Job Hacking

Targeting your audience

I've written more than a few posts about resume writing, with one clear point being to think about what the Hiring Manager wants in the ideal candidate, and then write to that audience.

Today, FTE 1.0, one of the funniest HR Blogs (or is it HR Art?) out there had a post which made me think twice about this point of view regarding resumes. My take is that it makes your resume creation choices that much more important - which boss do you want to work for?

And for you bosses out there, it should help you improve what you ask your staff to do in any given role.

Just look at what you've done!

Seth has an interesting post about Bill James and recruiting. 

After pushing my way through hundreds of resumes and linkedin profiles over the last several weeks, I can tell you that the world is wonderfully short on resumes and profiles with descriptions of shipped product. If you state what you shipped, and the outcome of that work product, you'll be ahead of at least 95% of your peers - and your resume or profile will stand apart from the crowd.

Here are some examples to help you along:

• As an SDE on the core dev team, shipped versions 1.0 and 2.0 of 'Jimmy's Amazing Click Express', along with several dot releases. Was principally responsible for the Click-Engine feature, which was the primary revenue generator. Improved revenue generation by 50% from v. 1.0 to 2.0 by adding several patent-pending SMO algorithms.
• Closed 5 deals my first year, resulting in $1M in revenue, and exceeded my target by 25%. Closed 10 deals in my second year, with $4M in revenue, earning top salesperson of the year for my team.
• Added 25 people to the company in my first year, all of which were graded 4s by their immediate supervisor on a scale of 1 - 5 with 5 being high. Average grade for all employees was 3.0 for this review period. 

You can do it - it's just describing what you achieved.

Resume. Speed. Disaster.

I've been pouring through a bunch of resume submissions at work, and have discovered a category you do not want associated with your resume: The hurried submission.

The way this typically comes about is a buddy of yours contacts you and says, "Hey, you know how we've always wanted to work together again, and how you're all impressed with my company? Well, we have an opening that might fit for you. Get me your resume NOW." 

Sending a resume into a company is not the time to show your Quick Draw McGraw act. There are several steps, at minimum, which you should take to make a great first impression on paper:

1. Read the job description. Ask your buddy to send it to you.
2. Check out the company website and the other jobs that they have posted. Read what they say. Think closely about that language. Put a pin in it.
3. Review your current resume.
4. Update your resume, and specifically your current role.
5. Sleep on it.
6. Go back to your resume the next day and then revise it again, this time with an eye towards the language they used as a guide to revising the messaging in your resume.
7. Set the resume aside. Good idea to send it to another friend for an edit pass.
8. Come back to the resume several hours later, and if possible, another day later. Review your resume again.
9. Send the resume to your buddy. Ask him what he thinks about it. Does it mesh with the company? Does it answer the need in the ad? Make sure you tell him to not send it along to the hiring manager until you both agree it's ready.
10. When it's ready, send it.

You might look at these 10 steps and say, "No way, I gotta get this in, the job is going to go fast." Maybe and maybe not. Remember, unemployment is high right now. Employers do not NEED to rush, so they won't. They know that making a bad hiring decision now is much worse later. They are taking their time. And so should you.

Are words holding your search back?

Yesterday, I stepped smack dab into the middle of the healthcare debate, and got a lesson in words.

Words are important because they represent our thoughts. And, our thoughts become our actions. And, our words also become our stories and our myths.

For the healthcare debate, here are some of the phrases that are framing our thoughts:

• "Death Panel"
• "insurance rackets"
• "Big Government"
• "AstroTurf protesters"

The thing is, the same thing applies to looking for a job. There are words and phrases that candidates use, recruiters use, and hiring managers use, and it turns out they don't really match up.

For example:

• 5 years of experience doing...
• Rockstar Java Developer
• Team-oriented
• Experienced with C, C++, Java, CSS, HTML, MySql, Apache, Perl, etc.

Let's take the 'experience' question. It might be that you have been coding at college on in-class projects and some stuff on the side during break. You think this is experience. The hiring manager thinks that experience means that the ideal candidate has worked for some period of time on a commercial development team creating software for their desired market. 

Oh, and there's the whole question of how well you know how to program. This is one of the areas that creates the greatest amount of angst and humor in the recruiting process. Does memorizing the Knuth books qualify? Can you code different algorithms in the language of choice by the employer? Do you know how different compilers treat the same code differently? How do you make an algorithm more efficient in a given Development environment? How do you go about refactoring code? How many years does this all take to get right?

'Rockstar'. Oh my. Could be that the hiring manager thinks this is someone who knows the programming cannon and can code anything. Fast. Without question. And be able to synch immediately with the rest of the Dev staff. For the candidate, it could mean that you are a virtuoso coder, yes, and that you expect that there will be a nice bowl of blue M&Ms on your desk every morning, that there will be a nice cute thang delivering your Peet's Double-tall mocha every day at 10:30 am, and that all other Developers on the team will do your bidding without question. 

