Slashdot Mirror
Reasons You're Not Getting Interviews; Plus Some Crazy Real Resume Mistakes
Yvonne Lee, Community Manager at Dice.com writes,
"Not using standard job titles, not tying your work to real business results and not using the right keywords can mean never getting called for an interview, even if you have the right skills to do the job. I once heard advice to use the exact wording found in the ad when placing your keywords. I think you're even more unlikely to get a job if you do some of the things on this list."
Yvonne Lee, Toolbag Mouthpiece at Dice.com writes, "Using a thinly veiled facade to make yourself appear to be a PR authority figure, not tying your true intent to forced Slashdot stories and not letting the site continue on as it was can mean the systematic destruction of the very asset you paid good money for, even if you thought you have the right skills to do the job. I once heard advice to let the editors decide what is newsworthy and what is not. I think you're even more unlikely to get a return on your investment if you do exactly what I'm doing right now."
Yup...here we go again.
F U dice.com, F U.
Another link to dice.com? That must be a great site! No time to comment! I'm heading over there RIGHT NOW!!
CEO of Dice: How can we make ourselves appear to be an authority figure on hiring. ... would that work?
Yvonne Lee: Well, really all you need is eyeballs that people will automatically use to read whatever you put in front of them.
CEO of Dice: Yes, but how do we do that?
Yvonne Lee: Um, you could purchase a tech blog site like Slashdot.org.
CEO of Dice: "Slashdot"? Sounds violent
Yvonne Lee: Yes, everything that goes up on there is widely regarded as fact by millions of idiots every day.
CEO of Dice: Very well, one slash dot dot org, please! *holds up $137 in small bills and drops some change on the table*
After study a couple of of the weblog posts on your internet site now, and I genuinely like your way of blogging. I bookmarked it to my bookmark web site list and will probably be checking back soon. I certainly will be recommend dice.com to all friends and good family.
News for nerds, stuff that matters.
I need to know where /. moved to. I didn't realize this url was now the Dice.com blog.
"I once heard advice to use the exact wording found in the ad when placing your keywords."
Okay, an anecdote "I once heard" posted anonymously on /. is not exactly a scientific survey, but the intent is quite clear: candidates should be carefully tailoring their resumes to HR's total "I don't give a fuck" attitude.
But. If that's how a company is hiring, that company is going to be fucked before too long. If HR doesn't give a fuck and there's not enough leadership from the people who count to get HR to give a fuck, the company is fucked.
And, yeah, if you've been unemployed for a while, at some point a paycheck is a paycheck until you're stable. But you don't want to *start* your job search thinking that way.
Not that I'm in the job market or even looking, but it didn't take long to figure out people hate these guys. Just wondering why.
HR drones not having the slightest clue
I for one welcome our new dice overlords
unsubscribe dl-slashdot-dice-bullshite /me
Is there a way to filter out 'stories' based on their tags? I.e. "ad" ?
From experience I know that one of the largest employers in the USA actually gives you a much better shot at a job if you do include the same key phrases in your resume. The mass crush of resumes that come in for any job opening requires that the HR drones put everything through an automated filter or three. If your resume doesn't pass those filters nothing else matters because no one is going to read it.
The main point of the article seems to be that you should deliver your resume in some fancy shape or form.
No wonder I can't get an interview...
RUN!
I wish they'd just stick to maintaining the side bar with the job listings. "herp derp shameless plug shameless plug herp derp jobs jobs resume herp derp" isn't really interesting to any of us. If I wanted resume writing tips I'd just do a Google search for it on my own time. Here's hoping there's a way to set filters on the story submissions ... I haven't heard about people doing that since the Jon Katz days...
Prior to the recent rash of Dice.com slashvertisements, I held a very positive opinion of both Dice.com and Slashdot. With each new thinly veiled attempt to drive traffic to Dice, I lose a little bit of respect for each.
If Dice wants to put ads on slashdot, just put ads on slashdot. Stop running fake stories that just diminish a site that has spent a long time earning a loyal following.
How many roads must a man walk down? 42.
Don't be Florida on your resume. Next...
If computers were people, I'd be a misanthrope.
This is one of the reason I despise the industry and the lore that surrounds it: the ostensible "professionalism", the bullshitting, the going to the job interview in suit and tie (what the fuck for, nobody knows), the total lack of colour and creativity, the need to use boilerplate and keywords...
