Hacking the Career Fair

Sat, 15 Sep 2018 10:18:00 +0000

During my time both as a student and a recruiter/engineer, I’ve spent quite a lot of time at career fairs, on both sides of the table. With career fair season upon us, I thought I’d share a few of my tips for making the most out of a career fair to give you your best shot at securing an interview with your dream company.

I’ll start with a little disclaimer that most of these tips may not apply as much to the bigger companies (Google, Facebook, etc.). In my experience, those companies get so much response at career fairs that the only thing that really matters is your resume. Several times as a student, I waited in line for an hour just to be told to apply online, which I of course had already done. Without further ado, let’s get into it.

Do Your Research

The first thing to do when prepping for a career fair is to scope out the companies in attendance. Depending on the size of your school, there might be hundreds or just a handful. Make a shortlist of your “priorities”, (I usually tried to keep this down to about 5 or so, but there’s really not a limit) and learn as much as possible about each company. At the very least, this includes:

What positions you’re applying for
Some of the current projects/products that the company works on
Question(s) you’re going to ask about the company (at least 1)
How you will pitch yourself to that company in particular

You need to know the first two things to know the second two things. The important point here is that your pitch is company-specific. A generic pitch that has nothing to do with the company will likely be met with a zoned-out stare from the recruiter, who’s heard the same thing from every other person that day. Armed with your research, let’s talk about how exactly you come up with that perfect pitch.

Sell Yourself (AKA The Pitch)

The first thing to keep in mind is that a career fair, like a resume, is a sales pitch. You’re the product (and the salesperson). You need to convince the customer (the company/recruiter) that you will produce value to them, that you, above all the other candidates, are the right person for the job. In my experience there are two essential parts to this. First, you need to show that you’re a good fit for the company. Find a way to relate what the company works on to your interests or things you’ve worked on. Maybe you’re really passionate about crypto-currency, maybe you’ve worked in a lab that has a technology overlap with the particular company, whatever it is, be sure to emphasize that you want to work for this company above all others. Secondly, you need to show that you’re a good fit for the particular position(s) that you’re applying for. The job posting likely had a list of requirements and “good-to-haves.” You should highlight how you meet these requirements and what makes you a good fit for this job in particular.

Keep in mind that all of these things in your sales pitch should also be on your resume, which you should have handed to the recruiter after shaking their hand (Side note: please lead with a handshake and not a resume, it’s much more professional). In all likelihood once you’ve handed them your resume, the recruiter will start scanning it. Do not wait for them to lead the conversation. Instead, give your pitch while they scan, pointing out the relevant parts of your resume as you get to them in your pitch. With any luck, this will make the recruiter stop focusing on your resume and start focusing on you which is the objective. You need to leave an impression with the recruiter, and that’s easier to do with a conversation than with a resume. Candidates that lead the conversation almost always leave me with a better impression than those that wait for me to start one.

Follow Up

After you’ve asked your questions to the recruiter (you did have questions, right?) be sure to ask for a business card or email address. Use this to email the recruiter a few days later thanking them for their time and conversation. Attach a copy of your resume, and try to bring up something you two talked about so that they can put a face to the email. This little extra effort can make a big difference, depending on how much sway the recruiter has during the recruiting process. I know for me, this was enough for me to move a resume from the “no” stack to the “interview” stack, just because it indicated that the candidate was genuinely interested in working with me, which is worth a lot.

Closing Thoughts

Career fairs can be stressful, but by following these tips you’ll be sure to stand out from the crowd, which is sometimes all you really need to do. It’s also important to be sure that your resume is in tip-top-shape, which I can also help with! Head on over to Debug My Resume for in-depth feedback and advice, personalized for your specific resume. Or, subscribe to our mailing list with the form below to get premier access to the latest resume tips.

What NOT to Put on Your Resume

Sun, 22 Apr 2018 02:15:00 +0000

When writing a resume, it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that the more you include, the better. If that means using 10pt font and no whitespace, who cares, as long as I can include all six of the clubs I’m involved with. In my last post I explained how that line of thinking isn’t always the best way to go. Today, I’m going to give a few more items that you may reconsider including unless you want to put yourself at a disadvantage right off the bat.

Your GPA If It Isn’t Great

When looking at the education section of your resume, I obviously look for a GPA. If it’s not there, I don’t think much of it. I certainly don’t assume it’s bad–it doesn’t factor in to my evaluation of your resume whatsoever. On the other hand, if you include your GPA and it isn’t great, then it certainly doesn’t help you.

Now, there are plenty of totally valid reasons for having a low GPA, including ones that might actually indicate you are a talented engineer (I had friends in college that would rather build robots in their free time than write essays; they were super smart people I’d love to work with). Unfortunately, when a recruiter is looking at your resume, you don’t have the opportunity to tell them any of these reasons. They see the GPA, and it’s either a mark in your favor or not.

Now, as to what is a “good” GPA, that’s a bit of a tough question. Generally, I’m looking for a 3.5 or higher, unless you’re at a top-tier university, in which case I drop the bar to around 3.0.

