I don't know that this is the right way to solve the resume 'problem' - I think LaTeX is a far superior choice, yet the author pretty much dimissed it as a possibility.
For me personally, I found LaTeX to be the perfect solution. I have my resume tex setup so I can set toggles to define what gets output. E.g. applying for a manager position, I might keep it brief and more technical.
The resume is modular and can be updated by updating external txt files and not the LaTeX itself. It looks nice, is always consistent, has nice links, etc.
It's optimized for all the ATS nonsense it inevitably gets run through, it generates a PDF, and I've made it near impossible for recruiters to copy and paste and repurpose it without retyping much of it, and I have a tone of tech tricks in their like invisible text that automated systems might see.
If LaTeX itself is sufficient, I can't imagine needing to add in something like Nix and a webserver or how that would be better in any way.
LaTeX is fine to me, as well. Heck, now that I'm older, I think bare TeX is probably fine. In line with what you are saying, I can offload the semantic nature of my resume to text files and just use the markup of TeX to layout how I want the page to look. Much easier if I don't try and have a single source that is both all of my semantic data with the layout at the same time.
> I think LaTeX is a far superior choice, yet the author pretty much dimissed it as a possibility.
Learning curve is a thing: I've never touched LaTeX, and I don't anticipate using it in the future. If I wanted to automate a thing as a learning project, I probably would rule out LaTeX unless I had a reason to want to learn it.
I’ve actually made the switch over to Typst[0] for my app [1]. I’ve previously used a quick jinja .tex template that then just pasted things in, but LaTeX can really throw some strange errors and overall handling the files was a hassle.
Typst was much easier to setup and the function-based operation meant that sending variables in was a breeze with better error handling there too. Also, I just grok the syntax a lot better.
Just another option for folks looking to redo their resumes/not use Latex.
Nix is completely orthogonal to whatever tech you use to build the resume - it's nice as a build tool + to provide dev environments for however you're going to realize your resume.
I have used LaTeX extensively over the years until Typst came along. Typst is exactly what I need. A lightweight syntax alternative of LaTeX without the issues. It supports SVGs and many more things that are very useful.
I would be careful with LaTeX. I use to have a LaTeX resume generated with LuaTeX. At an old company, I saw my LaTeX resume in the ATS long after I was hired. Apparently, something happened and the PDF displayed as blurred-but-not-unreadable in the ATS. Maybe the ATS did some post-processing or used a limited PDF display engine? Lucky for me, the resume for that job was just a formality. These days, I just use Google Docs and export to PDF.
I have yet to see a really good LaTeX CV. I guess it is possible but in my experience LaTeX just isn't designed for that and gives boring-looking results.
LaTeX is a nightmare to use, so you shouldn't inflict it on people. While I've used it and there's a lot to like, there's very little there that you'd want or need to make a resume. And without those things (most notably good formula support), it just doesn't add enough to justify the pain of having it in your life.
My resume is in LaTeX, but I like using a nix Flake so I can easily run `nix build` to build the resume, and I've guaranteeably installed the correct version of texlive that I need cuz it's reproducible.
Nix obviously isn't strictly necessary, but making a flake wasn't terribly hard and it's nice to keep stuff standardized between distros and macos.
> It's optimized for all the ATS nonsense it inevitably gets run through
How did you do/test that? I help maintain (didn't author it originally) the AwesomeCV template; we have an open issue about this, inconsistent results and not really having a good way to test it.
I've never tried LaTeX, but I've built my last few resumes with plain old HTML+CSS then saving as PDF. Works pretty great and is insanely simple to upkeep/modify
Automating your resume is a bit of a rite of passage for new software engineers. It just feels like a stupid repetitive task.
I've found that I change job summaries so often, that automating it was a net negative in time spent on the thing. So now I just do the same as the digitally challenged: copy a Word file to "resume (DATE).docx" and change the contents as needed.
My younger self would be surprised, and slightly annoyed, at how often I use the "dumb" solutions for problems.
Mine is also automated, but a lot more lightweight.
I - like OP - use JSON Resume [1]. Besides that I just have a Github Action which creates a PDF and also updates a web-based version [2] hosted in AWS S3. My favourite thing about this setup is that if I want to make a small change I can just log in to Github and commit a quick edit in the repo [3] through Github's web-based UI A new PDF is generated and the web-based version being updates automatically.
