Resume Critique
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Let's look at SAMland and Jimmyland again, because it's kind of useful.
SAMland - we assume numbers without foundation and lies and that people who can't make good decisions also can't evaluate good decisions, but that most people are fundamentally smart enough to be functional
Jimmyland - we assume that nearly all statements are true, but that nearly all people and companies are totally idiotic to the point of incompetence.
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@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
Normal people avoid all kinds of failures every moment, of every day. Imagine if you bought a Corvette and came home and your wife is furious because you spent $150K that you didn't have, on a car you didn't need. Now explain to her how dumb she is because you ACTUALLY saved $300K by not buying the $450K Ferrari that you also didn't need. Boy will she fill dumb once she realized how much success you had in not buying that Ferrari.
The success would have been on the wife's CV saying 'Saved 100k through purchase of a Ford'. In your example they both failed
How do we know that Hyper-V was not like the Corvette? Nowhere was the business process or success mentioned, only the avoidance of the Ferrari. We have no reason to think that Hyper-V was the right, or even a good choice, only that what other option was considered was worse.
But you've highlighted my point. The "success" is skipped here. We have the Ferrari and the Corvette only in the CV example, never the Ford. So you've caught my point, but I'm not sure you've applied it to the problem at hand.
The fact that the CV writer is saying it's a success and explaining why... Is why.
There is no explanantion and no foundation for calling it a success. Hence my assumption that it is a lie.
It must suck to assume everything is a lie. Pessimist?
Your approach is to just assume anything, no matter how illogical or unlikely, on a CV is the truth?
Until I meat them and question them, yes. That's the point of the face to face. To assume it's not the truth is just a bad place to be.
It's not when the statement is a fundamental lie. There is no foundation for a statement like $150K being saved under those conditions. There is no truthful statement to make in that manner because such a valuation cannto be made. So it is a known falsehood.
It can be said. If the director is about to sign off on the purchase but the Candidate stopped it and convincing them to change.. that can be said. Along with any savings etc. Who are you to say they lied?!
I'm the person evaluating their statement, in this situation, I am the sole person to determine the truth. Clearly the director can't understand the problem domain enough to know what savings vs. failure looks like, and the candidate had to work for that person and their perspective is coloured by their impression of intent from someone other than them.
Also, your statement is based on assumptions that dont' exist in the scenario.
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@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
You can't get away from the arbitrary failure component. That is the critical piece here. Along with not knowing if the disaster avoidance was the employee or a manager.
Then put that information in the CV. On that one line. Putting on your CV means you did it. Otherwise it should not be on the CV. I want to know what you did. Not what soembody else did.
Right. And Hyper-V is what he did. Savings $100K, both in the creation of the cost, and in the fixing of the cost, were someone else.
Not necessarily. If you read my post I'm saying to say why he use HyperV and gave a possible example why. If it was 'because I was told to'... That's pretty crap.
But the failure was because he was told to, right? Or is he saying that HE was going to screw up and not consolidate, but stopped himself?
No. He stopped not consolidation by doing consolidation.
Sure, but that's meaningless. He stopped failure by not failing.
Yes. And not failing is something to brag about.
Again, this is never true. Ever. You are talking about self sabotage. This is silly in the taxi / wall way.
This is not self sabotage. Telling of your success 'consolidates servers rather than like for like renewal saving x' is a success and shows depth. Saying 'HyperV' doesn't. Why HyperV. How did you decide. Why was gay better? Etc... Those are what I want to see. Not a logical static mindless void giving no information about you or why that word is on the CV at all.
Setting your own bar so low is absolutely self sabotage. You have to make yourself worthless to make such a meaningless avoidance of failure seem impressive in comparison to your personal baseline.
You are showing you have worth that you are able to prevent the failure. SAM land is such a strange place.
So, in Jimmyland, NOT driving your taxi into walls is success. And you think SAM land is weird?
No in my land stopping somebody from driving in to a wall', who was planning to, is a success.
That's what I said. So we agree.