That Those Projects Were Actually Homework

Many high-level computer science classes feature some capstone “project.” Common ones include an operating system or compiler, but there are also plenty of unique or student-defined projects being featured lately as part of the curriculum. These projects can make excellent additions to your resume, especially if you are lacking on relevant internships. However, I would avoid any indication that these projects were assigned as part of classwork. A project done “just because” is more impressive than a project done because you had to. For example, consider the example project description below:

Worked with 3 other students to develop a web app for the class “Introduction to Web Development”. My partners and I met regularly to work on homework assignments and build features of the app. Our application allowed students to find and reserve rooms around campus. Our project received an A.

Clearly, this was done as part of a class. We could rewrite this as follows to potentially throw a suspicious recruiter off the trail:

Worked with a team to develop a web app that allowed students to find and reserve rooms around campus. I worked on the user interface in ReactJS, which provided a campus map and a list of times that each room was available. My teammates and I met regularly to ensure we were on track to meet deadlines and deployed the application in just 5 months.

Notice how there’s no mention that this was done as part of a class project and how I emphasized my personal contributions to the project.

Of course, the fact that the project was done as part of a class might come out as part of the interview process (and you certainly shouldn’t lie and say that it isn’t!). But once you’ve gotten an interview, your skills will speak for themselves. Of course, if a project actually was something you did in your spare time, try to highlight that in the description.

Non-Technical Experience

This last tip may be slightly controversial. I’ve heard many people suggest putting non-technical experience on your resume as evidence of “soft” skills or just to show that you’re an actual human being and not a robot. I, personally, disagree for two reasons:

Space is valuable. You only have 8.5x11” of paper to impress a recruiter. Anything that takes up space but doesn’t demonstrate your value as a potential employee is wasted space.
Many “soft” skills can be just as easily developed and showcased as part of technical experiences. Talk about how you presented your work, or how you were perhaps a mentor to your peers.

If I had a choice between seeing detailed technical descriptions or seeing all the sports you play, I’d definitely prefer reading about your technical abilities.

Closing Thoughts

The moral of the story here is that putting the wrong things on your resume can be just as harmful as not including the right things. In my next post, I’ll start delving in to what exactly the right things are, and how you can optimize your descriptions to craft an exceptional resume.

If you want more advice like this, head on over to Debug My Resume for in-depth feedback and advice, personalized for your specific resume. You can also subscribe to our mailing list with the form below to get premier access to the latest resume tips.

Quality Over Quantity

Wed, 11 Apr 2018 10:18:00 +0000

When looking at a resume, one of the first things I look for is the place where the candidate enumerates their programming language proficiencies and other skills. I’m looking for two things:

What kind of candidate is this? Are they a front-end or back-end dev? Do they have experience with our technology stack?
Is this candidate really good at anything?

Given that I’m trying to answer these two questions, this is about the worst-case scenario (and you wouldn’t believe how common it is):

Skills: C, C++, Java, Python, HTML, CSS, Javascript, Node.js, Matlab, Bash

Other Skills: Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, MySQL, Microsoft Access

Great. Now I have absolutely no way to answer question 1 and I’m going to go ahead and assume the answer to question 2 is “no”.

The skills section is not meant to be an inventory of every piece of technology you’ve ever touched. Everything in that section should be both:

Relevant to the job for which you’re applying
Something about which/in which you’d be comfortable answering an interview question

Anything else is just noise that distracts the person reviewing your resume. So, get rid of all the languages of which you don’t have a working knowledge. For most people, I expect this will do the job and get the list down to 1-3 languages. If you truly are a programming language polyglot, then there are a few strategies that I can suggest:

Group Similar Technologies Together

For example, we could rework some of the languages in the example above as follows:

Skills: C/C++, HTML/CSS, Javascript/Node.js, Python

This is much more believable to me, despite still being pretty extensive. Here, the skills are grouped into 4 distinct skills, despite being 6/7 distinct technologies (depending on whether or not you actually distinguish Javascript and Node). Further, as a developer, I don’t really question any of the groupings because I know that they are actually related.

Divide by Expertise

Alternatively, you can list a wide swath of languages if you make it clear which ones are your strongest. Something like this is common:

Skills: (Experienced) C/C++, (Familiar) Ruby, HTML/CSS/Javascript

Now I can easily see that “Oh this is a C++ dev who’s done some WebDev”. That said, don’t use this as an excuse to just dump everything in your “Familiar” section. As I said earlier, you should still focus on relevant technologies that you actually have experience with.

Tailor Based on Company

Probably the best method, though, is to tailor your skills based on the company and position for which you are applying. Most companies list the tech stack they use on the positions page. Be sure that you actually know those languages and then be sure they are highlighted in your skills section. Obviously, this requires more work on your end, but it will almost definitely pay off. When I see a candidate that lists our entire tech stack on their resume (which is listed in plain sight on the job description) they’re almost a shoo-in for an interview. (Seriously, read the job description, it’s like cheat codes for getting an interview.)

Closing Thoughts

The idea of “quality over quantity” extends far beyond the “Skills” section of your resume. It applies equally to your projects and your past work experience. It’s generally more useful to market yourself as a highly-skilled individual in the domains that are relevant to the company than as a jack-of-all-trades.

If you want more advice like this, head on over to Debug My Resume for in-depth feedback and advice, personalized for your specific resume. Or, subscribe to our mailing list with the form below to get premier access to the latest resume tips.