Ten tips on how to write a (slightly) less terrible resume

“Goal: Get a Job at IBM”
- Writes some idiot 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 evaluate questionnaires at technical companies — especially technical companies that produce their own software themselves, such as Yahoo !, Ebay, Amazon.com, Microsoft, or Google — will 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 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 the glass, this is annoying advice. Tips not to feed! Etc.

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We are faced with a pressing problem: why are all resumes of programmers equally terrible? How would we correct them, these resumes?
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If you worked more than, say, 17 kiloseconds as a programmer in an enterprise, then you had to consider unsuccessful resumes of people with technical specialties. This is part of your job. Programmers' resumes, of course, must be assessed by programmers - no one can rate a programmer better than another programmer. So it becomes that kind of karmic revenge for the dreadful summaries you wrote. Admit it, you, too, wrote such! And you even knew that it was unfortunate right in the process of writing. Acknowledge! Did you find HTML in the list of programming languages ​​you own? Grrr! ..

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

Or the real dumb person who accidentally wrote “work at IBM” as a target in his resume for Amazon. Haha Well, 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 their fingers at me and choke on hysterical girlish laughter. Damn it. If you do not take into account the fact that it cost me wealth due to stock valuation of options, because I submitted my resume before the IPO (entering the stock market) and was, for obvious reasons, ignored by Amazon recruiters, until I did not reapply 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 received (in one word - nothing), because, to put it simply, I am noodle. I think that almost everyone is guilty of having done something stupid at least once when writing a technical summary; even if not as blatant as I allowed. And if almost everyone committed such nonsense, it’s probably not so easy to write it (technical summary).

I think there are several main reasons. One of them is that no one explains to us what exactly the 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 on resume writing in other areas of work are not necessarily applicable to technical summaries. I will talk about a few of these discrepancies below.

Another, less important, but strangely, indestructible problem is that many candidates are grandiose pathological liars. You will not believe how many people said to me: "Well, I just put in this word for recruiters." Needless to say, such an answer leads straight to the time-tested code for ending the interview: UVECMW? ("Do you have questions for me?")

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

Today I’m talking only about resumes for programmers, namely for the subgroup of resume applicants to companies that make their software themselves. I do not know how all this applies (if applicable at all) to a resume for other positions or companies. Probably not too much. Sorry!

So, here are my tips on resume writing, which I give to you right in hand, for free, without any conditions, because I want to help you like that.

Tip # 1: You don't give a damn

Haha I bet you are not surprised.

Well, to be more specific: as long as nobody cares at you. At least during the selection of a resume.

Reviewing a resume is a simple template filtering. 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. Your recruiter will love your resume if it is easy to visually scan it, and all sorts of stories about you, your cheerful character, the predatory parrot fervently devoted to you, and the annual walking expedition in Tibet, etc. etc. - just not scanned.

The result of a quick, step-by-step review of your resume is the decision: do you need to continue to work with you or should you reject your candidacy. As soon as this decision - passes \ does not pass - it is accepted that the recruiter wants to forget everything about you. No seriously. They need to free up their memory for the next sample search. So, whatever you say, everything that distinguishes you from a machine that can concoct a beautiful code is an annoying and potentially harmful distraction. At best, the recruiter will simply ignore this, 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're interested). Transmittal letter? REMOVE. Nobody cares! Your easy grin, accessible only to the elect, slipped into the goals section? REMOVE. This one 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 “hobbies” section, which characterizes you as a socially adequate person and from a good environment, with a developed taste and cultural background? REMOVE! Unless you have any hobbies that are directly related to work - just like that. If your resume does not 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 to program, so the resume will most likely be thrown away. If your passion is to write code, or administer a website, or something else remotely connected to computers, then this may slightly increase your chances. Otherwise, just do not mention it!

Accept this: all the usual advice about trying to convince the recruiter that you are a simple young man from Uryupinsk who is meant to be great, thanks to your Uryupa uncle Vanya, who pushed you with his pep talk, after which you fell off your horse, when you were still a kid - these tips are bullshit because the recruiter just wants to figure out your current skills. A “plain young man” can be sent to the wastebasket.

And do not depress 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 automatic programs and will be horribly distorted along the way. Any non-ASCII character, such as non-standard markers from Word, or any selected character, or (heaven help you) Unicode will be converted into our old pet, a question mark ("?")

