Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login
Ask HN: How do I write a resume after five years of a startup?
245 points by boxcardavin on Aug 3, 2016 | hide | past | favorite | 127 comments
I'm asking this for several founders on our team who are getting deeper into our thirties and starting to think about moving to a larger more stable company. We have been working together for 4 years under the same company name during which time we have done 4 major projects that we were hoping would take off. We've been profitable the entire time and we all make decent salaries, and 3 of the projects still generate modest revenues.

The problem we are facing is that our resumes and Linkedins do not look impressive (to our eyes) because you don't see a progression through multiple companies with inflating job titles (example good profile https://www.linkedin.com/in/saadkhan02).

So, how does one communicate that they are hirable after running a semi-successful startup for years? Or, perhaps, is this undesirable?




Do not fixate on job title progression alone; your co-founder titles are impressive enough. Outline your area(s) of responsibility on each project, especially if you all rotated roles once in a while.

Focus on growth of both top and bottom lines, and highlight margin improvements over the 4 years and 4 projects. Try to quantify your accomplishments in dollar figures since they stand out more. Statements such as "Grew revenues 50% YoY from $0 to $X million over 36 months" will quickly catch anybody's attention.

Throw in some specific, targeted technical phrases that are keyword friendly and you'll easily be an outstanding candidate.

Be prepared to explain why you'd want to join the target company and not stay at your current company.

TLDR: Hiring managers hone in on results, not only titles. Quantify your business impacts and list your technical accomplishments.

EDIT: Regarding my comment about quantifying your margin impact, for those that don't know, "margin" and "markup" are not equivalent[1]. Thankfully it's really easy for technically inclined folks to grasp this insanely useful financial concept.

[1] http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/102714/whats-differe...


> Hiring managers hone in on results, not only titles.

A lot of them kind of don't, but you don't want to work at those places anyway. This is good advice.


Looks like I'm 11 hours late to the party =(

Totally agree with otoburb and I'd like to add to the conversation.

boxcardavin, you bring up a common problem: traditional resumes and LinkedIn are mainly all about focusing on your tenure: the company you worked for and your job title. As you mentioned, it doesn't cater to your work history. What if we make your work front and center and push the job titles to the side? Instead of just typing, I'd like to show you what I mean:

http://www.theymadethat.com/people/p04ubn/david-hansen

boxcardavin, feel free to give me feedback. If you have a lot feedback, we can take this outside of HN.


Hey! I'm an engineer involved in recruiting at Periscope Data. We see resumes/LI from people who've been doing startup things all the time. It's definitely not an issue, usually the opposite - I love talking to people with less structured backgrounds, they usually have interesting stories to tell. We recently hired someone who had been "technical co-founder" of a successful startup for the past six years. He wanted to join a larger team, and we were totally comfortable with him having been in a more jack-of-all trades scenario because he is very obviously brilliant.

Shamelessly, don't hesitate to reach out if you might be interested - we're hiring in all areas, and I would especially love to chat if you or your co-founders are looking for engineering, PM, or marketing roles :)


> So, how does one communicate that they are hirable after running a semi-successful startup for years

The fact that you've held a job for more than just 6 month stints is enough to push you all the way to the front of the line. Most applicants we see just do 6 months here and there. I refuse to hire anyone that hasn't stayed at a company at least 2 years (excluding new grads). 4 years is pretty much a unicorn nowadays.


Here's what the last 6 years of my resume look like:

* 1.5 years - Startup I joined crashed and burned

* 0.5 years - Contract work for web design firm while I went back to university, they couldn't get their clients to pay their invoices

* 1.0 years - Worked for the university while I finished my degree

* 1.0 years - Startup I joined crashed and burned

* 1.5 years - Small company that was doing well, but proceeded to have one of its worse years as it lost all but one of its clients, eventually laid off 75% of its staff

* 0.75 years - Contract work for department in enterprise corporation that decided to cancel its own internal development and fire everyone after the lead developer quit

* 1.1 years - Current job, Fortune 500 corporation, still going well for now, but I'm expecting the sky to fall at any minute considering my luck.


Hey now, keep your head up. I worked almost two years for a government agency that went out of business. :)


Let me rephrasethar for you:

* 5.5 yrs of contract work as proprietor of Cableshaft Technology

  * Gig 1

  * Gig 2

  * ....


Just short the stock of your current company, profit will come :)


I work on projects not on jobs. Meaning I develop something bring it life and handover to operations. This means I work on projects taking 3 months to 3 years. It all depends.

I don't care about jobs. I just like to build things. 99% of my projects I work until delivery. Even when I hate it.

This is the reason I always say don't like to the time I worked for something. I finnish and deliver.


> 4 years is pretty much a unicorn nowadays.

I've been at my company for >= + years, but I can tell you that 4 years is not necessarily a good thing. Sometimes people that stay for a long time are people who are no good and know it, they have found a safe environment that tolerates their incompetence so they never leave! I say this as someone who has interviewed people with 10+ yrs experience and who have stayed at once location for a long time. Most of them had no idea what is currently going on in the industry, heck, they didn't even have the fundamentals down or claim to have forgotten it all. I rather get a solid programmer for 1 year than an incompetent one for 5.


That's unlikely (but not impossible) to be true for founders. Anything that's going 5+ years has some semblance of quality behind it.


Not in the enterprise world, a lot of terrible stuff lumbers along because of the huge gap between software users and software purchasers.


Sometimes its just funding decisions made years in advance and "we've already spent too much on this to not to put up with it".