I've made some improvements to the JR registry recently (still looks horrible)
But you can just go to https://registry.jsonresume.org, login with github, create the gist, and then your resume is automatically "deployed". And it is stored on github gist, so data is yours, and has revisions as a nice added benefit.
I regret to say it but I found what looks like a typo - you've got "automcomplete" where I think you mean "autocomplete". I hope this helps improve your resume.
Your CV is a lot closer visually to what I was expecting from the original post. Varied font sizes and use of different regions on the page. Easy to take in at a glance.
The linked resume is a poor example of the process.
It's neither visually pleasing nor is it more easily readable than other CVs that I have seen.
It's fine for a CV to be visually ugly as long as its readable, or visually attractive in spite of being less readable. You can't fail at both dimensions.
If you're really happy with a CV that looks and reads like this, save yourself all the effort and make a RTF document instead.
Agreed. It also has irrelevant fluff within the very first section, "I'm passionate about delivering products....I strive to center compassion..." etc.
That said, I never send the same resume to everyone. I tailor a resume for each job I apply to. This doesn't mean leaving off positions or lying. It does mean taking the work done in a position and giving it a slant toward the target job.
For example, let's say I created a web app that shows a sales dashboard, with stats visualization, from raw daily sales data.
Job 1 (applying for Front-End) - Created monthly sales dashboard web site using React, MaterialUI, SASS, Node, Riak, and D3. Dashboard provided grid-based summary over individual weeks, months, and years. It also provided configurable line graphs and pie charts for various sales metrics. Data pre-processing done with Sci-Kit. Later added sales prediction using Machine Learning.
Job 2 (applying for Data Analysis) - Analyzed raw daily sales data to determine data cleansing needed, and created tool pipeline using Python NumPy, SciKit, and scikit-learn. Integrated pipeline into Riak data source ingest, and then built sales dashboard web site to visualize the data. Provided ML model for sales prediction built with scikit-learn, with XX parameters. Model achieved YY accuracy with only a ZZ mean error.
Same work in both, but I highlight the tasks most relevant to the target job.
Other thoughts are that Latex is a good way to get a well laid out PDF resume (PDF is not the web, you should have two versions of your resume), and I agree with other commenters - the final product needs more polish if it was actually going to be used to produce a resume to send in (I think it's fine as a proof of concept though).
I wish there was a standard format for resume that was universally used. Every HR website requires you to upload a resume to apply, then tries to extract the various experiences and details automatically, invariably fucks it up completely, and you end up having to spend 20 minutes to correct it manually. Unless they treat this exercise as a form of captcha…
In Brazil we have Lattes (https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plataforma_Lattes). The English translation does not mention it, but one of it's most useful features is a centralized resume platform. It's quite nice, but mostly used by people in academia and government-adjacent areas.
Interesting approach. I am currently looking for jobs and went the 'career coaching' route for my CV. I did a few iterations with my coach until I got my current result (ideally I had a link):
I first looked at Canva templates, but apparently nowadays you are supposed to do black/white and no fancy designs for ATS readability. Then I tried it with Google Docs b/w resumee template, which kinda got me to write actual skills. Then I approached the coach, got her template and iterated, and then I also added some rules from here (https://principiae.be/pdfs/ECV-1.01.pdf).
I also involved ChatGPT to analyze job postings and to get the mix of keywords in my resumme right. Tools like https://tagcrowd.com/ also help with that. For example, I am targeting 'IT analyst' roles, and it does make sense that I have the word 'analysis' a few times in my CV.
E: mine is basically structured the following way
Name
Title
Summary
3x5 ATS keywords/skills specific to my profile and role
last ten years, also written in a way that 'gamifies' ATS: 'Year, worked as ROLE at Company, did XYZ'
--page 2--
Education (degree + grades)
Skills Training
Languages
Some more IT skills (programming languages, project management, ...)
E2: I obviously have no idea what I am doing, but I got three interview proposals for 10 applications, so I guess 30%.
As web dev, I migrated from TeX to svelte + Chrome's Print-to-PDF.
I've found that splitting data and representation is not as feasible as it sounds. You add a job and suddenly your CV doesn't fit on a page anymore, and cutting details from previous jobs isn't enough. So you change the layout, ever so slightly, because the data changed. And version control? Nice for building, but it's not like you'll ever go back in time anyway.
What's nice though is defining the data and then trying different layouts to see what works.
