Lessons from Both Sides of an Interview Desk
davidtuite.comHaving been on both sides of the interview desk and read pretty much every piece of resume/interview advice out there, basically don't take any resume or interview advice from anyone who hasn't done extensive hiring/interviewing/vetting of candidates.
I can't agree more. For whatever reason, this seems to be an area where everybody feels qualified to give advice (in many cases, it seems to be older people who have not interviewed in a long time who advise any younger / fresh graduate who will listen).
Examples:
* Customize your resume for each job you apply to.
This is completely impractical these days, when any given job is likely to attract hundreds of resumes, and your chances of getting a response from any single application are slim. It's far more practical to work on something generic and breif that you can use for any appealing job in your field, and go into more detail if and when an interview is held. Also, if you have to bend their skills and experience in different ways for different jobs, you're probably applying for positions that you're a marginal fit for, instead of waiting for finding a job that you're a better, obvious fit for on the basis of your generic, undoctored resume.
* Always wear a suit to the interview.
Again, often said, but a gross simplification. Obviously you need to dress well for the part, but in many industries / cities, you'll end up on the other side of the table from a guy in jeans and a T-shirt, and have a tough time building a connection.
Definitely worth taking any advice in this area with a huge grain of salt unless it's really from an expert in the relevant area.
Small rant:
your chances of getting a response from any single application are slim.
Every company beyond a certain size is using some kind of ERP to keep track of applicants, and even the smaller ones use something like Outlook or a similar calendaring app to keep track of people they've interviewed.
Is it really asking so much to get a "We decided not to hire you at this time" email? Without that, you don't know if they decided to skip you, or if you're still in process because the company's hiring process moves at a glacial pace.
The sheer amount of deception and silly dance nonsense required to get hired is insane.
> Is it really asking so much to get a "We decided not to hire you at this time" email? Without that, you don't know if they decided to skip you, or if you're still in process because the company's hiring process moves at a glacial pace.
The answer is often a mix of this. Usually a company will have 3-5 candidates for an opening. Of those, 2 are usually not right personality/culture wise, 2 will be good but maybe slightly mismatched (i.e. you need a senior Rails developer and they're a senior Java developer with some Rails knowledge), and 1 will be really good and probably take a job elsewhere.
Companies never want to turn people away, because there's a good chance you extend an offer to the 1 good guy, dance with him for a couple weeks over salary/benefits, then find out he accepted an offer elsewhere. So they go back to the stack of "maybe" resumes; though by this point yours could be at the bottom of the stack and they never get back to you.
Whenever hiring frustrates you, realize that recruiters (and HR in general) are not staffed by people who think about the big picture. I don't necessarily mean that as an insult -- the HR function simply requires someone who doesn't think too much about the reasons behind what they do and follows policy to the letter (this is how companies keep from getting sued). Add to this that pretty much every request is urgent, so they're very interrupt-driven in trying to get people in the door and service any additional open requests.
On the suit front the thing I always bear in mind is that it is always easier to dress down than it is to dress up. Removing a tie or a jacket is much easier to do, and an easy way to start a discussion about company culture. Much better than belatedly realising the developers may wear jeans but this interview process also involves HR people or senior types. Unless the company is the sort of faddish place which makes it clear that they never wear smart clothes I would personally always suit up.
"Business casual" especially is a social minefield. That said I don't mind wearing a suit to work, if you're vehemently pro-casual clothes then you might want to go the other way and make a point of it. That said I've yet to be convinced that in tech there is a time you won't need to dress smartly, even Zuck wore a suit recently...
Also, your recruiter should be telling you what to wear to the interview regardless. If not, then you should ask what is to be expected.
You've got a good point about dressing down though. It's easier to walk into an interview in a suit and have people laugh it off and say, "Oh man, we don't dress that nice unless someone important is here!" instead of going in with jeans and an untucked shirt and have people dressed in business casual give you a strange look like, "Hmmmm, interesting wardrobe choice." and instantly you've lost points with them before they even ask a single question.
> Also, if you have to bend their skills and experience in different ways for different jobs, you're probably applying for positions that you're a marginal fit for, instead of waiting for finding a job that you're a better, obvious fit for on the basis of your generic, undoctored resume.
Or you have a title, like "systems engineer", that means different things to different industries and causes confusion.
