Ten tips for writing a (slightly) less terrible resume

“Goal: Get a job at IBM,”
writes some idiot job seeker at Amazon.com.

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ATTENTION: this is my own, * personal *, opinion, not Google, not Amazon or anyone else. I think you will find that most recruiters who rate questionnaires at tech companies — especially tech companies that produce their own software themselves, such as Yahoo !, Ebay, Amazon.com, Microsoft, or Google — generally agree with many of the above. . But experienced recruiters disagree on many small details, and, in the end, this is just my own opinion. These tips do not guarantee you will get any better results. You may have a different experience. Do not use these tips in the bathroom or standing in a puddle. Do not knock on glass; this is annoying advice. Tips not to feed! Etc.

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We are faced with an urgent problem: why are all resumes of programmers equally terrible? How would we fix them, these resumes?

If you worked more than, say, 17 kiloseconds as a programmer in an enterprise, then you had to consider unsuccessful resumes of people with a technical specialty. This is part of your job. Programmers' resumes should definitely be evaluated by programmers - no one can rate a programmer better than another programmer. So it becomes this kind of karmic revenge for the nightmarish resumes you wrote . Admit it, you also wrote such things! And you even knew that it was unsuccessful right in the process of writing. Admit it! HTML is also in the list of programming languages ​​that you speak, isn't it? Grrr! ..

So why are technical resumes so bad? You know what I mean. You see the craziest nonsense in the resume. Like the job seeker who proudly writes out every Windows API call she has ever used. Or a jobseeker who lists every course he attended, starting in high school. Or another one that listed distance courses that took place while sitting for an armed robbery.

Or the real dumbass who accidentally wrote “work for IBM” as a goal in his resume for Amazon. Haha Well, you fool!

Oh wait. It was me. Ehh. I sometimes call it my "million dollar typo." This is a rather painful story, especially for my eardrums, because whenever I tell it, people predictably point a finger at me and gasp for hysterical girlish laughter. Curse. If you do not take into account the fact that it cost me wealth due to the stock assessment of options, because I applied for a CV before the IPO (entry into the stock market) and, for obvious reasons, was ignored by Amazon recruiters, until I didn’t apply again much later than the IPO, saying this time, haha, no offense, I'm to blame, I really wanted to work for Amazon . Um.

But - well - I deserved what I got (in a word - nothing), because I, in simple terms, a bastard. I think that almost everyone is guilty of at least once doing stupid things when writing a technical resume; even if not as egregious as I admitted. And if almost everyone committed such nonsense, probably writing it (technical summary) is not so simple.

I think there are several main reasons. One of them is that no one explains to us what exactly companies are looking for. And we do not write a resume so often as to get enough practical experience.

Another serious reason is that many tips for writing resumes in other fields of activity are not necessarily applicable to technical resumes. I will talk about a few of these inconsistencies below.

Another, less important, but strangely indestructible problem is that many candidates are grandiose pathological liars. You won’t believe how many people told me: “Well, I just inserted this word here for recruiters.” Needless to say, such an answer leads straight to the time-tested code for ending the interview: UVECMV? (“Do you have questions for me?”)

Despite all these problems, I cherish the hope that some free tips will help at least someone write a better programmer’s resume. Who knows ... In the end, I can no longer ask my favorite "screening" questions to those who call me about work - candidates say that they have already read my blog. So maybe someone will pay attention to these tips.

Today I am talking only about a resume for programmers, namely for a subgroup submitting resumes to companies that make their own software. I don’t know how all this applies (if at all) to resumes for other positions or companies. Probably not too much. Sorry!

So, here are my resume writing tips that I give directly to you, free of charge, without any conditions, because I want to help you like that.

Tip # 1: Don't give a damn about you all

! Ha ha! I bet you're not surprised.

Well, to be more specific: while all of you do not care. At least during the selection of resumes.

Reviewing a resume is a simple filtering by template. People want to know if you have the skills they are looking for. If they could do it well enough without human intervention, it would be even better. Recruiters will like your resume if it is easy to visually scan it, and all sorts of stories about you, your cheerful character, your ardent parrot, the annual walking expedition in Tibet, etc. etc. - simply not scanned.

