Ask HN: What are your best resume tips?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=903280

by tocomment • 17 years ago

46 58 17 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Here are some questions I'm coming across, but I'm curious to hear whatever you have discovered in general makes a good resume.

Should I include a skills section at the end? (It looks tacky, but I think a lot of places use automated searches?)

For each project I list should I include languages and tools used?

If I only have one publication is it worth having a publications section?

mtholking• 17 years ago

Instead of having a skills section at the end of your resume, try showing how you utilized those skills in the 'work' section. The keywords will still get hits, and it will give context to how you use those skills, and your proficiency with them.

scottyallen• 17 years ago

Let's face it, doing interviews can be boring when you do a lot of them, and so interesting resumes jump out of the stack pretty quickly. Your story should tell me why, if I choose to have a discussion with you, our conversation is going to be really engaging and interesting, and how it will convince me that you're the right person to do the job.

Some characteristics of engaging interviews:

- They're with people with people who are smart. Show your smart on our resume either by listing academic achievements if you're just out of school, or by describing hard problems you've solved.

- The candidate has done something interesting in their previous experience. Your resume gives you the opportunity to tell me what the most interesting thing you've done is. If I agree, you'll get to tell me all about it.

- The candidate has enough experience to get through my technical questions in style. I think this is less about knowing specific buzzwords (at least for how I interview), and more about having solid fundamentals and good hands-on experience. This suggests it's probably better to talk about hard things you've worked on, rather than playing buzzword bingo.

mapleoin• 17 years ago

I've always liked the way this guy's CV is structured(it's on his front page): http://www.zeroflux.org/static/resume.pdf

Btw: he's the guy who created ArchLinux, though he's no longer the lead developer.

michaelcampbell2• 17 years ago

It's nicely laid out. I don't think I'd put education up top (in fact, I don't). Maybe you would if you're closer to just having graduated, and/or from a particularly renown University.

jeffcoat2• 17 years ago

You're hinting at a general rule that goes something like "the most salient facts go at the top".

When I was trying to get my first job out of college, the fact that I'd graduated from a well-known school with a decent GPA was really important, and mentioned at the top. Ten years later, the fact that I went to school is just barely interesting enough to sneak in at the very bottom of the page, and my grades aren't worth mentioning at all.

fogus2• 17 years ago

General rule of thumb:

Even Steve Jobs' resume is one page, so what makes you think that yours should be 4?

http://homepage.mac.com/steve/Resume.html

(this is an incorrect quote, but I cannot seem to find the original)

gcb• 17 years ago

because he's a toy written by some PR person for the launch of mac.com, and your's must, uh, be used to get you a job?

fogus2• 17 years ago

Of course it's a toy -- it's likely that Steve Jobs does not have a resume at all. The point though is that it's 100% accurate and communicates the whole story. If you are really interested in getting a job, then what makes you think that 4 pages of a resume will help you do that?

boucher• 17 years ago

I was always told in college that hiring managers won't read past the first page. So I don't.

Having a concise resume is an exercise in good communication and editing skills. Give me the most important facts, not every single thing you've ever done.

ivyirwin• 17 years ago

The rules ares changing for length of resume. In college, yes, it should just be one page, but that's because you most likely don't have any experience. The one page limit works because it makes you focus on the meat of who you are.

However, as you gain experience, then the one pager can become an artificial limiter. As many people have explained above, tailor it to the job you are applying to. But in the hacker community it will be important to show things you work on for fun as opposed to things you do to pay the bills.

My resume is currently 3 pages. First page is what I love to do (projects I am working on and consider important). Page two is how I get paid. Page three is education, skills, references.

j_baker4• 17 years ago

> I was always told in college that hiring managers won't read past the first page. So I don't.

Not that you're wrong to feel the way you do, but this isn't a very good reason. I've been told a lot of things that turned out to be flat out wrong.

michaelcampbell2• 17 years ago

Steve Jobs is also known by name and reputation world wide. Most of us aren't.