I have a resume in latex, all I have to do is change a couple lines every now and then and run the default latex pipeline, all of it directly from gitlab. It worked on the first time I tried and every time since then, it produces a pdf which I can then download and send.
I noticed the container they run uses nix too, which is nice although I don't care about it as long as it works. I could add signing of the pdf maybe some day for fun. What's great with this approach is how little hassle there is and nothing to install, nowhere, and produces the same clean resume I've used for over a decade (but needed to install a thousand things I could never remember from one computer to another).
The only thing you should spend time on with your CV is the content. The ROI on tweaking the look and feel is very low. Aesthetics are not what people care about, unless your resume is so hideous that it gets thrown out.
My CV is a LibreOffice Writer document with no styling added.
A “boring” short black and white non-interactive document that I export to PDF.
It has my name, contact info, a list of recent work history, and mention of some of the technologies that I work with.
Last time I was applying for jobs, two years ago, I got an interview and eventually a job offer from the company I most wanted to work for among the ones I’d been submitting applications to. I’ve been there since.
I agree with you. And I think that any attempt to make the document look flashy would only have worked against me. At least when applying to the kind of jobs that I prefer – backend software engineering work.
I also over-engineered how I generate my CV[1], but went the opposite direction by using Dhall to create JSON and LaTeX files that I use to create a PDF and GraphQL API in Rust for it, automatically deployed via CI/CD to a VPS and a tagged GitHub release. It was a lot of fun to make, but is so over-engineered I hardly want to touch it anymore :)
With termux I can then hit a button to run a script and it will instantly generate a pretty PDF using latex from an orgzly note and fire off an android share intent.
The nice thing about this set up was that if a recruiter called me while I was out and wanted a CV quickly with a couple of tweaks made I could just do it on my note taking app and email an updated PDF in a few seconds.
In theory I could easily change the style of the CV but in practice I haven't felt the need to touch it in years.
It is definitely overengineered and, unfortunately, outdated, as the most recent position in the resume and about page do not match. A lot of effort for something that is not accurate and obviously not used to apply for jobs, which is the purpose of a resume in most cases.
A simple file (Word doc, Numbers, Google Doc) that receives a change every few years and is exported as a PDF seems to do the task better.
The overengineering here produced a poor result. I have found a lot of success using the pandoc_resume project, which is literally just a content item written in Markdown, formatted into different outputs using a LaTeX template via `pandoc`. With this, I output a PDF that looks great, and output HTML which I put in as a non-touched file in my static site generator, and it works very well.
This reminds me a bit of that animated Flash résumé that some young animator did, back in the day. It received quite a bit of attention (both good and bad).
It was basically a cartoon version of him, walking through his various life accomplishments.
It was well-done, and all, but I found it a bit annoying. Also, it was Flash.
I think the presentation of a resume is much less important than the content. It’s interesting that sourcers and recruiters make most of the decisions about who gets to the interview stage (particularly in a down market), yet they are the least qualified to assess the capabilities of the candidate of everyone in the whole process. Despite that, their assessment of a candidate’s resume has an outsized influence on the candidate’s outcome.
When you have 1,000 resumes from laid off software engineers from FANG companies that all look mostly the same, how do you decide who to call?
I’ve been thinking lately that an interesting project might be to look for publicly available resumes of people who have recently accepted new jobs within the tech industry and compare their resumes against those of people who have been looking for a new job for a while. The comparison would be qualitative if only a few resumes are available or perhaps quantitative (i.e., a classification model) if many are available.
Recruiters are not looking for the same signals as hiring managers, and since I’m not a recruiter, I would really like to know exactly what it is that they are looking for.
As an example of this kind of discrepancy that caught me totally off-guard, I was slightly below the “years of experience” requirement on a particular job posting that seemed to match my background perfectly. The recruiter I was talking to had reached out about another job posting where I did meet the YoE requirement, but I said the other posting was a significantly better fit for my skills and experience. The recruiter replied that the YoE requirement was not negotiable, so I was put onto the interview loop for the much less applicable role because of this arbitrary and narrowly missed line in the sand (and of course I failed that interview, wasting both my time and theirs).
A hiring manager would care less about years in seat and more about capability. That such a YoE requirement might be used as a hard filter when scanning resumes caught me by surprise—I had previously sent out plenty of resumes where I narrowly missed the YoE requirement, and in retrospect, my application was probably discarded immediately while using up the “quota” of how many times I could apply to that company. These sorts of insights from the recruiting world would be great to know in advance from the candidate’s perspective.
