My takeaway is that I guess different people look for different things. Because when I was hiring for a developer, I couldn't care less what your GPA was, and emailing the CEO certainly wouldn't have earned you any bonus points.
I looked for, well, relevant experience and a good cover letter that explains why you want to work here specifically -- as opposed to an obvious copy/paste job. (And, incidentally, the cover letter should be the body of you email message. It's unbelievable how many people attach a professional looking coverletter.doc to an extremely informal email message. Give me a reason to want to fire up Word and read your attachment. </rant>)
But you're probably looking for a cog. You'll get what you look for.
As an applicant, you get what you apply for. That you wouldn't have liked my style doesn't really matter: the person that wants to employ me would like my style.
The problem with all these 'how to apply' topics is that they really mean 'how to apply to me'. But I think there are 2 underlying and competing truths:
1) Be authentic. If you're not the person on your resume, it will come out sooner or later. Hopefully (for everyone) sooner.
2) Be unique. If you don't have a way to differentiate yourself, you don't have a reason to get hired. Of course, what makes you unique for one person won't make you unique (or will make you uniquely annoying) for another.
Of course, these are suggestions for getting the 'right' job - a job where you fit in with the people that hired you.
No, I disagree. The function of a resume isn't to represent you, it's to qualify you for further relevant attention. Thus style may disqualify you without justifying your relevance unless the position itself requires style. If it does, then what you should be submitting is a portfolio and an audition.
This is congruent with why it would be offensive to ask for a resume from somebody you know well. Somebody you know well would have already qualified for your attention some time in the past, and asking for a resume would trivialize that relationship.
I didn't say anything about style. I think it's very hard for a person's style to shine through in a 1 page typed document, so I don't look for it and I don't disqualify people for lacking it.
In fact, I object to the entire idea that you can make a cog/non-cog determination from a sheet of paper.
The resume just gets you in the front door. It gets you an interview where someone can actually try to figure out what kind of an employee you will be. It's a first-round check on whether you even claim to have the relevant experience.
Partially true: It's hard for your style to shine through on an industry standard resume template. So don't use one of those.
You have a blank sheet of paper in front of you, and the only required element is your name up top. Write something that will explain who you are and why every company in the industry should be fighting to retain you. You can get that message across easily in a single page.
But yeah, if you have a resume that starts with "Career Objective", followed into bulleted work experience with the word "liased" appearing 20 times, then you are in fact sending a message. That message is "I'm a cog."
If I should ever have to be back in the situation of applying for jobs, I'll put tracking pixels in my e-mail and my resume document. Resume open rates!
Churn: does this keep you from hiring someone? I'm unfortunately just getting started, I've had a lot of contract jobs. When my job was done I moved on.
Gmail address: Seriously get a life other than worrying about who someones email provider is. If they have AOL so what? how does this affect the job they do for you, AOL allows you pop or imap right? (might have to pay extra) maybe they use a mail client... and because they've had it for so long they don't want to change. I'm not an employer (yet) but I really don't care what email you use to mail me, even if it's totally unprofessional/inappropriate. I'm going to give you a company email anyways, I assume you were just being efficient with your time and not going out of your way to make another email just to impress me.
Customization: I probably wouldn't reject a tailored resume, but to me this reeks of a person who wastes time on perfection. If you are seriously looking for work... you are probably emailing a lot of companies, tailoring for each one is just a foolish waste of time, there are better things you could be doing with your time, like learning something new. I'd make an exception for a place you really want to work, have inside info on, customer etc. but most places I've applied to have not made this list.
Email to the CEO: Really it's a good idea to waste the CEO's time? In a small business where the CEO is HR then it's fine. I think emailing the department manager that you want to work with is the right answer.
Numbers: the numbers this guys citing are probably BS, numbers like that are obviously made up, don't lie on your resume if you have numbers that you can prove you are responsible for, then don't list them.
Usually you can easily explain issues such as contracts (you could also put "(Contract)" around that specific entry).
However, the "no churn" requirement bugs me too. In startups, churn of some sort is usually inevitable and healthy: not only do start-ups fail and/or down-size, but there are also changes in direction and culture. Big companies, on the other hand, have frequently changing business objections to and a little flexibility: it's too easy to get stuck in a position where one isn't learning.