I've seen two types who fit the six month pattern:

1 Devs who simply can't code and get fired/managed out/not contract renewed

2 Unlucky people who don't put up with crappy work environments

The first groups should be easy to weed out with decent interviews. The second are a goldmine as long as your company isn't as dysfunctional as the companies that drove them away previously.


Or, for that matter:

3 Unlucky people who have a tendency to get hired just before the company changes course and begins laying people off

That was the case with my last employer. Right after I was hired, our revenue sources began to dry up, and we couldn't stop the bleeding, so eventually a third of the company, including me, got laid off. I lasted 15 months before the axe fell, and I was worried when applying for new positions that my resume would be thrown out because I was there less than two years.


As just this sort of person, I get the sense that I'm probably looking for new employment the wrong way, because I only start hearing about opportunities at startups when those startups are fait-accompli dead-in-the-water.

My hypothesis: most startups don't bother advertising openings publicly while they can get by using private word-of-mouth in their network. Since I'm not well-enough-connected, none of the private word-of-mouth ever reaches me; so I only ever hear about these companies once their well of private leads has run dry—which really should be taken as a vote-of-no-confidence from their network.


I don't get this at all. As developers we should always be looking out for our best interests. If you think you can find something better for more money do it. The whole idea of company loyalty is bs in my opinion. They generally aren't loyal to you.


Your immediate self interest may not end up being your long term self interest (or it might, I don't profess to be an expert on your career)

As a hiring manager it's not in my interest to hire someone who is likely to leave in 6-12 months. If I have a team that is growing, then I am already spending a considerable portion of my time recruiting, I can't afford to have to rehire my whole team every single year.

I do want people who have personal drive and high standards - who won't put up with a toxic workplace. So if you've left 1 or 2 places after 6-12 months, then that could be a good sign, and I'll probably get you in for an interview and ask about it.

But if you never stay somewhere for more than a year, then I don't like my chances of being the place that breaks the pattern, and it's unlikely that I will bring you in for what is intended to be a permanent position.

While I can absolutely understand why someone might want to jump around every 6 months for better pay, don't expect me to sign up to be the next stop on that trip.


You're the type of person I don't hire:

> As developers

Developers aren't special. They are a profession which doesn't even necessitate advanced degrees/certifications like most other high-pay industries (med/law/finance/engineering). This instantly comes across as self-importance.

> we should always be looking out for our best interests

Sure, but not at the expense of my company. I'm assuming you have some experience based on your commentary. My expectation of a senior dev isn't to just hit keys and write 600 functions before they leave my company. I expect them to make everyone around them better. That doesn't happen if you spend your lunch hours looking for the next job.

> The whole idea of company loyalty is bs in my opinion

None of this is about company loyalty. It's about hiring useful employees that don't cost you money. Hiring is expensive. A rule of thumb for a medium sized company is that it takes 1 years salary to hire someone worth that salary. So If I'm paying you a salary of $100k, In six months I've actually spent $150k. When you put the numbers on paper, anyone viewing them would call me an idiot.


> So If I'm paying you a salary of $100k, In six months I've actually spent $150k. When you put the numbers on paper, anyone viewing them would call me an idiot.

What I see is that the person's salary is not the biggest part of their total cost to you as an employer, particularly in the first year or two when you're amortizing out your acquisition cost. If you're paying them $100k, six months in your total cost is $150k. If they are qualified for a job at another company that pays $150k, perhaps you should have bumped their salary to the $150k that is apparently the market value of their labor - after all, is it better to spend $150k and lose that employee to someone paying them 50% more, or to spend $175k and have that third-party offer not be attractive to them?


> What I see is that the person's salary is not the biggest part of their total cost to you as an employer

This is exactly why salaries are pretty negotiable.

> If they are qualified for a job at another company that pays $150k

We address this once a week on HN. People don't pay for qualifications, they pay for most recent salary. They'd still stick around for 6 months and then look for their next 10% bump. A "6 months here and there" person isn't magically going to change their perspective on life just because they finally had the opportunity to work for me! People that are willing to stick around typically aren't just using me for their "my last salary was...", and they are much more likely to get salary bumps within (which does actually happen, contrary to popular belief).


> A "6 months here and there" person isn't magically going to change their perspective on life just because they finally had the opportunity to work for me

I've seen those people stick for multiple years when they found the right fit. Of course, they got paid for their time and their employers worked to keep them happy because that right fit understood their value.

I'll be real with you: from every post you've made in the thread, this isn't the employee's problem. This is a you problem. You want to hire people who actively work against their own interests. That's super gross.


>I've seen those people stick for multiple years when they found the right fit.

And I've seen them not. I guess our anecdata cancels out.

> Of course, they got paid for their time and their employers worked to keep them happy because that right fit understood their value.

I pay people for both their time and talent. Why would they ever stick around if I treated them or their career poorly? That's just silly. Your assumption is that people who hop every 6 months have a notable difference in talent. That's a very poor assumption. Again, it's just a shitty personality trait.

> This is a you problem.

Even if it is us, it doesn't negatively affect us.

> You want to hire people who actively work against their own interests.

As I've stated, that's simply not true. I want to hire people that want to work for us, not just treat us as a stepping stone.


> Your assumption is that people who hop every 6 months have a notable difference in talent. That's a very poor assumption. Again, it's just a shitty personality trait.

