This page is not created by, affiliated with, or supported by Slack Technologies, Inc.
I removed "Solaris" from my Resumes's Operating Systems section. I've not used Solaris since 1998. But you never know what kind of resume bingo the recruiters and backends use for filtering. A recruiter asked about my bash skills yesterday. I've used bash every day for 25 years, but it isnt on my resume.... oh boy.
Not having to deal with oblivious recruiters is pure bliss. I wish you strength in those interviews.
Thanks! It is sometimes fun to explain what something like "bash" is to them... but other times it is exhausting and it also reminds you of how far you are removed from the actual decision-makers and/or how much you appear like cattle to the process. Moo.
I have trimmed a number of things from my resume over the years. I keep the job/title/date and the achievements/responsibilities but omit technologies. In some cases, I've had to omit specifics of certain jobs too since it made the tech obvious. Until I did that, I still had recruiters contacting me about mainframe jobs, and COBOL, decades after I'd last worked on that stuff. I don't have assembly, FORTRAN, COBOL, or Prolog on my resume these days and I've really played down the C/C++ stuff too (although I haven't yet gone so far as to "hide" my eight years on the C++ Standards Committee). It's been over 20 years since I last worked with C++ but I still get calls from recruiters about it, because it's on my resume. bash experience is an interesting one -- I wonder what caused the recruiter to be specifically looking for that to the point of asking outright about something not on your resume?
I think the role the recruiter was screening for involves devops which involves a fair amount of bash fiddling... but yea, bash was called out specifically. :man-shrugging: I was just trying to decide about C++ ... I did it for 7 years, but that was over 20 years ago.... hard to decide.... keep or toss? When I asked ChatGPT to rewrite my resume, it dropped 20 years of experience and only showed what I did in the last 10 years... That helped with concision, but I would think a 20-year gap in experience would raise eyebrows.... If were up to me, my resume would probably be "Coded shit, mostly Java, mostly embarrassed by it, trying to get better, not a jerk, always shows up, needs coffee"
Sometimes, it feels not like I have had 30 years of experience, but rather, like I have had one year of experience 30 times. (yea, this is a variation of Impostor Syndrome)
It's about having multiple resumes written for each tech stack/job type. Treat a resume as like a marketing piece written for a specific audience. If you're looking for a C/C++ job then those C/C++ skills are relevant. Not as relevant if it's eg: a Python/Clojure/Typescript job. I think for more experienced developers, we need to convey that we're not only super experienced but that we also keep up-to-date with the newest tech stacks (which C/Fotran/Prolog does not imply), so knowledge of newer things like Go/Rust/Zig would help. Of course, it comes down to the actual role itself, are they looking for someone to contribute to a newer stack, or it is one based on an older system/language (eg: C/C++)?
An interview process is all about elimination. You're looking for ways to reduce the possibility of being eliminated during the process, be it any of the following: too old, too outdated, too little experience, too much experience, too expensive, too many red flags.
If recruiters find you via your online presence, that's just going to be one resume. Certainly when you're applying to a specific job, you can tailor how you appear, and you definitely should. As a hiring manager, I hate it when I get what looks like a generated resume full of technology that has no bearing on the job in trying to hire for.