Perhaps Google's approach to this is in the right vein: use the hiring process to screen for people who are "smart and get things done" (with a high degree of certainty), yet allow them to change projects/groups at will. Reward accordingly for business priorities.
However: start-ups can't afford the costs of Google's hiring process and many big-companies can't attract the sort of talent where this practice would work. As such, churn (at least for engineering) is inevitable.
On the other hand, doing a background check and actually following up on the references, should filter out the "job hoppers": people going from position to position for a raiser or promotion. In fact an ideal test would be to initially offer someone coming from a short stint a slightly lesser compensation -- and then give them an immediate raise.
oh I always put, contract or consulting on my entries. I've got like 5 contract/consulting things on my resume, 2 internships, 2 failed business attempts and 1 that I was actually fired from.
I'm pretty sure I get skipped over because people think I'm job hopping when the truth is I'm 24, I've only been given 1 real break, and in that job I found that there are just some things I'm not great at, like help desk. Technically wise I do fine, I just can't handle the phones...
also I tend not to like background checks because of the above I'm pretty sure I've a crappy credit history. I've had hard times making payments due to lack of stable work.
also I wonder if the people reading my resume, are also noting during this job hopping I've mostly been in school full time.
Churn - Consulting is fine, but if an applicant has moved too quickly between permanent jobs it's a sign that they probably won't be at yours for long. Maybe they have a recruiter friend constantly putting new offers in front of them, or maybe they are outright incompetent and are quickly fired. My hiring team calls them "jumpers", and it's one of our biggest negatives.
If you are working as a consultant, I would suggest listing the consulting company as your main job source, and any specific companies as sub-items beneath it. Make sure you don't get thrown into the jumper pile.
What about my situation? I got a job right out of school and worked so much overtime I more or less burnt out on it. When they showed me graphs of how much money I made them and didn't even bother with a Christmas bonus I quit. The company I then went to more or less lied about what I was actually going to do so I quit there too. (Even though they were paying me twice the amount I was previously making.) I only lasted 9 months at the first job and 6 months at the second. I'm on my third job now (thankfully I like this one so I'll be here hopefully for a while) and I graduated less than 2 years ago. I suppose my resume would make me look like a job hopper so you'd hold that against me?
Yes, I would. Would you quit the first time you thought you deserved a bonus and didn't get one? You may be a good fit, but having three jobs in two years makes me nervous.
Another warning sign we look for is when somebody trashes their old company. In every case where that happened and we made the hire, that person was trashing our company within six months.
Thanks, I know it makes sense from an employer perspective, I just wanted to point out that there are exceptions so while I can understand reluctance in the interview I personally wouldn't set the resume aside and not give an interview at all.
To answer your question, no I wouldn't quit. I actually took a pay cut to work where I currently am because I thought I would enjoy the job more. (And I do.) I don't ever "expect" a bonus. Banking on a bonus I think is a really bad idea. You should get what you consider is a fair wage rather than expect a bonus to make up for whatever you think is lacking. People should be wary of companies that offer a salary that is below market average but promise bonuses or "quick pay raises". They often don't materialize.
Never stay at a crappy job so it appears 'better' on your resume, when I am hiring I look only at what you worked on. Many candidates of higher caliber I interviewed bounced around.
Exactly right. The employer who rejected anyone who moved around a lot (usually 12 to 18 months, with a maximum stay anywhere of around 2 years) would exclude pretty much all the best people I know.
I suppose it depends what you're looking for. A lawyer firm or family medical practise might be looking for long term stability for the sake of their patients/clients. But for programming, and I assume that most of us on "hacker news" are programmers, you want passion, initiative and the ability to actually get things done.
It's a completely natural cycle to arrive somewhere new with a new project, full of passion, and to put a lot of work into it. After a while, around 18 months for me, you're sick of it and ready to move on. There is no point, either for you or the company, at pretending otherwise and sticking around just to clock up the hours. And what you really don't want is the "lifer" mentality.
The role of "permanent full time worker" is retrograde and disappearing fast. Perhaps it's better to cast out the concept entirely and start thinking purely in terms of contracts. I suspect that a large number of the best programmers already think like this and companies that can't adapt to that will simply miss out.
