Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by tgittos 953 days ago
Your resume reads as if it was written to appeal to an engineer.

Write one that appeals to a manager. Talk less about what you did in your previous roles and more about "the business value you provided" in your previous roles.

If in doubt, pretend you're your own boss trying to get a raise. What would you say about you to justify it?

Specifically, I got my current job (in September) because I was able to tell a story of how I took an MVP and helped move it to production at scale at a previous company. They didn't care about the tech stack or my day-to-day duties.

2 comments

That only works once he's in interviews and people are looking at his resume. He's not getting to the interviews, which means the resume/portfolio doesn't check off enough boxes to the recruiter/hiring manager.

Some things on the resume that help:

1. Ivy league education.

2. FAANG listed in past experience.

3. A slew of technologies listed.

No one cares about an Ivy education in tech, it's worth about as much as a state school. The programs are completely devoid of rigor. Now CMU or MIT might raise some eyebrows in a good way but there's maybe 3 or 4 schools in the country that are 'notable' for CS.
Engineers don't care-- sure. However, random HR person screening a resume is going to have a simple thought process.

1. Georgia tech? MMm ok.

2. Harvard? Oh I know that one!

I don't think HR really cares either. Ivy League provides you with contacts to get into the room. An advocate already on the inside who will call up HR and get them to move you into the "Consider" pile.
eh good point, I was thinking big tech, but you're right, possible that applying to some average boring bigco it might matter (for a few more years at least...)
>"the business value you provided"

Wouldn't this rely on the assumption that OP is a profit center?

I guess, "this is how much our company convinced the client to pay, and we got it done x% ahead of schedule" is probably the best one can do if they are a cost center.