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> I easily get 100+ resumes, and I don't have days to spend trawling through them It is your job to look through resume's. This is what you are paid to do. You

> I easily get 100+ resumes, and I don't have days to spend trawling through them It is your job to look through resume's. This is what you are paid to do. You claim to be a hiring manager. It is not my responsibility to convince you to do the job you are paid to do. My resume contains all the information you need to make the determination of whether I am qualified for the job, including "I love writing web apps in Ruby on Rails with a ClojureScript front end" adds nothing to the application but does waste my time.

reader5000 10y ago
Write one cover letter and copy paste. I can totally understand prose selling better than a listing of "past things done".
- freework 10y ago
  Is it really "prose" if it's written in such a way that it can be copied over and over again?
  - rhizome 10y ago
    Prose is writing that is not poetry, so yes.
lostcolony 10y ago
Actually, no. A hiring manager is "a manager who is hiring". I.e., not an HR manager, but the person who put in the request to hire someone. Generally their job actually entails delivering a product or service or similar. -Part- of that is filling the team. But that is not what they are measured on. At the end of the day, what they will be evaluated on is delivery, not hiring. As such, it is up to them how much time they spend hiring, and it is up to them what heuristics they use in that. Because, ultimately, time spent on hiring is time they're not spending actually helping the other team members who they have already hired, and it is only indirectly related to actually delivering the thing they are supposed to deliver (whereas they may have demands on their time that -directly- affect the delivery). It is also up to you whether or not you try to help them by showing you have actually read the posting, and know something about the company, and whatever other heuristic they have. That's totally your prerogative. But you do not have -any- standing to fault someone whose job is delivering something with not considering you because you didn't want to put in some effort.
imron 10y ago
> "I love writing web apps in Ruby on Rails with a ClojureScript front end" adds nothing to the application I agree with this point. Writing that sort of sentence is meaningless fluff. That being said, you need to think of things from the position of the people hiring you. The manager is going to give the tech lead a bunch of resumes and cover letters and ask them to read through them and make a short list of 5 (or whatever) to interview. If they are looking to hire someone to build RoR web apps with a ClojureScript front end, then you make the tech lead's job easier if your resume and cover letter highlight your experience building RoR web apps with a ClojureScript front end - or if you don't have that, at least point out how your other experience means you can still solve their problem. While it is possible that a generic resume contains all the information needed to make a determination of whether you are qualified for the job, you should be emphasizing the parts relevant to the current job so the person putting together a short list doesn't have to study your resume, instead, they can look at your application for 30 seconds and go: Yep, yep, yep, wow this person has everything we're looking for, onto the short list they go. Because here's the thing. The tech lead is usually a busy person and they've got better things to do than spend and hour or two sifting through resumes. When I've had to do it, I'd take a quick first pass through all the resumes and put them in one of three piles: easy yes, easy no and maybe. If all the relevant information is in your resume but I have to hunt around for it, then you'll likely end up on the maybe pile. If I get through the stack of resumes and my easy yes pile has enough candidates, then the maybe pile doesn't get a further look, because I'm trying to minimize the time I have to spend looking at resumes.

reader5000 10y ago

Write one cover letter and copy paste. I can totally understand prose selling better than a listing of "past things done".

freework 10y ago
Is it really "prose" if it's written in such a way that it can be copied over and over again?
- rhizome 10y ago
  Prose is writing that is not poetry, so yes.

lostcolony 10y ago

Actually, no. A hiring manager is "a manager who is hiring". I.e., not an HR manager, but the person who put in the request to hire someone. Generally their job actually entails delivering a product or service or similar. -Part- of that is filling the team. But that is not what they are measured on. At the end of the day, what they will be evaluated on is delivery, not hiring. As such, it is up to them how much time they spend hiring, and it is up to them what heuristics they use in that. Because, ultimately, time spent on hiring is time they're not spending actually helping the other team members who they have already hired, and it is only indirectly related to actually delivering the thing they are supposed to deliver (whereas they may have demands on their time that -directly- affect the delivery). It is also up to you whether or not you try to help them by showing you have actually read the posting, and know something about the company, and whatever other heuristic they have. That's totally your prerogative. But you do not have -any- standing to fault someone whose job is delivering something with not considering you because you didn't want to put in some effort.

imron 10y ago

> "I love writing web apps in Ruby on Rails with a ClojureScript front end" adds nothing to the application I agree with this point. Writing that sort of sentence is meaningless fluff. That being said, you need to think of things from the position of the people hiring you. The manager is going to give the tech lead a bunch of resumes and cover letters and ask them to read through them and make a short list of 5 (or whatever) to interview. If they are looking to hire someone to build RoR web apps with a ClojureScript front end, then you make the tech lead's job easier if your resume and cover letter highlight your experience building RoR web apps with a ClojureScript front end - or if you don't have that, at least point out how your other experience means you can still solve their problem. While it is possible that a generic resume contains all the information needed to make a determination of whether you are qualified for the job, you should be emphasizing the parts relevant to the current job so the person putting together a short list doesn't have to study your resume, instead, they can look at your application for 30 seconds and go: Yep, yep, yep, wow this person has everything we're looking for, onto the short list they go. Because here's the thing. The tech lead is usually a busy person and they've got better things to do than spend and hour or two sifting through resumes. When I've had to do it, I'd take a quick first pass through all the resumes and put them in one of three piles: easy yes, easy no and maybe. If all the relevant information is in your resume but I have to hunt around for it, then you'll likely end up on the maybe pile. If I get through the stack of resumes and my easy yes pile has enough candidates, then the maybe pile doesn't get a further look, because I'm trying to minimize the time I have to spend looking at resumes.