For y'all on the job hunt, I challenge you - cut the crap on broad-based assumptions linked to common phrases. Know what you can and cannot do. Use appropriate language to describe what you are. The same thing applies to recruiters and hiring managers, but they don't think it does because it's a buyers market. For now.

Be Bold!

There are so many ways to make your resume stand out.

For example, use an Objective Section.

You can also include short recommendations from key supervisors in your career.

And, of course, you should include a line or two at the end of each career entry to detail the technology used, such as: Java, Javascript, CSS, HTML, MySQL, Linux, C++

You should, of course, make the resume short. And use declarative sentences.

And above all, BOLD random words. Because that's what all the best developers do to help the really dumb recruiters see all the key items on their resume.

- or -

Focus on clean, crisp formatting. It makes it easier to pick up the phone and call you.

re: What does 'career growth' look like?

Got a good question in response to my post, Well then, what is time again?

NotLooking wants to know if there is career growth for those individual contributors in the Development world, from the eyes of the hiring manager or recruiter.

Dang straight there is.

For me, when I read a Developer's, or Tester's, or Program Manager's resume, and especially one where the candidate has been at it for more than 5 years, I want to see evidence of learning and maybe more importantly curiosity. Having said this, the evidence of these two items is different between a Contract Cowboy Coder and a Sr. SDE who jumps jobs after 2 or so major releases of a product.

The evidence I look for includes things like learning new languages, jumping into developing on new platforms, teaching adjunct programming classes, getting a degree. To me, this is evidence of self-directed growth.

One of the most remarkable interviews I conducted was with a very seasoned developer who had completed his J.D. a month or so before. I was interviewing this candidate for a Sr. SDE role, and of course I had to ask as to why he was pursuing a Development role when he had just completed his law degree. He said it was because he studied law to bring deeper understanding to his coding as he had noticed similarities in the construction of legal documents and software.

That's career growth.

Your resume on PDFs...

Got another question regarding pdfs, "Would you please explain why you don't like pdfs?  It is the only document format proven to be viewed exactly the same on any platform."

What's with this 'you don't like X' this week??? ;-)

I like PDFs fine. I just think your resume has no place being in one.

Why?

Because too many Applicant Tracking Systems, ATSs don't scan or read them properly. Which means that when our hard-working recruiting-types go a-searching, they miss your resume.

In this case, all that cognitively-based formatting, and that way-too-cool-for-school font are wasted.

So, if you want a job, put your resume in either Text format or a Microsoft Word format.

What is a result?

I've had a couple of job hunters asking me questions about what creates a powerful resume.

"Results", says I.

They respond, "I wrote everything in PARs format, and so it is ready to go!" (PARs stands for Problem - Action - Results, which is a good thing for a resume).

I look at the resume, and no, not so much. The problem is their description of the results. It's all about what they delivered.

That's not really results what a hiring manager cares about. They want to know that what you delivered improved the financial picture of the organization. They want to see how your past work history will improve their organization.

Now, you, as the proud candidate may think that the delivered results are great. The problem is that just delivering something is not good enough. Sure, you need to deliver the product, the service, whatever. Then you need to track the results. Did the product improve things? Did revenue increase? Did the costs go down? Was the process more efficient and save the firm from hiring a bunch of people?

Look at it this way, the way a recruiter sees things. Lots and lots of resumes that tell them what candidates delivered. And then, one or two that show the impact of the delivered items.

Guess which resumes stand out?

re: What Employers Want to See on Your Resume

Guy Kawasaki has a nice guest post from Glen Kelman, CEO at Redfin, What Employers Want to See in Your Resume.

It's a straight-ahead post, and it's got some great suggestions in it. There are a few bits I'd quibble with, like pdf-formatted resumes (just don't do them because too many ATSs don't read them straight), but 95% of it is G-R-E-A-T.

One thing that's tough to put into context for most job-hunters is understanding what makes for a "generic skill" (I agree with Glen completely about avoiding them). It's one of the reasons I H-A-T-E Summary sections. I've yet to see one that did anything positive in marketing a candidate because most everyone does not want to take risks on their resume so they say stuff that's safe, like:

• Experienced executive with 20 years background in mobile technology.
• Highly energetic coder with deep experience in Java.
• Multi-faceted Systems Engineer, with hands-on experience with Linux & Windows OS.

It's all safe, it's all bland, and it does nothing to move you forward in the eyes of the scanner, er reader.

A new take on video resumes

Let's start with a frame on this post: I hate video resumes.

They are a very bad idea for so many reasons.

Today, I saw a video via DefenseTech that made me think a bit about what a video resume is. Probably because I had just told someone that the whole purpose of a resume is to get an interview.

With that in mind, take a look at this video, and think about this: If you were a hiring manager and you saw this, would you want to hire him? So, now, what other kinds of work scenarious can you think of that, if recorded, would put you forward in a positive light?

It's not a resume - it's a sales & marketing tool.

This video has a lot of very foul language, so you've been forwarned.