You do not want your resume to look like this:

  Resume?  Bob? T? Moblin
 ?Experience
   1997 — now?  for ??? des? yat ??? le? t ???? neither ?? x? i ??? not ??? c? did ?? 

Therefore, use plain text. Yes. Text. Well, you know, like on a typewriter or in a notebook pad. ABC, 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 (fixed-width font). If you make a nice table, beautifully formatted with tab characters, by the time the human being sees it, it will look like smoke signals in the artistic style of ASCII.

The maximum amount of “artistic ASCII” that you can get away with - although this is already a bit too much - hyphenated lines and list marks. For example, it may roll:

  Education
 ---------
   * Bachelor’s Degree, Computer Science, Gedetotam University, 1997
   * Master Degree, Resume Writing, 2003
   - super red diploma 

But I would not overdo it.

If your name contains specific characters, it is better to change the name. For example, if your name is Pièrre l'Éléphant, think, would you prefer it to vygardela as "Pi? Rre l '?"? Phant "or" Pierre l'Elephant "? Of course, your accents may come and go, but I would not risk it.

HTML usually runs intact, because it is plain text. Nevertheless, even if the automatic asphalt roller did not touch your tags, there is no guarantee that your resume will be viewed through the browser, and no one wants to understand a bunch of ugly tags during the evaluation of your skills. So no HTML either.

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

Tip number 3: Check, please!

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

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

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

Make no mistakes in Curriculum Vitae (CV). In fact, it is written as p-ez-yu-m-e, unless you do not have a doctoral degree, and you do not apply to a non-US company where CV is used as a standard. In the US, “curriculum vitae” is likely to be taken for a venereal disease.

For God's sake, remember the difference between "lead" and "led". This is one of the most common grammatical errors in resumes, and it is extremely annoying to many recruiters. “Lead” is either the present-day verb meaning “no programming”, or it is the metal that will sterilize you if you accidentally swallow it (lead). “Led” is the elapsed time from “lead”. For example:

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

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

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

None of these rules, of course, apply to blogs. If you find spelling or grammatical errors in my blog, it’s because I did it intentionally. Fu

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

So! Check grammar and spelling! They are needed. What about style?

Of course, I could utter a rant about style, but everything is pretty clear: people are constantly finding new clever ways to be stupid. Therefore, I will limit my stylistic quibbles to using the word “utilize.” It is scientifically proven that only stupid people use the word "utilize", so if you use it, you can be confused with them. Foolish man, that is, not a scientist. “Utilize” is one of the classic Indicators of Stupidity of all times, along with a loud “chukh-chukh-chukh” when you think. Never noticed that only stupid people imitate the sounds of a train when they think? "Oh damn, let me think, pshsh-pshsh-pshsh ... hmmm, chukh-chukh-chukh ..."

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

So! Check grammar and spelling! They are needed. What about style?

Of course, I could utter a rant about style, but everything is pretty clear: people are constantly finding new clever ways to be stupid. Therefore, I will limit my stylistic quibbles to using the word “utilize.” It is scientifically proven that only stupid people use the word "utilize", so if you use it, you can be confused with them. Foolish man, that is, not a scientist. “Utilize” is one of the classic Indicators of Stupidity of all times, along with a loud “chukh-chukh-chukh” when you think. Never noticed that only stupid people imitate the sounds of a train when they think? "Oh damn, let me think, pshsh-pshsh-pshsh ... hmmm, chukh-chukh-chukh ..."

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

Tip # 4: Avoid Pretentious Nonsense

Pretentious Nonsense - these are impressive words that make you feel like doing something useful, when in fact, all you did was dragging chocolate from a large vase of candy in the conference room while everyone else was working. .

"Participated" - the word champion of the Pretentious Bunny of all time. As you are such an example of nonsense - I can say with a clear conscience that I participated in the war in the Persian Gulf. I even got a medal for it. The real form of my participation was to watch 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 might 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!

Considering that you can participate in something without doing much, and without having much influence, the word “participate” turns into a semantic funnel: it sucks the whole meaning out of the paragraph, nullifying any conclusions we could draw about your real contribution. . If the word "participate" in any form appears in the paragraph about some of your occupation, an experienced recruiter will simply cross out the 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 introduced”. There are such type of candidates who drift from post to post, and do not produce anything except offers. This may mean that a person does not like to engage in a real business, or that usually no one listens to him, in both cases - nothing good.

