From: crawford@church.mitre.org (Randy Crawford)
Subject: Re: Interview Experiences?
Keywords: Resumes
Organization: The MITRE Corporation, McLean, VA
Distribution: world, local
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 23:09:00 GMT


First of all, I want to disavow myself as an expert on employment or as
an official representative of the policies of my firm.

That said, I have participated in the hiring of some 5 people into our
AI department in the past 2 months, and I can offer some observations 
from that perspective.

  
In article <4838@unixhub.SLAC.Stanford.EDU>, jfm@jupiter.SLAC.Stanford.EDU 
(John F. McGowan) writes:
> In article <1992Jul24.020955.29781@cco.caltech.edu> jeffp@cco.caltech.edu 
(Jeffrey E. Prisbrey) writes:
> >
> >A curriculum vita is usually pretty long.  I have been told that this
> >can be a problem, that people in the real world (tm) don't like
> >resumes longer than a page.
> >
> >Some of the people here have experience hiring -- what are your veiws
> >on resume length?
...
> 	The general consensus is to shoot for a one page resume in
> industry.  _However_, if one page doesn't do justice to your skills
> and experience, despite much effort to cram it into one page, do 2 or
> even 3 pages.

Agreed.  Don't do yourself a disservice by excluding skills or experience
simply so that your resume is a magical 1 or 2 pages long.  If I'm looking
for a talent or some background that you omitted, we may never meet.

> 	However, keep in mind the typical resume reader.  This is either
> (most often) a human resources person with limited technical knowledge who
> also has to scan hundreds if not thousands of resumes.  Or it is a hiring
> manager with a lot of work to do and quite possible a stack of many
> resumes to go through.  He/she is probably going to give your resume
> a very cursory look unless something catches his/her eye.

This is the first step in the process.  In larger firms, after initial 
screening by someone in personnel (or a headhunter), resumes judged to be a
sufficient match in the necessary skills are forwarded to staff in the 
departments with relevant vacancies.  There, the technical management will
review the resumes before proceeding with phone screens.  The screens are 
often conducted by working technical staff to further assess a skills match 
and to gain some sense of the applicant's experience, intentions and communi-
cation skills.  Then the successful screen is invited in for an interview.

Interviews in job fairs generally play the role of the phone screen.

> 	What I have generally done is include a Skills: section at the
> top of the first page of the resume.  I do this with one page resumes as
> well.  This section lists all the buzzwords for the skills I possess.  For
> example, if you know C, Fortran, and LISP, list these as skills.  If you
> know SPICE (analog circuit emulation software) list this.  If you know
> technical drawing, list this.  Try to identify the names used by industry
> for your skills.  Organize the skills section so the skills particularly
> sought by the company you are approaching are easily seen.  Perhaps
> bold face or highlight the skills that the company is particularly
> interested in.

I _strongly_ recommend the same.  When I look at resumes, I look for specific
skills as evidenced by some mention of the skill _and_ evidence of experience
using said skill.  If either is missing, I wonder just how much proficiency
is really there.  Remember that an ability to learn is valued only after an
applicant has demonstrated that s/he is useful to the company _now_.

I've found this has worked nicely for me as an applicant as well.
 
> 	I would say one of the main reasons for short resumes is that in
> practice the people reading resumes have very limited time to read the
> resume, hence they simply wouldn't bother with a 4 page resume unless
> really interested.  for this reason, you must catch the reader's interest
> with a resume, especially a longer one, get him to take the time to
> read your longer stuff.

I suspect most people never really 'read' a resume.  As with any document
which is organized in a segmented way, resumes are meant to be scanned.
If the skill, experience, education, or communication skills are lacking,
out it goes.  As I see it, resumes are used to qualify applicants for jobs.
If the resume doesn't convey your qualifications, then you won't be seen as
acceptable for the work.
 
The earlier post which advocated the development of several resumes, each
directed toward a different target job -- this idea is a good one.  People
who emphasize their interest in work we do not do, do themselves a disservice
by confusing the issue:  Do you want the job we are offering?  Are you
qualified to do it?
-- 

| Randy Crawford        crawford@mitre.org
|
| N=1 -> P=NP           703 883-7940
Newsgroups: sci.research.careers