geekitarian

Here's a presentation I put together for Duquesne's Math and CS Seminar Series a few weeks ago.

The fall semester is a challenge - coming back to school after a summer off, it can be hard to get right back into the swing of things. Vacations, barbecues, parties, trips... there are lots of things to keep you out of the studying mindset for a few months and that can bleed into the fall semester. Unfortunately, lots of companies will have selected their summer interns by the time you've read the syllabus for all of your classes. This means that you've got some work to do to secure your dream job. Here are a few tips to hit the ground running. #1: Figure out what you want. If you're a freshman, you can learn a lot about companies you might like to work for at this point - there are definitely internships out there for after your freshman year, but if you don't feel like you're ready, you can still also collect lots of information. As a sophomore, next summer might seem like a long way away, but it's important to consider if you're going to want an in...

I've been teaching technology courses for almost a decade now, and I really enjoy helping students work on their careers outside of the classroom - whether it's trying to help them find jobs, improve interview skills, or helping with networking.  Resume help is a common request; technical resumes can be a bit different than others so I'm glad to share some of the things that I've learned.  It seems to me that a lot of students have a good base for their resume, but make some common mistakes; here are some issues I regularly notice and how you can improve upon them. #8: Ordering Problems with ordering are not the most common problem I see, but I see it often enough.  Since people tend to read resumes from the top to bottom, the order that you present your content sections can be pretty important.  There are no hard-and-fast rules about ordering on a resume; but because of the typical top-to-bottom approach, I think it's best to put the most interesting and compel...

How to write a resume that WILL NOT get you an interview: Write a lengthy, detailed, generic objective statement. Put your GPA on the resume if it's anything below a 3.9. List skills "strong attention to detail" or other generic platitudes. Write your past experience section so it looks like the "minimum requirements" section of a job posting. Create a long resume that's excessively detailed and takes 20 minutes of concentrated effort to read. How to do it better: Don't put an objective on your resume.  If you're applying for a job, your objective is to get a job.   If your GPA is less than a 3.9, it's either going to be a non-factor, or it's going to hurt you.  Don't put it on your resume. List skills and how you've applied them; talk about the projects you've done or the things you've built. Talk about accomplishments instead of duties.  Anybody reading your resume can discern what your duties were; what...

One of the biggest challenges about writing your resume is that you’re trying to write it for an “anonymous” audience. Unless you’re willing to go through a lot of effort rewriting it every time you send it, you’re trying to take a brief document that makes it appealing everywhere you send it – despite the fact that the audiences may be very different. However, you can simplify this a bit. While there are lots of technologies and even more companies, there are only 4 major types of people who will view your resume, each with their own interests and goals. Hiring Managers Technical staff working for Hiring Managers Recruiters or Human Resources Personnel Resume Databases Lots of times when you’re applying to a company, you’ll hit all four of these. Depending on the size of the company and the level of technical expertise, you may only hit a recruiter or hiring manager . If you have a really good idea of who will be seeing your resume, you can target it – but it’s hard to ...

The resume database is like a recruiter, only not nearly as intelligent (and that’s saying something, given some of the recruiters I’ve met – just kidding recruiters, you know I love you). Resume databases are either a collection of resumes on a job site, or a repository of resumes for a particular company. These resumes are often scanned, indexed, and categorized so that they can be easily searched at a later date. With most resume databases, you could just write a resume that only listed every single skill available and every single application of experience that an employer might be looking for, and you’d probably get a ton of hits when anybody is searching it, looking to fill a position. Here’s one important thing to remember about targeting the resume database: any time I’ve ever been turned down for a job, and received the “We will add your resume to our database and contact you if we find an appropriate fit,” either A) they’ve never actually found a fit, because I’ve never ...

The recruiter can often be a hard fish to fry. The recruiter may have been involved in technology at one point in his career, but more than likely was not. They may have a cursory understanding of technical terms and technical jargon, but likely they can just identify buzzwords. Even though a lot of these buzzwords may not really mean anything to a real geek, they’re very attractive to recruiters. Here, you need to think like a recruiter. A recruiter has probably been given a task (find me a programmer) and a set of skills (C++, STL), and experience (3-5 years). To get past the recruiter, you just have to match (or mostly match) this checklist. So, if you’re looking for a job as a Linux C++ server engineer, you need to make that apparent in your resume. If possible, you should list it in the skills section of your resume, and also in the experience section, if you have relevant experience. Typically, all you have to do to make it past the recruiter is match your resume to the...

In the most common case, when a hiring manager looks at your resume, it’s the only time that he’ll (or she, there are a few women in this business, at least three or four) even see your name, or anything else about you, for that matter.  That means that you’ve only got one shot at catching his (or her) attention. The best thing to do when you’re writing your resume for a hiring manager is try to think like somebody who is reviewing resumes – somebody who is trying to identify a good candidate to administer a phone screen or to bring in for an interview.  I’ll give you some points to help you put yourself in this person’s shoes. Either you’re terribly busy because your boss has unrealistic expectations, or you’d just like to get back to watching YouTube and you don’t want to be bothered by reviewing resumes. You’re hoping to hire somebody to help alleviate the load caused by previously mentioned unrealistic expectations (or who you can order around and will do all of th...

The first rule I like to lay down about resumes is, “Be Brief.”  But, if there’s a second rule, it’s, “Be Honest.”  Lots of people will tell you that embellishing on your resume is common practice, but I don’t think those people are trying to get a job programming C++.  You should state what you have done and what you can do realistically.  Lying on your resume will only get you into trouble later.  It might get you a phone screen or an interview, but it will set the expectations for those to a much higher (and probably unrealistic) standard.  Interviewers ask gurus different questions than they ask entry-level programmers. Some people like to put lots of technologies that they’re only vaguely familiar with on their resumes.  This may or may not be a good idea. Early in my career, somebody once gave me some interesting interview advice.  This person told me, “If an interviewer asks you if you can do something or if you know a certain te...

If you learn one thing about resumes from this blog, I hope that it’s that they don’t need to be 12 pages long.  Seriously.  I cringe every time I pick up a resume that’s more than 2 pages.  I just don’t even want to read it.  I'm sure that the time you spent 2 hours learning about the differences between ECMAScript and Javascript eight years ago was really important to your career growth, but I'm just too busy to get to the tenth page. There are two schools of thought on resume length.  One school is to keep it simple and digestible.  The other school is to keep a resume long with as many possible buzzwords and information about every single day you’ve ever worked on every single job in your career and include lots of minute details about things that somebody, somewhere might actually notice and care about. I’m a big subscriber to the first school of thought here.  When I’m looking at 50 resumes to fill one position, I am looking at them FAST , be...