was no peter mcdermott at our company, nor did our jobs@ email have any name linked to it. the jackass forgot to remove it when he cut and pasted from some other job posting response.in the words of strongbad...DELETED!
anyone else's gag reflex triggered whenever getting an email beginning with Dear Sir/Madam from @yahoo.com?
*sigh*
-fren
"Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?"
This is exactly why people correct other people's English mistakes. If you aren't using it correctly when you are in casual conversation (or casual correspondence, as the case may be), you might not use it correctly when it actually matters.
Sure, he understands what you mean if you write "i m interested in your job," but if you don't have the patience or care to make even that one sentence cover letter correct, why on earth would an employer want to take a chance on you?
I'm done apologizing for wanting people to speak and spell and use English correctly. For most of you, this is your native language! Why is it shameful to want to speak it correctly?
(I probably made some grammar errors in there. I'm SURE I did, and I'm sure someone will pounce on them. I proofread this, and I have spellcheck running, and I have a pretty decent working knowledge of grammar in English, so, you know, I'm trying.)
Also spell check and let an unemployed English major review it.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
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
Buzzwords. Acronyms. Keywords.
In anything much bigger than a 2-person shop these days, resumes pretty much just go unread into a database. They are only seen by a human if they match a retrieval request. For that to happen, you have to have the keywords that the hiring manager typed.
The rest doesn't much matter. If a retrieval doesn't match your resume, it will never be retrieved, and will never be read by a human.
One thing still missing from the databases: They need information on how long a given acronym, uh, I mean product, has been out. This would cut down on managers looking for five years experience on something that was released less than a year ago.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them."
It's hard enough to remember my opinions, never mind the reasons for them..
While I understand his frustrations, the reality is that there are a lot of people--*especially* a lot of techies--out there looking for work. And spending the time/energy to develop a complete narrative cover letter for each position you send your resume to is simply time prohibitive.
I'm willing to bet that 99% of people who are looking for work right now are taking a "shotgun" approach. This isn't the *best* way to get your resume out, but it is the quickest. And if you're looking to get your foot in the same door as several hundred others, speed counts. As does as much exposure as possible--hoping that somewhere, somehow, your resume will generate interest.
Ultimately, the best way to generate interest is to carefully research the company you're submitting to, the position, check for networking opportunities (very important!), etc. But this isn't always practical--and it's tough to tell how much extra attention that will generate. From the job seeker's standpoint, sometimes "shotgun" is the most practical, even if it doesn't generate as much interest each time it's sent out.
Gifts for Geeks - Stuff that really matters!
If only the Democratic candidates had resumes better than:
* Demonstrated leadership capabilities
* Against special interests
* For the middle class
On the other hand, maybe those writing tech resumes could learn from the politicians and insert a few lines trashing the other applicants?
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Gees. I gotta disagree, here.
First of all, what does my prospective employer have to do with what other positions I apply for?
And second, I think that shows a sign of determination and, in these times, you seem to need just that to get a job. Gone are the "one phone call to the recruiter" days of finding 50 job offers. In fact, my last recruiter called ME a few months ago looking for a position for herself...
Go ahead, apply for every job THAT YOU'RE QUALIFIED FOR, and sort through the results yourself. Get out, get noticed. If your prospective employer thinks you should sit around on your ass and pretend that you're qualified and live off of Ramen and potatos for months while you wait, then you probably don't want to work for him.
Any sufficiently well-organized Government is indistinguishable from bullshit.
Joel - in all fairness this *is* a summer internship you are receiving resumes for. These people haven't got a great deal of experience - the fact that they put time into writing a halfway decent cover letter should be a positive thing, not a reason to chuck their potentially good resume in the trash.
Or maybe teamwork and being detail oriented are both bad attributes for a software engineer?
I'm a 2000 man.
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.
Hired for what?
Oh, I get it. Deceit and stupidity...must have been an HR position!
Any sufficiently well-organized Government is indistinguishable from bullshit.
Again and again, I see job positions for which the applicant is asked to submit a resume via a textbox in a web form. Usually, no mention is given of what format is allowed (Plain ASCII? HTML? PDF? Tex?), so one pretty much has to assume least-common denominator, and submit in ASCII. Then, one has to pray to the line-width gods that the end product (printed out? online?) will not look too horrible compared to what you just put in.
