Lessons from Both Sides of an Interview Desk(davidtuite.com) |
Lessons from Both Sides of an Interview Desk(davidtuite.com) |
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.
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.
"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...
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.
They still absolutely apply if you're looking for a job on the business side.
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.
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 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.
This first example is a docx file. It means you’re
likely using Windows, which is a negative in the Ruby world.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).