Unfortunately you either (a) need to craft your resume to work for all types of recruiters and all types of hiring managers*, or (b) carefully pick the type of firm and hiring managers and recruiting team you want to work with, then tailor the CV to appeal to them and get rejected by organizations that would annoy you.
The choice depends on your “need” for the next job.
* Examples of opposites in resume-reading personas: Many roles open vs. single role open. In-house versus outsourced recruiting. Contentful versus process recruiting. Technical versus MBA managers. Surface impression forming versus depth reading. Credential seeking versus competence recognizing.
[+] [-] DEADMINCEDOS|1 year ago|reply
For me personally, I found LaTeX to be the perfect solution. I have my resume tex setup so I can set toggles to define what gets output. E.g. applying for a manager position, I might keep it brief and more technical.
The resume is modular and can be updated by updating external txt files and not the LaTeX itself. It looks nice, is always consistent, has nice links, etc.
It's optimized for all the ATS nonsense it inevitably gets run through, it generates a PDF, and I've made it near impossible for recruiters to copy and paste and repurpose it without retyping much of it, and I have a tone of tech tricks in their like invisible text that automated systems might see.
If LaTeX itself is sufficient, I can't imagine needing to add in something like Nix and a webserver or how that would be better in any way.
[+] [-] taeric|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] gwbas1c|1 year ago|reply
Learning curve is a thing: I've never touched LaTeX, and I don't anticipate using it in the future. If I wanted to automate a thing as a learning project, I probably would rule out LaTeX unless I had a reason to want to learn it.
[+] [-] Ilasky|1 year ago|reply
Typst was much easier to setup and the function-based operation meant that sending variables in was a breeze with better error handling there too. Also, I just grok the syntax a lot better.
Just another option for folks looking to redo their resumes/not use Latex.
[0] https://typst.app
[1] https://resgen.app
[+] [-] turboponyy|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] datadeft|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] robbyiq999|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ok_computer|1 year ago|reply
Here’s a sparse copy of mine.
https://michaelwilly.com/cv/latex
I don’t want to share the git because my real resume has more details.
I learned tex during a degree, I can use it mainly for math notation but I’m not sure that I know it in and out for typesetting.
My resume now uses a template.tex and a main.tex file and I \\input sub section tex files so I can iterate using git.
[+] [-] webel0|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] IshKebab|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] krageon|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] tombert|1 year ago|reply
Nix obviously isn't strictly necessary, but making a flake wasn't terribly hard and it's nice to keep stuff standardized between distros and macos.
[+] [-] tneely|1 year ago|reply
[0] https://github.com/tneely/resume/blob/main/.github/workflows...
[+] [-] OJFord|1 year ago|reply
How did you do/test that? I help maintain (didn't author it originally) the AwesomeCV template; we have an open issue about this, inconsistent results and not really having a good way to test it.
[+] [-] sensanaty|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] lucumo|1 year ago|reply
I've found that I change job summaries so often, that automating it was a net negative in time spent on the thing. So now I just do the same as the digitally challenged: copy a Word file to "resume (DATE).docx" and change the contents as needed.
My younger self would be surprised, and slightly annoyed, at how often I use the "dumb" solutions for problems.
[+] [-] ivanjermakov|1 year ago|reply
Data driven resume was my introduction to LaTeX and I had a great time building it.
[+] [-] d3vmax|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jefc1111|1 year ago|reply
I - like OP - use JSON Resume [1]. Besides that I just have a Github Action which creates a PDF and also updates a web-based version [2] hosted in AWS S3. My favourite thing about this setup is that if I want to make a small change I can just log in to Github and commit a quick edit in the repo [3] through Github's web-based UI A new PDF is generated and the web-based version being updates automatically.
[1] https://jsonresume.org/
[2] http://geoff-clayton-cv.s3-website-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/
[3] https://github.com/jefc1111/cv/tree/master
[+] [-] thomasfromcdnjs|1 year ago|reply
But you can just go to https://registry.jsonresume.org, login with github, create the gist, and then your resume is automatically "deployed". And it is stored on github gist, so data is yours, and has revisions as a nice added benefit.
[+] [-] glumreaper|1 year ago|reply
I regret to say it but I found what looks like a typo - you've got "automcomplete" where I think you mean "autocomplete". I hope this helps improve your resume.
