What startups vs big companies like Google look for in resumes, pt.1

Some hiring managers prefer looking at LinkedIn because they find it faster to find the info they need (e.g. company logos, time spent at each company). Personal websites may also work as resumes. Fill out your profile at LinkedIn.

Startups and big companies, say Google, hire very differently. Therefore, it makes sense that a candidate should apply to a startup differently from how they’d apply to a big company.

Startups don’t usually use an automated system to screen resumes. Big companies receive a large volume of resumes, so they need a way to quickly filter out resumes, aka quick ways to say no. Startups, on the contrary, look for reasons to say yes.

Startups look for demonstrated expertise, not keywords. So using a long list of skills may be a bad idea when applying to a startup:
— It’s unconvincing. There’s a big gap between “saying that you know something” and “being good at it.”
— It can weaken your resume. Listing skills like Jupyter Notebook or Git as your competitive advantage (the only reason to include them in your resume), can only mean that you have no other competitive advantage.
— Expertise takes time to acquire, so do not list too many things.

Do not use long lists of keywords, demonstrate your expertise instead:
— Show how you acquired and use that skill in your job. If during interview, you can tell, for example, why did you chose Flink over other stream processing engines, what issues you’ve encountered, and what changes you wish to see in Flink, recruiter would be sold!
— Share your expertise on public channels, such as StackOverflow answers, open source contributions, papers, blog posts.

There are two traits startups look for to evaluate whether a candidate can get things done: initiatives and persistence.

Initiatives
To get anything done, you need to start it. There are a lot of people who can see a problem, but few who would do something about it. Startups want people who, when seeing a problem, proactively do something about it without waiting to be told. They look for initiatives a candidate has started before:
— A student club, an event, a team, a project at work. A project that you initiate doesn’t have to be about something new. Projects like writing documents or improving existing CI/CD are also extremely valuable.
— A startup. The best hires are people who have previously founded a company, even if that company didn’t work out. They know the drill.

Persistence
Persistence drives things to completion. Some signals of persistence:
— Daily contribution to GitHub for one whole year.
— Being good at anything that requires consistent effort, e.g. a Kaggle master, a chess master, a professional athlete, etc.
— Having previously joined another early startup before and stuck around.

Consistent job jumping can imply that you get bored or give up easily. A year at a job is hardly enough to get deep into a problem space and make significant contributions.

https://huyenchip.com/2023/01/24/what-we-look-for-in-a-candidate.html