I'm making no such assumption. What I am saying, however, is that the idea that "I shouldn't pass up on a huge salary bump that will have reverberations through my entire lifetime's earning potential" is a "shitty personality trait" is absolutely mad. This is irrespective of skill or ability in any way, because it boils down to a simple question: why should someone incur damage to their entire life's income potential to stay at a job (unless you're, like, literally curing cancer)?

It's a business transaction between the supplier and the purchaser. Continuing to sell to you when a worker can otherwise maximize their income (and, let's be real, not suffer a bit in terms of peripherals at 90% of companies) is literally and inescapably self-harm.

> I want to hire people that want to work for us

Wanting to work for you is working against a worker's economic interests. Working for you as long as you offer the deal that is most beneficial to them is not. And in the current market, that means moving on when you can move up the ladder. You are a stepping stone, unless you take active measures to the contrary (pay top-of-market, make people want to be there).

If you don't want to be a stepping stone, then be the desired destination. There are companies that figure this out (your Apples, Googles, etc.), and they don't have silly policies like "must have been at a company for two years."


agree you can replace the word developers with any other term. The difference is that developers are in very high demand right now. We should take advantage of the environment while we can.

>not at the expense of my company.

I'm sorry, we're all mercenaries for hire. What will you do for me if your company needs to do layoffs or is closing ? Theres more cases where companies hire and layoff fast or screw over employees than those that actually care about the employees.

>It's about hiring useful employees that don't cost you money

I admit its hard to measure the direct benefit to revenue over those 6 months, but I would argue these figures.


> I'm sorry, we're all mercenaries for hire.

Most people I know don't have this view. Ask around and you'll be surprised at how few people think this way. You'll probably get this perspective only if your job IS contracting, e.g. designers.

> What will you do for me if your company needs to do layoffs or is closing

Most companies have some form of severance, and it's typically more than enough to keep you going during your job search. Since you've mentioned how in demand we are, it shouldn't be of any concern.

> I would argue these figures.

Here's a good read:

http://web.mit.edu/e-club/hadzima/pdf/how-much-does-an-emplo...

My father does physician hiring. His costs run 4-5x salary.

Lets run some numbers:

Imagine I cost my company $50 an hour in salary, and earn them $150 an hour (revenue of 3-5x salary is ballpark for most companies, we'll go for the low end for some perspective). As a senior dev, I have to sit in all the interviews of people potentially joining my team. Imagine we have 10 people that make it through the HR round. I have to participate in 10 interviews, and then likely 3 more for the final round.

My cost for round 2 is: 10 people x 2 hours x (150 lost revenue + 50 salary paid) = $4k

My cost for round 3 is: 3 x 8 x (150 + 50) = $4.8k

My company has already dropped $8.8k on my involvement solely in the interview room for your typical entry level position. This doesn't even include my involvement in onboarding, training, pre-interview prep, post-interview review, etc. This is also JUST ME, and a very lowball figure at that. Now factor in the cost of the HR round, recruiters, background checks, the other devs in the interviews with me, etc. It adds up very, very quickly.

Moral of the story: People are expensive and it's really not all that difficult to quantify it.


I kinda agree with you on that but there's also another point: when a company hires you it takes some time for you to be really productive, in the meantime you must be a "loss" or just a tad bit of breaking even. From my previous job as a tech lead I've seen this ramp up time taking from 1 month (for a very well defined position with the perfect match) up to 6 months (someone who was curious about a new line of work and had to learn a lot but was a very intelligent person).

So of course, company loyalty is bullshit but there's also a point where your contribution almost didn't pay off their effort and money, those are the people I'd avoid hiring.

Anywhere after 1 to 1.5 years at the same job and I'd not bat an eye, many experiences lesser than an year would not put me off instantly just by looking at a CV but I'd definitely take more time to discover what happened.


I've found that the type of person who "[doesn't] put up with crappy work environments" is often the type of person who finds all sorts of perfectly fine work environments to be crappy.


I'm that person. For me it's the code quality, attitude and direction that matter the most.

There is an awful lot of terrible code out there and an awful lot of companies that are either oblivious to it or lying about it until post hire.

I can handle terrible code, but if there isn't a solid plan in place to improve it for whatever reason (or if it's getting worse) then I'm out of there.


I can empathize. You have one life to live so why be miserable? When a company's management disrespects its talent by imposing on them one or more of bad processes, malicious and/or incompetent minders, poor technology, and other non-technical obstacles, you enable and enforce this behavior by staying. There is only so much one can ask before accepting an offer, especially when some have no problems with lying. I resent the implication that I must agree to be voluntarily Shanghai-ed by the omnipotent employer for fear that I turn off some nebulous good prospect down the road. I hope the people who I encounter in desirable employment situations in the future evaluate history individually vs. do the whiteboard-interview lazy equivalent.


Some people just have lower bullshit thresholds. A wise manager can listen to what you are complaining about and use people like you to clean up a lot of the crap that accumulates in all technical organizations.

Sadly lots of places would just label you not a team player for complaining about the lack version control or whatever. This is when it is smart to switch jobs even if it has only been 6 months.

There are a two devs who fit this mold a my current job. They bounced from job to job until finally landing here for 2-3 years so far with no sign of leaving. They complain constantly and are honestly a bit annoying but are super productive. The changes they make have made hundreds of other devs more productive which more than makes up for the occasional bad attitude. The key is that they don't cross the line into being jerks, more curmudgeons than assholes.


> There is an awful lot of terrible code out there

There's also a lot of finicky people that think good code is only if it matches exactly their preferences

Also they're usually prone to believing Uncle Bob BS


Personally, I don't foresee caring this much about the quality of the codebase I'm hired onto, the direction of the projects, etc. as long as I'm getting paid for it.


