Let me give you a slightly different take. There are no specific things I'm looking for. But here are a few red flags that have proven to be good indicators of who NOT to hire. Don't
- Use high-level vague marketing speech like "helped reduce customers acquisition cost by $X" - The world is complex, who knows what that means in practice.
- List MOOCs, certificates, or free online courses on your resume. 99% of these require no commitment and don't teach you anything. Listing them signals that you care about cheap credentials more than learning. If you wanted to learn, you would've created a project out of it, tried to implement something, or written a blog post, etc. I'd rather see "I privately read books about X in my free time" than cheap MOOC credential signaling. That'd be more impressive and I could ask about it in an interview.
- List software like Excel or Google spreadsheets. I mean, if you're an engineer I'm assuming you can use a computer. Listing this means that you're living in a different world.
- List fluffy soft skills like "I am a good communicator" without any backup. Results speak louder than words.
- Too many spelling mistakes.
These are the things off the top of my head, I may add to it later.
> List MOOCs, certificates, or free online courses on your resume. 99% of these require no commitment and don't teach you anything. Listing them signals that you care about cheap credentials more than learning.
How I can tell you don't work with the government....
Government and government-related consulting loves certifications. If you're in that field you probably already know this, but if for some reason you're looking to relocate to a gov't-heavy area, or just applying to a contractor for the first time: yes, list certifications if you have them. If you don't have something the employer will have to pay for you to get one anyway, so already having something will save them money.
I would also disagree in general that these require no commitment. I've done a handful of MOOCs, mostly for fun, but I stopped on most of them because I realized they were really time-consuming. In particular exercises with deadlines instead of considering that most people doing these classes work full-time and might therefore prefer to complete at a slower pace.
On the other hand, apart from niche areas indeed nobody seems to care about certifications.
There’s a difference between certificates and certifications. Certificates are just a document showing you completed a course. Certifications are for those that have proven to a certifying body that they know the requisite skills and knowledge of a specific role.
ie: there’s a difference between having a certificate showing you’ve finished some Certified Ethical Hacker course, and actually having the Certified Ethical Hacker certification. The former is not worth much, even for govevernment or their vendors.
> Use high-level vague marketing speech like "helped reduce customers acquisition cost by $X" - The world is complex, who knows what that means in practice.
I agree that high-level buzzword-laden items in a resume are off-putting, but that example is actually concrete evidence that the candidate:
1) helped the business in a tangible, quantifiable way. (competent)
2) knows how their work was contributing to an important business metric. (aligned with business side)
The problem with this is that there is no context. It's impossible to verify or evaluate what happened. Who knows what "helped" means. It could be fixing a bug in an open source software product that was eventually used to reduce CAC. Who knows. It's vague.
The world is complex. There is rarely such a thing as a single person writing a few lines of code, and that code directly leading to $ savings. There are complex interactions and dependencies. Also, not all engineers are working on code that has measureable bottom-line impact, so these statements are only possible for a few. For example, an engineer refactoring old code can save a company millions over the lifespan of that code, and it would never show up as dollar values anywhere.
On the other hand, someone can change a cell in an Excel spreadsheet that had a typo in it and save the company $100,000. Should I hire the person because they found a typo? These kind of statements with dollar values are meaningless because the reader is missing context. More often than not, they are vanity statements and come across as disingenuous. I'd rather have you describe what you actually did.
A better example would be "Architected and implemented new real-time event messaging infrastructure using technologies X and Y that allowed us to move of expensive SaaS service Z and save $$.", or something like that. At least that tells me what you did, but even here the $ value is meaningless.
> The problem with this is that there is no context. It's impossible to verify or evaluate what happened.
This is usually what a first stage phone interview is for, especially if that piece of information is critical for the hiring decision. I agree the wording should be more precise about the capacity in which the candidate helped, but there's also a balance to strike between providing that context and brevity (which is valuable in resumes).
> The problem with this is that there is no context. It's impossible to verify or evaluate what happened. Who knows what "helped" means. It could be fixing a bug in an open source software
Which is the worst thing about modern hiring practices.
> List software like Excel or Google spreadsheets. I mean, if you're an engineer I'm assuming you can use a computer. Listing this means that you're living in a different world.
I'd take this with a grain of salt. Excel is a very malleable tool that can do marvels in the right hands.
> - List software like Excel or Google spreadsheets. I mean, if you're an engineer I'm assuming you can use a computer. Listing this means that you're living in a different world.
Yes, that different world is the public sector (or even just enterprise hiring), where applicants are graded against criteria.
