CTO Secrets: How to get the best companies fighting to hire you (part 2 of 3)
I recently gave a talk at the inaugural DDD East Midlands conference in Nottingham, UK. Here is a transcript of that talk, in three parts. UPDATE: the video of the original talk is now available here.
PART 2: Getting the interview
OK, so I just gave you some of my opinions on what you should be prioritising as career goals as a professional software engineer. Why did I spend 15 minutes talking about that? Because these are the sorts of things that I really value as a hiring manager. I want to see that you take your craft seriously. That you care about your own professional development and you care about giving something back to your colleagues and the industry. That you care about creating the best solution you can.
But that all doesn’t count for much if you don’t get invited to interviews. So I’ll now talk about securing that interview you really want to get.
It’s an uncomfortable truth that people reading CVs will make snap judgments. If I’ve got 5 CVs on my desk, my eye will be drawn to the one that’s got something a bit different about it. So we’ll talk about CVs shortly.
So you know how the most attractive and well-heeled people are rarely single, and if they are, they don’t tend to spend their time on Tinder? This same rule sort of applies to hiring. Surprise surprise, the best people tend to always be in a job — they get snapped up by their placement company straight from uni, then they get poached by a client company, then they go and found a startup with their mates, and so on.
And guess what, the best companies know this, and hire with this in mind. They don’t need the hassle of advertising jobs and sifting through thousands of CVs, not least because they know that the best people are already in jobs. So they use agencies to headhunt; they rely on staff referrals; they hang out at hackathons and conferences like this; they go to university fairs and snag the brightest sparks before the undergrads properly realise there’s such a thing as a job market.
So firstly, you need to know that recruitment agencies are not your mortal enemy. I’ve heard some pretty stupid opinions in the past from people refusing to talk to agencies, and convinced they are all charlatans and money-grabbing scoundrels. Some are, most are not, they are just people like you and me who are trying to earn a living. But even if they are rotten scoundrels who only see you as a pound sign, then that’s even more of a reason to work with them, not against them.
So play nice with agencies. They sometimes have exclusive hiring arrangements with companies you want to work for, and if one of the agencies I work with sends me a CV, I will always look at it because I know they’ve screened the candidate and their reputation with me depends on them sending me relevant and quality people. Often their clients will be anonymous in the advert, because they don’t want floods of direct applicants, and these companies are often the good ones.
And don’t sneer when recruitment agencies sponsor or turn up to events like this. If anything, make a note of who they are, and maybe go and have a pint with them later, because they’re the ones who are smart enough to realise that the savvier techies will be at events like this. They are like the smart lion who hunts at the antelope watering hole. As a hiring manager, seeing that a recruitment agency has sponsored an event like this makes it more likely that I will want to work with them instead of another agency, because they are being proactive and are immersing themselves in the local community.
Be polite and friendly with agencies. Don’t mess them about and don’t mess about their clients. If you aren’t interested in the current job they are calling you about, don’t tell them to eff off, because next month they might have a job that you really do want.
When you speak to an agency on a screening phone call, treat it like a first interview stage. You want to get the best version of yourself across, because they will then call me and say, “Neil, I’ve got an awesome candidate for you!”. I’ll sit up and take notice when I get that call.
Remember what I was saying about developing a point of view. Talk to the recruitment agent about it. Talk to them about your side hustles and your community involvement. These are things that will make you memorable to them when they talk to me.
Also, I mentioned that the smartest tech companies recognise the power of a) staff referrals, and b) hiring from the tech scene. So think about what that means from the perspective of getting hired by one of these cool companies. It means that if you hang out on the tech scene and get involved, they’ll notice you. It means you’ll start to get to know other people on the tech scene, and it’ll turn out that some of them work for the cool companies, and eventually they might recommend you to their boss once they’re confident you’re not going to make them look stupid.
