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dpkg chopra posted:So what does an interviewer actually see? The text boxes or the pdf/word? The interviewer themselves look at the PDF of the resume. HR will do data mining with the text stuff though.
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Mar 4, 2023 05:19
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Lockback posted:The interviewer themselves look at the PDF of the resume. HR will do data mining with the text stuff though. Echoing + another perspective: I'm small biz so I use Indeed/LinkedIn as my ATS but from what I could tell as an IC at big companies, my managers always had paper copies of resumes. From that I infer they're using the work history for data of some sort. e.g. post applying or for prioritizing cold outreach by matching highly reviewed employees with traits from the resume. For Indeed tho Indeed suggests candidates for me to request to apply and it only gives me a super minimal version of their work info. It doesnt fix capitalization or anything and comapring to resumes of applicants that applied, is frequently out of order or missing data. It will also tend to recommend resumes by how recently the resume was updated. So if you're applying through Indeed, make frequent small updates and fix the capitalization and order that your work history is loaded in. It will very likely make a bit +1 in the number of interview requests you get via Indeed.
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Mar 4, 2023 18:53
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That's good insight. As a candidate, I kind of gave up on Indeed during my job search, it wasn't really adding too much to LinkedIn, and it felt redundant to keep my profile updated in both platforms. The only contacts I got from there were either a staffing agency or a shady MLM-esque "we give you the tools to succeed" outfit.
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Mar 4, 2023 19:11
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Hello everyone. I was recently asking advice from a friend on updating my resume and they recommended this thread to me. I'll be graduating in May, and I'm looking for jobs in CS fields, and this was my latest update. Wondering what I could do to cut it down to one page and clean it up. Only thing not clear because of the identifier cleaning is that I still have my stupid 12 year old boy email as my primary, and I should probably change to a more adult/professional email. But other than that I could use your help, please and thank you. 
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Mar 6, 2023 04:07
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eliasswift posted:Hello everyone. I was recently asking advice from a friend on updating my resume and they recommended this thread to me. If you’re looking for CS jobs, why is the CS-focused education buried at the bottom of the page with the least amount of text? I would switch up the layout and add details to answer questions that are posed by your current descriptions (what languages? What certificate? What real world experience? What training in cyber security and network administration?)
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Mar 6, 2023 05:10
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This.. Is not a good resume for this part of your career. Toss it out. Start from scratch. Your work history is fine but you don't need to explain what you did. That should be the last section and you don't need any details bring the title and you held down a job while taking cs classes. 3 lines total for the 3 jobs. Don't explain what a degree is. Basic understanding of programing language? That's what a BS got you? Your asking someone to hire you to do programming. You need your GitHub and some projects. I'd probably highlight your best projects in your resume and give a link for someone to see them. That is what will actually get you hired or not. You need to break down better what skills you have. What kind of jobs are you looking to apply for?
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Mar 6, 2023 05:28
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eliasswift posted:Hello everyone. I was recently asking advice from a friend on updating my resume and they recommended this thread to me. This resume would get trashed if it applied for an internship with me. This person is clueless about what info a hiring manager needs, it signals they’ll be a particularly clueless engineer. CS degree at the top. Drop associates, no one cares. If you finished another bachelors you can include that as well. All of those jobs should have 1-2 sentence job descriptions. I know what a supermarket stocker is. It is good that you’ve at least had jobs before, but none of them need deets. Desperately needs projects that signal that despite being totally clueless about what a business needs or this job does, you can at least write code.
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Mar 6, 2023 05:30
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If you have no programming experience outside of your coursework, you're going to be a pretty unappealing candidate. Do you really have nothing at all?
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Mar 6, 2023 05:32
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Coursework is fine if it's interesting projects that are hosted somewhere. But you need something you can demonstrate.
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Mar 6, 2023 05:52
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ultrafilter posted:If you have no programming experience outside of your coursework, you're going to be a pretty unappealing candidate. Do you really have nothing at all? I know this guy - he's busy but he's given me the OK to speak for him. He decided to retrain in CS after his first Bachelor's (the history degree) couldn't get him any sort of job. To the best of my knowledge, he doesn't have any project work outside of just the degree. What advice would you have for helping him get hired in any position?