So, for those on the other side of the table, can you please implement a simple web-file-upload protocol, and tell us what format you like?
"...here's what I do with the resumes: I make three piles: Good, OK, and Bad. I give the same resumes to Michael and he does the same thing. There are always enough people that we both put in the Good pile that those are really the only people that stand a chance. In principle if we can't find enough people we like that we both rated as "good" we would consider some people who got Good/OK, but in practice this has never happened."
After my (1st) layoff, I attended a resume seminar paid for by the company. The speaker mentioned this one principle: That your resume was a tool to get the company to interview you. Not only were qualifications important, but your resume had to communicate that you were interesting or unique in some way - the point of the latter being that it would brand your resume into their minds and guarantee you an interview.
If X number of people all have basically the same qualifications and skills, and they all have decent looking resumes, the separating factor then becomes personality or uniqueness (something that would say "hey this guy would make a cool and interesting co-worker/subordinate).
Is the juice worth the sqeeze?
Its very difficult to be objective and to find a "one size fits all" sort of resume guide. Even one that is written by Joel Spolsky.
Joel has some criteria that he considers more important than others.. Fine. He's doing the hiring, it is his perogative (sp?). The thing is, not all hiring managers are ticked off by the same things that Joel rants about.
I have seen resumes with a few (minor) spelling errors that wouldn't have been caught by spellcheck make it into a short list. I've also seen letter perfect ones rejected. Obviously, some managers scan through and look for work experience and qualifications. They don't notice (or care) about "having a space only AFTER the comma" (direct quote from his rant).
I also don't completely agree with his idea that "if you don't have the right qualifications, don't apply for the job". I've applied for a job asking for 4 years experience, but I only had 2 (or a bit less). I still got the job. It is a nitpick, but if you think you're close enough, it's worth giving it a shot. Obviously, asking for a DBA and getting a COBOL programmer applying isn't ideal, but some employers are flexible about years of experience and specific technologies.
Last, but not least, I don't have a domain of my own. I use my Yahoo address and check mail on it regularly. What's wrong with using a free email service anyway ?
Sorry, Mr. Spolsky. You have good points, but I wonder if your rant deserves the publicity that it is going to get with a frontpage Slashdot story. Apologies for the rant of my own :)
Except that you are the product.
It's no use sending out resumes at random. You need to know who you are speaking to and what they need. Then, try to explain clearly why hiring you will save them money and/or provide other concrete benefits.
The hardest part is getting an interview but normally decent firms will interview several candidates. You can also call before you send your resume, find the person doing the selection, and ask them whether your CV was clear or not. This can help to get it to the top of the stack.
Last piece of advice: this is such a hard time to find tech jobs that you may be better starting your own business one way or another. Ironically, the dot-com boom was better for employees than for businessmen, and this period is the reverse.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
So, it's amazing this skill set is not available, because now they'll have to export the job offshore where apparently all the IT workers have this skill set.
Honestly, I'm surprised people look at cover letters at all, it's all fluff anyway.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I agree with most of Joel's rants. I have been a rep at a local college(a highly reputable tech school) job fair numerous times.
I am truly amazed at how crappy some resumes are. Some students hand me resumes that are printed off-centered, bad photocopies, wrinkled from the folder they just stuffed it in, etc. If they can't take the time to print their resumes on quality paper and carry them in a resume binder, I tend to believe they are just as careless when they are working.
Spacing and formatting is also a huge problem. Highlight the most important aspects of your resume. When looking at hundreds of resumes in a few hours, you want to be able to easily spot education and skill set (especially when dealing with college students who have little experience).
Many applicants came to the job fair dressed in non-formal attire. This is not good. At least, wear a shirt and tie. Don't roll out of bed and throw on some jeans, take the time to look presentable.
Like Solsky says, do these factors hurt an applicant if they have they meet the necessary requirements, sometimes. When applying for a job, you are selling yourself and must put your best effort in every little detail. From resume to dress, you will be scrutinized and judged. Look your best.
100% Insightful
The computer is not a typewriter.