So, your CV. What makes an attractive CV? Often, less is more. If you’ve been in the industry for 2 years and you’ve got a 3 page CV, I promise you it’s too big. It’s a bit of a cliche now, but have you seen the sample Marissa Meyer CV that went round a couple of years ago? It was actually being used to promote a CV writing service, but it captured people’s imagination. This is one of the most experienced and successful people in our industry, and they’ve captured everything you need to know about her on one page, with plenty of white space.
If you think that’s nonsense, let me tell you I’ve helped a lot of people with their CVs, and every one where I’ve cut it down with them to 1 page, they’ve had amazing feedback on their CV.
Also, here is one of those nonsense rules that you’ll hear: “don’t put your photo on your CV”. I cannot think of any good reason why you shouldn’t — humans like to put a face to a name, and as long as it’s not a picture of you throwing up in a bar in Magaluf or something, it will only enhance your ability to connect with the hiring manager on a personal level before you get there.
Here’s something important to remember. You will not get hired on the strength of your CV. But you could get eliminated at the first hurdle because of a weak CV. A hiring manager uses CVs as a screening mechanism to whittle down the candidates to a manageable shortlist of people to interview. A great CV will simply go to the top of the pile.
Don’t just list out the languages and tools you’ve used. It’s meaningless — it’s become a standard joke that candidates pretty much list everything they’ve heard of. I want to know what you used them for and your skill level with each — maybe give yourself a rating on each.
In your job history, I want to know what your contribution was. Even if you were the most junior person in the organisation, I want to know what you did that helped make it a better place, or how what you did there made you a better engineer or a better person.
Consider making a portfolio CV that showcases your skills. This is common for artists and so on, but it’s not just creative types that can benefit from a portfolio CV. I’ll tell you about a couple of the best CVs I’ve seen.
Firstly, one of my current senior developers, Zac, who you may have heard speak brilliantly earlier today. Really obvious thing for anyone in our industry to do: he made a CV website, and his is a really nice example. You can see it at ZackerTheHacker.com. But here’s the thing: I know he’s got mad React skills, but he made it clear to me that he used a template and didn’t build it from ground up in React. But that’s fine: he’s shown that he can channel his developer instincts into something that he recognises is important, namely creating a really nice “shop window” that shows me why I should hire him.
Secondly, a guy I employed as a BI engineer sent me a CV that used various data visualisation techniques, such as those radar charts, to highlight which skills he had employed in each of his previous roles. It was a really smart way of showing me something that was both very relevant to my reading of his CV while showcasing that he could use a skill very relevant to the job, namely data viz.
There’s nothing stopping you doing the same. Let’s say you are pretty pleased with your API writing skills. OK, so why don’t you make a HATEOAS compliant RESTful API that I can interrogate to explore your CV? It would only take a few hours to write, and I’ve literally never seen anyone do that; but if a potential candidate gave me that as an alternative way (not the only way, please!) of exploring their CV, I’d be impressed.
Remember that your CV is your shop window. Spend some time on it, and use it to showcase your skills. Be imaginative. Bring out your personality. I saw a CV of someone applying to a junior social media marketing role, so they laid their CV out like a twitter conversation. Simple but effective.
Too many people think of CV writing as a template-driven exercise, where they have to list out certain pieces of information and not do anything too funky. Firstly, to go back to my dating analogy, does that work when you are trying to hook up with someone? Do you make yourself attractive to someone by listing out your attributes?
Secondly, a killer career move could literally be worth thousands of pounds in your pocket. You would be stupid not to spend a good amount of time getting it right. Maybe even pay for a CV writing or reviewing service if you aren’t confident in your own judgment. It might cost you 50 or 100 quid — the price of a good night out — but if it is the difference between getting your dream job and not, it’s a small price to pay.
I mentioned Zac’s CV earlier. The opening sentence of that said he was “super jazzed by front end frameworks”. When I saw that it made me laugh out loud and I was telling people about it for days. He is an Aussie so he can get away with such ridiculous phrasing, but I didn’t know that when I read his CV. He also said in his CV that he is a mutant code monkey sent from the future, and I still employed him. It was memorable, and I got his personality from it. Turns out he is indeed a mutant code monkey.