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Mar 6, 2023 05:57
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Quackles posted:I know this guy - he's busy but he's given me the OK to speak for him. Find a job description for something he wants to do and build a project tailored to that. Post it open source on GitHub with a working demo or video of it working if it’s robotics/ electronics/etc.
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Mar 6, 2023 06:02
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CarForumPoster posted:Find a job description for something he wants to do and build a project tailored to that. Post it open source on GitHub with a working demo or video of it working if it’s robotics/ electronics/etc. Erm. The 'something he wants to do' is 'get a good paying job'. He's quite flexible in that regard, but he doesn't have a specific area he's focused on. Additionally: What advice would you give for resume rewriting in short order? He has a career fair on Tuesday.
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Mar 6, 2023 06:07
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Quackles posted:Erm. The 'something he wants to do' is 'get a good paying job'. He's quite flexible in that regard, but he doesn't have a specific area he's focused on. there's a goon that runs a fairly good resume and writing critique service in the SA store. Danny helped a family member out out; i bought a session on their behalf and it worked out well.
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Mar 6, 2023 06:58
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TheParadigm posted:there's a goon that runs a fairly good resume and writing critique service in the SA store. Danny helped a family member out out; i bought a session on their behalf and it worked out well. That link's broken but I'm interested. Tell me more?
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Mar 6, 2023 07:02
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Quackles posted:Erm. The 'something he wants to do' is 'get a good paying job'. He's quite flexible in that regard, but he doesn't have a specific area he's focused on.
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Mar 6, 2023 07:09
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Quackles posted:That link's broken but I'm interested. Tell me more? Sorry, here's the thread link https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2832510 unbroken this time
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Mar 6, 2023 07:20
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Other people can comment more on CS as that is absolutely not my area but as a fresh out of school person you should have one page of resume
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Mar 6, 2023 11:48
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Quackles posted:Erm. The 'something he wants to do' is 'get a good paying job'. He's quite flexible in that regard, but he doesn't have a specific area he's focused on. In general what people are saying about this reading like the CV of someone who just wants a job is true. Sadly tech still thinks you gotta just want to touch computers and the money is a side benefit. You need to convince the screeners that you really want to touch their computers. KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Other people can comment more on CS as that is absolutely not my area but as a fresh out of school person you should have one page of resume
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Mar 6, 2023 12:43
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Quackles posted:Additionally: What advice would you give for resume rewriting in short order? He has a career fair on Tuesday. As I always say here: I'm not an HR person or a hiring manger. Just a comp sci guy who has helped friends and colleagues write resumes in the past. Take my advice with a grain of salt, listen to everyone else besides me first, and keep in might I wrote this very quickly. A career fair is probably a reasonable place to go as a new person. I was in their shoes a while ago (returning to school to get into comp sci) and got my first job from one. Be open to what they say and suggest, listen and try to sound like a good worker and teammate. Try to find what might be interesting about the work, even if it seems moderately mundane. Don't be entitled or standoffish, and try to relax. Ask questions. Appear interested. Be prepared to answer questions about anything on your resume, even your polysci degree. If you bomb it or it sucks, there's 50 other motherfuckers there; just move on. It's good practice since nerves will sabotage a lot of opportunities for you. Just keep at it. Sure, at a job fair you'll have a lot of direct competition from others, but it's also a place where a candidate can stand out interpersonally with the right attitude rather than the pure relation of ideas of a resume. For the Resume: Make it one page. This goes doubly so for the job fair; you don't want to have to deal with staples or double-sided resumes. I say this every single time, but use bullet points not paragraphs, make each bullet point start with an action word (a verb, like "Provided" or "Accomplished" or "Created") and make them all the same tense (probably Past Tense for most resumes.) This will make it easier for the HR drone to pluck out what they want. So, something like: "Prepared course fleet of 15 golf carts before each day" or something. The issue with these types of (no judgement) so-called McJobs is that it will inherently be hard to make them sound good because of the negative connotations that surround them. (Which I fully disagree with; jobs are not 'lesser' than other jobs just because others get paid more. But not every dumbfuck boomer hiring manager feels that way.) Be honest, be complimentary to yourself but also be brief. These will get removed from your resume once you have anything else to put there and are just there to signal that you have indeed worked before. All that being said, it might be better to just leave them undescribed unless you have a very particular accomplishment you're proud of. This will also save you a lot of space and possibly avoid angering someone who thinks you're trying to blow smoke up their rear end. I don't think you need to describe your degrees in the same way as a job position, per se. I suppose you could. On my fresh-out-of-school resume, I put the names of my classes as "Coursework" to show I had "Object Oriented Programming" etc. Not sure what the consensus was with that. In the US, what I've typically seen and heard suggested are: University Name Degree Type (BS, BA, etc) Date of Graduation (or assumed date if in future) I also think it's better to organize things in reverse chronological order. That is, most recent stuff first. So, you can both show "I have/am getting a computer science degree" which is most relevant on top of a section, while still showing "I have an associates and another bachelor's". As long as they don't take up much extra space, I think these are okay to include since it might help show that you can commit to something.