Yes, so we agree that saying you stopped a purchase of 16 servers, and instead purchased one and consolidated saving cash is useful. Cool.
Yes. It is useful, compared to being useless.
So... Why have you been disagreeing entirely...
Because if you feel that avoiding being useless is a point to brag about, you have set the value of the employee so low that I would put the CV straight in the trash. Clearly, their measure of success is so low, that even being successful, they aren't good enough to hire.
See the issue? You have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. The candidate is so bad, that this modicum of failure avoidance is needed to show that they are not totally useless.
You arent bragging about not being useless.
You are bragging about how you have been a success and useful. -
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
Normal people avoid all kinds of failures every moment, of every day. Imagine if you bought a Corvette and came home and your wife is furious because you spent $150K that you didn't have, on a car you didn't need. Now explain to her how dumb she is because you ACTUALLY saved $300K by not buying the $450K Ferrari that you also didn't need. Boy will she fill dumb once she realized how much success you had in not buying that Ferrari.
The success would have been on the wife's CV saying 'Saved 100k through purchase of a Ford'. In your example they both failed
How do we know that Hyper-V was not like the Corvette? Nowhere was the business process or success mentioned, only the avoidance of the Ferrari. We have no reason to think that Hyper-V was the right, or even a good choice, only that what other option was considered was worse.
But you've highlighted my point. The "success" is skipped here. We have the Ferrari and the Corvette only in the CV example, never the Ford. So you've caught my point, but I'm not sure you've applied it to the problem at hand.
The fact that the CV writer is saying it's a success and explaining why... Is why.
There is no explanantion and no foundation for calling it a success. Hence my assumption that it is a lie.
It must suck to assume everything is a lie. Pessimist?
Your approach is to just assume anything, no matter how illogical or unlikely, on a CV is the truth?
Until I meat them and question them, yes. That's the point of the face to face. To assume it's not the truth is just a bad place to be.
It's not when the statement is a fundamental lie. There is no foundation for a statement like $150K being saved under those conditions. There is no truthful statement to make in that manner because such a valuation cannto be made. So it is a known falsehood.
It can be said. If the director is about to sign off on the purchase but the Candidate stopped it and convincing them to change.. that can be said. Along with any savings etc. Who are you to say they lied?!
I'm the person evaluating their statement, in this situation, I am the sole person to determine the truth. Clearly the director can't understand the problem domain enough to know what savings vs. failure looks like, and the candidate had to work for that person and their perspective is coloured by their impression of intent from someone other than them.
Also, your statement is based on assumptions that dont' exist in the scenario.
Like I said a few times... Let's just disagree on the CV. I personally like to have the reason a word is listed. You I guess dont. So, that's it.
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@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
If the director is about to sign off on the purchase but the Candidate stopped it and convincing them to change.. that can be said.
No, it cannot. It cannot be known. It's a like a quantum state. But here is an example...
Bob goes to Carmax and has many cars from which to choose. The angle on his shoulder says to buy the Ford. The devil on his shoulder tells him to buy the Ferrari. He splits the difference and buys the Corvette.
Did he save $150K? Did he waste $120K?
Two says of stating the same problem. Both are based on "decisions he considered but didn't make." That's never something we can gauge success from.
But what we DO gauge success from is determining externally what "good looks like", in this case we assume that he did need a car and that the Ford was the right answer. So any expenditure over buying the Ford is a waste. So the Corvette is not a $150K savings, but realy a $120K loss.
If you don't know "what good looks like" you can't even talk about cost savings. In this scenario, we have no idea what the right answer is, so we can't tell if money was wasted. We only know what a really bad decision was (the Ferrari) and that that didn't happen. That gives us nothing to work with.
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@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
Normal people avoid all kinds of failures every moment, of every day. Imagine if you bought a Corvette and came home and your wife is furious because you spent $150K that you didn't have, on a car you didn't need. Now explain to her how dumb she is because you ACTUALLY saved $300K by not buying the $450K Ferrari that you also didn't need. Boy will she fill dumb once she realized how much success you had in not buying that Ferrari.