The result of a quick step-by-step review of your resume is a decision: should you continue to deal with it or should you reject your candidacy. As soon as this decision passes / does not pass, it is accepted that the recruiter wants to completely forget everything about you. No seriously. They need to free their memory for the next template search. So all you say is everything that sets you apart from a machine that can cook beautiful code, is an annoying and potentially harmful distraction. At best, the recruiter will simply ignore it; at worst, he will get angry and will evaluate you more meticulously

So the best strategy for you is to avoid talking about yourself. All your hopes, fears, goals, dreams, ambitions - REMOVE. (By the way, your resume will be a little shorter from these tips if you are interested). Transmittal letter? REMOVE. Nobody cares! Is your easy smile, accessible only to the elite, slipping into the goal section? REMOVE. This is even more so. Writing a resume is not a reason for fun. Believe me, your resume may already be funny enough, without any extra effort on your part.

And what about your precious section of “hobby” that characterizes you as a person who is socially adequate and from a good environment, with a developed taste and cultural background? REMOVE! Unless you have hobbies that are directly related to work - that’s it. If your resume doesn’t quite fit, and you still say that you are a master of the World Origami Federation, it becomes obvious that you do not have enough time for programming, so the resume will most likely be thrown out. If your hobby is to write code, or administer a website, or something else remotely related to computers, then this may increase your chances a little. Otherwise, just do not mention it!

Accept this: all the usual advice about trying to convince a recruiter that you are a simple young man from Uryupinsk who is destined to be great, thanks to your Uryupin uncle Vanya, who pushed you with his fiery speech, after which you fell off your horse, when you were a kid - these tips are complete bullshit, because the recruiter just wants to find out your current skills. “A simple young man on the board” can go to the wastebasket.

And do not be depressed because of this. People will be more interested in you as a person in the subsequent stages of recruiting, especially if you are one of those candidates who does not like window dressing.

Tip # 2: Use plain text

Your resume will go through a bunch of transformative automated programs and will be terribly distorted along the way. Any non-ASCII character, such as for example non-standard markers from Word, or any selected character, or (heaven help you) Unicode will be transformed into our old favorite, a question mark ("?")

You don’t want your resume to look In a similar way:

Resume? Bob? T? Moblin
?Experience
  1997-present? for ??? des? yat ??? le? t ???? neither ?? x? I ??? not ??? c? did ??

So use plain text. Yes. Text. Well, you know, like on a typewriter or in a Windows notebook. ABV, not PDF.

Do not think that any space will pass, unless it is a line break or a single space. And do not expect your resume to be viewed in a fixed-width font. If you make a pretty table nicely formatted with tab characters, by the time the human being sees it, it will look like smoke signals in the style of artistic ASCII.

The maximum amount of "artistic ASCII" that will get away with you - although this is already a bit too much - hyphen lines and list marks. For example, this can drive:

Education
---------
  * Bachelor's degree, Computer Science, Sometam University, 1997
  * Master's degree, Resume Writing, 2003
  - super red diploma

But I would not go too far.

If your name has specific characters, it is better to change the name. For example, if your name is Pièrre l'Éléphant, think you'd prefer it to pop like “Pi? Rre l '?'? Phant” or “Pierre l'Elephant”? Of course, maybe your accent marks will slip through, but I would not risk it.

HTML is usually safe and sound because it is plain text. Nevertheless, even if the automatic asphalt compactor has not touched your tags, there is no guarantee that your resume will be viewed through the browser, and no one will want to figure out the heap of ugly tags while assessing your skills. So HTML should not be used either.

Text! All the best resumes are plain text. Use text.

Tip # 3: Please check!

Pay attention to the basics of hygiene: spell checking, grammar checking, syntax and punctuation checking.

For beginners: they have these wonderful programs called “spell checkers”, and they even include some computer jargon. For God's sake, do not submit resumes without spell checking. This is one of those traditional tips that are still relevant for technical resumes. Your spelling is important to people, because if you make mistakes, it means that the quality of your resume does not bother you enough to spend 30 seconds checking it with a program that searches for your mistakes for you. This is laziness, damn it.

If you decide to refuse the services of a spell checker, please at least try not to write “Lips” (lips) instead of “Lisp” (programming language). You will be surprised how often this happens.