Put down the can of worms and step away from it right now.
"Mr. Ameba, your resume says that you are a multi-celled life form. Thats exactly what we're looking for!"
0xfeedface
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
These aren't your hobbies, they are your qualifications, list them as such. The reason they inquire is because they see them as such, too. If you have done volunteer work (an excellent contribution to building your profile) don't list it under some category of Social Activies, put it where it belongs. Eveything you do that is related to the position you desire should be list as your qualifications, not under 'Hobbies'
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
D does really exist
This sig under construction. Please check back later.
It's not what you know, but who you know.
Many people believe this saying. More correctly its "not what you know, but who knows you". Think about it for a sec. Someone like Linus could easily have a 1 line resume:
- I created Linux in 1991.
The person reading this probably knows who Linus is (or should), Linus, more than likely, does not know the person reading the resume.
Nobody gives a crap about your hobbies
... one lady wrote such a long detailed list of her hobbies that we wondered how on earth she could ever find any time to do any work ... so we didn't interview her. So, that section of her CV was useful to us.
Not quite
I'd say they get what they are asking for. When you it on a job site or paper 85% of the text is about profiling the company and 25%(if you are lucky) are about the job. When you call them on a job you really find interesting, the people to contact are almost impossible to reach and most of the time they are unwilling to talk to you.
And it bugs me, because when I do find a job that looks interesting, I want to write something that they can use.
I have been reading af fair deal of job applications so I know when you have to read through 200 mails, you have to catch people's interest in the two first lines. Don't start with your life story, start with something that tells the reader that you can offer what they need and you are relevant for the job and they will read on. But it is hard to write something they can use when all you got are their marketing speech and you might focus on the wrong things in your application.
What he really needs is an editor to catch his sentence fragments.
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
Nobody in the hiring process cares!
Please, please do not fax an 8x10 photo of yourself!
Three Squirrels
Instead of bringing in candidates and quizzing them with stock questions to find out how bright they are, make the world's hardest instructions for applying and then just bring in the ones who follow them. I see a lot of people who are incapable of reading and following directions and I believe that they generally are not good employees, so it seems like a fair part of the selection process.
# In the olden days resumes were sent out in the mail and included a cover sheet on top which explained why the resume was being sent. Now that we use email, there is no reason whatsoever to send the cover letter as an attachment and then write a "cover cover" letter in the body of the email. It's just senseless.
# Even stupider is submitting two big Word documents with no body text in the email. This just gets you spam filtered. I don't even SEE these.
There so many, seemingly endless ways of doing things, that getting stuff like this shouldn't be an issue for people hiring. The first part above, I see no problem having text in the body of the email that is a cover letter, then attaching a PDF or something of the same cover letter. Why? Text if they can't read a PDF, and PDF if they want a nice printout of it. It's not senseless as Joel puts it.
The next quote above, about 2 attachments and no body. This is something you as the recruiter, HR, or drone in charge of the first round of hiring should have stated in your advertisement. Maybe not if it is a newspaper ad for lack of space, but online definately. Say that you don't accept word documents, or say that you must put your cover letter as plain text in the body of the email, etc. Give the applicants some rules to follow. If they cannot do that, it's a good first filter... not a reason for ranting.
My bigest pet peeve in my 9 months of unemployment before finally getting a job, is that the ads hardly ever stated what kind of documents they wanted. If they didn't say, I usually sent the stuff as plain text, hoping that it would be legible on their end. Other times based on the company, I would try to make a judgement as to whether they would know what to do with a PDF and would send the resume as that. Sometimes with cover letter attached as plain text with a brief note in the body of the email say why i'm sending this email. Sometimes with the cover letter as text in the body. If they said "WORD DOC ONLY" I would usually reconsider sending them anything.
Everyone should just say how they want it, and it would minimize these wastefull rants from Joel.
The worst part about resumes, is that you never get feedback from the company you sent it to. And by never I mean 1 out of 50 might send you back a canned, automated email response. Fog Creek does this if I remember correctly, I applied there last summer. Atleast it felt canned. Which was great though, because it was the first response I got back from anyone or anything over the course of many months. That after having my resume and and cover letters reviewed by english majors, parents, people in the software industry and former coworkers.
