While I've never been a recruiter, I've been a hiring manager at some mid-sized companies and worked closely with their recruiters. Side projects or attempted startups are great, but I've seen countless resumes where they get completely overlooked because of how they appeared on the resume.
Ultimately whether I saw a resume was dependent on some sort of subjective pattern matching done by the recruiter. This pattern matching is usually primitive and generally is just a check on whether your "years of experience" is within striking distance of whatever was in the job listing (e.g. "Senior Software Engineer" that required 5+ years of experience, the recruiter would filter anyone with less than 3 years), and (sometimes) would check whether your resume contained enough buzzwords. Yes, this is awful, and no, not every organization does it this way, although a lot do.
So while listing side projects on your resume is good, it's important to get it past the recruiter screen by translating those side projects into years of experience. Rather than just a single line in your resume like, "Side Projects: Enguarde.ly, a Link-Sharing Site for Fencers," find some way to list Enguarde.ly as experience. For example, list the time you worked on your side projects as experience as a "Web Consultant," put Enguarde.ly as a 'portfolio project' and describe the technology you used to build it.
Once your resume actually gets to a hiring manager, everything the OP talked about is much more relevant, because you'll actually have someone who can evaluate your resume. Although I think this post overstates how much your undergrad degree matters. I am a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, typically considered a very prestigious school, but the engineering school is ranked 27th according to US News and World Report rankings[0]. I know many hiring managers who would much rather interview someone with an interesting set of portfolio side projects than someone who went to a prestigious school. Your alma matter can sometimes provide a small bonus as a small signaling effect, but I consider software engineering a discipline where a formal education is only loosely correlated with skill.
I've seen good resumes and had my boss say "but he only went to .." And I didn't even read the college section So education can matter until it gets to the right people. It's an easy filter, sort of, since rankings are pretty bogus anyway.
I've always avoided being too elitist when it comes to a candidate's school/university when hiring people. Partly I guess because I didn't go to a particularly prestigious one myself. I guess my point is that it depends who is reviewing your resume and what their background is as to whether this really matters.
For me I found that the best way to stand out when looking for a new position was to work on a side project. Sneakily my side project was a resume building app. Which meant I got a nice new resume out of the deal too. It definitely got me noticed and people came to me rather than me having to apply for jobs. I even got some telephone interviews for startups in the Bay despite being located in the UK.
Overall I think if you build out some form of beta app and execute to a minimum viable product level of service then that's going to be a good thing for your chances of employment.
So now for my shameless plug. I'm continuing to slowly bootstrap MightyCV - my resume creation app with hacker leanings. It has integrations with HN, github and StackOverflow along with some other cool features. You can see an example of what one looks like here:
It's an interesting point - true "recruiters" are typically much more limited in their ability to evaluate resumes, which is why hiring managers do the resume review at TripAdvisor (I wasn't being precise in my usage). In reference to your point about universities mattering, though, I'd love to see more resumes from Penn... ;)
Wow, if you are skilled technically and aren't annoyed by constant recruiter outreach, you are doing something majorly wrong. I'd also say technical recruiters are also doing something majorly wrong if your resume reflects your abilities.
If you've coded anything that does something interesting, you should have no problem finding interviews, and frankly offers.
If you haven't coded anything interesting, then why would anyone hire you? Build something or work on an open source project.
I suggest taking your own project from start to production - this is the type of general knowledge and competence startups look for.
I'm 19 and skipped college and university to travel, I freelanced for a couple of years and worked on games and personal hobby projects during this time and currently work at a small web development company.
I only have 6 months of commercial experience but I get approached literally daily by recruitment companies because of a single resume I posted on a website and it is driving me crazy.
They all ring me up and say "Don't trust another company, they will screw you over, trust us instead" and "The job states it wants 5 years of experience, but that doesn't matter, I'll send your resume too."
Honestly, I wouldn't mind as much, but it all feels half assed, they don't want to find me a job, they want to find their company an employee, telephoning me and pretending to give a crap about my life is all well and good, but to be honest, when you go cold for a week after that without a single email it makes the candidate feel worthless.
