The Red Herring of Red Flags: Why Resumes Are a Relic of the Past

https://praachi.work/blog/red-flags-resumes.html

by abhas9 • 2 years ago

19 26 2 years ago

addaon• 2 years ago

"Resumes are a poor proxy for talent."

Resumes are not intended to be a proxy for (assessing) talent. They're intended to be a proxy for (assessing) experience. Portfolios, references, and interviews are intended to be a proxy for assessing talent.

abhas92• 2 years ago

IMO, resumes, while ideally intended as experience summaries, often function as gatekeeper proxies, filtering candidates based on arbitrary criteria rather than actual potential. Unfortunately, I too can't think of a good alternative solution that can scale well.

jahewson• 2 years ago

Hiring on potential isn’t a great strategy though. It’s important to compare candidates on something objectively displayed during in the hiring process, rather than some “potential” that’s a figment of one’s imagination.

tlarkworthy• 2 years ago

In my mind resumes are the trust part of "trust but verify". The resume is evidence the candidate meets the needs of the role description. The job interview verifies the resume is not a work of fiction.

katzinsky2• 2 years ago

Yup. Resumes tell you what's in the box but you should actually open the box and check to make sure the label is accurate.

duck• 2 years ago

They’re often polished, curated, and tailored to tick boxes rather than showcase genuine skills.

I look at a lot of resumes and would say most aren't well polished or curated. They often don't showcase skills either, but it is surprising how bad resumes still are today.

baxtr2• 2 years ago

That’s exactly why I believe they are still a good indicator for assessing people.

How much effort did they put it? That’s at least a first indicator how much they care about getting the job.

johnisgood2• 2 years ago

Mine is written in LaTeX, and converted to PDF with pdflatex. Does that work? :D

katzinsky2• 2 years ago

Meh. My "resume.html.pdf" has gotten me multiple jobs.

Cwizard• 2 years ago

This matches my experience as well.

deng2• 2 years ago

Haha, exactly this! The resume is the first work sample you receive from an applicant, and it's absolutely baffling that even nowadays with all the tools available, a LOT of them still have glaring typos, poor grammar, confusing formatting, wrong length, you-name-it. It is absolutely correct that a perfect resume might not mean much in terms of skills, however, it's been very rare that someone with a poorly made resume even made it through the first screening interview.

Cocktail• 2 years ago

I am one of those who made through the hoop of first and second rounds with the most horrid of CVs, still cant believe I got the job. Extremely happy that I did, I was told later that the resume I submitted was the worst one by far, but the person (ie. Me) was the best applicant, which I still consider funny yet depressing.

_nalply• 2 years ago

If a company excludes bad resumes they are possibly just optimizing for good resume writers just by assuming that good resume writers are good workers.

packetlost• 2 years ago

What are the things you generally look for? I've looked at a lot of resumes myself, but I still struggle with my own. I'd really love to see an example of one of the best resumes you've seen!

astura• 2 years ago

Just pay a professional to write it for you.

DSingularity• 2 years ago

For me I understood resumes when I interviewed.

It’s a pipeline. People are filtering the resume and you show up late in the process to interview. The resume is giving you material. You study it before the interview and based on what’s on it you look for opportunities to casually measure the candidate in a manner most favorable to the candidate himself. If the candidate can’t answer questions which probe the things his resume claims as expertise then it doesn’t bode well.

spicyusername• 2 years ago

They're simple, easy to make, easy to read, and perfectly solve the problem of quickly communicating your background to someone in in less than a minute.

I have a hard time imagining an alternative.

JohnFen• 2 years ago

Considering the amount of time and attention I put into crafting my resume, I don't consider them to be simple or easy to make.

from-nibly• 2 years ago

The root of the problem is that hiring doesn't scale. If you try to scale, it falls apart. It doesn't matter if you use resumes or some "objective" coding interview. Hiring is getting to know a lot of people and finding those that align greatly with what you are doing and who is doing it. You can't know that quickly. It sucks but it's the reality.

The Red Herring of Red Flags: Why Resumes Are a Relic of the Past

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