Re: not enough real programmers? (was Re: Byte Magazine: 18 Vintage issues, 1985-1986)

[Ian Thompson Bell <itb@techprt.co.uk>]

In my experience many people let themselves down with a poor CV.  In our organisation we brief the HR people on
basic parameters we are looking for - primarily education and skills so they can weed out the no hopers before they
even reach my desk.  Even then I read huge numbers of CVs and I am making just one decision - shall I interview
this person?  I look for two things:

1. Is there a reasonable match between what I want and what is on offer.  I do not expect perfect matches because
good people can learn new skills quickly and you never know when new experience will be usefull.

2. The person.  There are all sorts of indicators of this.  Quality of writing is one, age vs experience is another
and interests outside work can often be very revealing.  Long CVs are a definite negative here.

I do not expect the criteria I use are very different from those used by other recruiters so it is worth while
reviewing you CV against a particular job with these factors in mind.

Ian


Victoria Welch wrote:

> Huge wrote:
> >
> > In article <37ad5095.14948058@news.cadvision.com>, Brian.dot.Inglis@SystematicSw.ab.ca (Brian Inglis) writes:
> >
> > >Look at the wording used in ads for positions you can do, then
> > >work those into a detailed resume for morons. My "technical"
> > >resume is 15 pages long,
> >
> > In which case it goes directly in the trash. Do not pass Go. Do not
> > collect $200.
>
> Right on!
>
> Found this out the hard way, mine was once 13 pages.  Finally, some kind
> hearted HR type told me to re-write it down to *at most* two pages (he
> probably got tired of throwing them in the trash).  I crammed it into
> that as best I could.  Recently descovered that is gobbdegoop to the HR
> types just the same.
>
> These poor folks read an endless stack of these things, in that respect
> they have my sympathy.  I suppose that it probably bothers a lot of them
> that they have not a clue as to what they are reading - I could see a
> problem doing that and probably even understand them tossing them into
> the trash if they don't see the buzz words they are looking for (C !=
> Visual C) - it has got to be frusterating :).