That and the fact that if a candidate isn't accepted for an interview, the de facto method of rejection is simply not getting back to them unless they contact you.
This space really needs to be disrupted, for the love of a God, why isn't there a humane recruitment company?
I feel you. For sure, most recruiters are basically trying to fill a position - they work for commissions, and the hiring company, not you. Expecting a recruiter who contacted you to represent your interests is like expecting the lawyer for a company suing you to give you legal advice.
I think your expectation is a little off, and you may view it differently if you viewed them as someone you are doing business with, not an advisor. When someone is trying to sell you a car, they will butter you up the same way.
There ARE humane recruiters who can be more representative of your needs, but they don't usually cold call with specific positions in mind. They build a network of good candidates and people who would have good referrals, then reach out to them when they have a position that's a good fit.
Of course, you've proved my point above :) It doesn't take much to get smothered by recruiters.
Frankly I think the original article is linkbait. It presupposes a problem that does not exist.
Ouch, not so much fun. I should have been much more specific that this post was about getting interviews at companies, not getting agencies to put you into their mill. There are some good recruiting agencies, but the problem is there's no way to know which is which unless you've worked with a lot of them and have context. You're right, this would be a good area for disruption (or maybe a good new feature for GlassDoor).
Be aware of the anti-pattern section of TFA though. The impression of job hopping really does "damage your chances" as the author put it. I hope its not too rude to talk about my own case.
I lost a job in 2008 over the financial crisis (LIFO employee retention policy), had 2 short contracts (which really shouldn't count as job hopping!) a research position where I suffered a burnout and now recruiters don't answer my calls and I have to jump on any opportunity that comes around. I'm looking for both accounting and software development roles (obviously slightly different CV for accounting roles - in fact I generally tweak it for each application).
My (dev) CV is at (https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8PrUXneejNRdThYRWFHZUk5aHM/...) and I welcome and solicit any feedback to relfect on. Its hard to wrap a cohesive career trajectory around it when its really just me taking the best of the opportunities that I find.
I admit my github is embarrassingly bad, and I've been focusing more on my Coursera courses at the moment. I've had 1 interview in 2 months of looking for entry level/junior positions.
1. Put up a personal site on your own ___domain if you don't already have one. It doesn't have to be fancy but should look professional. A single page will do. Write a few paragraphs about yourself and link to projects, social media profiles, and your CV. See mine as an example: http://driverdan.com
2. Have a searchable PDF version of your CV / resume linked to from your page. If possible also include an HTML version. Consider SEO when writing your CV. What keywords do you want people to find you for?
3. Be everywhere. Have active social media profiles on all the major sites. LinkedIn is a cesspool of recruiters so get your keywords on your profile and link to examples of your work.
Some advice
-Remove junior from all positions
-Too much stuff about accounting if you are looking for swe job
-More verbs - I did A, implemented B, saved C amount of money
-Follow coursera courses = meaningless, remove it or at least put what courses you graduated from.
-Fix grammar and spelling
-Change objective to " I am looking for software engineer position where I can do ABC".
Surprisingly, I have the opposite trouble: how do I stop recruiters trying to recruit me? I have about 15-20 recruiters contacting me per week however what I put it down to is:
1. Location. Since I moved to SF the job offers have increased substantially.
2. Skill set. Fortunately I'm skilled in some "popular" languages.
3. Years of experience. I'm in the "hot spot" - not too old, and not too young (sorry - it does seem to be a factor...)
What I find however that recruiters don't necessarily look for anything BUT the above things. I've been approached for the weirdest jobs (considering my experience) from what I believe as a simple keyword search. When it comes to interviewing, the recruiters typically have no idea what they're talking about. This means that they're more interested in forwarding the resume from a brief "do you know this, have you had experience in this" as opposed to really understanding the position. Fortunately, I have had enough experience to interview the recruiters as opposed to them interviewing me.
My advice for developers struggling to get jobs (from how I hire...):
1. Have experience - whether professional or hobby. If it is a hobby: open source it.
2. Show initiative. You need to show you have the ability to actually think.
3. You don't need to know the answers. It's all about the approach to the problem.
4. Try to stand out amongst the resumes. I feel bad to say this: but unfortunately it's true. Given 100 resumes, you're probably only going to really look at 10.