[+] [-] Scubabear68|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] lelanthran|1 year ago|reply
It's neither visually pleasing nor is it more easily readable than other CVs that I have seen.
It's fine for a CV to be visually ugly as long as its readable, or visually attractive in spite of being less readable. You can't fail at both dimensions.
If you're really happy with a CV that looks and reads like this, save yourself all the effort and make a RTF document instead.
[+] [-] pcrh|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] deepspace|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Communitivity|1 year ago|reply
That said, I never send the same resume to everyone. I tailor a resume for each job I apply to. This doesn't mean leaving off positions or lying. It does mean taking the work done in a position and giving it a slant toward the target job.
For example, let's say I created a web app that shows a sales dashboard, with stats visualization, from raw daily sales data.
Job 1 (applying for Front-End) - Created monthly sales dashboard web site using React, MaterialUI, SASS, Node, Riak, and D3. Dashboard provided grid-based summary over individual weeks, months, and years. It also provided configurable line graphs and pie charts for various sales metrics. Data pre-processing done with Sci-Kit. Later added sales prediction using Machine Learning.
Job 2 (applying for Data Analysis) - Analyzed raw daily sales data to determine data cleansing needed, and created tool pipeline using Python NumPy, SciKit, and scikit-learn. Integrated pipeline into Riak data source ingest, and then built sales dashboard web site to visualize the data. Provided ML model for sales prediction built with scikit-learn, with XX parameters. Model achieved YY accuracy with only a ZZ mean error.
Same work in both, but I highlight the tasks most relevant to the target job.
Other thoughts are that Latex is a good way to get a well laid out PDF resume (PDF is not the web, you should have two versions of your resume), and I agree with other commenters - the final product needs more polish if it was actually going to be used to produce a resume to send in (I think it's fine as a proof of concept though).
[+] [-] cm2187|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] guilherme-puida|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] lionkor|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] altgans|1 year ago|reply
I first looked at Canva templates, but apparently nowadays you are supposed to do black/white and no fancy designs for ATS readability. Then I tried it with Google Docs b/w resumee template, which kinda got me to write actual skills. Then I approached the coach, got her template and iterated, and then I also added some rules from here (https://principiae.be/pdfs/ECV-1.01.pdf).
I also involved ChatGPT to analyze job postings and to get the mix of keywords in my resumme right. Tools like https://tagcrowd.com/ also help with that. For example, I am targeting 'IT analyst' roles, and it does make sense that I have the word 'analysis' a few times in my CV.
E: mine is basically structured the following way
Name
Title
Summary
3x5 ATS keywords/skills specific to my profile and role
last ten years, also written in a way that 'gamifies' ATS: 'Year, worked as ROLE at Company, did XYZ'
--page 2--
Education (degree + grades)
Skills Training
Languages
Some more IT skills (programming languages, project management, ...)
E2: I obviously have no idea what I am doing, but I got three interview proposals for 10 applications, so I guess 30%.
[+] [-] knallfrosch|1 year ago|reply
I've found that splitting data and representation is not as feasible as it sounds. You add a job and suddenly your CV doesn't fit on a page anymore, and cutting details from previous jobs isn't enough. So you change the layout, ever so slightly, because the data changed. And version control? Nice for building, but it's not like you'll ever go back in time anyway.
What's nice though is defining the data and then trying different layouts to see what works.
[+] [-] bionsystem|1 year ago|reply
I noticed the container they run uses nix too, which is nice although I don't care about it as long as it works. I could add signing of the pdf maybe some day for fun. What's great with this approach is how little hassle there is and nothing to install, nowhere, and produces the same clean resume I've used for over a decade (but needed to install a thousand things I could never remember from one computer to another).
[+] [-] BaculumMeumEst|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] codetrotter|1 year ago|reply
A “boring” short black and white non-interactive document that I export to PDF.
It has my name, contact info, a list of recent work history, and mention of some of the technologies that I work with.
Last time I was applying for jobs, two years ago, I got an interview and eventually a job offer from the company I most wanted to work for among the ones I’d been submitting applications to. I’ve been there since.
I agree with you. And I think that any attempt to make the document look flashy would only have worked against me. At least when applying to the kind of jobs that I prefer – backend software engineering work.