And the fact that "some of the things on the list" are considered outlandish and not conducive to getting a job. I found humorous every single item on that list, and would considered the candidate to have an advantage, exactly for having a sense of humor, rather than a disadvantage in getting a job.
In academia, where I work now, things are somewhat similar but not as bad as in the industry, and there's a measure of nuttiness and humor you can get away with.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
What the heck is a "standard job title" anyway? I've worked at 12 different companies in my nearly 30 years in software development, and never have I had the same "job title." I'm pretty sure my current job title is meaningless to anyone else looking to hire me, as would the dozen other job titles I've had be.
Get back to me when the "industry" publishes a list of "standard job titles" and makes every company comply with it.
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
Please stop posting this wank.
Thank you.
Fire Yvonne Lee and then periodically let us know what crazy real resume mistakes she is making and the reasons she is not getting a new job. Ruining Slashdot comes to mind...
Since you didn't read my post from yesterday, here it is again: Please go fuck yourself. Seriously. Everybody here means it. That's all. Thank you.
...on another forum:
Copy and paste the entire job description into a 1 pixel by 1 pixel box on your resume. Invisible to the naked eye, but parsers easily pick it up.
Just make sure to watch the sites that parse and reformat for you (Monster, eg) when uploading.
Karma: Can only be portioned out by the Cosmos.
Recruiters are too lazy to determine whether a person who's last position as "Enterprise Data Architect" where listed skills are scoping, implementing, and managing DB2, MS SQL, and Oracle instances requested by internal clients has the skills necessary for their company's "Database Administrator" position.
I read this as "Do the work for HR/Recruiters, they're not intelligent enough to do it themselves".
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
As a software consultant and occasional contract employee, in all cases, the resume is what gets me hired, and the phone interview is just a safeguard to make sure I'm a real person. Often the interview turns into a technology bull session with the developers making sure that I have the correct industry understanding and not whether I have done the things I stated I could do. I clearly communicated that fact to them already. In my resume.
We're getting this every day? And Dice is apparently deleting comments? Fuck that. Slashdot is done. Nice work, Dice.
PS: I'm on my way over to delete my Dice profile too, since the company is clearly incompetent and unethical.
I have used Dice, both as a candidate and as a manager looking for candidates.
Never again.
Dice should fire her.
Every time I read one of these, it confirms that there's no purpose in Slashdot anymore, but my muscle memory for the last ~12 years or so keeps navigating me to slashdot subconciously. Then when I figure out what I'm doing, I get all sad. Anyone else in this situation? This is not intended to be modded Funny :/
Sounds very much like "An accidental discovery has exposed a loophole in female psychology!" So fscking fishy...
“Hiring managers have a big pile of résumés to review, and they are always looking for a reason to put you in the ‘no’ pile.”
If you're going through the resume stage, the only goal is to get yourself into the "call" stack rather than the trash pile. When hundreds of resumes come in for a position, its far more important for HR to not let crap through then it is for them to try to find the perfect candidate - the reality is probably that there are several differently (but equally) qualified candidates for the position, and if any one of them is hired then HR and management have done their jobs.
If one of those candidates makes it easy to validate and hire them, and one doesn't, then the first one gets the job.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
I'm done slashdot...it's been great lurking for all these years, but your time has passed.
Never open an article submitted by "Slashdot Staff". Problem solved! Now, die in a fire, Dice...
My issue with finding employment mostly has to do with who I am competing with in my field. Computer science has become a field like doctors and lawyers where people get involved with it for the high salaries. People who are motivated by monetary gain for employment are more willing to make concessions just to have the job that pays $200,000.
In order to get that salary they will embellish their work experience, their skills or whatever it takes to get that position. Once employed, they generally don't mind 'doing it all', resulting in one employee handling the network, databases and systems administration, for one salary. This is appealing to businesses, because it means they have to hire fewer people, but it leads to mediocrity.
The crux of the problem seems to me to be that there are just too many unskilled people applying for skilled work. If 100 skilled employees apply to Google, there are probably 10,000 unskilled idiots sending in resumes, for the same position. The signal to noise ratio for HR and recruiting is ridiculous, and they have to resort to automating the filtering process down to some reasonable level. This means a LOT of good candidates get pushed into the trash. It's similar to the problem of spam; most people get lots of spam, occasionally an email gets mis-identified as spam, and you never see it.