So you're an example. What's your rate of job turnover with a policy like that?


It varies from years to months/weeks, although a lot of the months ones were contract jobs. My longest stint was 3-4 years, which I only left because I relocated.

The shortest is weeks, this is at places that have mountains of technical debt as well as other problems, like managers that don't understand the limitations of that technical debt and want everything done yesterday.

The last job was 18 months. despite a lot of bad code I had a free hand to add gradual improvements. The current one is looking to be considerably shorter.


Heh, I've yet to work for a company where management stayed stabled for 2 years, 4 would be a pipe dream.


Google seems stable enough.


Unfortunately, I don't work for Google. But if you're offering... :)


Googlers are mostly happy to give referrals. After all it's almost no work, and the possibility of a referral bonus.

However, I am about to move to Bloomberg.


After twelve years at the same company, I must be some type of ultra grand wizard unicorn.


You are a dodecacorn!


Sweet, I'll add it to my resume!


Triceratops.


This feels to me like a rationale for trying to get something for nothing, to be honest. Why would a quality engineer with an understanding of their worth stay at a company for two years when the next company's offering 20% more after twelve months? "Make hay while the sun shines."


Why would I spend money hiring and training someone that I expect to leave before they contribute anything significant? Contrary to what most people think of themselves, they aren't capable of hitting the ground running. This is even more important in a senior dev position where they need to know how everyone under them actually performs. I don't hire monkeys, I hire employees. They should be a benefit to each other and the company, not just themselves.


If they can't contribute anything significant in 6 months then that's a problem with the company.


In my career, I've only seen one person contribute significantly within 6 months, and they got a 10% pay boost that quickly. "Contribution" is a lot more than just "Hey! I deployed some code!". The first year for an employee is mostly just breaking even on the cost to hire them. Hiring is expensive^. For a junior role, it's probably 1x salary. For an experienced hire, it can easily be 2x salary. That means that hiring someone at a 100k salary has actually already cost you 150k by the time they leave 6 months into their job. I sincerely doubt they've managed to contribute 150k revenue to your bottom line.

^ This is why nepotism is so strong. I got my job through my brother, which was effectively free for my employer. Beyond just that cost, it makes me more likely to stay. The next hire cost us 70k, and he ended up leaving after... you got it! 6 months.


I guess you'll have to pay more than bananas then.


What you pay them is irrelevant if they are only using you for the 10% boost from "my last salary was...". It's a personality trait, not a salary issue.


You are trying to turn economic transactions into "personality traits" and it's kind of really disgusting. What you pay them isn't irrelevant if you are dedicated to paying them what they can get elsewhere. Because it's an economic transaction. Be more desirable, pay market rates, and people won't bounce. But nobody wants to invest in their people and nobody wants to pay market rates once you've signed on the dotted line. No, "yearly reviews" to get a five or even ten percent raises are not sufficient.

I create a lot of value--in much less than six months, at my last full-time job by the time six months had elapsed I'd built out a deployment system that reduced developer time for every deployment by literally seventy percent and gotten an "attaboy, maybe at the next perf review", which never happened because I got a new gig with a sixteen percent comp increase, before options in a publicly traded company no less, that would never have been matched by that perf review. This is why I consult now, as it happens: because I can parachute in and create a lot of value, because I don't need a bunch of ramp-up time, and I can get paid literally double per-hour to do it. (And it's why I can work three-ish days a week and make more money than my last full-time job.)


> No, "yearly reviews" to get a five or even ten percent raises are not sufficient.

Sounds like you've had a shitty work career. None of what I'm talking about is anything like that.

> You are trying to turn economic transactions into "personality traits" and it's kind of really disgusting.... I create a lot of value--in much less than six months...

You talk about it as an economic transaction, but you fail to actually acknowledge the economic transaction that's actually taking place. You don't just magically spring into existence into my company when you drop your resume at the door. The cost to hire you is significant. You simply haven't recouped that cost of hiring you within 6 months, regardless of whether or not you're God's gift to programming.

> I don't need a bunch of ramp-up time, and I can get paid literally double per-hour to do it.

Sounds like you're living the dream, congrats. Most people aren't as talented as you are. Using your experiences to make hiring decisions for the other 99% of society would seem silly, don't you think?


Boy, what I'd give for a career trajectory that looks like that. But I'm not moving to the US any time soon (my family is quite happy here), and my local market caps out at ~$110k for "senior" devs. It's annoyingly hard to find remote jobs working for US firms that pay US salaries.


FWIW, I'm not a senior dev, if I went back to FT I'd be somewhere between lead/staff and principal and I've steered my career towards in-demand areas (mobile for a while, then devops/platform engineering). The reason I saw salary bumps the way I did was because I negotiate hard and I didn't specialize, but rather learned the new trends and jumped on them.

That said, I feel you on the lack of remote gigs; a big part of why I went towards consulting is the opportunity to go screw off to somewhere warm for a month or two--I don't have a wife or kids at the moment--and work remotely. If it fits your skillset and your temperament, it might be worth a shake.


Apparently you wouldn't give enough..

I'm not in the US, and not an American citizen, but I got a similar trajectory from moving around globally.

(Not a criticism of you, just saying that you made your choice.)


Honestly, a "choice" between a pay-raise and a marriage isn't much of a choice.