Once you’ve started following through on some of the career goals I talked about earlier, make sure that all comes across on your CV. Include a link to your github and tell me what your stackoverflow reputation score is. Tell me about what talks you’ve given, even if they’re just to your team. Definitely tell me about your side hustles and any open source projects you’ve contributed to. Even if you’ve only had one PR merged on an open source project, it’s one more than most people.
How I read a CV
OK, so just to reiterate some of that, but from my side of the desk. How do I read a CV?
Firstly, what is the overriding impression that the CV as a whole conveys? Is it succinct and waffle free? If it’s 2 pages or less I’m likely to read it all; more than that I’m going to start skimming for keywords.
Is it well laid out, with at least some white space and maybe a splash of colour and the occasional use of bold to draw my eye to something important?
Are there any spelling mistakes in there? Spelling mistakes are bad in general, but if you misspell a framework that you’re supposedly an expert in, I promise you I am going to make assumptions about your true expertise in that. If you are rubbish at spelling, get someone who isn’t to check it for you.
Also make sure it’s a neat and clean layout, because subconsciously someone reading a messy CV with spelling mistakes in it will assume that you are lacking in self-discipline and basic organisation skills.
For your education, I’m interested in what university you went to and what degree you did. If you graduated recently, I’d be interested in a short statement about what you enjoyed the most about your course.
If you didn’t do a degree, or you did a degree in a non-computing subject, I’m going to look for what you have done instead that has helped to get some of the formal skills that come with a computing degree. Not everyone asks for a computing degree or equivalent, but I do, because of the professionalisation stuff I talked about earlier, but I do make exceptions if someone has really gone out of their way to develop those skills in a less formal learning environment.
For your job history, I’m most interested in your current or last job. How long have you been there, what is your personal contribution. If you’ve been there for less than 3 months and are already looking for a new job, explain why on your CV and make it convincing, otherwise I’m going to assume that you’re about to fail probation.
I’m interested to know how you have improved things in your team. What are the achievements that you are most proud of. I’d rather read one line saying “As a junior developer, I ran a POC of a new CI tool and the whole team loved it” rather than three paragraphs of filler.
I’ll attach progressively less importance to your previous jobs, but I’m interested in how long you stayed in each one and whether they show you’ve got a bit of staying power and have learned something from each and left for the right reasons.
I don’t really care either way if you’ve demonstrated leadership skills in a summer job flipping burgers. However, if you tell me you were coding before you could talk, or that you’ve automated your toaster using a Raspberry Pi, I’d like to hear it.
Basically I will look for signs from your CV that you are motivated by the right things and care about doing things right, care about your craft, rather than just chasing the dollar or a senior title.
I also love a good personal statement. Tell me your interests and hobbies, tell me what gets you excited about tech or the projects you’ve worked on. Remember I said you should develop a point of view? Tell me what it is. I want to get a sense of your personality. I want to see PASSION for computers and coding.
I am also definitely going to look for your side projects. If there’s not a link to a personal website or github or blog on there, I’m going to be disappointed. If there is one of those and there’s been a couple of posts or commits in 2017 and nothing since, I’m also going to be disappointed. I’ve had CVs from people who claim to be web developers, and their websites look like the sort of thing that the guy who runs our village hall website would be ashamed of.
Finally, should you write a cover letter? Yes, when not. Especially if it shows you have taken the time to research my company and you explain why you think you’d be a good fit. It shows you believe in your skills enough to be selective about who you are applying to. If you’re applying through an agency, you can still write a cover letter, as they’ll include it on the cover sheet they send through with each CV.
(Opinions are those of the author, not the company. All images used are copyright of the original publishers, who are too numerous to track down given the sheer volume of memes in this talk!)
