9 ms·

I think an "education" section is a boilerplate resume item. If it wasn't there, I'd at least ask for details.

by Bartlet 15y ago

daeken 15y ago
I don't have an education section on my resume, as I'm a high school dropout myself. Last year I was looking for a new job and shot my resume to probably a dozen different companies. Of those, the only company who asked about the lack of an education section was Bloomberg (of the ~8 people I had in-person interviews with, at least half of them asked me about it, in fact, which told me a lot about what the company was looking for). I'm not sure if it's indicative of the tech market at large, but no one else batted an eye at my lack of an education section and focused purely on my skills and experience.
- natrius 15y ago
  I always ask, not because it's required, but because the answer is often enlightening. Judging companies for asking isn't reasonable.
  - daeken 15y ago
    For me, interviewing with a company is as much about me judging whether or not the company is a good fit for me as it is them judging whether or not I'm a good fit for them. If it's clear from the interviewers that they're looking for someone with a college degree and a CS background, then not only am I not a good fit for them, they're not a good fit for me. With the ability to choose to work for the vast majority of tech companies, I'd rather err on the side of being very picky about who I spend my time with. In the case of Bloomberg, those who asked me about my education were clearly biased (not in the question itself, but in the context, tone, etc) against those who are self-educated, and that's not at all the environment I want to work in.
    - natrius 15y ago
      Ok, that makes plenty of sense.
  - tptacek 15y ago
    In the mid-90s I got reasonably far down the road with an interview at DE Shaw / Juno and stopped it cold when they demanded school transcripts. I guess I'm unreasonable, but, if you're looking for data points: hi, I'm a candidate who will turn you down cold if you require school information from me. For a long time, I thought this was a New York thing, but, no; I got an offer from a very excellent NY tech/finance company a few years before we started Matasano, and nobody there was dumb enough to want to see my report cards.
    - bane 15y ago
      Transcripts are a bit much. You should after all have some level of trust in the people you are hiring. Sounds like you dodged a bullet.
    - Daniel_Newby 15y ago
      I read that Google asks for it, but they are a bit, er, happy when it comes to statistical analysis. IIRC they were not impressed by the statistical power of transcripts.
      - lurker17 15y ago
        And yet they require transcripts (or did a few years ago). Maybe they've learned from past mistakes? Or their model can't handle NA values on some features?
        jarek 15y ago
        Google still asks at least new grads for transcripts as of this month.
        Daniel_Newby 15y ago
        The source I read said he never got around to chasing down a transcript and nobody complained. I think it reasonable to require a transcript for new graduates.
    - awj 15y ago
- gaius 15y ago
  I always ask this, but not for the reason you think: it's so that I, as an interviewer, can adapt the interview to you. Recent example, one candidate had no idea what I meant by "principle of locality", but I probed a bit, and he understood it perfectly well: but lacking a formal CS education, he didn't have the vocabulary. Same with big-O notation, some guys have never heard of it, but show them a code snippet and they'll tell you straight away how efficient it is.
thwarted 15y ago
Interests and Hobbies seem to be boilerplate resume sections too, but no one with any significant experience should include them.
- tptacek 15y ago
  Interests, hobbies, and education are what you put on a thin resume to fill it out.
- m0nastic 15y ago
  The "art" to resumes (as I'm now in the process of learning, after not looking at mine for ten years), is to figure out how to best portray yourself to the exact person(s) you're submitting it to. That should inform what sections are appropriate. Sometimes having interests and hobbies is beneficial. I've seen numerous folks at startups talk about how they like seeing things like interests and hobbies, as they feel it paints a more complete picture of the person. At larger companies, they might at a minimum not care about that, or even actively not want to learn that information (for fear of being accused of having discriminatory hiring practices). I have a few friends who include that they are an Eagle Scout on their resume (I don't put it on mine). In the overwhelming majority of cases, that's probably not going to be helpful to a prospective employer, but maybe it catches someone's eye and serves as a launching off point in an interview.
  - tptacek 15y ago
    I like Eagle Scout on the resume. I'd put it there. (I'm not one).
    - m0nastic 15y ago
      See, that's good to know (and I suppose ironic in the O'henry sense of the word). The thing I've started to figure out is that there is almost no consensus on what people want to see on a resume (short of what they don't want to see).
    - brianmckenzie 15y ago
DavidAdams 15y ago
I have a bachelor's degree, and I haven't included an education section on my resume for at least a decade. (I'm 40 years old) I've been at VP or C-level for a long time. That's largely because my degree is largely irrelevant to my career path, or at least I believe that putting it there wouldn't really advance the story I'm trying to put forward succinctly on a CV. I have an English degree, which has actually been incalculably key to my career as a software company founder and executive, since I studied writing and basically write for a living. But I founded my first company when I was still in college, and it's pretty much what happened from there that's part of my story. As it happens, I went ahead and finished my degree, but it wouldn't have mattered one whit if I hadn't.
bane 15y ago
Education is absolutely a boilerplate resume item. I can't even count the number of time irregularities in just that one section ended up providing deep insight into a good or bad candidate. Everybody who has an education puts it on their resume even if it's 30 or 40 years old and they jam it at the bottom in a small font. For example: A weird school name - "International University of America", "University of New York City" often points to a diploma mill or a lack of degree Missing GPA - The rule of thumb is, put it on if it's a 3.5 or higher. Don't put it on if it's lower and let the employer guess or ask during the interview. Or...if it's missing assume it's below a 3.5. It's up to you how much weight that has in the interview. You may be targeting a school or degree major that make it very hard to get a high GPA. If the school does some artsy fartsy "non-traditional" grading system and doesn't use GPAs, or they are from a foreign country with a different system, figure out what they do use and ask that during an interview. If the school is an "every one is a winner just for trying" school, they probably aren't the candidate you are looking for anyway. "Attended xyz" or "Coursework in major abc" - means they didn't finish school. Somebody currently going will likely have a "estimated completion Spring of 20xx" or some such instead. "Environment" - I see this often from candidates from India, and I don't know why this happens, but they'll list a perfectly good school and education credentials, then list environment and virtually every piece of hardware and software that they happened to have had in the room with them during their studies regardless of their use of it or not. Ignore this since it's obviously coming from some weird resume writing coaching and probably a result of trying to cram a CV into a resume format. No colleges listed only a high school - no problem, if the candidate looks good, they might still be a fantastic hire. Especially if they are young and haven't decided what to do yet. You can always go back to school. You usually see this on resumes of young candidates or experienced candidates with no upper education. There is no excuse to not have an education section on a resume. Experienced people will tend to put it at the bottom and let their work history speak for them, and inexperienced candidates will do the opposite. Resumes without that section should go straight in the shredder, same as resumes with typos, grammar errors, punctuation problems, a constantly changing font (or Comic Sans). It's like not putting your callback #, email address, home address or work history. Also, if you are about to hire somebody based heavily on their education pedigree, you should absolutely use this service http://www.nslc.org/ http://www.nslc.org/. The number of fake degrees on resumes is astonishing sometimes.