It is a choice, just an exceptionally easy one. Most of the important decisions in life are actually easy to make, I think. (Just sometimes hard to live with.)

I took my marriage with me. But she knew from the start what she was in for.


Yeah, it would be great if people were dedicated to one company for a long time, but that isn't our field anymore.

Companies come and go very fast. Move fast break things means breaking companies some times, and fail fast means fail to be able to keep the good people you went through so much effort to get and afford.

All of these new companies starting up look greener to devs and a lot of the time they are. As a developer, you can hitch your wagon to a fair bet, or take a risk and go to the place that might be awesome. It's a real big ask to assume everyone who's good gets only long term jobs at great places. Good people don't stay long if the job isn't good - they don't need to.

The logical reason to want someone who stays at a job a long time is that you want to feel like your investment in that person is going to pay off. I challenge that and say that you don't really need to invest in a developer (up front I mean) if it's a good development job. You point them at the problem, help them understand the business case, and if they need more than a week to ramp up in the code base with your team, either A. they suck, or B. your code base sucks.


I'd stay longer at companies, if they were as eager to increase my compensation while staying as they are for when I am switching.


Company I come from I was at 5 1/2 years, through 2 departments, 3 managers, 2 CTO's, and a number of just fucked up things in general.

The company I'm going to even highlighted that me being somewhere for 6 years was unheard of today, especially to have put up with everything I went through at that place.


What specialty are you hiring for? Is it something about the people in that area? I have personally worked for two companies in my 14-year career, and most people I have worked with have had similar tenure lengths. I do embedded/systems/scientific-type work, though.


I do web development, but I'm not involved with any of the designer hiring, which I understand to be more of an expectation of short term contracting.

I hire for back end web-dev/dev-ops. We do long term contracting with brick and mortar businesses building internal efficiency web apps. Web-dev tends to be more of a "startup of the week" field, so it's harder to find people that fit my "formula". Part of it is that my background is originally in finance, where the formula is 2 years at Bank A, 2 years at Bank B, 2 years at Bank A, etc. taking a 20% pay boost each time you switch.


> I refuse to hire anyone that hasn't stayed at a company at least 2 years (excluding new grads)

Then you're selecting for people that care more about a paycheck than the work they're doing

Also, I was let go after a couple of months in a small company because they closed the office I worked on, my fault I guess


I always thought that the opposite is true - people who care about their paycheck jumps ship every couple of months to improve their paycheck(it easier to get a raise in a new job than in your current one, right?)


Not so easy depending on the circumstances

Of course it's a bonus, but different locations may pay less


> Then you're selecting for people that care more about a paycheck than the work they're doing

You can only go through so many companies before you need to acknowledge: "maybe it's me, not them".


Out of curiosity, why do you think that that is?

How do you feel about that?


Hiring and training is expensive. Contrary to what most people think of themselves, they aren't capable of hitting the ground running. If their history is indicative of their career with my company, I have an expectation that they are going to cost me money, not make it.


I was in the same boat 1 year back. I had very diverse work experience across my 10 yr career, none very deep, none very relevant to my desired target industry (ecommerce)- I had worked majorly in manufacturing and finance. In my 30's, family and toddler to support, bootstrapped hardware startup failed after 2 yrs.

For the resume I focused on the journey's small wins, just bulleted. I had no revenue numbers to share, so just highlighted what was achieved in what time.

It was very hard, but what I figured quickly was that the resume mattered way less than the people i pushed it to.

What worked:

1. Sent linkedIn connects to a crazy number of startup founders (50-100 daily), apart from the usual HR connects. side note : i bought linkedIn premium subscription at about $40 a month to cover my search limits.

2. Whoever connected back (10-15%), I shot them a crisp email telling them I'd like to meet for startup advice and/or opportunities with a one liner.

3. Whoever responded with 'No', I politely asked if they could recommend someone they knew who'd like to connect.

4. Whoever responded with maybe/Yes (5-10% of the connects), immediately tried to set up a time within the next 2/3 days. Could be a call/meeting/skype/anything.

Note: the eMail always

a) had a touch of personalisation.

b) was no more than 3 lines

c) included my product snapshot as an attachment

d) ofc, had resume attached and contacts+linked in profile link included in signature.

Met great people along the way, will surely help in future. And met one of the best founders in my country - he made me join his company Nearbuy (Groupon India). The hunt took me 6 months, partly because I had 2 hard filters a) not going to wear a suit to office..so consulting/finance was out b) no politics..so most corporate jobs were out.

Takeaways: Seek help like crazy. Your passion and hardwork at your startup is your resume, nothing else will matter.


I had a similar experience. My suggestions are:

- have a clear, simple story to answer "why are you (single person) leaving the startup". You'll be asked at every interview (and if multiple people apply to the same company, you want a coherent answer). Include that you all are leaving if this is the case -- the risk is that you (single person) are seen as one giving up

- list down 4-5 main achievements. Make sure there are 1-2 which are not co-done, but you can state "this was mostly my own achievement". This is the hardest part, but if you're still working together you can easily agree on how to split

- make sure to clearly tell 1 story, which doesn't need to be the one of the startup, but the one for which you're seeking the new job position -- if I'm looking for a position as data scientist I'll focus on my research experience, if I'm looking for devops I'll focus on security, etc.

- in linkedin specifically, if it applies, link some press or some blog post, or anything I could spend time digging in to get to know you more -- if you feel that the list of jobs is not enough, help me finding more info about you

From the other side of the table, when I look for people to source/interview, I look at the total working experience. Wether it's 4y in a single company or 2+2 it doesn't make any difference. I personally (I see others can disagree, but this is me) see as a yellow flag a 1+1+1+1 experience, simply because I fear you'll leave my company after a sole year.