[+] [-] natertux|1 year ago|reply
Not sure if you can say that it was over engineered or not but I used the following:
* Frontend framework : Next.js / React (Functional components with React Hooks)
* Rendering : Static Site Generation
* Programming language : Typescript
* CI/CD : Github actions
* Unit test : jest
* Design : SASS / Responsive design
* Data validation : AJV / JSON Schema / Joi
* Infrastructure : Cloudflare pages / Terraform
* Package management: Yarn
* Linting & Formatting : ESLint / StyleLint / Prettier
* Pattern matching : ts-pattern
* CSS framework : react-bootstrap
* Monorepo : nx
* PDF generation : jspdf
* Contact form : web3forms
* Captcha : hCaptcha
I am quite happy with the final output : https://www.remikeat.com
It would pull the data from
https://data.remikeat.com/resume.en.json
https://data.remikeat.com/resume.jp.json
https://data.remikeat.com/resume.fr.json
So I can just update the JSON and the webpage will update itself.
Also as the PDF is generated locally, the PDF also get updated automatically.
And I didn't know there was a JSON standard for resume. Maybe, I should migrate the format I designed to this open standard.
Ultimately, I wanted to add a portfolio section, where I would show some of my projects like
https://stackl.remikeat.com which is a stack language interpreter written in Ocaml and compiled to js with js_of_ocaml.
[+] [-] sondr3|1 year ago|reply
[1]: https://github.com/sondr3/cv-aas
[+] [-] hitchstory|1 year ago|reply
I cribbed a CV template from overleaf and put some jinja2 in it to take the content from CV note in my note taking app: https://hitchdev.com/orji/using/latex-cv/
With termux I can then hit a button to run a script and it will instantly generate a pretty PDF using latex from an orgzly note and fire off an android share intent.
The nice thing about this set up was that if a recruiter called me while I was out and wanted a CV quickly with a couple of tweaks made I could just do it on my note taking app and email an updated PDF in a few seconds.
In theory I could easily change the style of the CV but in practice I haven't felt the need to touch it in years.
[+] [-] elAhmo|1 year ago|reply
A simple file (Word doc, Numbers, Google Doc) that receives a change every few years and is exported as a PDF seems to do the task better.
[+] [-] Scubabear68|1 year ago|reply
With that expectation set, the end product was severely underwhelming. The visual flare is non-existent.
[+] [-] cprecioso|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] tristor|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] datadeft|1 year ago|reply
https://typst.app/
[+] [-] ChrisMarshallNY|1 year ago|reply
It was basically a cartoon version of him, walking through his various life accomplishments.
It was well-done, and all, but I found it a bit annoying. Also, it was Flash.
[+] [-] Xcelerate|1 year ago|reply
When you have 1,000 resumes from laid off software engineers from FANG companies that all look mostly the same, how do you decide who to call?
I’ve been thinking lately that an interesting project might be to look for publicly available resumes of people who have recently accepted new jobs within the tech industry and compare their resumes against those of people who have been looking for a new job for a while. The comparison would be qualitative if only a few resumes are available or perhaps quantitative (i.e., a classification model) if many are available.
Recruiters are not looking for the same signals as hiring managers, and since I’m not a recruiter, I would really like to know exactly what it is that they are looking for.
As an example of this kind of discrepancy that caught me totally off-guard, I was slightly below the “years of experience” requirement on a particular job posting that seemed to match my background perfectly. The recruiter I was talking to had reached out about another job posting where I did meet the YoE requirement, but I said the other posting was a significantly better fit for my skills and experience. The recruiter replied that the YoE requirement was not negotiable, so I was put onto the interview loop for the much less applicable role because of this arbitrary and narrowly missed line in the sand (and of course I failed that interview, wasting both my time and theirs).
A hiring manager would care less about years in seat and more about capability. That such a YoE requirement might be used as a hard filter when scanning resumes caught me by surprise—I had previously sent out plenty of resumes where I narrowly missed the YoE requirement, and in retrospect, my application was probably discarded immediately while using up the “quota” of how many times I could apply to that company. These sorts of insights from the recruiting world would be great to know in advance from the candidate’s perspective.
[+] [-] Terretta|1 year ago|reply
The choice depends on your “need” for the next job.
* Examples of opposites in resume-reading personas: Many roles open vs. single role open. In-house versus outsourced recruiting. Contentful versus process recruiting. Technical versus MBA managers. Surface impression forming versus depth reading. Credential seeking versus competence recognizing.