The point was to make explicit one's specific work achievements. In your case, it seems you do it via contacts/word-of-mouth which works for you. Reading a long CV is generally not that much of a chore since a lot will be boilerplate (eg. company name, duration etc.) which can all be skipped as you pick out technical/other details relevant to the job. I also disagree that older experience beyond 10 years (some even use just 5 years) can be skipped. The reason i like to see everything is that it gives me many clues as to the nature of the person i am to interview viz. whether they have a breadth of thought to understand different concepts, the experience to have done it in reality, whether they are adaptable/self-driven etc. Without this information in hand i literally have to spend the first half of the interview asking them what they actually did before i can move on to the interview proper.
But no one to a first approximation is going to do it. Statistics show that on average, people only look at your resume for 6 seconds.
And I’m not asking questions about what you did 30 years ago. If I ask you the standard question as an interviewer “tell me about yourself”. I expect you to succinctly walk me through the parts of your career that are relevant to the job.
I am then going to ask behavioral questions to assess whether you have the traits I need, the “tell me about a time when…” questions to see if you can work at the needed level of scope and ambiguity.
I then ask them what they were most proud of to work on a dig into their technology choices and tradeoffs
I generally disagree with the CV point but the "6 seconds" anecdote doesn't ring true to me except for obviously unfit applicants. I have definitely spent less than 10 seconds looking at a resume but it's because I immediately rejected the applicant - for example, the role is a solid mid-level or senior role and the applicant just graduated college and has no relevant experience or open source projects.
I want to be interested in your resume. If I'm interviewing you, you can be absolutely sure I've spent at least 20-30 minutes reading over your resume, looking up your past companies/schools, getting a sense of what you've done and pulled out a few relevant or interesting things to ask about.
I think the "6 seconds" thing is mostly HR drones who are barely qualified to write the resumes they're reading, let alone judge them, and are simply sorting into "yes" and "no" piles.
Do you think that most managers spend 30 minutes reading over a resume and do everything else they have to do?
I can guarantee you that none of my managers spent more than 5 minutes looking over my resume and 4 of my six lady jobs have been strategic early hires, 1 was at BigTech where one person in my loop was my eventual manager and my current one was for one of I think 25 highest level IC positions at my current company of 600-700 people.
I am not buying the oft-quoted statistics in HR/Recruiting which like most popular adages is mostly made up from a few anecdotes and widely disseminated which people then accept because "everybody says so". The key is to hook in the reader from the summary/qualifications on the first page.
The "tell me about yourself" question is one of the worst to ask and i never do this. It is so open ended that people start rambling. Instead get them to focus (this also calms their nerves) by asking about notable jobs picked from their resume "what did you do as ... at ..." and dig more as needed. Do this for a couple more jobs if available and you will get to see how confident the candidate is, how he communicates, the depth of his knowledge and his modes of thinking. From here, you generalize to what the job actually needs and give the candidate some idea of the job and its environment and ask how he hopes to fit in and contribute. This makes things clear to both interviewer and interviewee.
I also do not place much weight on personality/psychology tests/questions. People generally cannot be truthful in their answers to questions like "how do you deal with conflict with your co-worker?" etc. Here i trust to "gut feeling" based on non-verbal impressions, verbal communication and pointed questions (challenge the candidate by taking a contrarian stance and see how he responds).
Finally, i make sure that the interviewee at the very outset understands that though i am the interviewer it does not mean that i am more knowledgeable than him in his areas of expertise. This works great by boosting his confidence which then leads to a more natural interaction.
Recruiting/HR is a complex art where you have to consider various factors to build a picture of a person (suited to a role) from factual data and psychology. IMO a good way is to start with an understanding of Self-Determination Theory of Edward Deci and Richard Ryan - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination_theory For a nice overview, see the book Why we do What we do: Understanding Self-Motivation by Edward Deci.
The fact is that every open req especially for remote positions get hundreds of resumes within the first hour, who is going to read that? An 8 page resume goes straight to the trash. Part of a job of a “senior” is good communication skills and knowing your audience. An eight page resume shows laziness since they didn’t take the time to make it shorter and no one is going to listen to or read anything 8 pages especially as a manager who just wants to know what is going on a high level.
I ask the tell me about yourself question partially to assess their communication skills and getting to the point.
Do you think people who are conducting an interview loop at large companies are going to go through an 8 page resume? Yes I’ve been on both sides of a BigTech interview loop and have gone through the interview training process there.
Even at smaller companies when building a team and I’ve had 80% of the say so about who gets hired, I still needed evidence to take the CxO/director and couldn’t go by “gut feel”.
