[NA rant] Lies on resumes

when i see someone mention he knows 3 flavors of SQL and 7 flavors of OS in their resume and claim to "know" all of them, they aint getting hired by me, i generally talk to them over initial phone interview and they are out in 3 mins or less.
 
Oddly, it goes both ways.

I've been consulting since 1996 and on numerous occasions I've been asked, "I need to interview a ______. What should I ask them?"

I'm also often asked to sit in on candidate interviews, even when it's a full time replacement for the expensive worthless consultant. (Me)
 
Seriously though, these morons are really making it difficult for people like me to get anywhere.

What's worse is when they actually get THROUGH the screening process and get hired on and you have to report to them or clean up the horrible messes that they leave because they are completely inept.
 
Grrrrrrrrr................this is the worst part...The guy said he would call me either way but didn't.

"
January 27, 2017



Subject: United States Postal Service Employment Application
Recipient: flhrci2@gmail.com

Dear David **************,

Thank you for expressing interest in employment with the U.S. Postal Service
by applying for:

Job Posting Number and Title: CITY CARRIER ASSISTANT - ASHVILLE
OH NC10075107

A review of your application for this position determined that you do not meet
the eligibility or suitability requirements listed on the vacancy announcement.
Therefore, you will not receive further consideration for this vacancy.

We encourage you to apply for other vacancies that may provide the career
advancement and growth that you are seeking.


Sincerely,





Human Resources


SYSTEM GENERATED EMAIL - PLEASE DO NOT REPLY!"
 
Lying on resumes seem rampant these days. People will list a skill just to get noticed by recruiters then they'll study for the interview. I've actually had to stop in the middle of a phone/Skype interview because the candidate was looking up the answers. Some will do fine until you ask questions like "tell me about a recent problem with _____ that you encountered and how did you solve it". A blank stare is not good.

Writing a "Hello World" method in Java doesn't make you a developer. :)
 
How do employers sift through references? My best chance of getting a really good job is for potential employers to call my references (including every previous employer.) I have never left a job under bad terms and all employers have told me to come back if I ever need a job.
 
@flhrci Yeah I've gotten a lot of those. Considering how these same managers are intimidated by education credentials, it doesn't surprise me one bit that they wouldn't have the intestinal fortitude to call you up as promised. I also love how they reject you and in the same email encourage you to try again. That always ****ed me off

MadseasoN said:
Writing a "Hello World" method in Java doesn't make you a developer. :)
Click to expand...

Some people would disagree :)
 
Acrodustertoo said:
Sounds to me like all you computer folks are a bunch of snobby know it alls! Rough crowd I guess. Remember, you used to be that guy once.
Click to expand...

The thing about 'computers' is that there are very very few true experts. If you walk into an interview claiming that you're a '9' on certain skills you'd better be ready to teach us something. EG: Sending emails with Outlook doesn't make you an expert. Don't put 'Outlook' on your software developer resume unless you really are an Outlook expert (APIs, etc).

I've seen resumes with 'Excel' listed as a skill. The candidate didn't know a lick of VBA.
 
MadseasoN said:
Lying on resumes seem rampant these days. People will list a skill just to get noticed by recruiters then they'll study for the interview. I've actually had to stop in the middle of a phone/Skype interview because the candidate was looking up the answers. Some will do fine until you ask questions like "tell me about a recent problem with _____ that you encountered and how did you solve it". A blank stare is not good.

Writing a "Hello World" method in Java doesn't make you a developer. :)
Click to expand...

coding "Hello World" in Java - Developer
coding "Hello, World" in Java - Sr. Developer
coding "Hello? World?" in Java - jaded developer
coding and synthesizing to speech "Hello, Dave." as the correct response to Java module "Hello World" and integrating into IVR module - bored developer
refusing to code "Hello World" in Java because the specifications state "Hello, World." is the correct string - QA analyst
 
gkainz said:
coding "Hello World" in Java - Developer
coding "Hello, World" in Java - Sr. Developer
coding "Hello? World?" in Java - jaded developer
coding and synthesizing to speech "Hello, Dave." as the correct response to Java module "Hello World" and integrating into IVR module - bored developer
refusing to code "Hello World" in Java because the specifications state "Hello, World." is the correct string - QA analyst
Click to expand...

You forgot one:

writing a BRD, scheduling 20 meetings to discuss the meaning of the words Hello and World and the phrase Hello World as pertains to the business as a whole - Project Manager.
 
MadseasoN said:
Writing a "Hello World" method in Java doesn't make you a developer. :)
Click to expand...

Yes, but not being able to write "Hello World" in Java certainly means you're not one. At least you're not a Java developer.

Speaking of Hello World - on another one of my interviews from 2 weeks ago - lists himself as an HTML expert on his resume. Asks how well he knows Bootstrap - "very well".

Ok: "Write an HTML application that prints out 'Hello World' using Bootstrap. You're allowed to use Google to look up stuff."

Couldn't do it.
 
gkainz said:
coding "Hello World" in Java - Developer
coding "Hello, World" in Java - Sr. Developer
coding "Hello? World?" in Java - jaded developer
coding and synthesizing to speech "Hello, Dave." as the correct response to Java module "Hello World" and integrating into IVR module - bored developer
refusing to code "Hello World" in Java because the specifications state "Hello, World." is the correct string - QA analyst
Click to expand...

You forgot some:

Laugh at developer who handed you a Hello World program in Java and re-write it in a one line shell script: Newbie Sysadmin

Tell developers NFW will you install anything that runs in Java on a production system because it'll take ten minutes to load another copy of the JRE into RAM for each Hello World program and the systems will be dead in five minutes: Midlevel Sysadmin

Having already written Hello World in a three line regex because you were bored at the last company, smile and thank developers and deploy the shell script instead: Sr Sysadmin (bonus points, show Jr and Mid Sysadmins the regex and tell them you think it has a bug, but can't quite pin it down, and watch their heads explode)

Ask for $250,000 to upgrade systems and $120,000 to hire another sysadmin to babysit crashing Java boxes: Managing Sysadmin / Operations Manager

Do what the Operations Manager did but convince Sr. Sysadmin to also deploy the Jr. Sysadmin's simple shell script so the department can look impressive and still buy the machines and the new sysadmin and start them on some project you saw in CEO magazine because you know the execs will want whatever stupid thing it is after they talk to their buddies at the golf scramble next week: CTO.

Tell the entire company all Hello World allocations must be shut down until further notice, even though they're the core business revenue generator, because they haven't been vetted by Security: Sr Security Engineer.
 
deonb said:
We've given up on trying to hire actual qualified candidates and now we're just hiring people who have anything decent on their resume. Figured if they did something good in the past, we can train them for what we need. But resume after resume that we get is just lies, lies, lies. It's not even subtle.

"So you're an expert in SQL you say? Cool! What database?"
"Oracle, MySQL & SQL Server!".
"Good! Show me how to get the count of records in a table."
"Uhhh.... I don't know."

I've similarly lost count of the number of candidates who said that they're a C/C++ expert and then don't know what the stack is.

(If you don't know the above references, think about 6PC's latest spoof where he "admitted" that he didn't know what a rudder is... this is worse).

But the latest takes the cake - we told a candidate last week that we're not looking for any specific past experience - we're just testing that their resume is truthful. So he said hold on... and sent us a new copy of his resume with his lies removed.

Seriously?? How is that even a thing??

I don't remember it ever being as bad before.
Click to expand...

I'm sure your applicants were a little worse than this but I've coded in a number of languages and done stuff in Oracle and MySQL before. But honestly if you asked me to produce code on the spot without a reference I doubt I could do it. I'd have to look at a reference or something to get going again but since I've coded in that before and I know I'd pick it up again within a day or so I wouldn't feel dishonest about listing it on a resume..

but yeah if you know how to code in anything and don't know how a stack works....
 
I once had a blind PhD. apply for a $7.75/hr ticket agent job. I gave him an interview and tried really hard to place him SOMEWHERE, anywhere, in the company. I was finally able to offer him a job as a reservations agent using a phone and a special computer but he would have had to relocate to a different city. He declined.

I never was able to determine if he was really serious, or an EEOC plant. He did seem serious. And I did not detect any lies on his resume.
 
cowman said:
But honestly if you asked me to produce code on the spot without a reference I doubt I could do it.
Click to expand...

I had a programming instructor once who started life as an ADA coder on paper tape.

She showed every college class she taught that she could out-code them in several languages using a piece of paper and a pen, than they could code with a laptop and the entire internet as a reference... without error.

It was a good lesson in not knowing what you're really doing is mostly what people call "professional" level coding these days, and it's not even close.

You don't see many coders challenging themselves to write a complex program with a pen and paper as a mental strength game anymore. She had to do it because computer time was EXPENSIVE back then, and wasting it was not only taboo, but grounds for dismissal. You didn't expect the compiler to catch syntax errors back then, nor warn about bad constructs that might bite you in the butt. That was considered unprofessional.

Faster machines actually made programmers dumber. Quantity not quality is the name of the software game and has been for a very long time. So long hardly anyone remembers writing quality code -- with a pen.
 
I should probably say it's been 3 years since I have written code professionally and closer to 9-10 years since I did much with any of those languages. If I'd been working with them recently I could probably do it. That doesn't mean I'm incapable if I got started again is the point and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

But yeah no, nobody writes stuff out on paper. We were taught in school that nobody can really write perfect code on the first attempt. Funny thing is after getting use to the language I actually could just type something out and have it compile half the time. Not going back though... maybe if there was a work from home thing but I can't do office life again. God it sucks.
 
cowman said:
I'm sure your applicants were a little worse than this but I've coded in a number of languages and done stuff in Oracle and MySQL before. But honestly if you asked me to produce code on the spot without a reference I doubt I could do it. I'd have to look at a reference or something to get going again but since I've coded in that before and I know I'd pick it up again within a day or so I wouldn't feel dishonest about listing it on a resume...
Click to expand...

We don't use those "go and solve this particular problem on the spot" style of interviews.

I used to work at a big tech company, and we always used to interview like that. And although it does work well to prevent unqualified people from getting hired, it also screens out candidates that I worked with before and know are qualified. So I know the perils of that interview process, and don't use that.

So I'm really just trying to validate and test the resume, and the questions are really basic. The actual screening out process is done with a 90-day trial hire, which works better than on-the-spot problem solving style questions. Or maybe it doesn't work better, but we're probably a bit more desperate than Microsoft/Google/Amazon is.
 
cowman said:
Not going back though... maybe if there was a work from home thing but I can't do office life again. God it sucks.
Click to expand...

I haven't done coding in an office for years, but working from home isn't as glamorous as it seems.

I currently spend about 5 hours a week in the office, and the rest of the time at home. But that kind of thing is generally associated with having a massive workload.

There was a time last year where I didn't leave my front door for 35 days straight. Eat, sleep, coffee, work. Bath every 3 days.

Compared to that, spending 40 hours a week in an office and having the rest of the time for yourself sounds pretty attractive.
 
deonb said:
Yes, but not being able to write "Hello World" in Java certainly means you're not one. At least you're not a Java developer.

Speaking of Hello World - on another one of my interviews from 2 weeks ago - lists himself as an HTML expert on his resume. Asks how well he knows Bootstrap - "very well".

Ok: "Write an HTML application that prints out 'Hello World' using Bootstrap. You're allowed to use Google to look up stuff."

Couldn't do it.
Click to expand...

My point was that people shouldn't list things on their resume that they've only had brief exposure to.
 
denverpilot said:
She showed every college class she taught that she could out-code them in several languages using a piece of paper and a pen, than they could code with a laptop and the entire internet as a reference... without error.

It was a good lesson in not knowing what you're really doing is mostly what people call "professional" level coding these days, and it's not even close.

You don't see many coders challenging themselves to write a complex program with a pen and paper as a mental strength game anymore. She had to do it because computer time was EXPENSIVE back then, and wasting it was not only taboo, but grounds for dismissal. You didn't expect the compiler to catch syntax errors back then, nor warn about bad constructs that might bite you in the butt. That was considered unprofessional.
Click to expand...

That is a bit of a parlor trick though. Like someone who knows Pi to 300 digits. Saying you need to be a language & library expert to write great code is like saying you need to be an expert in number 2 pencils to design great bridges.

I used to work on a C++ compiler (on the parser), so I know some of the ISO C++ standards committee members fairly well. I'm pretty sure none of them (Bjarne included) would be able to write a substantial C++ program on paper without a compile error on the first go. But it's not a requirement.

The committee is pretty mindful of how IDE's work these days, so wherever possible things are designed with left-to-right in mind rather than something that may be easy to remember. e.g. Sequential Consistent ordering is spelled 'memory_order_seq_cst', and that spelling is because someone who worked on N1494 tried to be cute. But it doesn't matter - the moment you type in memory_order, virtually all IDE's will give you a dropdown of all of the choices. You just have to pick the right one, and knowing which one to pick is why you get paid the big bucks. Not because you knew how to spell it.

To me a good C++ engineer isn't someone who can recite every function in the standard library, but that for every line of code they write they know exactly what gets laid out in memory, in what order, what the machine code is behind it, and how the processor is going to execute that machine code.

I know people who knows the language well and can do some fancy template meta-programming tricks, but don't know what the compiler actually does with their code. Their argument is that they don't need to know any more because they're "not a compiler dev". But seriously, dude, the compiler is going to stick stuff in YOUR memory space, so when inevitably you're going to have a buffer overrun and trash some or other vptr that the compiler emitted, how do you expect to debug it if you don't know that it's supposed to be there??

The compiler and the language is simply a tool to interact with the processor. Know thy processor.
 
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paflyer said:
You doing embedded stuff?
Click to expand...

A little bit. But that link was more because the instruction sets I grew up with (Z80 and 8088) were more similar in size to the Atmel instructions of today than they are to today's Intels. I think Atmel (NOT Arduino, but pure Atmel) is a great place for kids to start off with today.
 
I recently retired from software development, but I did interview probably hundreds of candidates over the 20 years I was in that business. I look for a couple of things, especially from younger people. Does this person like to code? Can he or she* show me a personal project or open source project to which they contributed code.

Then I'd give them FizzBuzz. This is just one step above 'hello world', but it was sad the number of the candidates who struggled with it. On the other hand one college freshman did in three lines or four lines of code in about 30 seconds. Clearly he knew that FizzBuzz is a common screen question, showing he did his homework. He turned out to be a near genius.

A local non-prime defense company that did a lot of C++ laid off a bunch of people. I interviewed several of them, and I was really rooting for them, since they were all older with military backgrounds, like me. Sadly, while technically they were writing C++, really they were writing on top of a very large proprietary class library that for all intents and purposes was a language of its own, and were not close to current on actual C++ itself.

-------
* As a small startup, we made offers to all the female candidates who showed programming skill, but better funded startups and large companies grabbed all of those girls up.
 
What all you computer weenies need is some kind of a sim ride type experience to separate the wheat from the chaff. It would be really basic - just a cubicle and a computer - no motion or fancy visuals necessary !
 
deonb said:
A little bit. But that link was more because the instruction sets I grew up with (Z80 and 8088) were more similar in size to the Atmel instructions of today than they are to today's Intels. I think Atmel (NOT Arduino, but pure Atmel) is a great place for kids to start off with today.
Click to expand...
Welcome to the club, Gramps! I prefer programming in assembly.
 
Art VanDelay said:
What all you computer weenies need is some kind of a sim ride type experience to separate the wheat from the chaff. It would be really basic - just a cubicle and a computer - no motion or fancy visuals necessary !
Click to expand...

I'm usually hiring for systems administrators, so we've done that even as a pre-screening sometimes. Here's a virtual machine in 'the cloud', here are the login credentials, here's we want done, let us know when you've finished. We log their keystrokes and commands and see if they managed to fix it and install what we asked. Usually if it's a pre-screening it's done remotely, so there's always some risk someone helped them, but usually asking them questions about what they did afterwards on the phone lets us figure that out quickly.
 
paflyer said:
Welcome to the club, Gramps! I prefer programming in assembly.
Click to expand...

I had fun with PICs a few years back, counting cycles, figuring out when you needed to check something else when you were doing too much work in an interrupt. Even had one that had no UART I wanted to send data from... serial bitbanging is fun.
 
cowman said:
I'm sure your applicants were a little worse than this but I've coded in a number of languages and done stuff in Oracle and MySQL before. But honestly if you asked me to produce code on the spot without a reference I doubt I could do it. I'd have to look at a reference or something to get going again but since I've coded in that before and I know I'd pick it up again within a day or so I wouldn't feel dishonest about listing it on a resume..
Click to expand...

Even when I teach programming languages, I start with the design. As I keep pounding into the heads of the students, the good, solid and correct design comes first, then the implementation in whatever language is required. When I'm being paid as a programmer (as I was this past year) the first action is paper, pencil (and eraser) and think about the problem. Then I write notes, reminders, design of specific parts that require special attention (such as use this algorithmt instead of that one for performance or maintainability). Then I take 2-3 sample types of inputs, check against my design. Then code.

Do I remember the ANSI standards for various languages? Of course not, that's why reference manuals exist. I had a job interview a few years ago where the receptionist handed me a C/C++ quiz. I handed it back stating that I give exams, I don't take them without advance notice. The hiring manager didn't even have the courtesy to introduce himself. I walked out. The company constantly advertises for C/C++ programmers, by the way. Gee, I wonder why.
 
deonb said:
That is a bit of a parlor trick though. Like someone who knows Pi to 300 digits. Saying you need to be a language & library expert to write great code is like saying you need to be an expert in number 2 pencils to design great bridges.

I used to work on a C++ compiler (on the parser), so I know some of the ISO C++ standards committee members fairly well. I'm pretty sure none of them (Bjarne included) would be able to write a substantial C++ program on paper without a compile error on the first go. But it's not a requirement.

The committee is pretty mindful of how IDE's work these days, so wherever possible things are designed with left-to-right in mind rather than something that may be easy to remember. e.g. Sequential Consistent ordering is spelled 'memory_order_seq_cst', and that spelling is because someone who worked on N1494 tried to be cute. But it doesn't matter - the moment you type in memory_order, virtually all IDE's will give you a dropdown of all of the choices. You just have to pick the right one, and knowing which one to pick is why you get paid the big bucks. Not because you knew how to spell it.

To me a good C++ engineer isn't someone who can recite every function in the standard library, but that for every line of code they write they know exactly what gets laid out in memory, in what order, what the machine code is behind it, and how the processor is going to execute that machine code.

I know people who knows the language well and can do some fancy template meta-programming tricks, but don't know what the compiler actually does with their code. Their argument is that they don't need to know any more because they're "not a compiler dev". But seriously, dude, the compiler is going to stick stuff in YOUR memory space, so when inevitably you're going to have a buffer overrun and trash some or other vptr that the compiler emitted, how do you expect to debug it if you don't know that it's supposed to be there??

The compiler and the language is simply a tool to interact with the processor. Know thy processor.
Click to expand...
Once upon a time, I interviewed with a major aerospace company for C/C++ and FORTRAN programming. In the discussion with the manager, the issue of quality of code came up. His attitude was that hardware gets faster all the time, we don't need no stinkin' quality code, just get something out the door that works.

Which is why to this day, the company spends most of the programmer hours fixing legacy code, fixing current code, just fixing code.

No, I didn't go to work for them.
 
JimNtexas said:
I recently retired from software development, but I did interview probably hundreds of candidates over the 20 years I was in that business. I look for a couple of things, especially from younger people. Does this person like to code? Can he or she* show me a personal project or open source project to which they contributed code.

Then I'd give them FizzBuzz. This is just one step above 'hello world', but it was sad the number of the candidates who struggled with it. On the other hand one college freshman did in three lines or four lines of code in about 30 seconds. Clearly he knew that FizzBuzz is a common screen question, showing he did his homework. He turned out to be a near genius.

A local non-prime defense company that did a lot of C++ laid off a bunch of people. I interviewed several of them, and I was really rooting for them, since they were all older with military backgrounds, like me. Sadly, while technically they were writing C++, really they were writing on top of a very large proprietary class library that for all intents and purposes was a language of its own, and were not close to current on actual C++ itself.

-------
* As a small startup, we made offers to all the female candidates who showed programming skill, but better funded startups and large companies grabbed all of those girls up.
Click to expand...
I gave fizzbuzz as a problem in my python course last year. Every student had the same solution - the worst one possible. Just for grins during a snowstorm last year, I did some timing tests - fizzbuzz in javascript with a web browser.. Ignoring the timing on the code itself, the approach for working with web I/O was remarkable. Worst case version writing out each element was more than 100 times slower than constructing the output and writing once. Which is to be expected, I/O is always the most time consuming whether web or local disk farm. But it also provided insight to the students how to consider their websites and user interaction. If the user only needs the final result, don't waste time with intermediate results.

Remember the Laws of the Universe (translation: speed of light and networks)
 
paflyer said:
Welcome to the club, Gramps! I prefer programming in assembly.
Click to expand...
Back in the Dark Ages (before RISC) I wrote the same little program in FORTRAN, C, COBOL and PASCAL on a DEC10. Turned on the assembly switch to capture the readable assembly code. Handed them out to my students and had them tell me which language generated each of the assembly code samples.

(*evil laugh*)
 
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