5. Show charisma
I'd recommend other's to add to this: it's just a list I made from what is off the top of my head. But in regards to the article I disagree with:
1. Startup experience. It depends on what type of job you're going for - some will admire the drive, some will fear it (will you leave after a year)
2. School. I don't give a flying f* if they're from MIT or the University of Waikato. However I would give SOME preference to them studying at a school which includes algorithms and memory management (but that is me). Believe me: that (unfortunately) isn't a given...
I'm sure I'll probably get down votes for this; but please comment if you do disagree :) I'm only speaking from my experience as both a student (always) and as an employer.
I've actually had a similar struggle with the incessant but spammy recruitment emails, that I was able to fix almost perfectly. In the "Summary" section of my LinkedIn[1], I have a sentence that says this:
"If you wish to contact me, please put the word 'Waffles'
in your message. It sounds silly, but it lets me know that
you have taken a little time to asses my profile, rather than
mass messaging people based on a keyword search."
"Waffles" will never be added by coincidence, so if I ever see that in the subject line of an email, I know that the recruiter has actually read my profile, and took the time to write a custom email to me. If it doesn't have the word "Waffles", I just ignore/delete it. It has dramatically improved the quality of emails I get from this vector
I see you worked for Jardine. I own a company that is also a SEMA member, and for those programmers out there looking for work, most of the members of SEMA could use advanced technical help. SEMA.org is the automotive aftermarket industry group and is for the most part not very technical. In other words they need a lot of help. They just launched a big initiative this year that has the bold goal of standardizing industry data, so they are just now getting into the computer age with gusto (to be fair, many larger companies have been using EDI for years).
Sorry for wandering off topic. I have used a method similar to your "waffles" technique when hiring for positions. It reduces the 100's of applicants for a job down to a few, simply because most people won't read your postings clearly. It has saved me hundreds of hours in the recruitment process.
My solution to your initial problem is to have a "note to recruiters" linked prominently at the top of my resume (and linkedin). It covers what kind of places I'd be a good fit for and vice versa. Things like I am not going to update the recruiter's database, tell me company names, small companies/startups etc.
It becomes very apparent very quickly which recruiters have made any effort to read it and if they can't do that, they are unlikely to be paying much attention to their clients either. Since I run my own mail server, I then add the most egregious cases to a block list. (They also tend to be repeat offenders so that problem is solved too.)
When recruiting I look at the initial acronym soup. I especially like people who categorise what they are very good at versus ok. Then I look everything else for substantiation and to get a flavour of experience. For example is networking there, mobile, low level languages (eg C), web stuff, Python/Ruby etc. It is generally a good idea to include the acronym soup for each item in the resume (eg if doing a network server say what language and frameworks were used).
Open source stuff is excellent because it is actually concrete - something I can look at, and far more informative than generic text elsewhere can ever be.
What I am usually ultimately looking for is "smart and gets things done". (Joel has articles with more detail.)
The general bad things people do are what appears to be a bulk send, really long but irrelevant cover letters, and not substantiating things. I was looking at a resume this morning where C++ was listed as the first skill yet could find no mention of it anywhere else. It immediately makes me sceptical of everything else listed.
I once had some programming languages listed on my resume that I didn't substantiate there. The actual meaning of that was "this resume will overflow one or two pages if I list everything I ever did to know every language I know."
Length isn't that big a deal these days, and there isn't a need to write down every single language, framework and library you have ever written hello world in. If you listed 100 items there is no way you are proficient at all of them right now. The highlights will fit in a line or two.
I'm in a similar boat. I'm not "senior", but I am skilled and have plenty of experience with a successful start-up and a top digital agency AND I am skilled in multiple languages/platforms. I constantly get calls, emails and stalked on Twitter and LinkedIn by recruiters. It's a real hassle...
However, now I am on the market (at the worst possible time of the year). Logically, a recruiter would be the best person to go to for work, but my relationship with recruiters is tainted, and it appears that there are a lot of good companies that simply won't deal with them.