JangoSteve2• 17 years ago

I've always been weary of the advice to keep your resume at 1 page. Mine has always been exactly 2 pages. To get it down to 1 page, I suppose I could cut entire items and make me seem more 1-dimensional, or I could make the specifics more general (e.g. remove "increased sales by 23% in 6 months" kind of statements) which makes the resume much less noticable.

I've always just chosen to make it 2 pages. And I've gotten every job I've ever applied for (though this is only in part thanks to the resume of course).

Now this doesn't mean disregard the advice about making your resume 1 page. It just means that there are no hard-coded rules about your resume, interview, etc, that will make or break your chances.

eru6• 17 years ago

Two pages also works nice for me. And it allows me to let LaTeX do its pretty things. The one-page-rule is not an end in itself, but actually a proxy for quick readability/scannability. The currvita package has a nice, light layout by default, so there's actually not much more in my resume than in most one pagers. But it's easier to read on two pages, than crammed into one.

j_baker4• 17 years ago

When was the last time Steve Jobs tried to find a job?

I agree that resumes should be short, but accepting an arbitrary page limit of 1 is kind of dumb. If you have 2 pages worth of data that genuinely belongs on your resume, send in 2 pages. Most people won't have 2 pages worth of stuff to go on a resume, but don't trim out useful information just to make your resume 1 page if you do.

lpolovets• 17 years ago

Instead of listing your responsibilities, talk about concrete numbers and achievements. If you list things like "interfaced with QA", "participated in planning with product management", or "used JSPs and Servlets to write web-based mail client", you will not stand out much from other applicants. You should focus on (preferably quantifiable) results. Examples: "designed and implemented QA testing plan that raised code coverage of a 100 KLOC email service from 18% for 63%", "wrote web-based mail client that handles 8000 users and up to 50 requests per second", etc. Try to show what you have achieved, not what you have worked on.

Along with making your resume stronger, specific points often help guide your interview predictably. I have 1-2 bullet points that everyone asks about, and it's great to have a few interview questions that you know you will ace.

mgrouchy• 17 years ago

I think one of the things that I have found that have worked well on my resume is a summary of qualifications at the top. Helps you leave out a generic skills section(which can look cheezy) and lets you highlight whatever you want to highlight for a particular position.

I make sure that I tailor that summary for every position I apply to make sure I highlight my relevant skills/experience.

JangoSteve2• 17 years ago

I usually summarize qualification as they apply to the job in question in the cover letter.

Another thing I do, rather than taking up space in your resume with a separate summary, is to simply make the important words/qualifications bold in your resume. That makes it easy to skim without using up more resume real estate.

eru6• 17 years ago

On a slightly unrelated note: I use LaTeX and the currvita package for my resume. It's easy and looks good. Plus the LaTeX source plays nice with git, and thus helps me keep track of how I customized my resume for different employers.

The extra-selling point for me is, that the use of LaTeX itself may people in the know to recognize me as the serious mathematician that I am. (Though that's no substitute for commercial experience.)

jbr• 17 years ago

Agreed wholeheartedly on LaTeX. It also is a great entry point for a warm-up conversation at an interview if you format it professionally. I've been asked a number of times "how'd you do this?" and I'm not doing anything fancier than a two-column layout.

I think we hackers tend to underestimate the influence presentation has on perception. A LaTeX-formatted résumé adds a nice touch of professional style and a little boost of geek cred to academic résumé readers.

Or so I'd like to think…

eru6• 17 years ago

And the currvita documentation (e.g. at http://www.cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/cur...) has actually some nice general hints on how to write a resume that are applicable even when you do not use it.

I saw lots of nice and well-presented CV here, where just using LaTeX might have made them even better. Knuth got something right with TeX.

tsestrich• 17 years ago

Side note: I have been told by the person in charge of recruiting at my company that explicitly stating references as "available on request" is really unnecessary, and just takes up space. Obviously your references should be available upon request if they aren't on there.

Other tips: - Avoid using italics, it apparently can cause problems if someone tries to scan your resume and have a machine read it. - Keep things left-aligned as much as possible, so someone quickly glancing down doesn't have to jump across the page on every line of the resume (this is actually similar to web design, in that you can assume the reader will spend a very minimal amount of time reading your resume unless they quickly find something they like)

cwinters• 17 years ago

1) Languages and tools should be highlighted if they're exceptional -- e.g., I probably don't need to hear that you used SQL to interact with a database, but if you implemented a set of complex views in T-SQL that's useful.