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Mar 6, 2023 13:12
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Arquinsiel posted:I dunno what US CS degrees are like, but if they're anything like the one I bailed out of in Ireland there's way less "be good at code" than you'd think, and way more "draw diagrams for managers" than anyone enjoys. Somewhat but usually you should have projects that you worked on, stuff you can demo. It's a little more abstracted than a bootcamp but not by that much. Like, when I talk to just-out-of-school people for a dev job we usually walk through stuff like "ticket processing system" or "Web-based media player" or something. Like, not exciting and stuff I wouldn't expect would ever be looked at after the interview but they showed that you can work on a project (yourself or with a group) and shows you didn't just copy off your friend and skirt by for your degree. So when I hire someone with a CS degree I expect they know a handful of languages and, probably more importantly, I expect they'd be able to understand concepts to pick up future languages/concepts/frameworks pretty quickly. Magnetic North's advice is very good, but in general I am hearing worrying things that correlate with people who end up never using their degree. Right now that resume is maybe something for a help-desk type job, but probably wouldn't sniff a real dev job (where the real money is). There's some serious work that needs to happen to get there. There isn't really shortcuts.
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Mar 6, 2023 15:26
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I’ve been out of the game a minute - should a soon-to-be graduate include their GPA? At the last college career fair I did for my company, it was a handy data point to have when I had 10 seconds to scan a resume.
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Mar 6, 2023 16:58
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Yeah. It's the kind of thing where if I don't see a GPA listed on a recent or upcoming grad's resume then I presume it's because it's not very good.
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Mar 6, 2023 16:59
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Democratic Pirate posted:I’ve been out of the game a minute - should a soon-to-be graduate include their GPA? At the last college career fair I did for my company, it was a handy data point to have when I had 10 seconds to scan a resume. If you don't include it I assume it was 2.0-2.5. So adjust accordingly. After that first job you probably should take it off.
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Mar 6, 2023 16:59
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Quackles posted:I know this guy - he's busy but he's given me the OK to speak for him. That's probably a better question for the newbie programmer thread over in CoC.
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Mar 6, 2023 17:04
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That’s what I figured, thanks for confirming. For us, 2.8 or below is a tough hurdle to overcome. >3.0 is smooth sailing with work experience or other involvement. 4.0 and only 4.0 gets you an interview, but some interviewers will get weird about confirming you aren’t a turbo nerd and can handle basic social interactions and workplace scenarios.
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Mar 6, 2023 17:14
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As a 40 year old who is about to get a few FAA mechanic certs, completely changing industries in the process, would you guys say that this advice is relevant? Mainly the bits about my ability to pick up and put down boxes has little to do with my future hiring managers, as well as highlighting my educational experiences. Still want to do my best to highlight things like quality control, as that sort of thing still has weight.
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Mar 6, 2023 17:47
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nomad2020 posted:As a 40 year old who is about to get a few FAA mechanic certs, completely changing industries in the process, would you guys say that this advice is relevant? Mainly the bits about my ability to pick up and put down boxes has little to do with my future hiring managers, as well as highlighting my educational experiences. Depends but in general I look at resumes from people making career switches very differently than fresh out of school people. It's a question of "How relevant are previous jobs to the current one" and there's frequently a ton that crosses over. However, supermarket stocker and java developer don't have a lot of overlap, other than you showed up on time and didn't sexually harass anyone (which is why we're saying keep those jobs on the list but you don't need to spend real estate explaining what that is). I've hired developers who were previously in mental health industry (I asked about their ability to juggle priorities, or maybe work against incomplete or impossible requirements), I hired someone who managed a bar (I asked about their ability to interact with different working styles, how to quickly resolve a conflict without escalating), and I've hired someone who was a multi-hat gopher for a small business (I asked about how he approaches solving problems that don't have a ready solution, how you deal with a situation in which doing Goal A makes Goal B impossible). So if you can tie those kinds of skills to the new job, it's valuable. Highlight that. But don't waste space on covering irrelevant ground or explaining things that don't need explaining.
