Definitely read the pages linked from here. They briefly describe the interview process and give information about what to put in your resume and how to prepare for the interviews. This is core, fundamental reading.
Take note of how prominent Educational Background is on the resume page. As far as I can tell, Google puts an unusual amount of stock in academic experience. So if you have a good school with a good GPA in your background, be sure to list it. It's probably worth mentioning large, interesting projects. And publications are probably great if you have them (I didn't).
Another blog post from Steve Yegge. My friend who helped me through the process suggested this link. But to be perfectly honest, I would take it with a grain of salt. E.g., Stevey says "But what about your precious hobbies section, which identifies you as a well-rounded and socially adjusted person of taste and culture? DELETE!" Well, that's in direct conflict with the aforementioned official Google resume advice: "Here at Google, we value talent and intelligence, group spirit and diversity, creativity and idealism. Googlers range from former neurosurgeons and puzzle champions to alligator wrestlers and Lego maniacs. Tell us what makes you unique!" I think there's a fine line there. If you have a hobby that shows off your creative abilities, your passion for technology, or demonstrate your ability to work towards someting, then I really think you should list it. Worked on an open source project? Develop iPhone apps for fun? Are you a musician or an artist? Pilot's license? I say list it. Have a Beanie Baby collection? Okay, yeah, nobody cares.
And as for "Use Plain Text"... I have to strongly disagree. I currently know nothing about how Google internally handles resumes, so maybe it makes sense on some level to help recruiters screen your resume. But... if you're looking at this, you probably got referred, so you already have a recruiter looking at your resume (don't underestimate how much of a difference that makes).
So now, my best guess is the value in your resume includes the following:
- Finding the best fitting job for you.
- Finding the best fitting interviewers for you.
- Making an impression on your interviewers.
- Giving your interviewers an idea of what questions to ask.
Given all that, I think having a clear, readable resume is important, and I don't think plain text is the best way to achieve that. Furthermore, I know that in the past when I've looked at a resume, the formatting makes an impression on me. For instance, any candidate that used LaTeX gets brownie points with me, and obvious default Word templates might give me a bad taste in my mouth. Granted... that's just me. Maybe other people don't have the same prejudices.
Also, make note of that fourth bullet. Anything you put on your resume is fair game. I had a pretty obscure bullet-point on my resume: "Template Metaprogramming". I didn't expect anybody to even know what I was talking about. Google has a lot of very smart employees, so rest assured, somebody knows your obscure skill, so be ready to answer a question about it.
Other than that, I think there's a lot of good information there.
And here's a useless tip that probably doesn't matter to anybody but me: <rant>Don't list C/C++ as a programming language. That's one of my pet peeves. If you know C, then list it. If you know C++, then list it. "C, C++, Java": Fine. C and C++ are not the same damned language, and if you think they are, you're doing it wrong. (Yes, I know that C is almost a subset of C++. I don't care, if you write C and call it C++ you're doing it wrong.) </rant>
No comments:
Post a Comment