Do not make mistakes in Curriculum Vitae (CV). In fact, it is written as r-e-z-y-um, unless you have a doctorate, and you do not apply to a non-American company, where the standard use of "CV". In the US, "curriculum vitae" is likely to be mistaken for a sexually transmitted disease.

For heaven’s sake, remember the difference between lead and led. This is one of the most common grammar mistakes in a resume, and it is insanely annoying for many recruiters. “Lead” is either a present tense verb meaning “no programming”, or it is metal that sterilizes you if you accidentally swallow it (lead). “Led” is the past tense from “lead”. For instance:

* 1995-1996: lead the team involved in blah blah blah. We were engaged ...

The date is from the distant past, the rest of the paragraph is the past tense, so obviously this is one of those that does not distinguish between “lead” and “led”. Or so, or she tried to sterilize her subordinates. In any case, it does not look very good.

The correspondence of the tense of a verb between sentences in a paragraph is related to the important grammatical principle of “parallelism”, according to which they try to use the same structure in parts of a sentence. For example, you should never say: “Call of duty: basically doing nothing and picking your nose.” You will be much more impressed with recruiters if you use a parallel form of gerund - picking your nose.

None of these rules, of course, apply to blogs. If you find spelling or grammar errors on my blog, it is because I did it intentionally. Phew.

To finish off our elegant lead / led example, I note that you can use “lead” as a noun, as in “technical leader”, but there is a risk that it will be understood as “nerd”, so refer to Council No. 5 before trying .

So! Grammar and spelling check! They are necessary. What about style?

Of course, I could make a rant about style, but here everything is pretty clear: people constantly find new smart ways to be stupid. Therefore, I will limit my stylistic nitpicking to the word “utilize”. It has been scientifically proven that only stupid people use the word “utilize”, so if you use it, you can be confused with them. Stupid person, that is, not a scientist. Utilize is one of the classic Nonsense Indicators of all time, along with the loud “choo-choo-choo” when you think. Ever notice that only stupid people mimic train sounds when they think? "Oh damn, let me think, pshsh-pshsh-pshsh ... hmmm, chuh-chuh-chuh ..."

Yes. They look like Winnie the Pooh, who, as you remember, “thinks” by knocking on his head, saying “think, think, think.” UEKMV!

So! Grammar and spelling check! They are necessary. What about style?

Of course, I could make a rant about style, but here everything is pretty clear: people constantly find new smart ways to be stupid. Therefore, I will limit my stylistic nitpicking to the word “utilize”. It has been scientifically proven that only stupid people use the word “utilize”, so if you use it, you can be confused with them. Stupid person, that is, not a scientist. Utilize is one of the classic Nonsense Indicators of all time, along with the loud “choo-choo-choo” when you think. Ever notice that only stupid people mimic train sounds when they think? "Oh damn it, let me think, pshsh-pshsh-pshsh ... hmmm, choo-choo-choo ..."

Yes. They look like Winnie the Pooh, who, as you remember, “thinks” by banging on his head, saying “think think think.” UEKMV!

Tip # 4: Avoid Pretentious

Nonsense Pretentious Nonsense - these are impressive-sounding words that make you seem to be doing something useful when, in fact, all you did was carry chocolate from a large candy vase in a conference hall while everyone else was working.

"Participated" is the champion word of Pretentious Bullshit of all time. How is such an example of rubbish to you - I can honestly say that I participated in the Persian Gulf war. I even got a medal for it. Real formmy involvement was to view CNN; at that time I served in the navy, but was not on a mission. But I "participated", so I received a medal, despite the fact that I may not be able to find the Persian Gulf on the map.

Hell, I even “participated” in the election of George W. Bush without specifically voting for him. Fair! I participated!

Given that you can participate in something without really doing anything, and without much influence, the word “participate” turns into a semantic funnel: it sucks the whole point out of a paragraph, nullifying any conclusions that we could draw about your real contribution . If the word “participate” in any form appears in the paragraph about your particular occupation, an experienced recruiter will simply cross out this paragraph with a bold red line and go on.

“Proposed” is another example of Pretentious Nonsense, unless it is followed by a statement about the present work, such as “... and implemented”. There are those types of candidates who drift from post to post and do not produce anything other than proposals. This may mean that a person does not like to do the real thing, or that usually no one listens to him, in both cases - nothing good.

