followup to got the job:
Seth Godin has a post on Why Bother Having a Resume while people from HedgeHogLabs has their own take based on their experience with their own lead developers: Good Developers Dont Need Resumes
from seth godin’s Why Bother Having a Resume:
Not just for my little internship, but in general. Great people shouldn’t have a resume.
Here’s why: A resume is an excuse to reject you. Once you send me your resume, I can say, “oh, they’re missing this or they’re missing that,” and boom, you’re out.
Having a resume begs for you to go into that big machine that looks for relevant keywords, and begs for you to get a job as a cog in a giant machine. Just more fodder for the corporate behemoth. That might be fine for average folks looking for an average job, but is that what you deserve?
If you don’t have a resume, what do you have?
How about three extraordinary letters of recommendation from people the employer knows or respects?
Or a sophisticated project they can see or touch?
Or a reputation that precedes you?
Or a blog that is so compelling and insightful that they have no choice but to follow up?
and from HedgeHogLabs blog:
There is no surprise then that only 1 of our 3 existing team members actually had to submit a resume to us, which we never read twice. All 3 were hired from our network of influence either because we worked with them previously or because they came highly recommended from people we knew.
The issues is close to my heart right now because I got a job inspite of my resume. I got the job because someone, a friend believed that I can learn fast and have a longer/farther horizon than other candidates.
How Do I Know This? because he told me. He told me they had the perfect candidate that they interviewed the day before. He had all the right years of experience and at all the right tools. As for me I had barely 8 months of experience programming professionally, and my tech stack skill sets was not divergent but I just always seem to pick differently with what is the norm.
Industry norm in the philippines is cvs, I picked svn, eclipse is the java standard IDE, I love using netbeans (I’ve never used eclipse). I’ve no experience using spring framework, I could go on and on.
The fact is it is nice to be counted upon, to be trusted and when you are trusted and you are a nominally trustworthy person you do your damnest not to fail, to let the one who trusted you down. It is a simple yet effective human bias. A human need to be trusted. This is so divergent with company planning of plan A,B,C even upt to Z that we seldom believe this. You better trust me when I say that I am sure not going to let anybody down.
Going back to the topic of this post, I got the job because someone believed in me (My first job was like this but I charge that to being childish and irresponsiple, that’s another post that I am still not ready to do.). By all objective measures bar one I was the riskier choice but sometimes people have to take chances and your resume is not what they are taking a chance on. They are trusting that you will perform not because of your resume but inspite of it. They see what you have done in the past, how well you have done it and they believe you have the capability to learn on the job and think with your feet. I am slowly getting my groove back, thank God!
Giancarlo Angulo's Blog
I think resumes are a waste of time and the most important thing you can do. They are a waste of time because at least 80% of the time people get jobs through networking. If you do a good enough job promoting yourself through all those excellent ideas above you don’t need the resume (HR might want a copy after you start work)
BUT a resume is a good way of finding out who you are. It’s a summary of what you’ve done, what you are proud of and what makes you stand out. If you get that on paper then you can talk intelligently when you pitch yourself or when you meet an employer.
A resume is like a trailer for a movie. You put all the best laughs or the scariest moments, the award-winning actors, director, writer, and you make sure that the audience forks out $10 for the movie plus all the popcorn and other rigmarole. If your resume is great then you have more chance of getting the interview whether that is through Monster or a monster party of buds and job-givers.
So forget it or focus on it – it’s up to you.
David
http://www.davidcoupercoach.com
I think resumes are a waste of time and the most important thing you can do. They are a waste of time because at least 80% of the time people get jobs through networking. If you do a good enough job promoting yourself through all those excellent ideas above you don’t need the resume (HR might want a copy after you start work)
BUT a resume is a good way of finding out who you are. It’s a summary of what you’ve done, what you are proud of and what makes you stand out. If you get that on paper then you can talk intelligently when you pitch yourself or when you meet an employer.
A resume is like a trailer for a movie. You put all the best laughs or the scariest moments, the award-winning actors, director, writer, and you make sure that the audience forks out $10 for the movie plus all the popcorn and other rigmarole. If your resume is great then you have more chance of getting the interview whether that is through Monster or a monster party of buds and job-givers.
So forget it or focus on it – it’s up to you.
David
http://www.davidcoupercoach.com