Why is it a racist remark?
Indians aren't a race. They are a nationality. There are a wide variety of ethnicities in India.
To point out that a large number have in common a particular grammatical mistake isn't racist. It's just observation.
"Stupid Indians" might be getting closer - at least it's prejudice of some sort.
There are a lot of problems that could be solved more easily if there wasn't always someone jumping out to call "racist" anytime someone points out a statistical truth about a demographic. Hey, is it racist to say that American Jews are better educated than the general population? No? Then how can it be racist to say that American blacks are less well-educated than the general population? If we can't even say it out loud, how can we solve it?
If Joel can't tell his Indian candidates (albeit in a somewhat snotty way), hey, I pay attention to grammar and punctuation, so don't give me a resume that looks like you pasted it from AIM, than how are they going to learn that his standards, and those of American employers generally, may differ from the standards to which they are accustomed?
I didn't see any racism in his rant -- the resumes I've read from most Indians are littered with spelling mistakes, terrible punctuation, incomprehensible English, etc. Not that I'm an expert in any of those areas, but sheesh, take the time to make it look halfways decent. Find a truly native speaker to fix it up for you.
Flat feet.
Oh, professionally? Well, I work so efficiently that it demoralizes all my coworkers. That's why they had to let me go from my last 4 jobs.
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.
Different places like different things. Some resume reviewers like the bullshit fluff, some don't. Sometimes being different will make you stand out from the crowd, sometimes it will get your papers in the dumpster.
I had praises about my reseme at one place (although it was not enough to get me hired but not because of the resume), and a few weeks later a recruiter told me to completely redo it.
The people who read resumes and cover letters are as diverse as the people who write them. Anyone who claims there is One Right Way is a bigger bullshit artist than those who write fluffy cover letters.
Table-ized A.I.
"Writing a shareware app when you're a teenager is just as good a qualification to us as getting into MIT."
In my 15 years of hiring new college grads for entry level engineering positions, I've seen some total fucknuts come out of MIT. I mean complete mouth-breathers who couldn't solve a problem without their hands being held from start to finish.
I'm not putting MIT below any other school, I'm just surprised that it had an equal percentage of dead wood as the local state school.
However, I do find that the students who excel from MIT, generally do so to a much higher degree than the top performers from other schools.
I'd immediately pounce on an applicant who started and finished a big project, on their own time, during high-school. Hardware, software, organization: the simple fact that you have problem solving skill and care about something is a HUGE plus. Can't stress that enough.
GPA and SAT scores are the LAST things I look at.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
See, I don't get this. I wear ties when expected by our dippy culture, but I never understood what the hell they are supposed to mean. As far as I can tell, it's some pointless relic from an bygone era. I'm not saying show up in torn jeans, but why can't people be comfortable in an interveiw instead of tarting themselves up with clothing they will never be wearing on the job? Why can't we have some sort of happy medium?
Some of the most brilliant engineers and scientists have are perpetually casual dressers. It's irrelevant. Drug dealers wear suits. Kenneth Lay wore suits. Saddam Hussein wore suits. It's meaningless.
We hired a guy last year who showed up in an expensive Italian suit (he came from a semi-rich family). He turned out to be one of the biggest screw ups we've ever had, and was fired six months later for accessing porn sites on his work PC.
--- Ban humanity.
I think his point was to get a decent e-mail account. Pay something for it, they're cheap. It think it looks much better when you apply for a job from an e-mail address like "mail@yournamehere.com" that it does applying for "girlcrazy2000@hotmail.com", especially for an IT position where you're supposed to be "in the know".
Also, even if the ad isn't for a competing company, do you really want to help someone else advertise their products on your job application? Seems unprofessional to me too. You don't put a banner ad on a printer resume.
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.
Well, all may be a bit to much, people actually get hired through the resume/interview procces, but getting an inside recomendation helps a lot. I can't say i have a lot of experience on the job market, but the three jobs i've had a came from networking. All companies i came to ask me if i knew somebody when there was an open position. The reason is simple, taking interviews and reading resumes takes a lot of time and hardly gives you any insight in who you're hiring. Asking your employee will the judgment of someone who actually knows the person and is in a much better position to judge his/her qualities. The result for the company is less hassle and a better changeof getting the right person for the job.
