Lloyd Leung

NOTE: I’m not claiming this is true for all career fields. These are only my thoughts on that matter… I am not an expert nor do I claim to be one in the matters of this post.

At work, I’ve been scanning through resumes that come across my desk to help fill positions.

There are some of the things I’ve noticed when scanning lots of resumes:

1. Make it SHORT and to the point. 2 page MAX.
2. Get to the point, my time is value. If I don’t see something quickly, you’re in the “NO” pile pretty quick.
3. Get someone to proof read your resume. Don’t have spelling or grammar mistakes on your resume. This is supposed to SELL yourself to future employers. This doesn’t mean you’re automatically in the “NO” pile, but it doesn’t help your cause.
4. Help me like you. I want to like reading the resume. Present your resume in an easy to read format. An easy to read format includes clean formating, and fonts.

I enjoy short, to the point resumes.

Different sections:

Objective: Everyone has an Objective… why, cause everyone has one. “To work in a fast paced environment… yadda yadda….” All objectives are the same to me. Keep it short, to the point, and move on to the meat of the subject.

Skill set: Highlight what skills you have that will be applicable to the job you are applying for. I don’t need long lengthy sentences, where I’ll miss your skills. For me, short to the point information. You know how to use Microsoft Office, Photoshop, Excel, Linux, yadda yadda. If applicable versions that you know. NEVER EVER LIE on your resume. Why would you lie to your potential employer?

Job History: Show here, your employer name, location, start time to end time… Keep the job listings relevent. I do not need to know you were life guarding when you were 18 years old, while you’re trying to apply for a tech position. If you want say you know how to swim, put that in your “Interests” section.

If you have lots of job, put down the jobs that relate. If that causes you to move over the 2 page limit, I suggest TRIM the older jobs to fit the 2page limit.

Education: I find this section useful. For tech I want to know your data structures are sound.

Whatever training you have is also good to know.

Interests: If you want to seem a little more human. This is the spot where I gleam a hint of your life.

References: Never just give references in your resume. Say “References available upon request”. We won’t be contacting your references till after an interview anyways. So why waste the two page limit with stuff that does not matter at that moment.

I’ve seen some immortal disasters that people have done. Epic even.

Keep it brief.
Relevant.
Accurate.
Fluff it if you need to, but don’t lie.
Employers see enough resumes to know fluff.

I welcome your thoughts on tech resumes.

find . -name ".svn" -print0 | xargs -0 -n 1024 -r rm -rf

-n prevents rm too many arguments error
-r prevents execution if none found (and prevents error!)

originally from:

http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/902/delete-all-.svn-directories-from-current-path-recursive

Remove those silly quizes, that everyone is doing… “what type of X am I” type apps, that splatter your feed.

Author’s page here

I’m playing with chromium… not chrome, but chromium!

http://code.google.com/chromium/

Chroimium
2.0.163.0 build 9836

I find myself in a midst of buying for the sake of buying. Do you remember buying something because you needed it? What ever happened to make due with what you have?

There’s a fine line, of being a consumer hound, being consumer savvy or even frugal.

I found myself in a local computer store, thinking I needed one or two new hard drives (to put them in an mirror raid solution). Then I realized, why am I storing old information that I’ll never look at again. I should just delete it. It’s not like they’re life time worthy moments like photos, or work that I’ve done. It was meaningless data, that had no future worth.

Delete, delete, delete…

I now have enough storage to last me a lot longer.

Trying to be smarter with my money… just because you have it, doesn’t mean you need to spend it.

Adrian made a comment about public speaking… i’m not sure how i would react if i was speaking in front of people I’ve never met, as opposed to the telephone conference call I had with these same people I’ve never met.

When I was up in montreal, I think I had a good meeting with peers then. Being able to read and react to people is huge with me. I could tailor my presentation a little more… allow for q&a through out the presentation, or just at the end. See if i’m loosing people, or if they’re bored… reading an audience is huge… while not having any metrics on the audience is very difficult. I wonder how radio hosts do it…

oh well, it’s over… at least I’ve shown the architecture committee what else is out there.

Work has given us some what 10% days… like Google’s 20% days, but more work focused endeavours. So, today, I spent most of my time, trying to show off the virtues of Symfony Framework for certain parts of a work product, over using Zend.

My analogy is this, you have to paint a big wall, and you are given a single paint brush (Zend framework). Why use a paint brush when a paint roller or a spray gun (Symfony) would be a much better alternative. I’m not saying you can’t use the paint brush at all. Use the paint brush for the corners. Get the bulk of it done with the paint roller. Alternatively, tape the walls, floor, and ceiling, and spray everything. The choice should be use the best tools for the job.

In the end, people looking at the wall will not care how the wall is painted. However, if you’re a customer looking at paying someone to paint it… the customer will care. Said customer is looking at the quality of the workmanship, how much it will cost / the bottom line, and how long will it take? All of which leads to the choice of using better tools.

title says it all. What’s going on?!? Why facebook do you limit my creative freedom to express myself in multiple outlets?!?

okay… so this all got started from another website… www.botchedcode.com it’s super geek. I know it, but it keeps me entertained, and hopefully other programmers/nerds/geeks whatever. It’s completely computer programming related, but that’s my career.

elevator psychology, http://ping.fm/nDgJ9 this should make you wonder how unique you are.