(If you'd like to chat more feel free to ping me via email.)


You can also break out job titles under the company. So, if you worked on one project as the tech lead and program manager as another. or break out responsibilities under job titles. Hiring managers could respond to this but seems like:

Awesome Great Company I started: 2014 - Present

CEO/HR - I was responsible for ...

CEO/VP Sales - I successfully sold 4 large projects which resulted in ... sales ...

CTO/Tech Lead - I designed, built, tested ... Also, created a complete automated test suite... using NoSQL, Android...


I'd be happy to spend ten minutes giving you pointers. I've a tech recruiter in Chicago and I've worked with a number of CTO's from 1871 (local co working space/tech incubator) to transition from their startup to a new role.

But like many have said here if you write on your resume what you have actually been building over the last couple years you should be fine. Being able to clearly talk about your experience is more important.


I'm open to such advice as well (going through similar experience). Feel free to ping me at radley@cloud.tv


Figure out the intersection of what you want to do, and what you can do, and emphasize that. So, for an experienced technical founder at a successful company, think about...

- this job for which I'm applying, what do they REALLY need, and which 3 to 5 bullet points capture my competence and accomplishment in this area

- how is this company like mine, and how can I communicate the similarities to my experience working w/ others, building a certain type of product, applying domain expertise, etc.

- what story will I tell if/when they ask, "So do why do you want a job when you've been your own boss for so long?" Maybe something like "You know, what I really like to do is make an impact doing X, and that's something I get to do in any position with responsibilities A, B, and C."

And my generic resume writing advice is... try writing your resume without adjectives. It forces you to focus on highlighting what you've really done. Let your awesomeness sell itself. Calling yourself awesome doesn't do much for you.


You don't need that. Anyone with basic understanding of how business works will know that you have far more profound experiences than most corporate ladder climbers.


Not true. To most corporate recruiters 'doing a startup' for a couple of years is almost the same as being unemployed. I faced this myself after years of slogging away at an unsuccessful project and then trying to get back into the job market.


I have heard it referred to as being in a band.

Things that people in start ups don't know: getting technical things done in complex environments. I would focus my CV on showing interaction with corporates outside the firm - show you have some game.


Depends which country/place the recruiter is in. Eg in SF Bay Area they would probably not treat you as equivalent to unemployed.

Or where are you?


I don't think it matters as much as you think. If anything it shows that you are a more stable employee that won't jump ship.

Put all 4 projects on there and try to sell them as technically as possible.

I was at an unknown company (nationally) for 7 years before I left. I had no issues whatsoever getting interviews.


It's weird, my experiences were more the opposite to what most people wrote. I only did my own gig (2-3 people) for a bit more than a year but until now it affects my career to that level that I want to exclude it from my resume, or at least make it look like a normal company.

When people talk to me about what I did they think it's impressive and love the technical challenges I tell them about, but most of the times the rejection happens only because of fear that I will create my startup again after a short time of working at company x. I got this confirmed multiple times after asking about the reason.

I'm living in Asia and it might be a thing here but it is very frustrating.


For what it's worth, I think your experience is a strong point to have on your resume. You have collectively demonstrated an ability to run profitable projects, over an extended period, doing everything that is necessary between you since there was no-one else to hide behind. That is more than many people in our business will achieve in their entire career. As long as you were all contributing substantially and can show that, just to avoid any perception that your team was actually built around one key person or anything along those lines, I expect you'll do just fine.

As an aside, not everyone is on LinkedIn, and those of us who aren't apparently can't see the profile you linked.

Also, full disclosure, it sounds like I'm a bit older than you but my background is somewhat similar, so my views here may be biased. But having sat on the hiring side of the table in various roles, I'd take demonstrated ability to get things done and build successful projects over some random progression of short term jobs with increasingly impressive-sounding job titles any day of the week.


Just do a "functional" resume. instead of titles "from 2010-2016", do "Selected Accomplishments" and categorize them.

Technical

* Implemented xyz process to reduce pdq by x%

Leadership

* Developed market strategy for team of y teams to improve market share by z% in 3 months

etc


If your a developer with a good amount of experience and stuff/projects to show then you have nothing to worry about.

If you didn't pick up any coding or tech skills during running your start-ups you may or may not have issues.

For me my start-ups were like going to school to pick up a new/in-demand skill that I could fall back on if my startup dreams fell flat.


Do you know your shit? If yes, you have nothing to worry about.

If no, work on that.

There're so many unqualified job candidates out there, you can rise above the crowd just by being good at what you do.


As a former hiring manager at a company that got way more resumes than qualified candidates (Rdio), I totally disagree with this. Candidates have to be able to communicate why they are good at what they do concisely, otherwise their resume won't even make it to the hiring managers inboxes at most companies.

This is pretty similar to the elevator pitch for a startup. I'm amazed that anybody has a hard time keeping their resume to a single page when any founder can describe their startup in a paragraph. In both cases, you're just trying to get a meeting, not tell your life story.

It's not enough to be good, you have to be able to say why you're good.


> has a hard time keeping their resume to a single page

Last time I did that I got complaints that my CV was not detailed enough


I am not clear why people think a resume needs to be one page. I tend to prefer about two pages. That's enough room to list where you worked along with the highlights. One page normally means just a list of employers and almost no detail. Three pages typically feels rambling or padded.

