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

[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...