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Mar 6, 2023 18:16
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Lockback posted:So if you can tie those kinds of skills to the new job, it's valuable. Highlight that. But don't waste space on covering irrelevant ground or explaining things that don't need explaining.
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Mar 6, 2023 19:07
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Big Curse of Knowledge Energy in this thread, goddamn. Cut the guy some slack.Quackles posted:The 'something he wants to do' is 'get a good paying job'. He's quite flexible in that regard, but he doesn't have a specific area he's focused on. Maybe I'm projecting but to me this does not read as someone trying to find a shortcut at all, nor "I want computer money but I'm not interested in computer stuff really." Nothing they've said justifies assuming they're not willing to do the work. To me it sounds like they're asking for help finding a place to start. There are millions of people out there who are very interested in computer stuff, but didn't think they were smart enough to code when they were younger, didn't have opportunities to dabble in hardware as they got older, etc. If you are one of those people with only an entry-level understanding (and not the decades of passive experience and knowledge that many of you who are replying don't seem to even remember you have), the diversity of possible career directions in tech is INSANE. It is definitely overwhelming to try and pick an area to pursue. I do not blame this guy in the slightest for being a little unsure of where to focus first. They just need some resume help in the short term so they can start getting that lovely help desk time under their belt now (which some replies have done a great job of already, so no worries there), and a nudge in the right direction for the long term. The latter is definitely a better question for the newbie programmer thread, but I see no need to bust them so hard about it. Unsinkabear fucked around with this message at 19:32 on Mar 6, 2023 |
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Mar 6, 2023 19:29
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Lockback posted:So if you can tie those kinds of skills to the new job, it's valuable. Highlight that. But don't waste space on covering irrelevant ground or explaining things that don't need explaining. Thanks, this is the advice I needed. I've learned more from this thread than the bunch of 'resume writing' workshops I've been to. Those seem to end up turning into creative writing classes pretty quick. Also agree with the above. "wants a well paying job with at least the promise of advancement opportunities" is the #2 American dream, #1 being independently wealthy. A recent CS grad is probably only vaguely aware of what is possible in the industry, aside from "go work at a tech company". Also also agree with the below, I've had a couple of hiring managers point me towards positions that better reflect my skills and experience, but those are pretty rare. You have to put in your own legwork. nomad2020 fucked around with this message at 20:11 on Mar 6, 2023 |
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Mar 6, 2023 20:04
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Unsinkabear posted:Big Curse of Knowledge Energy in this thread, goddamn. Cut the guy some slack. I am coming at this as someone who hires entry level people in software, I've hired goons and helped goons get jobs at my company directly. The thing you quoted is fine, that's not what people are commenting on. (in fairness I am assuming Quackles is faithfully representing this person) Quackles posted:To the best of my knowledge, he doesn't have any project work outside of just the degree. Quackles posted:Additionally: What advice would you give for resume rewriting in short order? He has a career fair on Tuesday. That with a resume that shows no CS projects, no Github, and not even highlighting any relevant coursework is a red flag. We're not trying to gangpile the person, we know from experience what gets traction and what doesn't. The truth is you DON'T HAVE to work help desk jobs with a CS degree, you don't have to work crappy 3rd shift Screen-staring SOC shifts. But honestly there is a lot of work to do before you even get to that level. If they want to do help desk, or something that's great! Most of the advice applies and once of the first replies was me asking "What job are you looking for?" We can't really answer that for them. So if the only feedback is "I want to do something that makes money", then they are going to get some real harsh-but-true feedback that in general they need to significantly improve both the piece of paper and what they have to demonstrate their skills, and if they are having trouble demonstrating their skills they may need to take time to refine those skills. Finally, things are much tougher for the entry-level person in tech than they were 18 months ago. More senior people have more options, but it's tightening up a lot at the bottom. A resume that might have gotten interest then will get canned today.