The success would have been on the wife's CV saying 'Saved 100k through purchase of a Ford'. In your example they both failed
How do we know that Hyper-V was not like the Corvette? Nowhere was the business process or success mentioned, only the avoidance of the Ferrari. We have no reason to think that Hyper-V was the right, or even a good choice, only that what other option was considered was worse.
But you've highlighted my point. The "success" is skipped here. We have the Ferrari and the Corvette only in the CV example, never the Ford. So you've caught my point, but I'm not sure you've applied it to the problem at hand.
The fact that the CV writer is saying it's a success and explaining why... Is why.
There is no explanantion and no foundation for calling it a success. Hence my assumption that it is a lie.
It must suck to assume everything is a lie. Pessimist?
Your approach is to just assume anything, no matter how illogical or unlikely, on a CV is the truth?
Until I meat them and question them, yes. That's the point of the face to face. To assume it's not the truth is just a bad place to be.
It's not when the statement is a fundamental lie. There is no foundation for a statement like $150K being saved under those conditions. There is no truthful statement to make in that manner because such a valuation cannto be made. So it is a known falsehood.
It can be said. If the director is about to sign off on the purchase but the Candidate stopped it and convincing them to change.. that can be said. Along with any savings etc. Who are you to say they lied?!
I'm the person evaluating their statement, in this situation, I am the sole person to determine the truth. Clearly the director can't understand the problem domain enough to know what savings vs. failure looks like, and the candidate had to work for that person and their perspective is coloured by their impression of intent from someone other than them.
Also, your statement is based on assumptions that dont' exist in the scenario.
Like I said a few times... Let's just disagree on the CV. I personally like to have the reason a word is listed. You I guess dont. So, that's it.
I didn't disagree with having a reason. I just said to put on facts, not opinion (and especialy not easily challenged opinion.)
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Like I said earlier... mentioning Hyper-V alone has 99% of the value. Adding that it was also a consolidation project adds a little value (but risks adding to much info that might undermine if someone was hoping you did it for HA or for just best practice reasons.) But these are two very different things... one is a tech so would normally be listed under skills. The other is a project and should go under experience. The two don't need to be associated as it's almost entirely unimportant that you consolidated with Hyper-V. That you know Hyper-V matters, that you know consolidation matters. but there is no need to tie them together.
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@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
Normal people avoid all kinds of failures every moment, of every day. Imagine if you bought a Corvette and came home and your wife is furious because you spent $150K that you didn't have, on a car you didn't need. Now explain to her how dumb she is because you ACTUALLY saved $300K by not buying the $450K Ferrari that you also didn't need. Boy will she fill dumb once she realized how much success you had in not buying that Ferrari.
The success would have been on the wife's CV saying 'Saved 100k through purchase of a Ford'. In your example they both failed
How do we know that Hyper-V was not like the Corvette? Nowhere was the business process or success mentioned, only the avoidance of the Ferrari. We have no reason to think that Hyper-V was the right, or even a good choice, only that what other option was considered was worse.
But you've highlighted my point. The "success" is skipped here. We have the Ferrari and the Corvette only in the CV example, never the Ford. So you've caught my point, but I'm not sure you've applied it to the problem at hand.
The fact that the CV writer is saying it's a success and explaining why... Is why.
There is no explanantion and no foundation for calling it a success. Hence my assumption that it is a lie.
It must suck to assume everything is a lie. Pessimist?
Your approach is to just assume anything, no matter how illogical or unlikely, on a CV is the truth?
Until I meat them and question them, yes. That's the point of the face to face. To assume it's not the truth is just a bad place to be.
It's not when the statement is a fundamental lie. There is no foundation for a statement like $150K being saved under those conditions. There is no truthful statement to make in that manner because such a valuation cannto be made. So it is a known falsehood.
It can be said. If the director is about to sign off on the purchase but the Candidate stopped it and convincing them to change.. that can be said. Along with any savings etc. Who are you to say they lied?!