I think an "education" section is a boilerplate resume item. If it wasn't there, I'd at least ask for details.

by Bartlet 15y ago

I think an "education" section is a boilerplate resume item. If it wasn't there, I'd at least ask for details.

I don't have an education section on my resume, as I'm a high school dropout myself. Last year I was looking for a new job and shot my resume to probably a dozen different companies. Of those, the only company who asked about the lack of an education section was Bloomberg (of the ~8 people I had in-person interviews with, at least half of them asked me about it, in fact, which told me a lot about what the company was looking for). I'm not sure if it's indicative of the tech market at large, but no one else batted an eye at my lack of an education section and focused purely on my skills and experience.

natrius 15y ago
I always ask, not because it's required, but because the answer is often enlightening. Judging companies for asking isn't reasonable.
- daeken 15y ago
  For me, interviewing with a company is as much about me judging whether or not the company is a good fit for me as it is them judging whether or not I'm a good fit for them. If it's clear from the interviewers that they're looking for someone with a college degree and a CS background, then not only am I not a good fit for them, they're not a good fit for me. With the ability to choose to work for the vast majority of tech companies, I'd rather err on the side of being very picky about who I spend my time with. In the case of Bloomberg, those who asked me about my education were clearly biased (not in the question itself, but in the context, tone, etc) against those who are self-educated, and that's not at all the environment I want to work in.
  - natrius 15y ago
    Ok, that makes plenty of sense.
- tptacek 15y ago
  In the mid-90s I got reasonably far down the road with an interview at DE Shaw / Juno and stopped it cold when they demanded school transcripts. I guess I'm unreasonable, but, if you're looking for data points: hi, I'm a candidate who will turn you down cold if you require school information from me. For a long time, I thought this was a New York thing, but, no; I got an offer from a very excellent NY tech/finance company a few years before we started Matasano, and nobody there was dumb enough to want to see my report cards.
  - bane 15y ago
    Transcripts are a bit much. You should after all have some level of trust in the people you are hiring. Sounds like you dodged a bullet.
  - Daniel_Newby 15y ago
    I read that Google asks for it, but they are a bit, er, happy when it comes to statistical analysis. IIRC they were not impressed by the statistical power of transcripts.
    - lurker17 15y ago
      And yet they require transcripts (or did a few years ago). Maybe they've learned from past mistakes? Or their model can't handle NA values on some features?
      - jarek 15y ago
        Google still asks at least new grads for transcripts as of this month.
      - Daniel_Newby 15y ago
        The source I read said he never got around to chasing down a transcript and nobody complained. I think it reasonable to require a transcript for new graduates.
  - awj 15y ago
gaius 15y ago
I always ask this, but not for the reason you think: it's so that I, as an interviewer, can adapt the interview to you. Recent example, one candidate had no idea what I meant by "principle of locality", but I probed a bit, and he understood it perfectly well: but lacking a formal CS education, he didn't have the vocabulary. Same with big-O notation, some guys have never heard of it, but show them a code snippet and they'll tell you straight away how efficient it is.