If you can't find a job that way, try looking for the smaller companies. Call them and ask if they mind if you drop by for a talk. Chances are you will get an instant interview. Only HR people like to get resumes, most managers hate it as much as you do and are likely to skip the proccess when somebody gives them a change to do so.
I've been in the job market for several years. I have a perfect resume, lots of experience that is suitable to a variety of positions, and a lifetime of experience searching for jobs. Since I usually get nibbles when I do find jobs to apply to, I would argue that the problem is the terrible job market and incompetent employers. This rant about bad resumes might be amusing to those of us used to belittling our fellow co-workers, but when I've been involved in the hiring process, most of the resumes I've seen have been pretty adequate.
The real problem here are incompetent, rude, and stupid employers. I've been through enough interview situations to know that the real incompetent factor in the job interview process is usually the employer. What burns me up these days are employers who can't even bother to contact you after you've gone in and interviewed with them. Think about it. You go out of your way to dress up for an interview, get your butt to the interview, spend an hour or two answering questions, and then the potential employers can't be bothered to contact you about the outcome of the interview.
Here is a short list of rude and stupid behavior that I have experienced from potential employers:
1) If you are contacting me to set up an interview, I assume that you have noticed the fact that I live halfway across the country from your office. Do you understand what a *phone interview* is?
2) It is rude behavior to leave an interviewee in a room so you can go get some cake at the department birthday party (Aspen Sytems in Washington, DC).
3) When you ask me stupid questions like "What are your greatest strengths and weaknesses?" I make a mental note that I will not work for your company.
4) I sent you a nice resumer, cover letter and thank you letter after the interview. The least you can do is send me a rejection letter when you have made your decision.
5) Please don't spring "tests" and "homework assigments" on me when I show up for an interview. Please have some respect for my experience, skills, and time. Just because you think that it is a cute idea to send me home with "homework," doesn't mean that you are finding out anything more than you could have learned from my resume and interview. Stop wasting my time!
6) If the interview is going to take more than an hour, please tell me ahead of time so I can adjust my plans accordingly. It really sucks to show up for an interview only to be handed an "itinerary" for three hours of interviews.
7) It says a lot about your organization when you interview me once, then interview me again three months later, and never bother following up with me with a phone call or letter (ACLU).
8) Don't assume that I will leave the job because I am "overqualified." If I bothered to show up for the interview, then I have solid reasons to want the job. Did it ever occur to you that I might want a part time job so I can have time for the family or other projects or jobs?
9) Where do I see myself in five years? Probably in your job, if this is the most intelligent question you can throw at me.
Yeah, people write bad resumes, but let's talk about stupid employer tricks!
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.
Yes, I've done some hirin' and some firin'.
Worst cover letter boner:
"I have good communicationing skills. As you seeing from cover letter, I can speaking and writing very well English"
Okaaaay... look, I don't need a James Joyce clone for an entry level engineering job so this kind of English is not a disqualifier by itself, but I try to avoid the delusional. Don't fib.
Worst resume boner:
Some guy got past the screeing process with a resume that looked quite good. Lot's of relevant experience items. So, naturally, I thought I'd pick one and let him expound, you know, give him a chance to show his stuff. First one fizzled. Second. Third. So, about the fifth try I decided to pick one a drill down to the bedrock, what did this guy really know? He listed experiece with SPICE. So I asked him some basic SPICE questions. Deer in headlights. It turns out, the "experiece" this guy had with spice, is that when he was a lab monitor some grad student had needed SPICE on a workstation, so he had tar'ed it off the tape. THAT WAS IT. He ran tar to pull SPICE off a tape. His entire resume was just as inflated as that item. His interview day ended shortly after.
Don't inflate, don't stretch. It will bite you in the ass, big time.
Joel on Software painless software management
His strategy seems to be: rant like a lunatic and behave like a jerk. Then, only people with low self-esteem will apply and management will become really easy. Great idea.
Of course, lots of big organizations had figured that one out long ago, having a long tradition of degrading application and hiring procedures of their own.