Not all certifications are bad. Some are quite good. For example, the Google Cloud certifications (associate cloud engineer, professional cloud architect, professional data engineer, professional cloud developer etc) give you a good technical understanding of GCP services and to use them to achieve business objectives.
The fluffy soft skills thing - sometimes we're just trying to get past the ATS. If those words are in the job description, they're gonna have to be shoehorned in somewhere if the company uses one of those god awful ATS suites
> List fluffy soft skills like "I am a good communicator" without any backup. Results speak louder than words.
How you bring result/backup about soft skills in a CV? Is already quite hard to get an understanding of hard skill from a piece of paper let alone soft skills.
Unless you think you can condense the complexity of the experience of a person in a two page document.
Also trying to backup something like that with things such as "speaking engagement" etc is not even working. There are people who are "good communicator" for a certain audience (eg. Entry level) but quite bad for another audience (eg seasoned engineers). For example for me a bad communicator is a person that spend 30 minutes to share a concept that can be compressed in 2.
The best advice I ever got about writing a CV is to avoid using adjectives. Instead of saying "good communicator", give an example of good communication. Examples could be pull requests on GitHub, conference talks, a blog post, etc. Or just demonstrate that you're a good communicator by crafting a resume people want to read.
You're right, so I'd rather not so these claims on a resume at all. But, for example, if you've managed a team for several years or given a lot of talks, it's more likely that you're good at communicating ideas, simply because you've had a lot of practice and you have probably gotten some feedback over time.
Again, this is pretty subjective. I find people who do these things being very bad communicator because they can talk only to entry level people. Most of the speech in any conference around the world are just simple stuff that can be condensed in an hour. Usually you could do the same in a 10 minutes session if you are targeting a more skilled audience
Also I had experience on working and organizing team of people and I would really point out that is super hard to get people to work together doesn't matter what. There are people who hate each other and can't work together and some that dick head that get along well.
So what I do I just skip the soft skills section in the first place. What I find it useful is scenario base question like: last time you had a conflict in your team how did you handle that. You can understand a good communicator much better in this way than claiming to have experience at speaking on random conference (communication has much more to do with being able to empathize with the other person's point of view rather than keep pushing through your own idea with very nice pointless words)
My experience is almost diametrically opposite on the first few things.
> Most of the speech in any conference around the world are just simple stuff that can be condensed in an hour
I have found that in majority of technical talks, an hour is thoroughly insufficient to convey everything in detail. This means, a good talk requires days of preparation, careful understanding of the critical aspects of the subject matter and building a narrative that joins all of them seamlessly.
It is incredibly difficult.
> Usually you could do the same in a 10 minutes session if you are targeting a more skilled audience
In my experience, 10 minutes is only good for elevator pitches. To take away anything of technical values, it usually takes 60 minutes or more.
> that is super hard to get people to work together doesn't matter what
That's why my mentioned running clubs/committees or being deeply involved a team sport. Those exact same dynamics manifest in the 2 scenarios and the skills obtained form there are to some degree, transferable to industry.
> What I find it useful is scenario base question like: last time you had a conflict in your team how did you handle that
I love these kinds of questions. Not because they always reveal anything important, but they play to the strengths of a good story teller.
Most people at this point, practice these questions just like leetcode. The interviewee doesn't answer your question, they fetch a meticulously crafted and appropriately fictionalized account of a past event, and the interviewer is none the wiser.
I'd just not reply to everything to avoid a infinite loop but I like your last point:
> Most people at this point, practice these questions just like leetcode
This is a valid point and as you mentioned is true also for hard skills (eg. Algo prep with leet code). But at one point the question would be: would you rather hire someone that showed dedication for the job to the point that spent weeks/months to prepare leet code or possible other interview questions or someone that perhaps performed worst during the interview?
Most of the time you can always find out who is just memorizing everything by asking follow-up questions (both for technical and non technical questions) and as I guess you know (there's plenty info on the web) you can find books on how to crack any interview
- Use high-level vague marketing speech like "helped reduce customers acquisition cost by $X" - The world is complex, who knows what that means in practice.
- List MOOCs, certificates, or free online courses on your resume. 99% of these require no commitment and don't teach you anything. Listing them signals that you care about cheap credentials more than learning. If you wanted to learn, you would've created a project out of it, tried to implement something, or written a blog post, etc. I'd rather see "I privately read books about X in my free time" than cheap MOOC credential signaling. That'd be more impressive and I could ask about it in an interview.
- List software like Excel or Google spreadsheets. I mean, if you're an engineer I'm assuming you can use a computer. Listing this means that you're living in a different world.
- List fluffy soft skills like "I am a good communicator" without any backup. Results speak louder than words.
- Too many spelling mistakes.
These are the things off the top of my head, I may add to it later.