Christmas isn't the best time to be looking for jobs, but even following all the rules won't necessarily get you noticed.
I'm in the same boat as you, but on a smaller scale. I'm based out of Charlotte. So there is "less potential." However, I don't understand the whole deal that recruiters try to recruit you for the town you're in.
What about candidates who are willing to relocate? What about overseas relocation? Not being married and liking travel that sounds like fun to me.
New Zealanders other than me come here! It's funny that the Waikato reference is used the same way in an international forum as a it would be on a New Zealand one.
The resume review process isn't intended to find the single best candidate. It's intended to whittle a big pile of resumes down to one that can be reasonably covered by the next stage of the process. Coming from public listings, the pile of resumes is enormous, and most of them are utter garbage. There may be thousands of resumes where the goal is to find a couple dozen candidates. At some point, the only way to do this is to apply really broad filters: "Went to Stanford, MIT, CMU...", "Worked at MS, Google, FB, Apple...", "Proficient in Scala, MongoDB".
I didn't really appreciate this until I was on the other side of the massive pile-o-resumes, but it's really the only option.
I hate saying this, because I generally believe that "problems solved" are far more indicative of success than any specific school, company, or technology. I have at times used a resume that doesn't do the whole buzzword-bingo game with very limited success - It basically never got pulled from a big pile-of-resumes unless I had a friend on the inside, or was applying to a job on my school's job board (where clearly everyone passed this "filter").
I disagree entirely. Graduate school has nothing to do with the undergraduate curriculum. I went to a school with an amazing graduate program but I had a terrible watered down education that barely went passed Java and did not push me or many of the other students.
It's an excellent opportunity for summer research jobs and the such, but otherwise does not translate well into the lower curriculum unless you want it to.
I agree: a good graduate school can offer a good undergraduate education if you want it to. The ambition to get a good education when it's available (but not necessary) is highly desirable, no?
According to USNWR, both the UIUC and University of Texas at Austin also have top 10 undergraduate engineering programs (#5 and #10 respectively) as well.
I can't think of a top graduate program with a poor undergraduate program. And CS tends to be extremely rigorous, so I am honestly surprised that a recruiter would view a degree in CS from UTex as a non-indicator.
But I'm not trying to shoot the messenger. Perhaps UTex and Brown were selected to specifically illustrate the phenomenon here, that a highly regarded engineering school might be discounted while an Ivy league school that normally isn't associated with Computer Science would be considered a positive indicator.
It's a little hard to argue with a recruiter, they've done far more placement than I have. But I have worked (and done lots of interviews for) for a large silicon valley company, as well as for a few startups, and personally I think that a CS degree from UTex at Austin or UIUC would be very positively received.
Undergraduate curricula tends to be standardized, and nobody gets out of a top school without taking the tough courses. But you can get wiggle through an MS. But at the door... not so sure, the selection requirements (undergraduate GPA and GRE) at Berkeley were very high for any kind of admitted grad student. However, Berkeley doesn't have one of those "industrial affiliate" programs that are profit centers. However, I don't think these programs harm the universities that offer them at all - the students are almost always already employed at good companies doing interesting work, and I think the other students benefit from their presence.
The way it's worded, no public school can be a top-tier school, and since he says the value of "top tier" is the (four or more years ago) application process, there's a certain logic to that. A HS student in Texas will have a much easier time getting into UT than Stanford.
However, my experience (as a holder of a degree from a further-down-the-list university) has been that after the first job (and then even moreso after the second), the name of your undergrad university matters much less. Having real, productive work experience is itself a powerful signal—so hopefully those first jobs let you do interesting or varied enough stuff to have something good for the resume. So I don't have the network (yet!) that a Stanford or MIT grad would, but I'm not landing on discard piles either.
Funny in my part of the world, the bad ones are the private universities.
The reason being the only people that go to private universities are the ones without good notes to earn a place at the public universities, but whose parents are rich enough to pay for the university.
People with degrees from private universities are told they bought the degree.