One of the biggest misconceptions about job search is that a job opening is like a lottery and you are one lucky sonofabitch if a company deigns to consider you for a position with them.
A job advertisment is NOT a lottery, it is an invitation to enter into a BUSINESS NEGOTIATION with them in which you exchange something they need (your skills) for something you need (dollars). You should ALWAYS have the view that they are on trial by you just as much as you are by them and you will walk away from the table if they aren't the right fit for you. NEVER adopt the demeanor of the supplicant or job-beggar.
Another thing I have to take exception to is this statement: If you don't have the right qualifications, don't apply for the job. That depends on who wrote the qualifications and how reasonable they are. Often the list is written by some HR drone who doesn't know shit from shinola, much less what UNIX is or what a router looks like or that you can't possibly have 5 years experience deploying Windows 2003! Maybe you don't exactly meet their qualification list...so what? If you think you can do the job and offer them something of value, by all means apply! I've applied for (and landed) jobs that I wasn't fully qualified for. Who knows? The other guy they're considering might be a super-qualified asshole. I'd rather train somebody I can get along with than have to deal with an asshole any day! And if some HR dork gives you grief for "wasting their time" because "you don't meet their list", politely remind them that your time is valuable too.
You're using her as bait, Master!
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.
I've been doing alot of interviewing over the past several years and there's one thing that far too many people just don't get:
KNOW WHAT YOU PUT ON YOUR RESUME!
Seems like a pretty obvious thing, eh? No that I can prove. Not telling blatant lies on your resume is also important, but regardless of the truthfulness of what you've written, you need to remember it's on there.
Me: (seeing AIX experience on resume) What kind of experience have you had with AIX?
Applicant: Um, AIX?
Me: What platform does AIX run on?
Applicant: What's AIX?
If you put it on your resume at least know what the hell it is and remember it's on there. Even if that means you bring a copy of the resume with you and you look at it. I'm not even going to touch how I feel about the recruiter who brought this person in to waste the time of 4 different people who can't afford it because we're understaffed and trying to find someone to pick up the load. You know, the reason we're hiring in the first place? ARGH!
"Suppose you were an idiot..... And suppose you were a member of Congress... But I repeate myself."
Last time the goverment allowed us to hire or replace someone, we tried something new.
First, there were horrible resumes sent in and the only thing that stopped us from deleting them was if they sent a word document. We read most of them no matter what.
Second, we only cared what the persons experience was, an opensource project was a definite PLUS!
A resume was only crappy if they had nothing real
to show. We then selected about half for the interview process.
Third, we had two interview levels. The first was IRC, we would send an email telling the person to meet us on irc and then have a chat with them. This let us know if the person was for real or not. Whether they wrote a bad resume or not. It was great to do this, everyone on the team was involved in the interview and it was logged. Also, it was completly unbiased with relation to sex or race. Then after we had about 3 canidates we interviewed them in "real life". It was a quick and fun experience. And we hired someone that kicks ass!!
Can you see Iron City here?
There are several things that will cause me to put someone in the 'do not hire' pile - here's a short list:
- Generic resumes. You clearly don't care enough about my company to research us and make sure your resume fits the job.
- More than two spelling errors.
- More than one error spelling a technical term. If you know how to do it you should know how to spell it.
- Lying. Even a little one.
- Listing obsolete skills as filler. I don't care if you're proficient in Windows 3.1
;-)
Another thing I might add for people out there looking for a job - no one I know reads further than the first page when making the first cut on a pile of resumes. I personally don't read much more than the first half of the first page.Another thing that bugs me - applicants who stress the fact that they need a job. I know you need a job, folks - that's why you applied to the company in the first place. My only concern is what you can bring to the company - everything else is secondary. If you're not the best candidate for the position you have absolutely no business showing up for the interview.
The day after the interview, call or email me and thank me for the opportunity to interview. *Do not* use this courtesy call as an opportunity to ask me if I've made a decision.
Sorry for the rant, but I hire reasonably well-paid technical people all the time and you might be surprised how many people are completely unprepared to enter (or reenter) the job market.
we see things not as as they are, but as we are.
-- anais nin
It works in other fields as well.
It's not just the trite "it's not what you know, it's who you know" philosophy... it goes deeper than that.
