Why I hate you because of your resume
You caused this and now my heart hurts
Hate is a strong word but after looking at over 100 resumes over the last two months while hiring for a web developer, its the word that first comes to mind.
Here are some of my thoughts over the last 8 weeks:
Listen stop sending me your cookie cutter resume, frankly I don’t give a s*** that you worked at Microsoft doing .NET development. This is a PHP job posting why are you even applying.
or
You’ve never heard of or used GIT, wtf??? Where have you been living in Siberia hunting bears. Pfffft (insert fart sound and thumbs down gesture) Thanks for playing but this job isn’t for you buddy.
I’d say 95% of applicants can be immediately knocked off just by looking at their resume for 30 seconds. Here is what I look for:
Relevancy
Every single piece of experience better be related to the technology we are working in. I don’t care that you can learn anything, I want someone that can hit the ground running and if its not you, it will be someone else. Remove all those Java, Python blocks of experience even if that only leaves one single item on your resume. Frankly, within 10 seconds I segment people into Java or Python or JS developers and once you are in, you aint getting out.
Open Source Experience
If you haven’t used GIT or haven’t hear of Twitter Bootstrap chances are I don’t want to hire you especially if its a web developer role. To me this says that the person is not up-to-date on whats going on in the industry. Is this harsh? Noooope. These are the basics and almost everyone should be on top of these things. Using open source projects drastically reduces our development time and cost of the project so I need someone that has experience with them.
The bar is so low right now that is actually where I start. I wanted to think of a third thing but these are mission critical and everything above and beyond can be taught and in my eyes is gravy. Chances are if they hit the two things above then they are the type of person can learn more. After that, it comes down to fit and more behavioural stuff.
If you are looking to get hired, DO THIS:
Screw the resume, beef up your LinkedIn profile
I’m really tired of resumes, they are stale, non-interactive and don’t give me any context. Seriously, give me a sheet of paper with the link to your LinkedIn profile, I would prefer that. No, but actually don’t do that, that would be a huge waste of paper and I love mother nature. On your profile you should have:
1 work sample: Give me some work samples both website links as well as code samples on Github. I can tell pretty quickly your skillset by just reviewing your code. All you need is one really good one to get my attention. If you are in a visual industry, post images of your work.
2 recommendations: Talk to an old boss and get them to give you a recommendation. Better yet, write it for them and ask them to post it. Having someone vouch for you is huge and it will always be there whenever someone is looking to hire you.
10 endorsements: Same thing as recommendations but these are even easier. It takes one friend (or enemy if you are really desperate) to give you a bunch of endorsements and you are off and running.
If you must do a resume, keep it tight
Okay, maybe some times you need to send in your resume to apply for a dinosaur company. If you do, keep it to one page and customize it for each job especially for development work. Taking the 5-10 minutes to cut out the experience that doesn’t apply will I promise you, get you many more call backs. People want answers to their problems, if your resume is
Answer, Answer, Answer
vs.
Answer, Not Relevant, Not Relevant, Not Relevant, Answer
I am much more likely to see you as a targeted hire who focuses exclusively on solving my problem.
I was going to add more stuff but really thats it — That will get you in the door with someone looking to hire and then its up to you to impress further.
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