I don't mean that everyone that goes to private universities here has bought his or her degree, but there are a few cases of famous people that went to Bocconi and well... let's say they don't need to make use of their degree. I don't know if you can read italian but this article (http://www.lettera43.it/persone/8320/il-lato-b-della-bocconi...) explains how many of the girls involved in the Berlusconi's scandal went to Bocconi and got one or even two degrees. That means either that the place is unusually full or very smart and very pretty girls or that there's something strange going on.
I think the author is claiming that the difficulty of undergraduate admissions is the important metric, not the quality of the program. UIUC and UT-Austin are tier 1 research departments, but not among the most selective of programs for undergraduates. (I realize they are extremely selective as PhD programs.)
I think the single best thing you can do is tailor your resume/cover letter for the job you are applying for.
Every company wants to think that you really want to work for them and only them. If you send out an obviously standard cover letter and resume, it's very easy to get brushed over.
Spend 10 minutes on their website/blog reading about them and tailor your application to match. Include some comments that show you have done so.
You can't change what education/experience you have (well you shouldn't), but you can definitely show that you made an effort.
Articles like this tell me there is a strong need for improvement in tech recruiting. If a candidate truly is "a great coder, easy to work with, and knows data structures and algorithms backwards and forwards" then he/she should have no problem landing a job regardless of his/her background.
I only hope there are firms that see through this elitism and realize that there are undervalued tech wizards out there waiting to be given an opportunity.
Very sound advice. Having been to a top school is indeed important (even though not necessary). A while ago, I was offered a very well paid freelance gig just because I went to a French top engineering school. I didn't know anything about the technologies I had to use but they didn't give a damn.
Of course not everyone thinks like that, but it's puzzling that some people actually do.
Yeah these points are valid (although it should be noted that they align with the author's background - sorry the TripAdvisor mention made me curious)
I think they are more applicable to early career.
In my experience, connections and relationships are way more powerful than any of the stuff mentioned with the baseline that you are competent and relatively easy to work with.
During hiring, I have looked through dozens, if not hundreds of resumes over the years, mostly for Unix systems administrator positions.
You can tell a lot about what someone knows just by how they put together their resume, over and above the work experience. A question I used to ask on interviews was, "Have you ever worked with Gnu programs, like gcc, Gnu make etc.?" Hiring Unix admins in 1998, when you couldn't get your hands on an experienced one, you'd be surprised how many blank looks I got at that question. Once I got a resume which was very well-written, and he even had the Gnu tools he knew listed. Considering how dismal prior candidates had been, I almost wanted to hire him sight unseen just seeing that. We did make him an offer, which he turned down. It's more than just what buzzwords to put, it's knowing what buzzwords to put and not to put. Most of the time, people who don't know what they're doing don't even know what will sound good on a resume, even if their resume is BS.
In terms of my own resume, in 2000 I had a lot of buzzwords on the top. But then people would ask me detailed questions about some of that software, some of which I had not touched for three years. So I removed those words from the top of the resume so as to avoid those questions. But then I stopped getting as many calls. So I put them back. Better to look dumb in an interview then never get the interview I figured.
For you young ones - tech guys like me generally just care if you know the stuff or not. Managers, HR etc. are generally more formal - they want to know what degrees you have, they like to see buzzwords and several years of experience, especially at large companies, hear from references, know why you have a gap of two months in your employment record and so forth. Non-techies have no gauge to tell how well you know your stuff.
A caveat about large companies - at startups, an older person who has worked a long time at a big company - this can be held against you. You have to make clear you'll be OK with the fact that there is not yet a backup system, or code revision control system, or whatever. You have to say, "I understand you don't have this stuff, and I am fine with you not having it yet, I'll help you build it out as the company grows".
Same goes for recruiters, they need to know which buzz words to use too. I saw a good list of requirements the other day, for a vaguely machine learning type of job, that said:
"An Ideal applicant must have experience in:
- Maths
- Computer Fusion
- Algorithms
- ..."
I assume they misheard 'Computer Vision' over the phone. Also "Why yes, I do have experience in Algorithms.".