I don't know what it is like in other regions and other fields, but Silicon Valley's hiring practices need a serious overhaul. I've long thought that a 'guild' type system for technical employees would be useful, where there is a clear path from apprentice to master, and people's professional reputations are paid closer attention to. Industry accepted certifications could also help, but that doesn't prevent 'paper tigers.' Having a guild or even an agent, like talent in Hollywood, would help a skilled employee break out from the background noise that all the unskilled idiots are making.
Finding work, networking with people and schmoozing requires social ability, and technical people are often not that social. Having an agent make connections for you, and get you in front of the right people would be incredibly beneficial, and smooth the hiring process for employers and candidates. That only works, however, if the people doing the networking are 'good' and they are representing their clients properly. Recruitment is a booming field full of talentless jerks that are only interested in making their commission and don't seem to care about their reputations.
Sites like LinkedIn are handy for connecting people, but I don't know about everyone else, but none of the recruiters that contact me seem to read ANYTHING in my profile. They just blast out email to whoever has particular keywords in their profile, and hope to hear back from a small percentage of them. Sounds kind of like spam, no? There's no investment from the recruiter and they're more than likely working under quotas, where they need to contact/call at least 20 people a day, or some bullshit like that. The recruiter doesn't care if you get the job, because they'll get someone the job, and make their money, regardless of the candidate's talent.
Job titles are also problematic. People don't understand what 'senior' means, especially in many small/new companies. Someone fresh out of college is NOT a Senior Linux Administrator, regardless of what theory you may know. Even after 5 years of solid work, I would disagree with someone being considered 'senior', but that isn't how job titles work here. There isn't some agreed upon or 'industry standard' for junior, mid-level, senior, etc.
Then you have the creative 'impressive' job titles, like Server Operations Engineer (Linux Admin), Site Reliability Engineer (Linux Admin), etc. I realize there are different skills needed for various areas of a company, and it is tempting to distinguish employees by title, rather than skillset, but that's what departments are for. You have Linux Admins working in the Site Reliability Department, or whatever.
This is why we keep seeing positions that are re-listed. HR people can't or won't do their jobs, and they get crap. Recruiters do even worse by telling the applicants what to say on resumes and in interviews, and they bring in crap.
It's been fun, it really has. Over the years as a lurker, as AC and then eventually as a lowly 6-digiter I have seen tons of insight, reasoned debate and out-and-out flame wars. There's been +5 Funny and -1 Troll and everything in between. And despite all of the bitching, there really was quite a bit of news for nerds and stuff that mattered.
Up until the last couple of months, when it all seems to have gone down the pan at warp factor nine. On this wonderful internet of ours things come and things go. Now is clearly the time for the venerable /. to go and I will help it on its way, albeit with a heavy heart.
So long, slashdot!
Burns: We're building a casino!
McAllister: Arrr. Give me 5 minutes.
http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/09/18/1457243/dice-buys-geeknets-media-business-including-slashdot-in-20m-deal
An applicant created a marketing brochure promoting herself as the best candidate and was hired.
Reminded me of this.
It needs more apprenticeships / tech schools not just college.
4 years pure college classroom is way to much for IT and has lot's of skill gaps. I say max 2-3 years classroom and more tech / trades schools with apprenticeships.
College put out paper tigers at a much higher cost then certifications.
This reminds me of an application bought here at MegaBigCompany years back that promised to automatically scan, sort, classify, grade and determine what resumes where good for what job openings. HR was thrilled at the work it would save. We lost a lot of faith in it when we noticed that it reported many of applicants whose resumes it had scanned had gone to the University of Nix....we wondered, did they all go to a strangely named college? Then it occurred to me that the app was parsing UNIX on the resumes of people looking for IT jobs, as the University of Nix....
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
Check her out on LinkedIn. Her resume is rambling, confused, filled with recommendations from junior-level staff, and uses a lot of buzz words without describing what she actually does. Plus, check out her picture. Who beat her with the ugly stick?
I do not see any point to this article.
Is that what they call a slashvertisement?
What, is Dice going to spam Slashdot every single day with Dice propaganda?
I am really starting to hate the new Slashdot.
I must have the right terms in my resume. I'm getting emails, calls, etc. Of course I can tell they didn't READ my resume because I put catch terms in there that would clue them if they did.
It's been a fun ride, slashdot, but slamming into the wall at the end ruined it for me. Dice Holdings, Inc. can apply big wet smoochies to that part of my anatomy that is reserved for evacuating the stuff that Dice does best.
Warning: This signature may offend some viewers.
I've stuck dice.com in my hosts file to make sure I don't ever go there by accident.