And when dealing with customers (I work in consulting now) or “the business” you have to have a strategy to deal with interdepartmental conflicts, different stakeholders have different priorities, some people don’t want to change etc. I’m not talking about a conflict with another coworker arguing about which design pattern to use.
You have missed the point of the long CV. It is not that the recipient has to read everything. As mentioned, the first couple of pages is the resume. However the details are there to provide more info. as needed. Contrary to what you think i have had very good response to such a layout. Often times they see a company/project/technology there (even if old) which rings a bell with them and which they are then eager to discuss. That is the point; Give them all the info. in which you are strong so that they can make a better informed decision. The same is what i look for when i am the interviewer; a few bullet points on a 2-page resume which basically tell me nothing is useless.
Incidentally, Jeff Bezos does something similar with his 6-page memo (plus annexes) for meetings; Same idea different ___domain; More details help better decision-making.
"Gut Feel" is absolutely needed to give your input on Team Fit, Conflict Management and similar other intangible Human factors. Some companies are doing Myers-Briggs etc. but i give them lower weightage (because they can be gamed by practice) over subjective feelings.
A report on a interviewee should include objective assessments (knowledge, experience etc. and your inferences based on them) and subjective assessments (temperament, maturity etc.)
I worked at AWS for three years (Professional Services). Using Amazon as an example of a good corporate culture and how companies should behave is not the argument you think it is.
But I see a few scenarios.
You have a strong network and the resume is a formality. In that case it’s easy enough to tailor your resume for the job. I don’t need to put that I wrote FORTRAN and C on VAX and Stratus mainframes in the mid 90s. There is no need for an 8 page resume. The year before last I had two offers for strategic positions based on my network.
The second case you are targeting a company where you know you have a competitive advantage, again in that case, you only need to have a resume that focuses on what gives you a competitive advantage. In my case, now I focus on strategic cloud consulting positions that focus on app development. In that case, I only need to focus on my job at a startup in 2018, talk in broad strokes about my time at AWS (working there automatically gets call backs by the way), and when the day comes, when I leave my current job as a “staff architect”.
The worse case is if you are spamming your resume far and wide and you are looking for any generic job. I look at an 8 page resume and then I have to take the time to see what is this person trying to communicate - it goes in the trash and I move on. I have hundreds of other resumes that I can get through quickly.
Of course if the company is reaching out to me, it’s even easier to tailor my resume for the job requirements. I have my “career document” to pull from either way that is as long as needed.
But even then I’m not going back even to the low level work I did in 2012 for Windows CE devices.
I am not talking about general Amazon corporate culture so your caveat makes no sense. I am talking about the practice of one specific technique which leads to better decision-making and which has also been validated by other people adopting it. Here is Jeff's own words - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYb5pBVBXEg
I consider 2-page resumes no better than a powerpoint presentation (i.e. almost useless) and furthermore when i see people tailor it to what they think i should know i consider it maybe trying to hide something. This is because by omitting companies they take away a vector for me to check references and more. Note that this is different from highlighting relevant experience/knowledge.
Your scenarios are nothing new from what you have already mentioned earlier; And spamming is not what i am talking about. That is a policy decision made by each person based on his circumstances.
You and most folks are simply parroting current practices in HR/Recruiting which are broken and need to be rethought from the ground up. To repeat once more, all details matter at some level in recruiting. As they say "measure twice and cut once" and "slow is smooth and smooth is fast".
Well, since most people at least in the US don’t do 8 page resumes and yet they get hired everyday and most managers aren’t asking for 8 page resumes and aren’t complaining about two page resumes, you ever thought you might be the outlier?
On the other hand, do you pay top of market? Would anyone be clamoring to expand their resume to eight pages because you prefer it?
Well, did you ever realize that you have a "bee in your bonnet" regarding the number 8 which is not the point of my example resume? It could be any number smaller/larger as long as it gives all the details (at varying levels) with nothing omitted. The rationale has already been pointed out viz. a) Different job fit than applied for job b) background reference checking c) indicators of self-motivation/adaptability/breadth of thought etc. all of which are very relevant.
As i already mentioned, the current HR way of doing Recruiting is broken. So being a outlier in this case is good. Also in a paradoxical way, this breaks the ice and becomes a conversation starter. When i do send in my CV, recruiters invariably call me back which then helps me to prime them with specific relevant experiences listed in the CV which they then forward to the actual interviewers. It allows one to stand out from the crowd.