I'm the person evaluating their statement, in this situation, I am the sole person to determine the truth. Clearly the director can't understand the problem domain enough to know what savings vs. failure looks like, and the candidate had to work for that person and their perspective is coloured by their impression of intent from someone other than them.
Also, your statement is based on assumptions that dont' exist in the scenario.
Like I said a few times... Let's just disagree on the CV. I personally like to have the reason a word is listed. You I guess dont. So, that's it.
I didn't disagree with having a reason. I just said to put on facts, not opinion (and especialy not easily challenged opinion.)
Saying you saved money is not an opinion. It's a fact if they did it. Of course, you can never know it's true. But it can still be their fact.
And if true, is a great thing to brag about that you stopped that failure.
The whole point in meeting them is to them discuss this stuff.
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For example, I know RHEL and Windows. I am also experienced as a web admin. But I don't need to list which OS I have used in a web admin capacity. It's generally better to keep those things separate as they are different kinds of things.
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@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
Saying you saved money is not an opinion. It's a fact if they did it.
I've proven it is opinion. There is no means of proving you saved money, it's literally impossible. There is no fact here whatsoever. I don't know how you can state this, because I showed concretely via logical example that it is not possible to determine the cost savings, at least without an accepted baseline of success against which to measure.
Even with a baseline that is accepted, cost savings is a soft concept and very relative. Without a baseline, it is provable to be a falsehood.
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@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
The whole point in meeting them is to them discuss this stuff.
Right, so never put it on the CV where it could easily stop you from getting to have a discussion about the situation.
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In an interview, having a long conversation about how bad decisions were suggested and how you decided to do something else and talked them out of it, great. Talk about how they were going to spend $200K and you only spend $50K, great. But don't claim success or cost savings in a vacuum. Cost savings "versus decision X" is totally different than "cost savings", for example.
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For example... I was tempted to spend $200K, but I only spend $50K and got a system that was even better. Maybe I could have saved more, but I didn't feel like looking into it any more. That's a decent discussion to have. At some point you've got to make the judgement call to move forward, even if the answer isn't ideal. Talk about decision making capabilities, talk about your understanding of the decision making process. Those are the things that matter. If you try to state absolute value of decisions, someone is going to tear it apart. It implies unlimited knowledge that cannot exist.
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Going back to the software development example that I gave... I had a long meeting with the team talking about what they were planning to do. I kept asking them for their reasoning behind decisions and then asked why those same reasons were not applied universally to all decisions. We went round and round on this. Eventually they asked me what answer I was looking for. I was shocked. I had to explain that I wasn't looking for an answer, I was asking them to take a rational approach to decision making and be aware of when they were deciding based on stated criteria, or applying criteria after the fact to justify emotional answers.
Likewise, in the interview, you want to show that you can get to good answers, not claim that you once had a good answer. That you "did something good" once at a previous job is of no value to an employer in the future. But that you knew how to get to a good solution is something that you can repeat for a new employer. Does that make sense?
It's like "I picked Office 365 and it was the right choice" is worthless because for all we know you threw a dart at a dartboard. But if you show logic as to why you chose O365 and with different conditions would choose different things, you can show how you can bring value to other employers by making good decisions for them in the future.
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@black3dynamite said in Resume Critique:
What happened to staying on topic?
Actually, I welcome this for my thread. Reading others' opinions helps me achieve some clarity about what I think.
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@eddiejennings said in Resume Critique:
@black3dynamite said in Resume Critique:
What happened to staying on topic?
Actually, I welcome this for my thread. Reading others' opinions helps me achieve some clarity about what I think.
Lots of insight on this one.
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Any more lively discussion on this thread and it will make the all time most popular threads list!
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holy shit this thread blew up.
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@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
What a hiring manager or new company cares about:
- That you know technical things or have skills and experience (e.g. I can do this thing.)
- That you make good decisions and have good understanding (e.g. I think well about things.)
So a resume should only contain the above, and nothing more, nothing less?
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@Dashrender
It's all a part of my grand plan to be mentioned on a ML review video
On another note, home DNS server is now functional, so back to editing and job searching.
