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Why bother with a resume
Posted: Mon Nov 19, 2012 9:10 pm
by yacahuma
I am currently looking for a php job in Orlando. I wonder why we need resumes anymore. Every timeI contact a different recruiting company, I am asked to take a new php and javascript exam. What I waste of my time. After 20 years as a Software Engineer, it is an insult. Can’t they read a resume? Why waste time even preparing one? Some idiot had a great idea of how to get rich. I will make stupid exams that now one can pass and I make money selling the idea to recruiters and companies. Those exams measure absolutely nothing. Apparently someone forgot to tell them that software is an evolutionary process. No one makes perfect software the first time. That’s why we have alpha, beta, etc, etc. Some, give you a 70 lines of code, and you are not supposed to take more that 2 or 3 minutes to answer. It takes more than that to read it. Even when you answer correctly it does not gives you the points. A quick Google search proves that I am not alone. WTF happened in the last 10 years?
Re: Why bother with a resume
Posted: Mon Nov 19, 2012 11:40 pm
by Eric!
It's a poor attempt to establish a base-line level of proficiency for people who don't know anything about the subject. Recruiters often get duped by people who claim to be "experienced" in XYZ on paper to get in the door, then they send them to an interview and the company calls them back and says that guy you sent has never even touched "XYZ". The recruiter would much rather waste your time on stupid tests, than waste their clients time with bad candidates.
Sadly canned exams are a time a dozen for internet technologies these days, so they are everywhere. You could switch to some more esoteric, like VLSI design, and avoid all those pesky tests.
Re: Why bother with a resume
Posted: Tue Nov 20, 2012 12:17 am
by Benjamin
I'm not a fan of exams but I don't think there's any other way to judge skill-sets unless you are a programmer yourself. When I hire developers I base my decision almost solely on code samples they send over. Reading their code gives me a pretty solid understanding of where they are at and what their skills are. The sad fact is that resume's are irrelevant in this field. You can have a really good resume but not be worth a damn at programming or vice versa.
Re: Why bother with a resume
Posted: Tue Nov 20, 2012 5:42 am
by twinedev
Sadly, people BS all over the place when applying. (this is why I could never land a good programming job, I suck at selling, even myself, which is why I don't apply for sales jobs)
One time at my cousin's company, he went to hire someone, he asked me for requirements. I MADE UP a programming language for him, even googled it, nothing remotely close to an actual language. 50% of the people applying said they had experience in it! I told him to either throw those ones in the trash, or if bored invite them in and then blindside them with questions on the fake language for laughs.
Re: Why bother with a resume
Posted: Tue Nov 20, 2012 2:33 pm
by califdon
@twinedev:

That's a great story!
Re: Why bother with a resume
Posted: Tue Nov 20, 2012 3:53 pm
by Eric!
twinedev wrote:if bored invite them in and then blindside them with questions on the fake language for laughs.
Really?! It's pretty brazen to lie about experience, but even bolder to interview people about fake experience. Do you ever let them in on it? Or send them home and ask them to compile, test and send it to you it as a final step?
Re: Why bother with a resume
Posted: Tue Nov 20, 2012 5:01 pm
by twinedev
Eric! wrote:Really?! It's pretty brazen to lie about experience, but even bolder to interview people about fake experience. Do you ever let them in on it? Or send them home and ask them to compile, test and send it to you it as a final step?
Sadly for my sense of entertainment, nope, he just filed them away in the "no hire" pile.
Re: Why bother with a resume
Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2012 7:47 am
by social_experiment
If it is the recruiting company doing the test that baffles me a bit; here in south africa you just send your CV to the recruiting agency and the company doing the hiring does the testing / checking to see if you can do the job. Tests by the recruiting agency to me is pointless - they should only put you in touch with potential employers.
Benjamin wrote:When I hire developers I base my decision almost solely on code samples they send over.
This is probably outside the scope of this topic but what would a good code sample look like; how a person uses php functions, more abstract things like design patterns?
Re: Why bother with a resume
Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2012 9:22 am
by Benjamin
Good code makes use of decomposition, encapsulation, separates HTML from PHP, is indented properly, formatted well, shows an understanding of security, shows an understanding of performance, makes use of braces where appropriate etc. Certainly it's subjective to an extent.
Re: Why bother with a resume
Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2012 10:09 am
by Bill H
Benjamin wrote:Good code makes use of decomposition, encapsulation, separates HTML from PHP, is indented properly, formatted well, shows an understanding of security, shows an understanding of performance, makes use of braces where appropriate etc. Certainly it's subjective to an extent.
AND IT HAS PLENTY OF COMMENTS !!!!
Re: Why bother with a resume
Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2012 10:34 am
by Weirdan
AND IT HAS PLENTY OF COMMENTS !!!!
Hopefully not. Good code should be obvious to the competent reader, otherwise it counts as the code smell.
But there are comments and then there are comments. I'd consider comments that explain what the code does as useless, but comments explaining ideas behind code as the most useful. One other kind of comments I find extremely helpful are comments answering 'why not?' questions, like:
Code: Select all
// would have extracted this to a method, but the following lines are called
// a gazillion times, accounting for more than 80% execution time,
// and function call overhead here is just unbearable
Re: Why bother with a resume
Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2012 11:53 am
by Bill H
Well, yes. Comments like
are absurd and actually reduce my opinion of the programmer. I'm referring to comments like,
Code: Select all
$_SESSION['Rec'] = $_GET['Anum']; // record number to be viewed
to explain what the passed in value is, or
Code: Select all
if (isset($_GET['Edit'])) // input by shopper but not yet locked for editing
to clarify what the passed in condition means.