I don't consider a resume and a CV to be equivalent, though. A CV is generally a lot more exhaustive than a resume. I would put together a CV if and only if applying for a research or academic position.


"[Keep your resume to a single page]; you're just trying to get a meeting, not tell your life story."

I like that.


Resume is not the only, or even the best, way to get an interview.


I'm sorry but no.

Even if he knows his stuff he'll most likely have problems getting an interview and then he needs that the people interviewing him are capable of recognizing his expertise.

That's a lot of compounded ifs.


I went through this a few years ago.

Ran a semi-successful web / mobile app development company. We were a small team of four, hitting early to mid thirties. From the outside anyone would have thought our company was successful. Good brand recognition in our geographic region, finding clients was easy. They found us.

We paid ourselves decent salaries, paid the bills on our dev infrastructure, we all worked in the trenches, at our own pace, and we all generally loved what we were doing.

However, after about five years we got that itch. In a way we were too comfortable. Our finances looked the same year after year. We purposely weren't growing. Or maybe we just didn't want to take that risk. I guess we peaked early and got comfortable staying there.

At first no one really talked about it. You could feel it though. As we got older. Being so close to the business administration became a chore. Planning summer vacations with a small team became a chore. Riding out December became a chore. Maintaining apps over a five+ year lifecycle became a chore. Dealing with dev infrastructure maintenance became a chore. Wearing too many hats became a chore.

Life outside of work becomes more important as you get older. Family and that sort of thing.

So we decided to shut it down. Lots of emotion, soul searching, panic, joy.

Anyhow ...

I personally had the same feeling you did. Does co-founder look good on a resume? What the hell did I do for the past five years? Will I fit in with corporate culture? How do I transfer my skills to the corporate world?

What I learned is that you've got nothing to worry about.

Working on a small team, and staying profitable, and paying the bills means that you understand the value of money. You wear multiple hats. You're skilled at sticking to a budget and meeting deadlines. You had to "show up" every day. You worked the trenches and enjoyed getting your hands dirty. You worked twice as hard and twice as fast. You stayed the course for four years. You're loyal. You're reliable. You understand the entire lifecycle of building something from start to finish. And you've done it successfully multiple times over. You understand failure too, and know how to bounce back. You have an amazing combination of business savvy and technical smarts that's difficult to find. You're entrepreneurial. You've got vision. You're an ideas person. You've got real-world experience. And a track record of success. Most startups crash and burn early, you didn't, and you're leaving it on your own terms. Knowing when to exit is an extraordinary skill in itself. You understand how it all works. You haven't lost touch.

Don't scare potential employers with big fake C-level job titles. In a company of four you never really had a specific job title anyways. Use that to your advantage.

Custom tailor your resume for different roles. You've got so much to offer your challenge will be figuring out what to "leave out". You've got volumes of specific examples and accomplishments to draw from, which you can talk about for hours.

You're still young. In fact you're in your prime. You'll be a massive positive addition to any team.

Look for a larger (than yours) company that hasn't lost their entrepreneurial spirit. You'll be right at home. Don't settle and don't be surprised if five or six years from now you get the itch to embark on another startup.

It's all good.


I'm partners with @boxcardavin (OP) and this is pretty much us exactly. Thanks for a great response!


Thank you for your post.


I'm someone who has recruited mostly for startups for almost 20 years, and two years ago I launched a resume review and writing service (resumeraiders.com). My focus is on tech resumes, and I've done work for at least a few HN readers.

You don't need to show a ton of progression. You just need to know how to market the skills and experience that you have. If you've been profitable and are getting paid well, and have four substantial projects over four years, you're marketable.

Feel free to inquire if you'd like professional help.


Just skip the resume. They're worthless anyways.

If you find a position you like, send an email. Tell them why you're interested, what you could bring to the table. You can mention your history if it's relevant, casually, just like you wrote it up here.

If they don't like it, fck them, their loss, try a different company.

edit: Just to be clear, i'm not suggesting you skip the resume because of your specific history, rather because the whole concept of presenting resumes is utterly inhumane and counter-productive.


I can only speak for myself, but as someone who interviews developers for a small-medium company (<20 in my office, ~100 total), I have to say that this is bad advice if applying to a place like mine.

I need some formalized experience document, even if your resume just looks like bullet points. It gives me discrete items/events/projects/education/skills that I can consider and discuss with you. If I don't have that as a reference point when talking with you, all I can say is "So, tell me why you're awesome", which is not useful.

If I'm not starting out with some idea of what we can drill down into, some table of contents, I have too little to work with and I'm not going to bother. Perhaps more relevantly, HR probably won't even bring you to my attention.


I'm not suggesting that the applicant should withhold any relevant information. Obviously, the whole point of the application process is to get to know each other.

I believe if I see your job posting, research your company a bit and get in touch describing why I'm interested in that specific position and what I think I could bring to the table, that's a better starting point for a discussion than me sending a generic list of buzzwords, positions, qualities, etc. trying to sell myself.

And maybe the next step could be grabbing a coffee rather than an overly formal interview where we're both trying to see through each other's distortion of reality.

We're human after all.


have you thought about your hiring process in general?

you don't you have something to talk about with people applying, coming from the same industry?


I've noticed given absolute numbers works great also. Like "Built a back end for a video game that was doing ~5M active players"


Are you guys all agreeing to disband? I have heard that selling yourselves as a qualified, functional team can bring a higher value than each person solo. I guess acqui-hires are an example of that; maybe some of the recruiter types that have responded here have thoughts about how to initiate that dance.