One large class of Pretentious Nonsense is a category of obsessive words such as “analyzed,” “studied,” “observed,” “looked,” and the like. No one wants to hire you for your extensive work observation experience. If all you did was analyze something there, if it wasn’t any kind of thorough statistical analysis worth mentioning, simply cross out this entire paragraph from your resume.

Recruiters will search for non-bullshit words, that is, Productive Words. These are words with which you can not "slip away" if you are asked about them. The best of them are the synonyms of “doing the real thing,” including “writing code”, “introducing”, “developing”, “handing over” and “launching”.

It is perfectly normal to use “designed” if the Productive Word is right behind it. If you are designing something without implementing it, then it is simply a synonym for the word "suggested." If you prefer to design something that others ultimately implement, you may be very suitable material for a company of complete freaks. A real company like 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 hard it may be, is also pretentious nonsense if you apply for the position of an individual developer, because your technical skills will easily rust and go into oblivion if you have spent enough time in the role of technical leader without participating in programming. This is especially true of graduates who talk about their group projects; weaker programmers usually come up to the positions of project coordinators, and end up with a lack of real skills. So, if you are applying to 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 didn’t do anything.

Tip # 5: Avoid Onanoslov

These words inflate your perceived importance (for example, use “created” instead of “designed”), or words like “Rational UML Process”, which have already become simply synonymous with the pseudo-work done by people who are on their asses and don't know how to code.

Onanoslov is much worse than no content; they are good indicators of total inaction. Recruiters will either remove Onanoslov or replace them with the word “onanist” (for example, “Certified Master Onanist”), which makes resumes much easier to filter.

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

“Consultant” is often another eminent synonym for “onanist.” Let me add, before hot representatives of the heavily armed Consultant Industry consultants slaughter me - there are very good consultants. The problem is that during the review of technical summaries, luck is completely against you. It’s like a fast food experience when you’re looking for a job as a waiter in a fancy restaurant. She could help you hone your skills, but all the odds are against it, and much of the art of selecting a resume is just an estimate of the odds.

The problem of "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“ to maim ”because employers are too confused to solve their own problems and are unable to hire permanent a staff member who can help them, so they turned to paid "self-help". When you see this word in a resume, it is difficult to determine exactly what it means.

"Methodologist" is probably the worst On-topic of all time. It will definitely make your resume walk among technical companies, but not for the reasons you are hoping for. All sorts of funny synonyms of the word "Methodologist", for example Scrum Master, in general, achieve a similar effect.

Onanoslov - to some extent as adjectives in the restaurant menu - 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 Cooked Apple-Smoked Spices 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 feelings you have, you can replace all adjectives with the word "nasty" or "tasty", that is, "Delicious tasty tasty tasty tasty tasty tasty tasty Salmon"or "Vile nasty nasty nasty nasty nasty nasty nasty Eggplant."

Thus, many onanosoderzhaschie resume after remarks recruiter, as follows: ". Leading masturbator, masturbate for Onanoinstituta Onanologii in onanoproekte, during which I successfully masturbated with seven other wankers"

By the way, the "master" is also onanoslovo, well, you already understand.

Council number 6: Do not be a certified loser.

Never and never use the word "certified" in your resume. This is undoubtedly the most noticeable red flag in reviewing a resume, bordering on a situation like dead-number-send-it-away-can-not-be considered, you understand. (If not, then ... well, you know the old adage, about who plays cards, but he doesn't know the suits).

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

The same is true of 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 ready to answer questions during telephone and / or in-person interviews. If it seems to you that you need to add that you have any certificate, then it will simply show that you are unsure of your self-esteem - that it will not help you a bit.

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

Council number 7: Do not say "expert", if only you really do not have this in mind

The term "expert" makes the eyes of experts pour blood. Personally, he doesn’t hurt me that much, but I know enough interviewers that it infuriates to advise you not to use it. If you say that you are an expert in anything, many interviewers will consider that you are claiming that, figuratively speaking, your member is longer than theirs, and they will get a ruler (also figurative) during the interview and will measure you. Needless to say, I use this metaphor in its most gender-neutral sense.