Technical recruiting is hard, but I think good technical recruiters approach things differently than this. Its not as black and white, everything lives in the nuances:
We are looking for some sort of external validation: A really popular module on CPAN? Graduated with a 4.0? Graduated from Stanford? Hired full time by Google? That is all external validation, and it is something that shows me that other people / organizations think you are good. I really need just one piece of solid validation for me to speak with a candidate and this can take on a lot of forms. In lieu of this, we can administer a coding test if someone is on the cusp.
The second thing I look for is passion: Is this person a 9 to 5 code monkey in it for the solid and consistent paycheck? Or do they love the work they do and constantly push themselves to further their craft? You can almost always get to the bottom of this question on the phone. Journeymen programmers are fine for a lot of jobs, but not for the jobs we are talking about here.
If both of those line up then the candidate is good, and we will represent them. We can't promise a placement, but I would be surprised if someone with both of those boxes checked didn't get at least one offer. They are really hard to find.
If you're recruiting by people who "love what they do" - that's awesome .. but don't forget they need to have a life and a family they're likely taking care of, too: if you're recruiting for the positions wherein 50 or 60 hours is "normal", then I hope you're only getting single folks who don't care if they have a life :)
The occasional long week is fine - but I'm going to be a lot more interested in someone who is good but expects a "normal" amount of work.
> Resumes should be summaries, with more detail for recent positions, less detail for more distant ones. If you’ve been in industry for ten years, you can have a second page. No one needs more than two.
I agree with this in principle, and strongly 'implemented' this approach as well in an earlier version of my CV.
[To be fair, I'm looking for a product management role, and not a dev job, so maybe it's different here?]
But recruiters just kept asking me for a more detailed version so often, that I just gave up and made a 2-pager. I personally believe it goes into far too much detail than is necessary, but the difference in response is quite stark from both startups and BigCos alike.
From the other side of the issue, when recruiting PMs or analysts, I always made a conscious effort to ensure that CVs that fell afoul of 'industry standard guidelines' weren't overlooked solely for those reasons. As in, I honestly didn't give a shit if it was one page, or two, or six, as long as it gave the information I was looking for. (However, I suspect I may have been in a minority then..)
Every single person, whether they are a recruiter and project manager , a guidance counsellor or your mother has a different opinion about how long your CV/Resume should be and will have all sorts of reasons justifying why they are correct.
So the only sensible thing to do is go with the length that you feel sells you best.
Mine has 'relevant' experience on the first couple, then 'other' experience on the last howevermany.
A fixed length is one of the worst things you can do, in my opinion: it needs to be how I heard an English professor describe her writing assignments: "It should be like a girl's skirt - long enough to cover everything, but short enough to keep it interesting"
I'm not sure what the deal was about the schools. An expectation of a top tier school is mostly useless. Yes a solid education is important, however just because you have credentials from a "top" school doesn't mean you'll be: 1. a good worker 2. motivation to perform the tasks 3. experience. Secondly, anyone who depends on a big name school to get by fails to understand economics. Yes you might be able to get a small premium for the name. However, the market can't afford to choose only the top names. Theres more work that is needed than the small group of "top school" names can fill.
The only thing a "top tier school" can really provide is the potential for a 'better' set of initial contacts in your network (eg startup founders and investors if you go to MIT, Rice, or Stanford).
Beyond that - it's all pretty much the same: can you get the job done? Can you think? Can you communicate coherently? Those are the real biggies when I interview.
"If you’ve had five jobs in the last five years, why should the recruiter think this time will be different?"
Maybe because who is hiring is supposed to be better than the others? There are far too many terrible companies, especially the big ones, and honestly I would never stay in a company just for the sake of it.
If recruiters think that this is a problem, it means that who is hiring is not confident enough or worse, the company IS really terrible like the others.
IMHO, nobody leaves a company if he feels good, stimulated and paid enough.
If it's only one short term job, it's totally ok. Two is ok but I will ask why. Three+ is a negative. 5+ short term jobs is pretty much no hire unless there is a very good explanation. There are no perfect companies and people have to compromise.
Well, I totally agree with you that there are no perfect companies but for the rest, I believe you don't have very good arguments.
I do understand that recruiters have to place people and they don't really mind/understand if the company is good or not but I can't see why this should be our problem.
