Stop wasting everyone’s time by sending inflated CVs
By: Dragan Lalos
Tags: Cv, Job Interview, Company, Job Search, Write

Photo by João Ferrão on Unsplash

Who am I?

I’m a senior developer with over 10 years of experience. First, I applied for jobs and went to interviews, and later I started working as a tech lead and began interviewing people myself. I’ve been on both sides of the table. Since I’ve been fortunate enough to work with many successful companies, I’ve had a chance to talk to and interview many developers and review many CVs. In all honesty, the sheer amount of them that was not good is why I decided to write this article and help future developers apply for new roles.

Introduction

I know the title of this article sounds like something that goes without saying, or it’s clear to you that actively wasting anyone’s time doesn’t make any sense. Personally, I would not be writing this if it were less than 50% of candidates inflating their CVs. Still, unfortunately, in my experience, the number of people wasting time is far greater. Stay with me, and I will try to briefly explain using examples from my own experience to give you some tips on avoiding doing this.

What’s this about?

From time to time in companies where I worked/am working, I am tasked to put together a new team. The company sends me different resources where I can pick up CVs, and I spend days looking into them, and most of them are crap. Let me try to explain why that is and what the problems with the CVs are.

Why is a CV important?

On the one hand, a CV is your entry point for your next company. Of course, other resources can be important too, but don’t think your CV counts for any less these days. If you are blindly sending a CV thinking, maybe it will pass — believe me, it will not. If you aren’t paying attention to the details, we are.

What matters?

If you are applying for a position, read the description of the job carefully. Try to find out what the company does and who is already working in the company. Think about it, and check if you and your CV fit with the company and the people that already work there.

Example

I will give you a concrete example from my former company.

The company is a travel agency, and the goal was to put a team together to redesign the current web site module-by-module with the “latest” tech.

Here is what I put in the ad:

Strong programming foundation and experience in Javascript

3+ years of NodeJs and Javascript (ES6)

2+ years of React experience

Document/NoSQL database experience (MongoDB)

Webpack, HTML, CSS, Babel

Git, GitLab, and source code management concepts

Experience with running Node on production, ideally in the context of a server-side rendered app

Understanding of web performance and page speed optimization techniques

Integration, unit and end-to-end system testing principles

Excellent English communication skills (spoken and written)

What can we see from this ad? What’s obvious?

The stack was based on JS, and the company needed full-stack developer(s).

Now let’s crunch the numbers. Here’s what I found in the CVs we received:

55% of the CV’s didn’t have any trace of JS

30% had all the possible technologies on the market :)

10% had some experience with JS

5% were worth checking out

I already mentioned reading the job description carefully and not wasting either your or the company’s time. If you do not have anything with JS in your CV, of course, you will be skipped, and my opinion is that in this case, it’s not even worth letting you know what’s happened with your application.

The second bullet above is my favorite one.

Why is that?

Many people seemingly believe that they will look like a better candidate if they list many technologies. That’s wrong. After reading this kind of CV, I am baffled and need a lot of time to figure out what programmer you are.

Instead, the opposite is usually the case, and employers like CVs that are very succinct and, more importantly: accurate. I am not saying it is impossible, but people are rarely an expert in many different technologies at once.

There are two reasons why I don’t take this kind of CV:

The math is simple, takes the number of programming languages, multiplies them by a reasonable assumption of years of experience that you think it is necessary to be good at them, and compares that with your CV experience.

Five programming languages (C++, Java, C#, JS, PHP) Minimum of two years per language to be familiar with each one of them 5 x 2 = 10 years (CV has 5 years of experience) — really?

2. I call them and ask them questions about their CV, and the first question I ask about is always about something that is used very rarely (e.g., JS programmer and has Oracle in the CV).

In most cases, they do not know anything about it.

As I mentioned in the third bullet, 10% of the CVs had some connections with JS.

What do I mean by that?

Most of them were back-end developers, worked with JS in college, or did some small tasks as front-end developers. It’s totally OK to switch, and I am fine with this kind of CV because it’s honest. I would contact these guys to hear the full story, why they applied, and their history.

The last bullet point above should be clear now, and you can see why only 5% make it to a deeper check.

Takeaways

In the end, we know what we are looking for and what we need to see, so:

Read the job description carefully

Make a concise CV that fits the job description

Only include that which you know how to explain

Extra tip: try to find out as much about the new company and future colleagues’ profiles.

Let me know about your own experience in the comments, and how we can further improve communication and not waste anyone’s time.