I think we're going to apply for Stripes Bring Your Own Team where they hire functional teams. Haven't decided to disband yet, we based it on time and revenue requirements for ourselves.


recruiter/sourcer, 4 years exp.

- don't worry about inflated job title, especially in the bay area.

- resumes are targeted to its audience.

- know what you want to do (engineering, product management, etc).

- reach out to managers at companies that you'd like to work at. ask them what they need (don't go by job postings, too generic most of the time). fill resume with relevant info if you have them.

- communicating that you're a desirable hire is done in the interview stage. resume is a tool to get you the interview if you have zero connection inside that company (don't blow it off though, since it's usually shown to a hiring board for final decisions).


Are you behind snap2print.me? Looks super cool. A good idea for sure.


Yep, it is pretty cool but the decision-makers at most of our client companies are slow to approve budgets for Snapchat. It has been fun to work on, it's our first big push into hardware so I've had a ball. We'd like to push our prices way down to hit weddings but our hardware needs to be overbuilt as all hell to handle the rigors of being shipped and handled by half-drunk wedding photographers :P


We shipped our hardware in Pelican Cases. They are indestructible, and they come with foam liners that can pretty much be custom molded or "plucked" to fit the object your are shipping.

I could almost guarantee what we were shipping was more fragile than your printers, (not a pissing contest) but it was precision instrumentation that needed to not get jittered around. Pelicans worked great for us. http://www.pelican.com/us/en/

And they arent even that expensive.


Oh yes, I love our Pelican's, we use them for our printers as well. The problem was the first few iterations of our printer were fragile once outside the protective cocoon of the pelican and in the hands of live-event people. As a result, we've beefed up our gear but it's expensive to do as such a small scale (dozens not thousands).


Have you reached out to snapchat about your product? Anything come out of that?

Product looks really cool!


That's a super cool product. Do you do long term setups? Like if a bar wanted to always have one, is that something you can accommodate?

Also, there is a typo in your FAQ, second question (Can I print without adding the printer as a friend?), account is misspelled in the answer.


Bah, thanks. We're developing a new version of the hardware for permanent installations, it has probably been our biggest challenge as end-users definitely expect consumer grade hardware while the number of units we build is very low so costs are high. Our first permanent installations will all be at corporate headquarters like WeWork NYC.


I have started startups before and now, am in a senior role in a large corporate. My gentle suggestion is that don't sweat it and just reflect what you have built in your resume.

Your work will speak for you, and discerning employers will find you.

More and more large corporates value what you have, and in cases, are willing to pay a premium for startup skills. They are also sophisticated enough to separate the company's failure from your skill.

Really, don't sweat it.

All the best.


I've been there, and this is a real concern. My cofounder and I both didn't succeed to get our experience really recognised and we both got to start again with entry level jobs. However, we've found that we got up in the ladder quickly. My cofounder is almost CTO again now after only 4-5 years.


How old were you when you switched?


28


That's still rather young.

Thanks for answering.


I guess I'm really naive.

Isn't 5 years at a startup doing [presumably] technical work pretty much the best thing you could possibly put on a resume?

I guess if you were a bizdev-type, then maybe the negative here is: why was still a startup after 5 years?

5 years at a startup, for a technical person, sounds awesome.


Tell the hiring manager that companies aren't built to show career progression/build a resume, they're built to fill a customer need. You prefer to spend your time thinking about how to better fulfill your customer's needs than checking off boxes for your resume.


I have a very small company / startup mindset but to me co-founder is really as impressive as titles get. I'd just focus your resume on what you did there. To me that experience counts for a ton since founders have so much less supporting them.


I strongly suspect most people here on HN have a startup mindset. HN's direct and obvious connection to YC filters for it.

When my startup failed and I was looking for a new role most hiring managers I spoke to were impressed enough with my resume but also had reservations about hiring me as they thought I'd get bored and want to do another startup within a year or two. Playing up the co-founder title might not be such a good idea. Everything else is spot on though - experience is far more important than anything else.


I built a project-focused résumé builder geared toward exactly this problem. Perhaps it can help out! https://makerslate.io


It depends on where you are located? I've found recruiters/HR in silicon valley being cognizant about the fact that titles do not really matter if you are in a startup.


I think this is very desirable. 5 years of solid engineering under the same title / company is desirable when looking for a mature developer.


"""we have done 4 major projects"""

+

"""We've been profitable the entire time"""

Just communicate that and you should be fine.


Do some marketing of your brand, if technical team members are excited about you the titles and stuff don't matter as much.


personally i don't think it's that big of a deal. on my resume i just call myself a co-founder of my company, X years. i don't even put a title on my linked in because i don't want people to try to pitch to me.

otherwise, give yourself a different title for different periods of time, and list your co-founders or customers as references.


I'd say you make it very short, but be sure to study up on algorithms, algorithms, and more algorithms.


the definition of impressive resume depends on the purpose you want to achieve. There is not such a thing as THE impressive resume.

If you are looking for a certain job, you don't want a resume with a bunch of empty titles. You need a strong resume addressing the specific requirements of that particular job, in terms of skills and relevant experience.

Large organizations need both people that take care of the "ordinary business" and people that take care of "special projects", that are the doers, that figure things out by themselves: your startup experience automatically qualifies you for all the activities that require this second type of people.


Customize your resume to the relevant opening;




Join us for AI Startup School this June 16-17 in San Francisco!

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: