Ask HN: what do you look for in a resume?

[elbenshira]

As an engineer looking through resumes, do you want to see all the languages and tools we have used before, or just the primary ones? For example, I list Python, C/C++, and Java as my languages even though I have dabbled in Scheme, Ruby, PHP, etc.

I've seem some people put SVN as a skill, but isn't that assumed? I've seen VIM as a skill. Irrelevant?

I don't want to clutter up my resume, but I don't want them to think that I only can program in languages that the university teaches.

[run4yourlives]

I honestly could care little about your "skills". I say that because I've come to learn that a resume is no place to discern language competence and/or tool familiarity (eg, SVN).

Instead, I look for the "case study" resume. In other words, talk about a particular project, the tools you used, and the result to the bottom line/client. Structured this way, it's harder to bullshit your achievement, and you get an idea that the author has a good idea of the big picture - something many programmers lack.

At the interview, I'd ask questions on the projects designed to assess skill. In other words:

"On project X, did you use a version control system?"

"Yeah, SVN"

"Cool, how many branches did you have going at any given time? Did you run into any of the common issues, which ones?"

I can usually tell the bs'ers right away, but if you've done the project based resume, you usually know the stuff.

Any more than three languages on a resume, and I either assume you are full of it (ie, don't know any) or are some sort of hacker god, and would expect to see the same sort of "I programed improvements to the space shuttle's flight control systems" project backing that up. :-)

Getting past the HR department might be a different story altogether, but I usually tell them not to vet any technical skills at all.

[YCW10]

Links to websites are probably the best thing you can include on a resume. They are nice checkboxes on paper, but playing with something you built is invaluable.

[ErrantX]

Honesty.

I think I have read one utterly honest CV (out of about 100 in the past year) - it was one of the less thrilling ones too.

He's a great employee.

(I know that's not what you were asking - but it strikes me as a useful tip. And yes, I know it does depend on the employer :) sometimes honesty holds you back)

[nobody_nowhere]

Relevant experience. Successful projects. Evidence of meaningful contributions. Indications of clear thought and expression. Any of those things might get you to a phone screen and/or programming test.

The details depend on your experience level and the job. Are you applying for an entry-level position fresh out of college? Then I'd love to know that you've used and understand source control. Do you have ten years under the belt? Then focus on your contributions.

Above all, be honest. My coworker phone screened a guy last week. Asked if he had a chance to look at our website. The applicant said "yes, a little", so the interviewer asked him what we do. Silence. We told him to call back in a couple of days. It's okay to say "no, I've been really busy". Trying to BS is such a red flag.

[nathanb]

For me, showing that you're familiar with general concepts is better than specific software. If you have extra space, write "version control", don't write "svn". If you don't have the space, don't bother. If your interview doesn't make me confident that you can and will learn the basics in an afternoon, no hire.

Only list languages that you're comfortable being interviewed in. If I see a language on your resume, I may ask you to whiteboard a solution using that language. If you can't, I'm going to wonder where else you stretched the truth. Be prepared to describe at least one project per language listed. Thus, don't list languages you haven't written cool projects in.

Make sure your cool projects are front and center, by the way. You worked for company X? Great. What cool things did you do there? You write open source software in your free time? Awesome. You created an interactive website related to a hobby you're passionate about? We don't do websites, but that's still way cooler than the kid who worked at an internship all summer and can't tell me one interesting thing he did there.

The best resume advice I can give you is this: I look at your resume for maybe fifteen seconds at a career fair or thirty seconds if I'm sitting at my desk. Make a list of everything you want on your resume. Sort it by most to least epic. Make sure everything on the "most" end stands out. Make it easy for me to find information about you (grade level/professional experience level, type of job sought (intern/full time), graduation date/date you're available for hire) so that I have more time to look at your epic stuff.

Any employer who's going to be impressed because you have vim or MS Office on your resume is not one I would want to work for; if you feel the same, don't even bother listing it.

[icey]

I look for things that are directly applicable to the posting I have up.

I dislike seeing filler like "SVN", or "Word". I hate it when people list every piece of software they've ever touched. Tell me what's relevant and I'll assume that's not the full corpus of your computer using career.

Here is a snippet of something I pulled out of a random resume from my 'rejected' file:

  MS Office, DOS, Windows 3.1, 95, 98, 2000, ME, XP, Vista
  HTML, CSS, JavaScript, VBScript, ASP/ASP.Net, C#, 
  VB/VB.Net, AJAX, JAVA, SQL

This was for a C# gig. I don't care at all about Windows 3.1. Or MS office for that matter.

[xal]

I usually look for any signs of not being a left brained drone.

E.g. nice typography, mention of creative hobbies, maybe a picture of you doing something fun, open source work etc. I generally don't care about anything you have done 6 months or more ago (degrees) and It's important to me that you are fun to spend time with.

In fact open source is really key. Anyone who spends their free time doing coding is probably very passionate and will likely make a great employee. For the current programmer position I just posted I simply asked people for their GitHub profile as an experiment. I got more then 70 applications.

[ramanujan]

I actually am interested in seeing resumes that list more than just languages. E.g. if I see something like this

Linux (GNU textutils, LDAP, ...) C/C++ (STL, Boost, gdb Archer, Cint) Emacs/Elisp (Org-mode, ESS, IPython, Haskell-mode) Python (Numpy, Scipy, rpy2, Matplotlib, Django) R (ggplot2, rgl, etc.) ...

I'm more confident that they actually know the stack of technologies related to that language.

I'm not saying it's worth it to kitchen sink it, but rather that if all they're using is the most vanilla editor and environment, then they probably haven't learned the importance of tools.

[spooneybarger]

my take:

your resume should be targeted to the job you are applying for. initially i dont care that you know scheme if i'm hiring you to do XYZ, but once we get further along, i do care. highlight what was important in the job posting and just tease that there is more.

please note that although i do hiring, i know from talking to others who do, i'm not nec. typical in how i go about it. ( as in, i often dont read resumes at all )

[bayareaguy]

The resumes I like the most explicitly list the languages, platforms, environments and tools the candidate has been working with for the past 8-12 months separately from the larger list of things properly characterizing their full experience.

[EGF]

A link to someones web presence

[edw519]

For each language you choose to include, in descending order of importance:

  - amount of work done (years, lines of code, # of programs)
  - self-assessed level of expertise (expert, novice, 7 out of 10, etc.)
  - how much you like it and why
  - 1 or 2 major projects done in that language

[Edinburger]

é ;-)

[zackattack]

é's. ;)