thwarted 15y ago

Interests and Hobbies seem to be boilerplate resume sections too, but no one with any significant experience should include them.

tptacek 15y ago
Interests, hobbies, and education are what you put on a thin resume to fill it out.
m0nastic 15y ago
The "art" to resumes (as I'm now in the process of learning, after not looking at mine for ten years), is to figure out how to best portray yourself to the exact person(s) you're submitting it to. That should inform what sections are appropriate. Sometimes having interests and hobbies is beneficial. I've seen numerous folks at startups talk about how they like seeing things like interests and hobbies, as they feel it paints a more complete picture of the person. At larger companies, they might at a minimum not care about that, or even actively not want to learn that information (for fear of being accused of having discriminatory hiring practices). I have a few friends who include that they are an Eagle Scout on their resume (I don't put it on mine). In the overwhelming majority of cases, that's probably not going to be helpful to a prospective employer, but maybe it catches someone's eye and serves as a launching off point in an interview.
- tptacek 15y ago
  I like Eagle Scout on the resume. I'd put it there. (I'm not one).
  - m0nastic 15y ago
    See, that's good to know (and I suppose ironic in the O'henry sense of the word). The thing I've started to figure out is that there is almost no consensus on what people want to see on a resume (short of what they don't want to see).
  - brianmckenzie 15y ago

DavidAdams 15y ago

I have a bachelor's degree, and I haven't included an education section on my resume for at least a decade. (I'm 40 years old) I've been at VP or C-level for a long time. That's largely because my degree is largely irrelevant to my career path, or at least I believe that putting it there wouldn't really advance the story I'm trying to put forward succinctly on a CV. I have an English degree, which has actually been incalculably key to my career as a software company founder and executive, since I studied writing and basically write for a living. But I founded my first company when I was still in college, and it's pretty much what happened from there that's part of my story. As it happens, I went ahead and finished my degree, but it wouldn't have mattered one whit if I hadn't.

bane 15y ago

Education is absolutely a boilerplate resume item. I can't even count the number of time irregularities in just that one section ended up providing deep insight into a good or bad candidate. Everybody who has an education puts it on their resume even if it's 30 or 40 years old and they jam it at the bottom in a small font. For example: A weird school name - "International University of America", "University of New York City" often points to a diploma mill or a lack of degree Missing GPA - The rule of thumb is, put it on if it's a 3.5 or higher. Don't put it on if it's lower and let the employer guess or ask during the interview. Or...if it's missing assume it's below a 3.5. It's up to you how much weight that has in the interview. You may be targeting a school or degree major that make it very hard to get a high GPA. If the school does some artsy fartsy "non-traditional" grading system and doesn't use GPAs, or they are from a foreign country with a different system, figure out what they do use and ask that during an interview. If the school is an "every one is a winner just for trying" school, they probably aren't the candidate you are looking for anyway. "Attended xyz" or "Coursework in major abc" - means they didn't finish school. Somebody currently going will likely have a "estimated completion Spring of 20xx" or some such instead. "Environment" - I see this often from candidates from India, and I don't know why this happens, but they'll list a perfectly good school and education credentials, then list environment and virtually every piece of hardware and software that they happened to have had in the room with them during their studies regardless of their use of it or not. Ignore this since it's obviously coming from some weird resume writing coaching and probably a result of trying to cram a CV into a resume format. No colleges listed only a high school - no problem, if the candidate looks good, they might still be a fantastic hire. Especially if they are young and haven't decided what to do yet. You can always go back to school. You usually see this on resumes of young candidates or experienced candidates with no upper education. There is no excuse to not have an education section on a resume. Experienced people will tend to put it at the bottom and let their work history speak for them, and inexperienced candidates will do the opposite. Resumes without that section should go straight in the shredder, same as resumes with typos, grammar errors, punctuation problems, a constantly changing font (or Comic Sans). It's like not putting your callback #, email address, home address or work history. Also, if you are about to hire somebody based heavily on their education pedigree, you should absolutely use this service http://www.nslc.org/ http://www.nslc.org/. The number of fake degrees on resumes is astonishing sometimes.