Sometimes not the candidates' fault

I've seen more than a few CVs that were clearly hacked about by a recruitment consultant with no clue. And once or twice I've seen CVs where their job titles had clearly been rewritten to meet the job spec, despite the actual experience being for different jobs. Ended up with one very angry candidate when we pointed out what his recruitment consultant had done...

Well duh...

All the points given are basic interviewing advice, I'm surprised at some of the comments so far that try to argue against them. Well, actually not surprised, this is after all the Internet where people will argue against *anything*, particularly "IT Professionals" who are used to being more right than you.

Probably unremarkable

"So while 82 per cent of IT pros reckon they're good at interviews, some 66 per cent of recruiters said they'd seen candidates with poor communication skills during the interview process."

That remark seems to infer a disparity which appears not to exist. If 82% of candidates have good communication skills, and if "the interview process" involves on average 5.5 candidates then the probability that any given interviewer will have seen at least one candidate with poor communication skills is 66%.

CV

Many moons ago, when running my own small PC repair firm, I had a CV sent to me in the mail.

Among the bullet points, the author proudly proclaimed

'IT illiterate'

I had to give him a call and explain that no, I couldn't offer him a job, and that he might want to proof read his CV before sending it out to anyone else.

in some IT jobs inappropriate==suit

Last time I took part in interviewing we tried very hard not to penalise the ones that turned up inappropriately dressed in suits. It was almost always due to a clueless recruiter giving bad advice. Last time I had an office job it mattered in, notice went round the day before customer visits to dress smarter - essentially swap the t-shirt for a shirt and leave the torn jeans at home!

As a dyslexic, spelling impaired and grammar challenged programmer I know none of that is incompatible with being a good programmer. Not taking extra care fixing your CV is bad, shows a lack of attention to detail, which *is* incompatible with being a good programmer. To be honest I'd rather notice problems with English upfront though, really don't want to hire someone who ends up writing documentation!

A fair effort I think is all that is required

Ive recruited engineers for over 16 years and I consider myself to be pretty harsh but no way near as draconian as some of the posters above.

I expect people to make an effort dressing for an interview. It dont have to be a great suit but you ought to wear one. You dont need to look good in it (most programmers somehow look wrong in them) but you need to try. Like other people said , if you cant be bothered why should I.

Again I expect people to put some effort into their CV but I also recognise not everyone is that good at spelling / grammar so I accept that some things may slip through. I'm not that good myself. I've got some great developers who can't spell to save their lives and other than some mispelt variables in the code which can be irrating, doesnt interfere with their work.

What I cant accept is BS or plain lies on CVs.

Cause and effect?

"Some even misspell the name of the technologies and products they're meant to be experts in, which might be why 23 per cent of people admit they get someone else to write their CV"

Perhaps the misspellings were due to using "professional" CV writers who don't have a clue about the IT business.

Unreasonable Job Specs

Just a quick heads up on unreasonable jobs specs - where the job spec appears to be the definition of an individual rather than a broad set of skills.

It looks like that because that is what it is. The company already has an individual to fill the job. However, whether it be because of work permit issues or because policy states they have to advertise all positions (common for government or Council jobs), they are still advertising the role but in such a manner as to ensure their "guy" is the only suitable candidate. Work permit giveaways are often "must be fluent in English and <INSERTSOMELANGUAGE>".

If you see something like that it is almost certainly not worth your effort applying.

3 pages or less

Format of my CV is:

1. Name, address, email, phone nr

2. Short description of my problem solving / thinking skills.

3. Bulleted list of current skills. It's very important to name drop specific skills because agencies will do keyword searches

4. History of companies worked for. More info is supplied for more recent jobs. Old jobs can be relegated to a couple of lines.

5. Other personal stuff, marital status, date of birth etc.

It all fits on 3 pages, 14pt arial despite 20 years of development work. It shouldn't be hard to maintain a CV once you write one. It's best to keep it terse, and well formatted since you can always elaborate in interviews.

Once you have a CV upload it to Monster and the other usual places. Keywords are especially important because the first people to eyeball your CV are likely to be agencies. If you don't turn up in the keyword searches they won't bother ringing you.

Well

I got my current post via a good recruiter and interview.

Browsing on Edugeek one afternoon, knowing I had to move on before long, and saw a position in my field. Emailed the guy a query, he asked for my CV. Emailled my CV (updated the night before, absolutely NO errors) and got a "pre-screening" interview immediately. Within ten minutes of the interview, I had him thanking me because I beat all his other potential candidates by miles.

1) I had a CV relevant to the job, not just a generic thing.

2) I knew what the acronyms meant and could provide a real-life example of my use and understanding of them.

3) I could speak on his level - he was technical but not a technician, if you get what I mean, and I could easily translate "geek" to English when asked.

4) I was well-presented and professional.

Went to the interview, with both the recruiter and his client there, and came up against two very technical employees who would be my bosses - worst nightmare because you either have to struggle to keep up yourself, or you end up having to correct them on technical points. They had a 24-point list of projects they wanted to do. I'd done all of them in the past, to the point where I was naming software I'd used/written, problems I'd run into, and *they* skipped the last eight because they were already answered by the previous 16.

I was wearing a shirt and trousers, no tie, no shined shoes, but "neat and tidy". You'd get into nightclub but probably not into the Oscars.

Got the job. Got told I was the most impressive candidate by miles. It's a private school with a strict dress code, which I tend to ignore on the whole because, as I explained in the interview, I'm more likely to be pushing cables through a hole, or hunting down the back of dusty machines than I am meeting parents (i.e. clients) face-to-face. Of course, if they *want* me to greet parents in a ripped suit with huge dust marks all over the knees, that's fine. I don't think I've ever worn anything as "smart" for work since the interview.

You don't need a huge suit to get a job. You need to be *presentable*, you need a good CV that you've had several dozen people check for you (amazing how many people are ashamed of their CV and/or secretive of it in case I copy it), you need to be the right person for the job. You *don't* need to be in a suit.

Dear sir

I once received a CV with a cover letter starting with "Dear Sir or Madman". Oh the dangers of spell-checkers.

Someone who made it as far as an interview only asked questions about the contacts he might make in the job and then when his mobile rang mid-interview he answered it and had a conversation with the caller. He didn't get the job either.