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Mar 6, 2023 20:08
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nomad2020 posted:Thanks, this is the advice I needed. I've learned more from this thread than the bunch of 'resume writing' workshops I've been to. Those seem to end up turning into creative writing classes pretty quick. There's some others that did a better job explaining this earlier in the thread, but generally the idea is a resume should be about telling a story. You target your industry or job (and if you have multiple targets, have multiple resumes), then you use your resume to tell a story about why you're a good fit. If being a forklift driver or w/e can help tell that story (and that's not an easy job that can show lots of skills/responsibilities/etc) then that's what you do. But a good story is tight and succinct, and doesn't spend time on irrelevant details. Same with a resume.
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Mar 6, 2023 20:10
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Lockback posted:I am coming at this as someone who hires entry level people in software, I've hired goons and helped goons get jobs at my company directly. The thing you quoted is fine, that's not what people are commenting on. Fair enough! I can't argue with any of that. Hiring at a lot of places was pretty willy-nilly 18 months ago, right? Is the current state of things just tough relative to that wild time, or are we talking tougher even than the Before Times?
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Mar 6, 2023 20:23
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Unsinkabear posted:Fair enough! I can't argue with any of that. The recent layoffs at a lot of big tech firms mean that there are more candidates and fewer openings than there have recently been. It'll shake out over the next few months but yeah, it's a bad time to be looking for a job right now.
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Mar 6, 2023 20:32
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Unsinkabear posted:Fair enough! I can't argue with any of that. Depends. If you go back and look through the newbie thread you'll see lots of periods where they say "It definitely can take hundreds of applications and months of looking to find the first job, and that's assuming you are keeping your github up to date and staying on top of the various technologies out there." I feel like thats a very reasonable expectation again. You'd be shocked at how much chaff is out there from people who clearly cheated/skimmed their way through a degree or a bootcamp, so you really don't want to be lumped in with them. As ultrafilter mentioned, you have people who may have come into the industry in 2020/2021 and have a couple years of experience but got laid off. Those people will look much better to an employer, so even if you do everything right you might get beat out by someone with 2 years experience applying for an entry level job. It'll shake out but I think it'll look A LOT more like the Before Times, especially as bootcamps are more common so you have more qualified candidates looking for that first job. People who are senior and/or have specialized knowledge (oh to be 23 and know my way around Kafka) are still in very high demand.
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Mar 6, 2023 22:07
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Lockback posted:The truth is you DON'T HAVE to work help desk jobs with a CS degree, you don't have to work crappy 3rd shift Screen-staring SOC shifts. But honestly there is a lot of work to do before you even get to that level. 
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Mar 7, 2023 01:32
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nomad2020 posted:As a 40 year old who is about to get a few FAA mechanic certs, completely changing industries in the process, would you guys say that this advice is relevant? Mainly the bits about my ability to pick up and put down boxes has little to do with my future hiring managers, as well as highlighting my educational experiences. Are you becoming an A&P because the job requirements right now are basically: has certs Shows up to work As scheduled Sober Someone will take a flier on you.
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Mar 7, 2023 02:17
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Are you becoming an A&P because the job requirements right now are basically: That is correct, I have no doubt I could, at least, swing a GA job now as is without certs (you probably can too, if you know which end of the wrench is dangerous). I'm just spending the next 6 months making sure to position myself well so that I can avoid working for defense contractors while still pulling a decent wage. VV-I missed that it was a 2nd degree, lol, yea you should probably have a more than general idea of where you want to end up then. nomad2020 fucked around with this message at 03:30 on Mar 7, 2023 |
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Mar 7, 2023 02:34
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Unsinkabear posted:Maybe I'm projecting but to me this does not read as someone trying to find a shortcut at all, nor "I want computer money but I'm not interested in computer stuff really." Nothing they've said justifies assuming they're not willing to do the work. To me it sounds like they're asking for help finding a place to start.
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Mar 7, 2023 03:22
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Me, after going to the specialty grocery store and buying $500 worth of food, spices, and cookware for an elaborate dinner: "Hm, I wonder what I should make?"
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Mar 7, 2023 03:25
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