2) ...which means you need to list your skills somewhere. I tend to categorize mine for easier scanning (languages, databases, frameworks, build infrastructure) but YMMV. If something sticks out there I'll ask about it -- "how did you find the experience of implementing a maven plugin?"

3) In the vein of not annoying people who read your resume, name the file you send "FirstName_LastName_resume.pdf" rather than "resume.pdf". Attention to detail matters, and people wind up dumping resumes into a directory with others.

mping• 17 years ago

Hard, discrete data such as measurable accomplisments followed by numbers or equivalent (gave 14 presentations in 3 continents, architect of Apache2 http server, etc) instead of ambiguous information such as 'gave many presentations',' founder of many projects',etc.

Edinburger2• 17 years ago

Yes, project budgets, number of people led, revenue figures are also useful if you can disclose them.

dabent• 17 years ago

Yes, giving some way of quantifying any accomplishment is a good thing for all resumes.

After that, I'd go light on keywords if applying to a startup, but rather get into the tech details of what I'd done at each company. I'd be likely to describe how I'd deliver software that changed things for the better at each company.

For a day job, I'm prone to keyword stuffing. I hate to say that, but to get the resume past HR drones and third-party recruiters, some form of black hat resume SEO is needed. I have a section at the top that has the keyword and years of experience for all relevant experience. I also have a roundup of keywords I'd used at a particular employer. For a startup, I'd be likely to leave that section off. I only use it for regular jobs because it works. My resume gets through the filters and to the people who will interview me.

Uchikoma• 17 years ago

As a technical recruiting manager I'd say:

Yes, add skill section, it will get you through most HR filters. Skills should be plausible and based on experience in job section. Otherwise skills look fishy to me.

The major tools for each project helps me cross check the skill section with the jobs. I'd say yes. But do not add all tools and all languages. The most important ones used are enough. PLEASE: Only add those you've used, not all tools used by others on a project. This is a warning sign for recruiting managers should they discover this during an interview. Clearly state your part of the project. It's too common that candidates describe projects in wonderful colors and then only have written XML files - which they did not state in the resume.

I'd drop the publications if you only have one. I do prefer shorter resumes.

Hope that helped.

sokoloff• 17 years ago

It depends on that publication.

If you proved P = NP* and that was your only publication, I'd still include it.

*-other than the joke "for P = 0 or N = 1"

jgrahamc2• 17 years ago

I like to receive well researched cover letters to go with resumes.

tocomment5• 17 years ago

What kind of research? What impresses you in a cover letter?

jgrahamc2• 17 years ago

Someone who has researched the company and shows me the relationship between their resume and the position we are hiring for.

jlees• 17 years ago

On the flip side, a cover letter that shows the candidate clearly has no idea what job they're applying for or what skills we are after won't get the resume read at all. I'm guessing most hackers are smart enough to avoid this, but be careful.

vital101• 17 years ago

I agree. You can have the best resume in the world, but if your cover letter is underwhelming then it is all for naught.

Edinburger2• 17 years ago

I like to see a strong, concise introduction/objectives section which (a) isn't full of buzzwords or B.S. and (b) helps me get a feel for the candidate and what makes them tick.

tocomment5• 17 years ago

Side question. I'm also considering doing consulting or contract work so I figure I should have a separate resume for that.

Does anyone have good examples of a resume geared towards consulting?

(Are they even much different from regular resumes, do consultants need resumes?)

HistoryInAction• 17 years ago

I haven't done consulting, but I have a basic resume for each job type (public policy, campaigning, engineering (now out of date), and finance) that I've been looking for recently that then gets geared towards the specific company in question.

I'll second the "restate the job posting in the cover letter" thought, though.

agotterer• 17 years ago

In the last week I have read way too many resumes. Here are some of the things that I would look to tell all future candidates...

- Your resume should be no more then 1, if you must 2 pages (1 page per 10 yrs experience). I can't tell you how many 5-7 page resumes I receive that get a quick skim and thrown aside.

