[calepayson]

> 1. This author’s writing is extremely, uncommonly good.

> 2. His resume is designed poorly… This is the world of TikTok and Instagram reels

Imo this is exactly the problem. We’ve constructed a system where brilliance doesn’t shine through. The idea that someone as thoughtful as OP needs to tiktokify their resume to even have a chance at getting hired is ridiculous.

I’m young, so I have no clue, but surely the job market didn’t always work like this?

[windowshopping]

Well, I think there's a middle ground between "tiktokifying" and "having your CV look like an essay." Brevity is the soul of wit, after all. These summaries of projects/positions are just very long. In this context, I feel they're too long. 1-2 sentences each should be sufficient, not extended paragraphs.

Many other commenters here disagree, though, so....clearly it's subjective!

[coolThingsFirst]

It doesn't matter at all, if it's not enough that they have a DeepMind internship the rest are just trivia and details. People get hung up on details when they REALLY are just not interested in hiring.

No one rejects candidates based on the color of their shirt if they really need said candidate.

[aprilthird2021]

> they REALLY are just not interested in hiring.

That is the point of OP's article yes, that and the idea that being "out of distribution" is increasingly important. This, mentioning his unique qualities (e.g. a Deep Mind internship) and not his similar qualities (everything else) would probably be pertinent

[vkou]

Which is, of course, the meat of the matter. Nobody 'needs' to hire a junior anymore.

[bitfilped]

Eveyone needs to hire juniors, it's how seniors get made. Management thinks they're smart and have found a shortcut to save money, but it's only going to lead to degregation of skill at the senior level as well as raise the amount of money people that truly operate at a senior level can demand. I've already seen both happen where I work.

[array_key_first]

Nobody, in particular, needs to hire juniors. But everyone needs to hire juniors.

[gedy]

In my limited world view and 35 year career, the big shift I see (which I view is a problem) is that companies seem to lean way more on young HR types to recruit and filter than in the past. I can’t speak for everyone, but to me it seems it used to be a lot more common for the skilled hiring manager to be responsible for looking for new hires.

[nradov]

That happened because online job sites made it so easy for candidates to apply that hiring managers could no longer personally keep up with the flood. It's a bad situation for both employers and candidates but there doesn't seem to be any practical alternative.

[carlosjobim]

But then you're making it even worse by hiring inexperienced HR staff to do your hiring? Who mostly make their hiring decisions on whether they would want to have sex with a candidate.

[jjav]

> That happened because online job sites made it so easy for candidates to apply that hiring managers could no longer personally keep up with the flood.

Yes, this is a big factor. As an actively hiring manager, there's nothing worse than when HR enables receiving resumes through linkedin apply. We got a flood of many thousands of resumes. While I feel a duty to review them all, it's just flat out impossible so I had to skip most of them without reading.

On my most recent hire I'm glad HR stopped that and required people to file through the company website. Volume was reduced to many hundreds, which is more tractable. I still wasn't able to review them all, but at least a much higher percentage, like 60% instead of 2%

[lisbbb]

There has to be a way to limit the flood--someone has to pay a fee someplace.

[vee-kay]

The only fee will be a subscription to AI LLM.

AI will do a cheap job of automatically filtering the potential candidates for a hire.

A suitable AI LLM can even be leveraged as automation that calls up the filtered candidates and evaluates them for the basics.

So that would filter the wheat from the chaff.

And then the humans can take the process further to interview and select the candidates for the hire.

So yeah, AI will replace the HR recruiters at least for the mundane tasks.

[deaux]

Resumes will be increasingly fake, at the same rate. We're already seeing this. Recently interviewed a guy clearly using AI interview cheating tools, which is much higher barrier and risk than just making up shit on your resume.

[nradov]

Anything that charges a fee for candidates to apply to a job is a scam.

[harvey9]

Maybe only accept applications by post.

[pempem]

Ok - this obviously doesn't work everywhere but recently was flown to a city for an interview. Day long, full loop, 5 45 min interviews + 1 working session with a panel. Had dinner with the team the night before.

There's no way to cheat at that point. You either have what they need (yay btw) or its not a fit

[lotsofpulp]

The above posts are discussing how to evaluate and narrow down the avalanche of applications to decide who to fly in for an interview.

[ghaff]

Though honestly 40 years ago, sending out hundreds of cookie cutter applications by post wasn’t that hard.

I do agree that once someone gets through an initial filter and screen they should be willing to meet in person. That has costs on both sides but, during the tech boom, one heard a lot of complaints by applicants that they’re no going to travel for interviews, dinner, etc. <shrug>

[carrychains]

I'm 47. It has always been like this with resumes.

[brendoelfrendo]

When I graduated from college in 2013, the common advice was to keep your resume to one printed page. Because people realized that job applications were all online and people rarely handled physical resumes anymore, that advice started to shift to "you can go onto a second page, if it is warranted." (My personal opinion at the time was that if an employer wasn't willing to expend a staple on my resume, then they probably won't worth working for).

I'm of the opinion that a two page resume is fine. Three pages would probably be fine if you needed to elaborate on something really niche like research, but at that point we're getting into CV territory (note that in the US, resume and CV are not the same and a CV is used primarily in academic or scientific settings; a CV is supposed to be exhaustive; a resume is not).

Funny that we're having this conversation here, though, because based on this particular example: the author's resume is fine. It needs punching up, and he should probably turn some of those paragraphs into bulleted lists, but I don't think it's too long.

[siva7]

Matches my experience. 2 page resume is standard for senior careers, everything below should be 1 page. The reason is simple: I'm evaluating if you are able to summarize the most important points for how you're fitting into this role into a very limited space. This is a important skill that transfers to many other areas and isn't obvious just by looking at the extensive list of your degrees and job positions. I trashed applications for the sole reason when i felt that the applicant missed the whole point of why i'm reading their resume. Yet some hiring folks may prefer it the other way around so it's also a cultural fit filter in some way.

[socalgal2]

No idea about small companies but FAANG companies get > 1 million resume submission a year. You need to take that into account, the recruiters and other people in the chain do not have time to read your essay.

[khafra]

Thanks to modern technology, every advertised job opening now gets > 1 million resume submissions a year, no matter the size of the company.

[Den_VR]

The way it used to work was you’d know somebody that’d know somebody and they’d vouch for you. But these days… it’s the same.

[carlosjobim]

> I’m young, so I have no clue, but surely the job market didn’t always work like this?

No it didn't. Established (older) people saw it as their duty to help the younger generation become a part of the team. Today's older generation have nothing but hate and resentment against the young, and nobody considers themselves as having even the slightest duty towards younger generations. Maybe for their own family members, but usually not even that.

[augment_me]

I agree but then the reality is that we are here now, so it's no longer ridiculous. So if you are that brilliant, you understand that there is no point of fighting the current, so to make your life easier and to get the job where you can feel fulfillment, you might have to adjust your CV to fit the reality. That is a part of the intelligence you need to adapt and has always been.

[AznHisoka]

Something something lemon market…

[soupfordummies]

Buddy, the amount of people these days with MASTER’S degrees that can’t even communicate via 2-3 (short) paragraph email exchanges… yep, it can be rough out there.

[ivape]

Why do you think any of that has to do with being a good programmer?