One big class of Pretentious Bullshit is the category of obsessive words, such as “analyzed,” “studied,” “watched,” “looked,” and the like. No one will want to hire you for your vast experience of observing your work. If all you did was analyze something out there, if it wasn’t any thorough statistical analysis worth mentioning, just delete this entire paragraph from your resume.

Recruiters will look for non-nonsense words, that is, Productive Words. These are words with which you cannot “slip away” if you are asked about them. The best of these are the synonyms of “doing the real thing,” including “writing code,” “implementing,” “developing,” “handing over,” and “starting up.”

It is perfectly normal to use “designed” if the Productive Word follows it. If you are designing something without introducing it, it’s just a synonym for the word “suggested”. If you prefer to design what others ultimately implement, you may be the right material for a company full of freaks. A real company such as Amazon or eBay or Microsoft or anyone else will not hire you, because they can find a lot of people who can do both, design, program, and implement.

“Technical leader”, no matter how boring, is also ambitious nonsense if you are applying for the position of an individual developer, because your technical skills will easily rust and go into oblivion if you spent enough time as a technical leader without participating in programming. This is especially true for graduates who talk about their group projects; weaker programmers tend to gravitate toward the positions of project coordinators, and end up with a lack of real skills. So if you are applying for a programmer and you were some kind of project leader, try to shout out if you wrote the code for this project, otherwise the recruiters will decide that you did nothing.

Tip # 5: Avoid Onanoslov

Onanological terms, these are words that inflate your perceived importance (for example, using “created” instead of “designed”), or words like “Rational UML Process”, which have become simply synonymous with pseudo-work done by people who sit on their asses and don’t know how to code.

An onanologue is much worse than a lack of content; they are good indicators of complete inactivity. Recruiters will either remove the Onanologue, or replace them with the word “onanist” (for example, “Certified Master Onanist”), which makes the resume much easier to filter.

“Support” is a very common language when it comes to rank or position. If this is a verb, then this is just pretentious nonsense, but if you think that this is your title, then you have inflated yourself to Onanastrana. In other words, if you stumble around supporting nonsense, it means that you are not working. And this also means that no one is listening to you, because if you are a true leader, people will simply follow your recommendations and you will no longer need to support them. Those. To "support" means simply "to masturbate."

“Consultant” is often another prominent synonym for “masturbator”. Let me add, before I get slaughtered by hot representatives of the Consultants Industry, armed to the teeth, there are very good consultants. The problem is that while reviewing technical resumes, luck is completely against you. It's like a fast food experience when you are looking for a job as a waiter in a trendy restaurant. She could help you hone your skills, but all the odds are against, and a significant part of the art of selecting a resume is just an assessment of the chances.

The problem of the “consultant” is the existence of two interpretations of the word. It can mean “a person hired on a contract basis to help the organization with the necessary programming,” or it can mean “a person hired to“ advise “aka“ masturbate, ”because tenants are too stupid to solve their own problems and are unable to hire a permanent a full-time employee who can help them, so they turned to paid “self-help”. When you see this word in a resume, it can be difficult to determine what exactly it means.

The “Methodologist” is probably the worst Onanoslovar of all time. It will definitely make your resume go for a walk among technical companies, but not for the reasons you hope for. Various funny synonyms for the word “Methodologist”, for example Scrum Master, in the general case, achieve a similar effect.

Onanoslova - to some extent as adjectives in restaurant menus - meaningless fluffy words added to make the name of the dish tasty. You will understand much better what kind of garbage that you intend to eat if you remove all adjectives, including nouns and sets of nouns that serve as adjectives. For example Grated Apple-Smoked Cooked Spices on a Fishing Rod Caught in the Columbia River Pacific Salmon, after removing all Onanoslov turns into "Salmon", which, of course, is the only description of what you really eat. Depending on what kind of feelings it causes you, you can replace all the adjectives with the word “vile” or “tasty”, that is, “Tasty tasty tasty tasty tasty tasty tasty tasty Salmon”,

Thus, many onanoid resumes after the recruiter’s remarks are as follows: “Leading onanist who mastered for the Onanology Institute of Onanology onanoproject, during which I successfully mastered with seven other onanists.”

By the way, the “presenter” is also a verbatim, well, you already understand.