- Use the cover letter to address the company. Who ever is reading it is probably reading others as well. The same generic boring BS gets old. Every letter says "I would be a good fit for your company and my skills match your job description". That is obvious or you wouldnt be applying, or you didnt read the job description. Tell the company what you can do for them and not what they can do for you. Mention why you want to work there and what intrigues you about the company. Pretend you read the job description and researched the company. Be personal-able. You are trying to stand out amongst potentially hundreds of other candidates.

- A skills section is useful, especially for tech jobs. But you don't need to mention every tool you have ever used. No one cares that you still know win 3.1 (I see that on resumes sometimes). Give the highlights and worthwhile list. More is not always better.

- Definitely include your publications, speaking events anything that shows your community activity. They dont need to be more then a line or short description.

- Some people put what tools and languages are used for every project. It starts getting repetitive. I think those can be covered in your skills list. The projects should be short and sweet with a few bullet points. Tell the reader what the project is and what you contributed. You don't need to list everything you ever did at a company. Just need to give the reader a taste of your skill level and ability to perform the job they are filling. If they like you, you will get an interview or follow up questions.

The goal is not to digest your entire life story and work history into a resume. Old jobs and projects can fall off the list. I know its hard to part with some of those things, but it will better your chances that someone will actually read your whole resume. You want to impress them as quickly as possible. The goal is to get an interview.

eru6• 17 years ago

> More is not always better.

Wasn't there even a study about it, that confirmed your finding?

elbac• 17 years ago

The resume is important, but what grabs me every single time is a insightful and thoughtful cover letter. Honestly 75% of resumes look the same. If you can get me with the cover letter 9 times out of 10 you'll at least get a phone screen.

wdewind• 17 years ago

I'm going through the hiring process now so from my perspective:

Keep your resume short, and tailor it for the specific job. If the job doesn't say anything about a specific skill, take it off your resume (unless its a general skill like UNIX) - include no more than 6-10 skills. I definitely include skills and don't think it's tacky in our applicants, but it is tacky to include a huge list of acronyms and makes people think you actually know less (less about more, instead of more about less). Cover letters are nice, but in my view they are just a paragraph to know how well the person speaks english (many hackers don't speak english well). I like short, casual, cover letters ('hi, saw the post on craigslist, heres 4 bullets why im good for the job, hope to hear from you soon, DONE.) Number one thing for me is to keep in concise, don't make the reader read through a giant paragraph description of your work, just bullet points and tailor the bullet points to the job (you're trying to say "heres my experience at abc123 corp. and heres why its relevant to you").

cover letter is exponentially more important if you aren't replying to a job posting, and less if you are (we use craigslist so get a ton of applicants and we weed people out based on bad english in the cover letter, but we dont really see many cover letters so good that they sway us positively)

dhyasama• 17 years ago

Always remember the goal of a resume is to land an interview not land the job. Your resume should make the employer want to meet you and learn more about you.

tocomment5• 17 years ago

How do you list an achievement where you were part of a team?

It sounds dumb to me to write: "helped build X". Any ideas?

jamesbritt• 17 years ago

"It sounds dumb to me to write: "helped build X". Any ideas?"

Not all that dumb. But try to include concrete numbers about the value added to the company because of the team.

Rather than "helped build X", write "helped reduce operations costs (numbers if possible) by (whatever it was your team did)."

The goal of a resume is to get an interview, so you need to pique the interest of the reader. Showing that you were at least part of a process that made money or reduced costs suggests you can help do the same for someone else.

Also, pointing out how your contributions (if even via a team) affected the bottom line should indicate you have an important awareness of business needs.

jeffcoat2• 17 years ago

What did you do on project X? Was there a piece that you were responsible for? Something you're particularly proud of?

j_baker4• 17 years ago

Bear in mind that I'm in no way shape or form involved in any resume screening process. However, if I were, I'd rather see "helped build X" than "built X all by myself". Chances are good you won't find a job where you can work by yourself all the time. It's good to show you can collaborate with other people.

btilly2• 17 years ago

First I think that anyone who is offering advice on resumes should be willing to present theirs. Here is mine: http://elem.com/~btilly/BenTilly.pdf

I believe that a good resume is one that makes people look twice at you. It should lay out the facts in as compelling and concise a way as possible. Whenever possible you should demonstrate to prospective employers that you provide value, and you understand how much value you provide. Details about format, layout, and so on should be chosen to highlight your strengths in the most compelling way possible.