A friend of mine from Amazon once told me that he takes a resume in which there is “expertise” and says to the candidates something like, “Wow! You don't often meet real experts in areas like this. I seemed to have met a soul mate! I do not do this often, but let's choose one of your core technologies and conduct a deepest submerged analysis of the subject. But before we start, would you like to remove something from your resume? ”

He says that it acts like a truth serum.

Tip # 8: Don't reveal all your cards.

Writing a resume is like going on a date, or taking a bank loan: no one will be happy if they know that you are desperate. And there are a lot of right ways to spill the word that you really are 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 distinction” to “Worm”, you will try to look able to effectively perform their functions at this level.

One of the ways to seem really desperate is to do 18 jobs in one sentence. “About me: A very representative, result-oriented programmer looking to lead or provide personal assistance to projects or programs affecting Internet advertising, multiplayer 3D games, working with corporate clients, web programming or servicing client-server databases, or others places of application of my perseverance to meet my need to solve problems, to perform any dirty work that you entrust to me; please, please, please, please, hire me, I’m completely from asking-aaaaaaaaa! "Sounds like a spell!

You can take on 18 papers, provided you write 18 different resumes, each aimed at yours, and you should not send all 18 at once.

Another marker of "despair" - the line "eager to learn." Never and never write in your resume "eager to learn." In all the ancient and secret occult Rozet decoders for checking technical summaries, the “eager to learn” is translated as “inept worker”. Let's face it: if you were really “thirsty” for learning, you would have already learned everything.

“Quickly learning” is another minus. This is doubtful, because it combines despair with untrainedness; you do not need to mention this if you can show something concrete that you have already learned. If you have any evidence of fast learning, such as a high school diploma at the age of 14, then of course tell me about it. But just the phrase “learn fast” is the direct road to the Great Landfill 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 the door without a doubt.

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

Council 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 the commercial emulator on Unix
platforms. This allows users who do not have access
to a DOS machine, but having a 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 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 remove from there everything that seems obvious. If you worked in a world famous company like Microsoft or Amazon, do not waste time explaining what they do.

Be specific. It is not necessary to write "supervised several small projects and one medium-sized one." It is useless. If projects are too small to describe, simply do not mention them.

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

Summary - not a suitable place for fables. As a resume writer, your goal should be a full description of your academic and professional career so as to help recruiters match your skills and accomplishments with things they are familiar with. 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 make out what you, damn it, did in your projects - I met that too. If in doubt, add more information, not less. It's okay if the resume is long, despite the fact that you could hear about other areas of activity. Just omit all that can be found using a search engine.

Tip # 10: Do not be a lying scum

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

The bad thing is that so many people do it. Maybe they needed to write a ten-line program on Forth in about fourth grade, so they shrugged and indicated Forth in the section of programming languages, shoving 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 lying.

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

Seeing how candidates evaluate their knowledge for five, which means “one”, I think I can define “obviously exaggerate” as “a lie”. Fair enough?

If you lie in a technical summary, you will be caught. Needless to say, one of the interviewers will be a fanatical supporter of Forth (as if there are no others), and they will be interested, and ask about something that will immediately lead the candidate to the state of a psycho-wetted undershirt masquerading in a smoke screen that includes hesitations and mutters, and phrases like “oh, hell, it was so long ago,” and all the other similar things that lead to parting with interviewers.

What were they thinking about?

By the way, I know that this article is about writing a resume, not about interviewing, 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 in operating systems, and you say "oh, damn it, it was so long ago, let me think, chukh chukh, I don’t remember," and then I look at your diploma and see passed this subject only two years ago, well, UVEKMV?

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

Total

Resume writing is high art, and everyone has their own cherished opinions on this matter, and without a doubt I have angered 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 interviewed in person or by phone more than 1200 candidates for my entire 18 year career, and I worked with people who have these numbers much more. Despite the broad philosophical differences of opinion regarding the conduct of technical interviews, all the engineers with whom I spoke for all these years, searched for more or less the same in my resumes.

At the risk of tiring you to death, I will repeat again that I don’t speak for Google. In fact, it is impossible to speak for the entire company about the varied and self-confident resume writing (or selection / interviewing), but if this were possible, I would not have tried.

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

UVECMW?