I concur with the point about emailing the CEO, unless it's obvious the position would report directly to them. Best bet would be trying to find a direct line of communication via your social network (and by that I mean people you actually know, not people who follow you on Twitter, though the two may intersect).
As for the AOL addresses--well, if your address is tightjeans@aol.com (I've seen it on a resume), then, yeah, probably worth it to get a GMail address. But if it's jsmith@aol.com, I wouldn't worry much about it.
what do you think of mine Caleb Cushing xenoterracide@gmail.com ? would you toss my resume for that? xenoterracide is google-able, my caleb.cushing@gmail is not. I use the xenoterracide one for all my social networking, blogging, open source work.
Probably the people you want to work with won't mind, and people you don't want to work with might. I'd be careful who I sent that to if my goal was to be hired at all costs. (I don't know what your goal is.)
I don't think it would bother me, but you'd probably get an eyebrow raise from me from a guy whose handle appears to translate to "Aliens blowing up the Earth". I'm not sure I can promise that I wouldn't have at least a bit of a negative subconscious reaction. I mean, I live on the terra and all... :)
I usually use too-large images in my design nowadays, because I tell them to scale with the page. Thus, when you increase the font size or resize your browser, the image gets larger, but not more pixelated.
I am aware that it is not an employees hiring market out there right now, but if you want to see a specific kind of resume, say so in your job advert. Please don't generalize what you want to see, to what employers want to see. The job advert or your website is the best place to put this information, not when you do a guest post on some other guys blog (unless clairvoyance is a job requirement).
"Verbs ending in "d": shipped, launched, built, sold."
I wouldn't want to see such an obvious oversight on a resume.
Should read "Accomplishment Verbs"
I also disagree with the "churn" criteria. I think it's becoming more and more acceptable for an employee to have a broader range of employers over a shorter period of time. The "company man" idea is dying. Sure, different industries will have different standards, but I tend to think that the trend is heading away from 20 years at the same company. It typically pays better to keep moving, and employers should (and are) realizing that the brighter candidates are the ones who are always looking for better opportunities.
(1) Sort resumes in order from least amount of pages (on the top) to the most amount of pages (on the bottom). The resumes with the lesser amount of pages get priority (I've seen 12 pagers... the quals on it were from a complete bozo). I'll throw out anything over 3-4 pages.
(2) Throw out resumes that list every programming language since 1982 (this halves the resume stack) or a list of languages the person is "familiar with" (when will head hunters stop telling their applicants to list this crap?)
(3) I could care less about GPA as long as its over 3.0; I look for diversity at this point. Was this person an English major or a CS major? Does this person code outside of work? Are they experimenting with other languages/technologies? Does this person travel quite a bit?
(4) Now its time to more carefully read the resume. I'll actually look at the experiences to make sure they're being honest and not making stupid claims like, "Save over $10mm in costs from writing code X".
(5) Next up is the phone interview where I ask simple questions to make sure the applicant can communicate clearly, knows what regex is (this questions throws a lot of applicants to the way-side), and verify a few claims on their resume. I had one person claim they knew about DOA web-services and another guy who had "HTTP" listed on his resume and didn't even know what an HTTP verb was. Another more clever guy was actually Googling shit as I was asking him a question (I can hear your keyboard!).
You wouldn't work for a company that requires you to present a resume? That is basically equivalent to not working for any company at all, other than as a consultant or a founder. Making a decent resume is not difficult, and done well, it isn't "cruft".
I see no "leave a comment link". in fact there is no word "comment" on the page at all. Fail at web accessibility, you know the part where your site should work without javascript. At least I assume this is added if I allow one of the 10-ish domains that noscript says I'm blocking, I tried allowing the main domain, but that didn't help.
My takeaway is that I guess different people look for different things. Because when I was hiring for a developer, I couldn't care less what your GPA was, and emailing the CEO certainly wouldn't have earned you any bonus points.
I looked for, well, relevant experience and a good cover letter that explains why you want to work here specifically -- as opposed to an obvious copy/paste job. (And, incidentally, the cover letter should be the body of you email message. It's unbelievable how many people attach a professional looking coverletter.doc to an extremely informal email message. Give me a reason to want to fire up Word and read your attachment. </rant>)