The first trick is that you must hook people fast. Yes, you need a bunch of keywords for the bots. But you don't want that to be the first thing the humans read. You want people to read something that can make them dream about what you could do for them.

The second trick is that a resume is not the time for modesty. When else is it socially acceptable to sit down and say the nice things about yourself? Don't hold back, have fun with it!

The third trick is that no matter how much work you put into your resume, you need your most honest friends to read it and give critical feedback. You don't want the friend who will say nice things. You want the one who will look at it, tear apart, let you know why it doesn't work and make you rewrite it. I don't know how many times I rewrote my resume, but I do know that it is a lot better for having been rewritten.

I'm starting to ramble now, so I'll stop. So in closing, good luck.

tocomment5• 17 years ago

I really like that. BTW where you look for part time consulting jobs like that? Everything online seems to be full time w2 type work.

btilly2• 17 years ago

Networking, networking, networking. I hit up everyone I had worked with in the previous few years, and several came up with projects that they wanted done which I was an ideal candidate for.

It helped a lot that I maintained connections and have an unusual combination of useful skills. Therefore people have things they want done which they know I can do, but don't know who else could.

DanielBMarkham2• 17 years ago

As a consultant, I have a sales pipeline that starts out with people searching for me on LinkedIn or getting a reference from somebody I know.

The next step is for them to look at my resume. If that goes well, then the next step is a phone interview.

It's all a pipeline, and my resume's main job is to get the phone interview. That's it. While technically the resume is supposed to be a history of what you've done, that's what a resume is, not what it's used for. It's used for screening, therefore it should be good at surviving various screening processes.

tocomment5• 17 years ago

Is your resume much different being designed for consulting instead of a regular full time job?

DanielBMarkham2• 17 years ago

I don't think so.

It's all about showing capabilities. For full-timers, there might be more interest in "culture fit", but you can't really tell that from a resume.

j_baker4• 17 years ago

I typically turn in my resume using a a flat text file (usually using restructured text). It's really helpful because you really have no idea how the company's HR systems will mangle your resume. Plus, doing a resume in ReST just screams "hacker".

eru6• 17 years ago

Yes, text files are among the best choice, when you are actually applying for a hacker post and know that a hacker will read your resume. If you are not so sure about your reader, I'd use LaTeX and produce a nice pdf.

It will still be recognized, but it also looks kind of pretty to the mere mortals.

alphaBetaGamma• 17 years ago

Put in the least amounts of skills that will still land you an interview.

Writing "basic knowledge of Java" adds a lot of credence to "expert in C++".

eru6• 17 years ago

So you suggest understatement, to make the dynamic range sound broader? (Writing "expert in everything" definitely won't work.)

RiderOfGiraffes• 17 years ago

I've written about this before:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=728863

I freely admit I'm unusual, but then again, so are you.

Here it is again:

If you apply for a job with me, I want to know why I should employ you. I want to know how you will add value to my company. I want to know that you will bring skills and abilities.

Do you know what I want? You should. You shouldn't just read the ad for the job - you should find out what my company does, then read the ad, and work out how your skills will help me meet my goal of making money. If you can't or won't do those things, I probably don't want you to work for me.

What skills do you have? How can I tell?

Can you work on your own? How can I tell?

Can you work in a team? How can I tell?

Will you get things done? How can I tell?

I don't really care about your education, or your recent jobs, unless they show me why you are the right person for me. And I want to read that on the first page, preferably in the first paragraph, and preferably without typos, grammatical errors, or anything else to distract me. I don't at this stage really care what your name is, or how to contact you, or whether you can typeset 16 different fonts on the same page.

Why should I employ you? What do you think I want, and why should I think you have it.

Ask HN: What are your best resume tips?

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