What can distinguish you from the clamoring masses, all wanting the same job or position? Personal recommendation... all the way. This is partially how I got a residency slot I wanted, and my current medical job.
I was offered a residency slot based on my qualifications, but also because a department chairman at my medical school was personal friends with the department chairman at the residency site. A letter of recommendation and a phone call later, and the residency site chairman personally came to my interview, asked for me by name out of a room full of faceless medical students (talk about some envious glances... competition can be cutthroat in medicine), thanked me for applying, and told me to thanks his buddy for calling ahead (I knew about the letter, but that was the first I knew of the phone call).
My current job was offered to me long after I applied... my current director approached a mutual acquaintance from my residency program, and asked him about me. His response? "pure gold... you should hire him yesterday." (I don't know about that "pure gold" part... he may have oversold me a bit...).
The point remains... you can be qualified and never be hired if you get lost in the resume` shuffle... but that networking, word-of-mouth contact is money in the bank.
Also, the employer is understandably hedging his bets by not hiring someone sight-unseen, who may or may not play well with others, who may or may not be dishonest, etc, etc... personal confirmation of a person's claimed credentials/ability is key. And for those of you who think this is somehow wrong, we're talking about a good word from a friend, not someone's daddy getting him a job that he's totally unqualified to do. I despise nepotism as much as anyone.
Never, never underestimate the value of a friend...
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Sorry for being negative, but the guy just bugs me.
Some of the points that he brings up from time to time are reasonably interesting, but rarely inspiring or revolutionary.
Nobody gives a crap about your hobbies
I've had Firewalking listed in my 3-line Outside Interests section for some time now, and it invariably sparks conversation during the interviews. I'll grant that the HR folks don't generally notice it, but I have yet to see a hiring manager who didn't. That seems to be one of those resume tidbits that gets around the office before your first day, too, and in my mind anything that gets your name around the office without making you look like *too* much of an idiot is a good thing. =)
Dan
...Hey,
Congrats on a VERY successful Karma-whore. +5 insightful, very well done. When I originally wrote it, it only got +4, informative.
Just in case anyone else cares, however, I posted this comment originally in response to "Have You Personally Used an Honest Head Hunter?" on September 30, under the subject line "Guess I've been lucky..."
All in all, this doesn't bother me too much, I figure you know you've "arrived" on /. when the whores start plagarizing your comments.
Rock on!
"That naive cube! How long must I suffer this!" --Sheldon J. Plankton
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.
Geeks lack social skills. The only way to build social skills is to get out there and approach. Approach early, and approach often. Hey, this advice won't only get you a JOB, it can get you LAID too!
(Maybe I should have posted A/C, but it's the truth, so it's going under my real UID.)
I think that one needs to be careful to be extremely precise when making such statements. A statement like, say, "men are better at math than women" is often taken to mean any of:
Etc., etc.; some of these versions are more or less true (or, more importantly, more or less testable) than others. It's in the slipping between all of these than I think people often unknowningly cover up what is essentially sexist thinking. So I think it's important to make sure you say precisely what you mean.
--Bruce Fields
I wear pants when expected by our dippy culture, but I never understood what the hell they are supposed to mean. As far as I can tell, it's some pointless relic from an bygone era.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Sure - a well formatted and grammatically correct resume catches attention. I, for once, am flooded with those everyday and have to then look for substance under that fluff... I mostly interview techies, and I dont care much about punctuation and English usage - as much as the projects and the tech skills that are on the resume. For me, the most important pointers: 1. DO NOT LIE. 2. DO NOT LIE. 3. MAKE IT SHORT AND READABLE (not interested in how long you spend troubleshooting that drvice driver problem).
See, I don't get this. I wear ties when expected by our dippy culture, but I never understood what the hell they are supposed to mean. As far as I can tell, it's some pointless relic from an bygone era. I'm not saying show up in torn jeans, but why can't people be comfortable in an interveiw instead of tarting themselves up with clothing they will never be wearing on the job? Why can't we have some sort of happy medium?
What makes you think they will never wear ties on the job? There are a lot of IT positions where ties will be required, at least some of the time.