Tip # 6: Don't Be A Certified Loser

Never ever use the word "certified" in your resume. This is undoubtedly the most noticeable red flag in viewing resumes, bordering on a situation such as dead-number, send-it-away-you can-and-not-consider, well, you understand. (If not, then ..., well, you know the old saying about who plays cards and does not know the suit).

Certification for wimps. This is what designates you as a technique, when you really want to be an engineer. If you want to be a television master, you can get a telemaster certificate. If you want to work for Sony and design their new widescreen TV, then you definitely do not need to attend evening courses to repair dusty boxes.

The same goes for technical certification. This means that you attended courses on a topic that you could study by reading a book. If you know something, just mention it and be prepared to answer questions during telephone and / or face-to-face interviews. If it seems to you that it is necessary to add that you have any certificate, then this will simply show that you are unsure of your self-esteem - that not a bit will help you.

Seriously. Erase all references to certificates from your technical summary. They significantly reduce your chances of getting an interview.

Tip # 7: Don't say “expert,” unless you really mean it.

The term “expert” makes the eyes of experts bleed. Personally, he doesn’t hurt me like that, but I know enough interviewers that infuriate him to advise you not to use it. If you say that you are an expert in anything, many interviewers will find that you claim that, figuratively speaking, your term is longer than theirs, and they will get a ruler (also figurative) at the interview and will measure you. Needless to say, I use this metaphor in its most gender-neutral sense.

One of my friends from Amazon once told me that he takes a resume in which there is “expertise” and tells the candidates something like: “Wow! You do not often come across real experts in areas like this. I seemed to meet a soul mate! I don’t often do this, but let's choose one of your core technologies and conduct a deep, deep analysis of the subject. But before we get started, would you like to remove something from your resume? ”

He says it acts like a serum of truth.

Tip # 8: Don't Show All Your Cards

Writing a resume is like going on a date, or taking a loan from a bank: no one will be happy if they find out that you are already desperate. And there are a lot of sure ways to talk about the fact that you are really desperate, such as, for example, using the word "desperate" in your resume. Do not do this.

Ideally, you should look confident and competent. Regardless of the level of your abilities, from “Graduated with honors” to “Worm”, you will try to look able to effectively perform your functions at this level.

One way to seem really desperate is to take up 18 works in one sentence. “About me: A very representative, result-oriented programmer looking for the opportunity to lead or provide personal assistance to projects or programs involving online advertising, 3D multiplayer games, working with corporate clients, web programming or servicing client-server databases, or others places of application of my perseverance to satisfy my need for solving problems, performing any dirty work that you entrust me with, please, please, please, please hire me, I’m completely from Chayal-aaaaaaaaa! " Sounds like a spell!

You can take up 18 works, provided that you write 18 different resumes, each aimed at its own, while you should not send all 18 at once.

Another marker of “desperation” is the line “eager to learn.” Never, ever write “eager to learn” in your resume. In all the ancient and secret occult rosette decoders for those who check technical resumes, “eager to learn” is translated as “inept worker”. Let’s say frankly: if you really were so “eager” to learn, you would have already learned everything.

“I’m learning fast” is another minus. This is doubtful because it combines desperation with unlearnedness; you do not need to mention this if you can show something specific that you have already learned. If you have any evidence of your fast learning, such as a graduation certificate at the age of 14, then, of course, say so. But just the phrase "learning fast" is a direct road to the Big Dump Summary in Heaven.

"Motivated" is another synonym for the word "desperate." Do not say that you are “motivated”. It's like putting on a suit for an interview. I will point to the door without a doubt.

The best way to not look desperate is to not be desperate. This can be achieved without expecting too much, tightening your belts and not trying for a position that you do not meet. In another case, just make a nice little neat resume with a list of bare facts about your skills and achievements.

Advice number 9: Do not get bored to death

Pay attention to the following paragraph summary:

* designed and developed the standard library code for emulation
MS-DOS and BIOS calls on various Unix platforms. it
allowed to run binary DOS software applications, such as Quicken
and Microsoft Word under a commercial Unix emulator
platforms. This allows users without access.
to the DOS machine, but having blah blah BLA, repeat if necessary.

The first sentence is all that is needed; the rest can be omitted.

By the way, if you are thinking of commenting that I should follow the advice # 9 on my blogs, well .. just remember: if you ever start writing so well that you want to comment, you will also be hated. So that!