Or you deviated from your original path for personal reasons and need to explain why you are trying to get back on it.
Or you have had roles that do not easily translate to the specific domains of the companies you are applying to.
Or you have roles where your ability to provide clear, detailed information about your contributions is limited by law or legal agreements.
Yes, all of the above apply to me. I don't think I'm very unique in this regard.
I very strongly disagree with not customizing your resume/cover letter. As a programmer it is not very difficult to have a template that you can slightly alter and, if required, throw a script together to insert pertinent details. As for applying for job that you are a poor fit for I disagree - you would also need to highlight different parts of what you have done if you are a bit more of a generalist.
These two pieces of advice never really applied to software developers.
They still absolutely apply if you're looking for a job on the business side.
Are you getting annoyed by the "I just achieved basic competence in this task, and here is how I did it" posts?
If so, you are not the target audience for them.
There are very few experts, and almost none who are able to explain the basics in a way that can be understood by a complete beginner.
This article does a good job of hammering home the basics, even if I don't agree with everything.
Since you've been on both sides, what would be your advice?
tl;dr Guy landed his first developer full time job at 30 and thinks he has valuable experience to share. Follows up some cliches of SF tech bubble recruitment tips.
He's not in SF, but your comment is mostly spot on. I liked this part especially:
Sure, file format is absolutely a right metric to use when going through resumes.This first example is a docx file. It means you’re likely using Windows, which is a negative in the Ruby world.Being able to send files in an appropriate format is a communication skill, a basic skill for any employment, and .docx is almost never appropriate.
You're going to be dinged for a Word doc by some people, some of the time. You created a % chance that your job application got thrown away for something easily remedied. At least take one second to convert to a more generally-viewable PDF.
Besides which, the article is talking about code. Why would anyone cut and paste code into a Word doc at all? A waste of time for everyone involved.
.docx is often very appropriate; it's one of the most widely used formats out there and is readable by pretty much any word processor out there.
Agreed that it's probably not the best choice for sending code, but the author's point wasn't that it's a terrible format, just that it's a terrible format for code reviews. PDF is equally awful for the reasons the author describes (lack of syntax coloring, inability to run the code, etc.)
Though IMO the author should just be explicit about what he wants; playing mind games with people is never a good idea, and it just self-selects for people who have used GitHub professionally. Choice of SCM system is almost never up to an individual developer anyway, are you going to ding someone with otherwise great credentials because their company uses Mercurial? It takes all of an hour to learn how to use GitHub anyway.
Anyway, I echo the comments I've seen elsewhere that a guy who got his first "adult job" at 30 then hired some people less than a year later is probably not the best person to take career advice from. This guy makes a lot of novice mistakes in his interviewing practices; so take this as a perspective on how some companies do hiring and not a definitive guide of the right way to do things.
> Though IMO the author should just be explicit about what he wants; playing mind games with people is never a good idea, and it just self-selects for people who have used GitHub professionally.
I was thinking this exactly. Perhaps the interviewee should have asked what format - but I would argue just be professional and don't try to trip them or play mind games. Put your expectations up front in simple writing (just say "submit in github gist").
There are so many formats and mediums - if you allow the interviewee to guess what you are expecting they will most likely guess wrong.
Do you honestly want to work for an organization that would ding you for sending a .doc or .docx? I surely don't.
It might totally make you lose a few points on a company you'd be thrilled to work for though.
>> .docx is almost never appropriate.
A few years back I started sending PDF copies of my resume in instead of a .doc/.docx
I had a couple places email me back asking for a copy in Word format because their HRIS system could only import Word documents or text files.
".docx is almost never appropriate"
It was pretty appropriate when I applied to Microsoft last year (didn't get the job but did get hired elsewhere based on that application).
I know he wasn't referring specifically to CVs and resumes, but one problem with using .docx for those is that it won't look the same on all computers. For example, if you format something in Word on Windows, it may look slightly different when pulled up on a mac or vice versa. So you spend 30 minutes getting your resume to fit on one page, only for someone to open up your Word file on the other OS and the resume spills over by one line onto the next page. PDF is much safer to use if you need to make sure that it looks the same no matter who is opening the file.
Regardless of how petty you think it is, friction is a real concern.
Any reason to disregard a resume ("Oh, it's hard open, in some format I don't understand") is just another strike against you.