Anyway, all clothing styles are either fashion-driven, situational, or both. You can wear what your drinking buddies think is "comfortable", or what the hiring authority thinks is "comfortable", but unless they are the same, I'd go with the hiring authority for the interview. Save the "pointless relics" of the current era for after hours :)!
Some of the most brilliant engineers and scientists have are perpetually casual dressers. It's irrelevant. Drug dealers wear suits. Kenneth Lay wore suits. Saddam Hussein wore suits. It's meaningless.
Not quite. The bad guys wear them because they don't want to feel like or appear as bad guys. I think you're getting that lesson backwards ...
As for the geniuses, they by definition get more leeway than us mortals. Just because it works for them doesn't mean that it will work for you.
I have received a number of funny and amusing resumes over the past year or two since I became management (*shudder*).
One of the most interesting was a gentleman applying for a Windows system administration position. It consisted of 7 pages of print, single space, 8 point type filled to the GILLS with every product he had every seen, touched, smelled or heard of. Everything from Microsoft Paint and Wordpad to a listing of at least 15 to 20 complier products. Yes, he even made the effort to let me know that he used DOS... and included every... single... version...
To top this little gem of a resume off (I had to read the whole thing, it was like watching a train-wreck), he included the following line at the end:
"This is a brief outline of my qualifications. If you would like a more detailed resume, please contact me".
PUUH.
I believe I sat dumbfounded in my chair for at least 5 minutes.
A lot of computer science departments realize that the language that is in style changes, so they teach a good amount of theory, rather than specific languages. What this means is that their students can basically pick up a new language by grabbing and book and be useful in a day or two
You won't be "useful in a day or two" in C or C++ if you have never dealt with pointers or manual memory management before. But even if you have, C and C++ have enough pitfalls and obscure corners that you really have to spend years learning them.
And the same is true about many other languages. And, in addition to the languages themselves, you have to know their APIs in order to be productive.
A CS degree gives you CS skills. CS skills are not the same as commercial programming skills, much as you may not want to believe that.
Really, by the time a position makes it to advertising in common places, it IS a lottery. Joel is lucky in that he's not HR full time for a large firm advertising in high visibility areas. A good rule of thumb in these scenarios is that they'll spend about 30 seconds looking at your application/resume/cover letter. Often applications for a position number in the thousands,so there's good reason for it. As you point out, the people screening these teaming masses may not understand speciific aspects of the job themselves. A resume and cover letters are tools to get an interview. You want to demonstrate that you can communicate quickly and be crystal clear.
The requirements thing is iffy. Some things you can get away with waving away, either because nobody has the specific skill set or because you show elsewhere that you have quickly picked up skills in the past and still can. Other requirements, like interviewing in NYC, aren't likely to be waived, and maybe even asking for them to be is ample justification for roundfiling. This is of course assuming the skillset wasn't tailored to the guy the hiring manager has in mind but has to jump through corporate hoops to hire. Often solicitation for applications is occuring while they begin interviewing candidates from within the company and from employee recommendations.
You're right though, in a way. Just because you've won the lottery doesn't mean you should be prepared to kowtow. If you've won the lottery, there's an expectation that you are in demand. One time in an interview I was asked if I had any other outstanding job offers or interviews. I wasn't sure whether to be offended, to tell the truth or lie. On one hand, telling them you have a job offer may serve as reinforcing their opinion, but on the other it may serve as an excuse to find someone else, who is less likely to jump to a competitor, having been introduced to the market and trained on their dime.
The real lesson here is networking. Toastmasters is a concept that has grown beyond its means, but there's plenty of other ways to find connected friends. Attend Linux User Groups if that's your bag. Keep in touch with college friends and remind them from time to time if you're looking for breadmoney. People on the inside of a job opening have a HUGE advantage; applying before the masses do with the endorsement of a current employee almost makes interviews formalities.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
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++.
Mr. Torvalds,
We don't care about a college software project you did over a decade ago. At a minimum, we require a work history for the last three years.
Regards,
Human resources
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
(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?"
if more people than he need are already jumping over it? Why should he lower the bar only to present and even larger crowd to weed through? Yes there might be some good people stuck down there but there are in all probably also some good people in the list of people who didn't make classic blunders.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley