I like this idea. I have been thinking of taking the leap from my current employer. Maybe I will test the waters with this new technique.

Its reputation that is so hard to prove in the Internet age. You can claim to have skills and experience, and to be praised by prior employers and colleagues., but can you prove any of that. Linkedin goes someway. A Blog (with history in the way back machine) helps too. Open Source patronage, IMO, helps yet more.

Oh, I'm seriously going to use this next time I'm actively looking for a new job.

Selectively of course, but I know a number of employers who would probably appreciate this.

The part of the resume that lists verifiable work experience (not just a list of skills and languages) is pretty useful since that job history provides evidence about your ability to apply your skills. In addition, it provides access to potential references that can vouch for your performance. That, too, can provide topics for some pretty interesting conversations about who you are, what your experiences are, and the kind of work you do.

I agree that a list of skills/languages/technologies isn't really all that interesting...

-charles

I the novelty of your idea and I understand the frustration of it all. I've recently been reviewing lots of resumes and the first thing I thought of was updating mine (and pitching most of it). I'd say if I was going to have a simple but really effective resume I would have two columns. One with a list of the places I've worked with phone numbers and names of people to get references about me. The second column would be similar to how monster.com lists skills: skill type, level of competency and how long you have used it (perhaps a variation on this, but the idea is to cut the crap and get to what I know how to do). Other than that, I'd have my blog address so they can fill in the details and a number and email to reach me.

A couple points:

a) Asserting that a resume is perjury is a big stretch. I have a lot of skills on my resume but I have at least touched on them just as you have on yours by your own admission. What I don't have is complete falsehoods; my resume doesn't say that I am a fighter pilot or that I attended college for art history. Those are complete falsehoods. So the vague list of skills gives the reader a basic point of reference and a vague list that can be filtered upon.

b) The medium is the message. You can learn a lot by what a person includes in their resume, how detailed it is, how well laid out, edited, etc.

Now just don't get me started on cover letters.

The resume gets you the job interview -- not the job. If the resume is full of lies, a solid interview process should reveal this. The bigger problem is that many people don't know how to conduct interviews properly.

You can use links to commits to opensource projects. At the very least it proves that you have knowledge to be accepted as a committer in the said project. It will also provide the reviewer a chance to see the quality of the code you wrote.

My comment is that Linked-In has become the new resume. Your experience is on there along with people you know and who know you.

I haven't updated my resume on-line in years, and yet I'm getting quite a lot of attention from recruiters. It indicates something has shifted -- resumes are a static artifact with no relevance on connection. This is much like the way that search engines were obsoleted by Google.com when it went live -- suddenly the connection was everything. No one remembers searching with the old technology (rather, most people don't) -- but it's a very similar situation.

Thanks for sharing, --Paul

Resumes aren't useless by any means - when hiring, use them to determine if someone says they have the skills and experience you need.

Then interview carefully to determine if the candidate matches the resume. And importantly, check out their personality - personality goes a long way.

Then reference check.

Managers who are hiring don't have time to call people to try to extract information from them - if your resume doesn't provide a good summary of your skills and experience, you're on the reject pile in an instant.

As a developer and someone who's been tasked with hiring others, I've been on both sides of this mess. Agreed that filtering through resumes is mostly BS. That's why I typically post adverts asking for code samples or a description of previous projects and the role the applicant played. I'm also looking for a php dev (http://marketplace.sitepoint.com/listings/47395), and your post, in itself, is much more convincing than any resume.

I've seen this complaint before in the IT community, and unfortunately, by and large, it's just not valid. As a few others have said, the resume is a summary of you, and is what gets you the interview. As a recruiter, I don't have time to interview every single applicant to the roles I'm hiring for. At this point I have no better method than to look for key phrases and terminology that correlates with the responsibilities of the role I am trying to fill. I could test every applicant, but this tells me nothing about their commitment level, their ability to manage multiple competing priorities, their ability to fit into particular working environments, or any sense of their career progression. A resume helps me see that off the bat. And detecting a bald-face liar is something I have been trained to do. Certainly some things slip past me - I've hired fake candidates before. But I am generally successful at what I do, largely thanks to resumes, or similar tools, such as LinkedIn.

Allowing for variations between industries and job functions, static experience and skill overviews (resumes, CVs) aren't going anywhere, and are a useful tool in the hands of the right person in most organizations of a dozen or more staff and up.

As for perjury, well, I have to say that I wonder if resumes make firing easier, if a candidate has falsely represented themselves. I believe perjury only applies in a formal, legal setting.

Also, with all (any) due respect, maybe you could use your proficiency in coding to make apostrophes show up properly in posters' comments.

wish i had the money to hire someone with your caliber of aptitude and background. you're exactly what i need for my startup.

Andrew,

Very interesting.

I usually put two things in the initial email to employers: """ I am an outstanding developer. What is approximate salary/rate? """

Works really well:) Usually the problem is with the second... damn you stupid Toronto

@ryan: you're exactly what i need for my startup.

You can do better.

I've always marvelled at the whole "all resumes are lies" line. I've never lied on my resume. Hell, I have a hard time even embellishing.

I've always felt that my resume is meant to be as honest as possible, that way when you start a job and the boss looks at you and says "I want you to do X", I'm never in a position where a lie on my resume makes me look bad.

Also, Quinn, I don't see any problems with apostrophes here. Maybe it's your browser?

For highly qualified candidates and highly selective employers, the resume is mostly meaningless. Capacity and opportunity will be determined in the interview; the gateway artifact should be a portfolio (my thoughts on these at http://www.robbyslaughter.com/consulting/portfolio/)

However, most employers and most potential employees are mediocre. The resume allows for screening against the insipid in either direction. People who misspell the name of their hometown are likely not qualified for any job that would require a resume. Hiring managers confused by a particular set of acronyms will likely make for uninspiring bosses. The resume is not a measure of capability, but a litmus test. You must take it. You must give it. You must pass.

Didn't you just post your resume in the form on this blog.

I don't know about you but I don't lie on my resume. I just list stuff I've had experience with (usually with links to projects and so on that demonstrate that). In fact, having also read a lot of resumes of friends and colleagues, I don't see many people making stuff up at all.

Perhaps you're jealous of those people who get better jobs than you and blame it on their resume being better "because they lied." Who knows. As you said, apparently it's impossible to know when someone is telling the truth.

Also, I just cannot resist pointing out how ugly this website is. Very difficult to take you seriously :/

Opinion noted on the website, but I get just as many who think the opposite. I never claimed to be an artist :-) If you have a better design send it to me.

Not sure why anyone has ' troubles. I will check it out. Seems to work for most people.

And no I'm not jealous, I've been on both sides of the resume issue and I know what they look like. I'm not saying all resumes are lies, but enough are that the rest of us can be labeled by them.

I have noticed smaller companies or even big companies but with less layers of management are the ones that will easily accept people like you if you get to be interviewed directly by your future boss who should know also what you know. Interviews will be more direct to the point that resumes don't matter.

But for companies with many levels of management and also through agencies, they might be resume dependent on their decisions to hire. True or not, I agree they are looking for buzz words and this goes through a filtering process, so how ever your resume looks like, Buzz it up. :D

Resumes are not for candidates (i.e. potential) but for recruiters, so they can cover their butts if the hire turns to custard...They have a document to blame and bear the risk. People lie on their C.Vs based on the probability of being found out, combined with likely cost of found out (out the least, being maybe fired, at the most being sued for fraud), and make a rational decision..Given the average tenure within an organisation is under 2 years, there is even less incentive to maintain a truthful C.V. Hence the future of the way people get jobs will gravitate even more to work/example based tests and assessment, as employers recognise the falling value of CVs.

Resumes are mostly useless in much the same way that exams are mostly useless. A good exam score / resume doesn't tell you anything useful about the person.

But a bad one tells you a lot about them. The industry is full of mediocre programmers, and you have to interview a lot of people in order to find the good ones. We easily have a 10 : 1 ratio of people we interview in person to people we hire, and interviewing is a time consuming process. We screen people out with a phone interview, but we also screen them out based on their resumes. I'm not sure of the exact numbers, but I don't think more than one person in five gets past the resume stage.

An interview with us ends up taking about half a day (a bit less for bad candidates) with 3 or 4 people involved. So each candidate we reject on the basis of a resume is about two man days of work we don't have to do. That doesn't strike me as useless. :-)

Of course, a bad resume isn't just one which doesn't tick all the boxes. We're much more likely to reject resumes on the ground of boringness than on the grounds of not having 17 years of Java experience.

Resumes are what is known as a "hygiene factor." They are don't count for much when present (or well done), but when they are absent (or poorly done) they matter.

Similarly with references. If you can't get 3 friends to say good things about (or lie for :-) you, you probably shouldn't be hired. And yes, I've had people who couldn't produce 3 references. Yeesh.

When people put that big list of technologies on their resume, I start quizzing them on them - starting from the last one listed. If they turn out to have only done a single homework problem using SNOBOL (or whatever), I brazenly cross it off their resume right in front of them and go on to the next one. They quickly admit to what is BS before I get to it after that.

Resumes are a good way to screen out the total losers and a good way to direct the interview. Not useless at all. Really, the cover letter is the important document. Says a lot about an applicant in terms of their ability to write (or get a proof-reader), their understanding of what the job is looking for, and their personality.

Also, always verify the degrees listed. I've been surprised a few times.

Also, Resumes are the first indication for an employer to see if you can do something as basic as complete a mindless task in an acceptable fashion.

Seriously, If you can't create a resume, however useless you think it to be, what happens when your employer asks you to create something else that you deem to be "useless". How much confidence do you think your employer will have in you if you can't even bullshit yourself through something that you don't like to do for the good of the company?

Actually, even that short bit you included there does suggest a lot about you:

• Mentioned PHP first. Ouch.
• No exposure to Lisp, Python, any functional languages.
• The balance of technologies mentioned suggest that you've lived most of your career in the businessy/proprietary world.

I use my resume as hint to prospective employers and colleagues regarding what technologies I've been exposed to and which I consider to be worthy.

I totally agree with you on resumes its just too easy to lie and exaggerate.

P.S.You may have some kind of bug in how your blog software html encodes the apostrophe character. '''''''''''''''' . I think. It's sending an html character entity literal to the screen instead of a variable non literal for the browser to parse.

Egads, IE caught me on the ', I was using the wrong entity (the xml one not the html one). Fixed now I believe.

I assume this refers to finding contract jobs as for find a software development job at a company normally the interview process is very rigorous and you are interview by people you will potentially write code with. In this case the resume is used a point to prove what you can do. So if you lie on your resume you'll probably be caught on it.

@The_Codist, Hahah really awesome read. I enjoy your articles a lot because is the TRUE, the real life. I will follow your advice for next time I search for job.

Regards.

PS. One question why you went with PHP and not with Ruby or Python?.

Some companies have rigorous interview processes and some don't. The whole point of resumes that are lies is the hope they find an employer who won't or can't vet their ability. TheDailyWTF is a testament to those employers.

@ OtengiM I learned Ruby at my last job but we never used it. It was a tossup between it and PHP which I already knew, I flipped a coin. I like python but haven't had any opportunity to work with it.