Not sure that was their intended effect.
Python coder | PyQt Applications | Writer
Yvonne Lee, Community Manager at Dice.com writes,
Python coder | PyQt Applications | Writer
Ignore everything posted by Yvonne - how hard is that? The "Slashdot Staff" will soon get the message when there are NO replies to their adverticles [sic].
The fact is that all you posters WANT to be outraged. It's like a sexual thrill (at least that's what Andrew Denton said on the (Oz) ABC show "Shock Horror Aunty").
...has now been excluded on my options. Hopefully that should take care of all the Dice stories for me.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
...and thanks for all the fish!
Why can't we have a nice discussion about this great premium content?
Simplyhired.com is a much better job board than dice. Craigslist is competitive with dice.
Need I elaborate?
a resume has to impress an imbecile in an HR. Often a corrupted imbecile with a hidden agenda (allegedly) .
That is why we have got a global economical crisis. HR is to be rethought and revamped from the ground up.
resume mistake hire you!!
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
Yvonne wrote down some good basic advice, but nearly all of us are already aware of what she had to say, now that we've collectively endured three economic turn downs in twelve years. Here's the real story:
For the last twelve years, American high tech companies are outsourcing engineering jobs as fast as they can, without getting caught. They now employ more engineers and way more technical support people overseas than they employ here at home. The Feds have done nothing about it.
Our former, present and future employers are now lobbying for a SIXFOLD INCREASE in H1-B visas. They are saying that there aren't enough engineers here to do the work they have. Well, I know of about 20,000 good, employable Engineers just in California, who would love to be working again. Thousands more have left the State because they couldn't afford to stay here anymore. Please write US Sens. Debbie Stabenow, Diane Feinstein and Barbara Boxer for details on their current immigration and H1-B proposals. I'd note the Republicans here, too; but they are too numerous to list.
If you want a job; do three things: 1) look at starting your own business, and 2) raise public Hell with local politicians about the fact that you're still unemployed and they've done not a damned thing to help in four years; and 3) do what Yvonne says. Our resumes can always be improved a little.
Seriously, in the last week there's been at least two slashvertisements for jobs and now a resume training. This sucks.
Even the ghost in the machine knows this sucks, my captcha just a moment ago was "ruined"
Can we have a dice.com story category so that we can just ignore them all?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
WWCTD
What
Would
Commander
Taco
Do?
Wonder how he feels about this. I mean, he got his pile of $$ and "is out" but still, I bet he cares.
-Styopa
Stop stop stop stop stop stop stop stop stop.
Please.
Thank you.
Anyone read the accompanying article titled: "How Recruiters Read Resumes In 10 Seconds or Less?"
Well, this definitely explains how completely unqualified, unfriendly, terrible workers that everyone in the office hates get hired in the first place. I always wondered that. If this jackass narrows it down to 3 people that he deems qualified from just "on paper" type stats, then they all turn out to be arrogant and unfriendly people that can't get along with others, he just failed but he's going to send one to the client anyway because they're "the most qualified" and "properly educated" IN THEORY. In practice, they're an asshole. But then the company gets all impressed by the perfect on-paper match and hires them anyway. Then all the coworkers get to suffer until that asshole gets fired.
I'm the absolute best IT worker any company could ever ask for. I'm the head IT manager at my company at the age of 25. I know everything from graphics design to AV equipment to server maintenance to programming to web design to malware removal and security and have years of professional experience in each field...but I have 2 associates degrees. Oops, looks like that jackass threw my resume out. Oh well. Due to my age, I have the latest education in the most modern technologies and ways to operating and IT system. He didn't think of that though. He wants some 45 year old because 15 years of experience looks prettier on paper. I guess his client gets some less quality options because his preconceived notion of what a good employee looks like ruined it. But really, that's his job as a recruiter. He wants to trick the company into thinking that they should ignore the person and just hire the resume because it's God's gift to that position and matches it perfectly. This is why I quit my old tech contractor. I was the best programmer and they knew damn well that was true but they didn't think my 2-year degree would impress anyone. I even took their worldwide staff programming assessment and beat 81% of their programmers. But they're recruiters so they don't deal in reality, they deal in bullshit and lies to make a quick buck. People like that should be shot.
Don't bother clicking on the link. The twelve mistakes are things that you wouldn't ever do to begin with and the rest is similarly contentless.
The rest of Dice isn't much better by the way, so you might want to avoid that site.