I'm not saying it's a great reason. Nor is it fair. But it happens. And if you're trying to optimize for success, this is one of the parameters.
Give your resume in PS format and see how far that gets you.
The article has problems, but that isn't one of them.
He isn't talking about a resume being sent as a docx file, he's talking about a coding example being sent as a docx file with bad formatting.
And some obvious cultural differences between UK and US (ie: "budget 2 months to find another job". Which made me scratch my head... my experience lately has been 1-2 weeks, if that. And I'm not in a prime market either...)
1-2 weeks? I don't believe it. Maybe in SV, where young developers are constantly being kidnapped off the street and forced at gunpoint to code for $200k+ and free lattes in swanky offices with foosball tables (or so I've been led to believe).
My shortest job hunt took about a month, but I was a cheap junior dev then. These days, I'm constantly getting pinged by recruiters, but I know better than to take that as evidence that finding a new job would be easy.
My last job hunt took almost 6 months (ok, I was being a bit selective). Hell, finding someone that didn't balk when I told them my current salary (and I was looking for a job in a fairly low COL area) took at least a month (and I'm too old to care about foosball tables and free lattes).
And now my current job has been eroding pay/benefits and layering on useless processes and other BS. I can feel that itch coming on... better budget a year to be safe.
I am in the Bay Area and I would not budget anything less than 3 months start-to-finish for a job hunt. Companies are flaky, they don't get back to you, many have job postings but are just fishing (not serious about hiring). Most don't talk comp until late in the process so you could go down a rabbit hole with a company and find out their salary expectations are way out of line with yours. You could easily burn through months.
>>> My last job hunt took almost 6 months
This has been my experience as well. Once I get the itch, I'll start looking, doing interviews and being pretty selective in where and who I want to work for.
I think if you're not in a good place to begin with, you'll take something sooner and inevitably find yourself somewhere you don't want to be.
General job market advice is to budget (financially) 6 months to find another job.
If you work in a high-demand sector, if you are experienced, if you're not bothered by the ethics of who you work for or about the conditions, and you are lucky, it might take you less time. Good. You saved yourself some budgeted time and you should be happy about this.
There are plenty of jobs where you won't even get through the door in 1-2 weeks. Many companies have hiring cycles that don't allow that level of flexibility.
I've found new job in one day two years ago, but year ago it took me over 2 months. Luck is also big factor.
This advice states:
For example, consider the file format you use when you respond. Here’s a couple of examples of response formats I’ve dealt with and what it makes me think of you. [screenshot] This first example is a docx file. It means you’re likely using Windows
But the [screenshot] is from OSX. Is asking someone for prepared source code a good idea? I don't know, and have never asked. Sure I've looked at source online that's been referenced, but asking for a bunch of code... desperate copy paste from an existing non open sourced project seems a likely response, and not a good one.
> If definitely means you didn’t go out of your way to make it easy for me to read your code because there’s no syntax highlighting and the font is horrible.
'If' is a typo If -> It). I only get pedantic when pedantic is necessary. A blog post getting pedantic while not eating your own dog food isn't great.
Cover letter:
Seemed short and flippant. Perhaps this in is vogue where you are. I know a lot of Irish developers that would tailor something a lot more detailed and specific by default.
Agree with the author's points saying "I don't know" and general CV tips.
一半 [e-ban]. Half full advice, or half empty; basics with no real insight.
>I had about 3 years of professional freelancing and contract experience and a handful of side projects. I have a reasonably active Github account with a couple of open source projects. I even sometimes write code related blog posts and put them on the internet where nobody ever reads them.
>I probably came across as your average “better than junior but not quite senior” developer.
Man, I hope you're just being modest otherwise that's bad news for me.
3yrs experience is not senior. He's right on the money there.
I mean, that damn near fits the bill for me last year when I left my first job and was looking for a mid level position. 3 years professional experience, had been doing some limited freelancing/consulting in that time, and for a couple years before that. Even have a blog post where I log pain-in-the-ass problems and the solutions to them. Titles are a giant fog since every company has their own system, but I view Junior X as someone with no experience beyond maybe an internship, but your mileage will vary. That's how it's been at the places I interviewed/talked to back then, and right now. Having 3 years good experience puts you on the bottom rung of middle tier.
This one is much much better: http://ortask.com/a-better-way-to-hire-developers-and-tester...