This is great advice. As a person that is normally labelled as a job hopper (6 in the past 5 years) I finally settled down and got into tech by attending hackathons and helped ship apps (mostly android) it has given me the opportunity to work for a YC company and I am very happy here. It's just ironic that startups have been the most stable positions rather than corporate or bigger tech companies.
Hackathons are relativity cheap (time wise) investments, but make you stand out from the crowd.
It sounds like you are pretty savvy at getting hired. I am a computer science student who is graduating this December, and I would love to get hired as soon as possible! Do you have any tips for someone like myself? The only experience I have is interning at a very small shop where I build custom Google maps for other schools and companies.
I'm helping running this hackathon that is live right now: hackerrank.com/thanksgiving, show off your skills and get noticed. It ends today @ midnight PST and the winner gets a meeting with a YC Partner and Thanksgiving meal delivered to their door.
Just out of curiosity, does the undergrad/grad ranking apply to other (non-CS) engineering careers as well? I ask because I went to a top 5 undergrad but never did any research so I'm not attending a top 5 grad school. However, I think the research I am doing now is possibly eye-catching, so how much does what-research vs. which-grad school matter?
(By the way, I actually like my grad school significantly more than my undergrad so ranking of course isn't everything).
I mostly - for seniors - look in the experience and what projects the person did. I don't believe any skills in a skill section.
This is the first screening, followed by a programming task during the the telephone interview, interview with me, interviews with developers, followed by practical programming work.
So yes it is important to get through the CV screen (have experience), but it's only the first step.
Side note: Hiring for Junior positions is different, for me the CV here is mostly irrelevant.
I’m wondering what’s your opinion about how does it affect to have on your resume some great places to work at, but that might not be so well known in the US tech world as they’re not the usual Google, FB etc.. I’m talking about places like CERN, Fermilab, Max Planck Institute for Physics or the MIT Medialab. Do you think these matter as much as Google on a resume?
How about having ‘old boring’ companies like IBM or Oracle on your resume?
A lot of this advice goes for those who are looking for their first co-ops and internships, too. If you haven't built experience yet, your GPA becomes a critical flag for how you dedicate yourself to the work you've been given. Combine that with interesting projects, and you'll be well on your way to getting the internships that will make you stand out later.
What got me in easy for my internship was a decent GPA (3.8 at the time) + working full-time as a shift manager from when I turned 18 until the company hired me. GPA + maintaining some sort of responsibility definitely helped
I've been on the hiring side many times and I never look at a resume's education section. I suppose if I were hiring someone fresh out of school that'd count a little more, but experience is much more important than what school they went to or what they studied.
But maybe I'm biased because I have a grad degree in music, so I just assume other degrees are equally worthless ;)
Ultimately whether I saw a resume was dependent on some sort of subjective pattern matching done by the recruiter. This pattern matching is usually primitive and generally is just a check on whether your "years of experience" is within striking distance of whatever was in the job listing (e.g. "Senior Software Engineer" that required 5+ years of experience, the recruiter would filter anyone with less than 3 years), and (sometimes) would check whether your resume contained enough buzzwords. Yes, this is awful, and no, not every organization does it this way, although a lot do.
So while listing side projects on your resume is good, it's important to get it past the recruiter screen by translating those side projects into years of experience. Rather than just a single line in your resume like, "Side Projects: Enguarde.ly, a Link-Sharing Site for Fencers," find some way to list Enguarde.ly as experience. For example, list the time you worked on your side projects as experience as a "Web Consultant," put Enguarde.ly as a 'portfolio project' and describe the technology you used to build it.
Once your resume actually gets to a hiring manager, everything the OP talked about is much more relevant, because you'll actually have someone who can evaluate your resume. Although I think this post overstates how much your undergrad degree matters. I am a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, typically considered a very prestigious school, but the engineering school is ranked 27th according to US News and World Report rankings[0]. I know many hiring managers who would much rather interview someone with an interesting set of portfolio side projects than someone who went to a prestigious school. Your alma matter can sometimes provide a small bonus as a small signaling effect, but I consider software engineering a discipline where a formal education is only loosely correlated with skill.
[0] http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/engineering-majors/12136...