Seriously, take a look at your resume and take away everything that seems obvious from there. If you worked for a world famous company like Microsoft or Amazon, do not waste time explaining what they do.

Be specific. No need to write "led several small projects and one medium size." It's useless. If the projects are too small to describe, just do not mention them.

Do not repeat information from paragraph to paragraph. This often happens. Apparently, candidates think that recruiters may miss something important in their resume, so they start and repeat the same thing. This copy-paste strategy has two main drawbacks. First, the recruiter is annoyed by your repetitions, and he begins to judge more strictly. Second, if you repeat something that the recruiter finds ridiculous, such as “Agile Senior Methodologist” or “J2EE Certified Consultant,” you cannot say that you are improving the situation by continuing to shout about it like a wounded gull.

A resume is not a good place for tales. Your goal, as the author of the resume, should be a full description of your academic and professional career so as to help recruiters compare your skills and achievements with things that are familiar to them. By and large, this is a checklist.

Do not overdo it with my advice and do not make such a brief summary that no one can figure out what the hell you were doing in your projects - I also met this. If in doubt, add more information, not less. It's okay if the resume is a bit long, despite the fact that you might have heard of other areas of activity. Just omit everything you can find with the search engine.

Tip # 10: Don't Be a False Bastard

Look, this is what will happen: you will be caught. I’m still surprised at how many candidates think that playing a resume is a lotto option in which all the words in your resume have invisible stars indicating that you actually know something about this word, and you they simply crossed their fingers for good luck that the interviewer would exclaim “Won!” by accidentally jabbing at five star words.

The bad news is that so many people do it. Maybe they needed to write a ten-line program in Forth in about fourth grade, so they shrugged and pointed to Forth in the programming language section, stuffing it between “HTML” and “English”, in the hope that it looks good and will not be selected for Lotto Interview. This guys is tantamount to a lie.

I understand that “lying” is a rather harsh criticism, but I wanted to clarify a little about determining the number “five”. Many people who assess themselves in some skills as “normal”, or “medium”, or “almost average”, or from 4 to 6 on a ten-point scale, redefine concepts as “familiarized with the concept diagonally, but not already remembers nothing but the name. " True. I do not invent anything.

Seeing how candidates evaluate their knowledge by five, which means “one,” it seems to me that I can define “clearly exaggerating” as “false.” Fair enough?

If you lie in a technical resume, you will be caught. Of course, one of the interviewers will turn out to be a fanatical supporter of Forth (as if there are no others), and they will certainly be interested in and ask about something that will immediately lead the candidate to a state of psycho-wet-underpants masked in a smoke screen, which includes hesitations and mutterings, and phrases such as “oh hell, that was so long ago,” and all other similar things that lead to parting with interviewers.

What were they thinking?

By the way, I know that this article is about writing a resume, not about intervening, but let me mention for the record that I remember my university classes, twenty years ago, as if they were last week. If I interview you and ask about your classes on operating systems, and you say “oh, damn it, it's been so long, let me think, choo choo choo, I don’t remember,” and then I look at your diploma and see that you passed this subject just two years ago, well, UVEKMV?

Here it is, your perfect super-duper is the best winning strategy: do not lie or exaggerate. Everyone had a brief introduction to programming languages ​​that they did not like or did not understand, and if you list them in a resume, you won’t gain anything. Try to give a professional characterization of each skill in your resume (acceptable levels: "beginner", "amateur", "beginner", "teapot", "freshman", "beginner", and "come up with this" if you need something special regarding the Council No. 7).

Total

Writing a resume is a fine art, and everyone has their own cherished opinions on this subject, and without a doubt I was angry with more certified agile consultants than usual. But I can say that the number of resumes I have processed is much more than five thousand, and I personally interviewed or over the phone more than 1200 candidates for my entire 18 year career, and I worked with people who have these figures much more. Despite the wide philosophical differences of opinion regarding the conduct of technical interviews, all the engineers with whom I spoke over the years looked more or less the same in their resumes.

At the risk of bore you to death, I repeat again that I am not speaking for Google. In fact, it is impossible to speak for the whole company about the diverse and self-confident writing of a resume (or selection / intervention), but if it were possible, I would not try.

That concludes today's set of free, personal tips for writing a technical resume. Thanks for attention!

UEKMV?