The modern resume

[msmemory_archive]

I know what my biases are, but I haven't interviewed anywhere lately, and haven't interviewed more than a dozen candidates or so for my employer.

[Poll #1127303]

Comments

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

You, of course, know my area of expertise. It matches your husbands. :-)

I prefer that experience be listed along with some notion of what wonderful things that YOU GOT DONE at each job. I am always suspicious of "we implemented" or whatever. If the noun ain't singular, you got 'splainin to do.

You might want to peruse how your name comes up in Google, and on professional sites like Linked In, and do some cleaning up.

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

Ick. I made that sound like I checked those things and there is a problem. No. Just a suggestion.

[msmemory.livejournal.com]

See below response.

[msmemory.livejournal.com]

I did Google myself, and know I need to post the new resume, since the old version is the one that comes up. Other than that, things seem to be in order; there are links to me in a number of kinds of site, but genuine. If you have found something you think damaging - which I didn't see any of - please let me know privately.

[jducoeur]

I prefer that experience be listed along with some notion of what wonderful things that YOU GOT DONE at each job. I am always suspicious of "we implemented" or whatever. If the noun ain't singular, you got 'splainin to do.

I dunno. I used to share this opinion, but I'm biasing away from it now. The fact is, too many well-run software projects are deeply collaborative to be able to *honestly* say "I" to all of one's work.

In particular, for most of what I spent the last year on, everybody was in everybody else's pockets, pretty much by design. There were some areas that I *led*, but damned near nothing that didn't have other hands all over it. That's a feature, in my book, so I'm sympathetic to it...

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

It is my current bias.

In my previous job, we interviewed a lot of candidates who used the term "we", to take credit for work that they didn't do. If you pressed them for details of their particular contribution - they had none.

I appreciate and understand collaboration, and I make good use of it myself. Yet, somehow, I can still say "I co-designed X, wrote half of Y, did Z for the team".

[jducoeur]

True, but that can get awfully wordy for a resume. And for a junior engineer, in particular, separating the contributions can be tough without running into eye-glazing verbiage (which will cost different points with some people).

Anyway, matter of taste. I don't rule "we" out as a resume item, but it's the kind of thing that I will probe into early in the interview process -- maybe as early as the phone screen, certainly in the first interview. If they can't defend their contribution, they go poing at that point...