How I Read CVs Before an Interview
It’s a good practice to read an engineer’s CV before an interview, for two reasons:
First, to eliminate obviously unqualified candidates, like an engineer who never worked in iOS applying for an iOS engineer role. Or a fresher applying for a staff engineer role.
Second, to make notes that will help me conduct the interview better. To do this, I go through the resume, and note down a bunch of questions. I prefix each question with a +, - or ± sign based on whether it’s a positive, negative or neutral indicator. Let’s look at each category:
Positive Indicators
+ As Jocelyn Goldfein says, I read CVs backwards, from the oldest job to the newest, looking for signs of growth. Growth can be technical, like solving a hard problem. Or impact, like building something that a million people use. Or leadership, like taking responsibility for deliveries of a team, estimating, communicating progress to stakeholders, interviewing candidates, onboarding new engineers… On the other hand, if the person “attended weekly meetings” in his first year, and “attended weekly meetings” in his eighth year, that’s a sign of stagnation.
+ Have they worked for at least 3 years at one company? This shows that they’re not flighty, and worth investing in.
+ Did they work on one framework for at least six months? When you learn a new framework, you learn a lot in the first six months, after which the curve tapers off. So I look for six months experience. Without that, they won’t be productive at anything, and in that case, why am I hiring them? I’m not a training academy.
+ Did they work on one language for at least six months?
+ Have they gone off the beaten path, like being the first engineer at a startup? Or starting a startup? Or building a product by themselves or with their friends? Or freelancing? Or helping a friend’s startup, even if they’re not actively working there? Or contributing to an open-source project? I’m looking for indications of an entrepreneurial mindset, rather than a 9 to 5 “do what they tell me to do and go home” mindset.
+ Does their CV describe outcomes instead of efforts? You don’t need to be a CTO to do this. Even a junior person can say that they “Kept all stakeholders informed every week” (outcome) instead of “Attended weekly meetings” (activity).
+ Do they have good communication skills? There are multiple signs you can look for this. One is whether they described their primary skill in one phrase at the top of the CV like “Backend Engineer” or “Engineer who works in computer vision and machine learning”. You shouldn’t have to read the entire CV to reverse-engineer where they fit in. Or this can be in the form of a bar chart showing that they’re 100% skilled in backend and 20% in frontend. Another form of communication is whether they’re articulate. And whether their CV is visually pleasant to read or you it feels like filling in a passport application form.
+ Do they know what they want? Do they want to be the first employee at a startup, or work at a stable company? Do they want to work in backend? Do they want to work in a particular sector like fin-tech? This is an sign of a person who’s not wandering aimlessly.
Negative Indicators
- Working in one stack (like iOS) for seven or more years is a sign of stagnation. You’ll learn less in the seventh year compared to first. It indicates a lack of ambition, or even an inability to learn new things. It’s fine if the person worked in backend for a year, frontend for another year, and then decided he likes iOS and wants to stick with it. But not even exploring other stacks is a sign of stagnation.
- As my friend Aditya says, having worked in mass-market services companies for more than 1 year is a concern, because it’s a sign that he couldn’t get a better job, or doesn’t have the ambition to. He’ll have imbibed bad habits from that environment. Such as not caring about code quality, insisting that as long as it works, that’s all that matters. Or becoming skilled at not working and at covering their ass. I know someone who was hired to attend client meetings and claim that he was working on their app when he wasn’t. You don’t want someone who worked in mass-market services companies for too long, since they’re taken. Our environment shapes us. Nobody is strong enough to resist this for long. If you work in a gang, you’ll become a thug. That’s why you should think twice about hiring someone who worked in mass-market services companies for longer than a year.
- Bad attention to detail like typos, punctuation, grammar. If a person is careless when they know they’re being judged, how will they be after they’re hired?
- Run-of-the-mill verbiage like "I endeavor to join an organisation where I shall devote my time to serve the organisation as well as I can and keep up the highest standards of..." This can mean the person is unimaginative, or that he’s a copycat. This is a weak indicator.
Neutral Indicators
These are neither good nor bad, just topics to discuss in the interview:
± If I see an unfamiliar technology, like using machine learning to detect jet engine failure, I make a note to ask them to tell me something interesting about it. The goal is for me to learn something about it. And to check whether the person made it up or knows something about it, because we get different kinds of answers in both cases.
± If I see an unfamiliar sector, like travel, I ask them to tell me something interesting about working in the travel sector that people who haven’t worked in it may not know.
± When I see familiar stuff, I can go deeper and validate. Even if the skill is not relevant to the current job, you don’t want someone who’s learnt nothing from having worked in an area, or who lied about working on it.