Finally, most 2-page resumes look all the same with keywords/boiler-plate sentences/paragraphs with nothing giving me any additional insight into the person. The self-imposed page limit causes them to self censor their words/sentences unnecessarily leading to loss of info. For example; compare "Expertise in C++ programming" vs. "Expertise in C++ in Multi-paradigm designs with focus on performant code". A few additional words but orders of magnitude information.
Well, seeing that my success rate over 25 years (not counting my first job the i got via a return offer from a internship) is also 100% across looking for a job 9 times as far as send my email to a recruiter -> get an interview with only two pages at most, I think I’m doing pretty good.
Admittedly before 2020, those were local recruiters with local jobs.
> It could be any number smaller/larger as long as it gives all the details (at varying levels)
Let’s say I was looking for a job next year. I wouldn’t want to use my one hour I have with an interviewer to talk about anything I did before 2016. I’m looking for high level staff roles at small to medium companies. I want the entire conversation to be about signaling that I have competencies with leading a project from initial discovery with stakeholders to implementation and getting it done on time, on budget and meets requirements.
I also want to signal that while my breadth in my chosen ___domain is wide and I’m going to highlight projects that show that breadth, I’m not a paper tiger who can’t do hands on keyboard software development or “cloud engineering”. I can demonstrate that easily in 2 pages by leaving off anything before 2016.
Within those 10 years I can demonstrate a steady growth from being a barely competent lead developer, to being an architect at a startup, to consulting and working on projects with increasing “scope”, “impact”, and “ambiguity”.
> As i already mentioned, the current HR way of doing Recruiting is broken.
Even if recruiting is broken , it’s a “gravity problem. Just because you may not like gravity, if you jump out of 50 story building, you will die. While I’ve avoided the leetCode grind, I’ve played the “how to be successful at system design and behavioral interviews” game with aplomb. You adapt to the reality
>So being an outlier in this case is good.
Or you can just be an outlier by having a skill set and experience that sets you apart from the crowd in whatever niche you decided to pursue.
> Also in a paradoxical way, this breaks the ice and becomes a conversation starter.
The last thing I want to do is discuss how cool it was programming in Fortran in the 90s. I once had an interviewer ask me a “trick question” about C in 2014 for a C# development position. Even at the time I was six years removed from any C programming. I answered it and got the job. But that was a distraction from the narrative I was trying to convey. My single focus at an interview is to demonstrate that I have both the soft and hard skills that make me fit for the role.
> For example; compare "Expertise in C++ programming" vs. "Expertise in C++ in Multi-paradigm designs with focus on performant code". A few additional words but orders of magnitude information.
Not really, the latter sounds like the fluffy “I work well with people”. I communicate my expertise on my resume by telling how I used my knowledge to achieve an outcome.
Again, you are not saying anything new at all with this wall of text. You can claim any competency you want but that has to be evaluated and judged by the Interviewer's (and his team's) standards. This is the key; since your opinion of yourself does not count for that much, you provide all the info. you can to the Interviewer so they can pick up on it and dig deeper on all aspects (coding, designing, requirements specification, system architecture etc.) as needed.
Also a lot of words/phrases you have used above are general platitudes. By themselves they mean nothing unless you can tie them to a specific usecase/experience from your CV which should contain the details. Both the "Forest" i.e. big picture/business need/overall system/architecture/etc. details and "The Trees" i.e. languages/tools/libraries/frameworks/techniques/etc. matter.
You have to deal with Reality even if it is broken but you can do it differently than the norm (but stand out on the positive side) and get excellent results. To paraphrase a wellknown saying; "It is no measure of health to be adjusted to a profoundly sick [recruiting process]".
> The last thing I want to do is discuss how cool it was programming in Fortran in the 90s. ... But that was a distraction from the narrative I was trying to convey. My single focus at an interview is to demonstrate that I have both the soft and hard skills that make me fit for the role.
This depends on what i am interviewing you for. As pointed out above, my requirements/needs trump your view/opinions of the role.
As an example, my very first job was implementing a Personnel Information System using Cobol85 on a Cyberdata mainframe. Using Structured Analysis and Design methods (this was before OO became mainstream) I implemented a RDBMS inspired design using ISAM files and also a UI using ansi escape codes. So even though i do not remember much of the Cobol language itself i remember the design which is still useful today. Hence i can demonstrate knowledge of Relational Theory/RDBMSes as needed. This is only possible if it were listed in the CV in the first place.
> Not really, the latter sounds like the fluffy “I work well with people”.
You have failed the test. This only shows you have no business evaluating any resume for a C++ developer. It is actually an advanced expertise which most good interviewers understand and appreciate and design teams need.
