Probably a dumb question, but when you say "tailor your resume", what kind of tailoring do you mean? I've seen this advice repeated a lot, but I've rarely taken it because I tend to apply to jobs with the same job title and roughly the same responsibilities; in general, I assumed that tailoring is mainly helpful if you have a diverse/generalist skillset.

Like, it's obvious to me why a true Jack of all trades would use different resumes for applying to a plumber role vs a carpenter role, but less clear why a career plumber would tailor resumes for applying to two plumber roles at slightly different companies.

▲ drillsteps5 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Several months ago, having exhausted all other options in fruitless job search, I asked for assistance of a recruiter who I used to work with some time ago. Just to get some pointers on how I could improve my search, with his experience working on the other side. His advice on "tailoring" was very simple.

Go to the most popular LLM (ie Claude). Give it the job description. Give it your resume. Ask it for percentage match, it will give you a number. Then ask for advice on improving your resume, you can either ask to rework the resume by itself (if you're in a hurry) or you can work with the thing to modify the sections/entries yourself, one by one, if you have time. With each modification you will get better and better percentage match. Ideally you need to get to high 80% or maybe even 90%.

The idea is that automated ranking tools used by recruiters/HR are ultimately use the very same LLM, so you are improving your ranking assigned to your resume by those ranking systems.

I have to add that now this advice is mostly useless as everybody's using the same technique so you won't be standing up against others but merely be on the same level.

Add to it the fact that many job descriptions are inaccurate and sometimes downright misleading, and hiring managers use their own criteria, and you will understand why connections/referrals is probably the only way to get hired now.

	▲	Terr_ 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> The idea is that automated ranking tools used by recruiters/HR are ultimately use the very same LLM, so you are improving your ranking assigned to your resume by those ranking systems. Working in HR-tech, that is definitely happening, and "self-bias" is a thing with LLMs so if you can guess what the employer/screening-process is using then that's a bonus. That said, we should distinguish between "Hey robot tell me if X matches Y" prompts, versus model-weights comparison. In the second case, the system feeds your resume into a model with no prompt, grabs all the magic math numbers, and statistically compares them to the magic-numbers if the model had been given some "ideal" resumes.

▲ shagie 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If the job is for a backend Java developer position, change the list of languages you know from:

    Languages: JavaScript, C#, Python, Java

to:

    Languages: Java, C#, JavaScript, Python

Many times people order their languages by familiarity or preference for working with that technology. Don't make the person looking at the resume have to hunt for the information. If it's last on the list, that may say something about how much you're interested in that job and how likely you are to stay.

> but less clear why a career plumber would tailor resumes for applying to two plumber roles at slightly different companies.

If one company is looking for a plumber to do PEX and another is looking for someone who is experienced with natural gas and black pipe, you might want to make sure that your experience in those two different domains of plumbing are at the front of the experience. They're both plumbers, but the heating and air conditioning company hiring a plumber is looking for different things than the residential new construction plumber.

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legitster 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's so funny to me that a tech company will have no problem hiring a VP from, like, a beverage company - but heaven forbid you put your programming languages in the wrong order on your resume.

	▲	shagie 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Hiring a CEO, you know (of) the person and its more likely a "the board wants to hire {that person}" and it really doesn't matter what the text of their resume says. At most there's a dozen candidates and a several month process for selecting one of them. For developers, if the resumes are largely the same, then you're selecting for the ones that show evidence that they read the job posting and want to work there. This isn't about hiring the best candidate - it's the least risky candidate that is hired. If you're listing the preferred language of the job and the language that is mentioned in the job posting last, you're more likely to be a risky candidate than one who lists it first. You may not know the language as well. You may not enjoy working on it (there's a reason I don't list php in the languages on my resume). In a stack with less risky candidates, the one that has the preferred language last won't be at the top of the list for callbacks.

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whstl 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

While this makes absolutely no sense to me, I'm pretty sure unhinged language fanatics would reject some resumes because "Java is not the first on the list".

HR people and AIs, as much as I criticise them: would not reject that.

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shagie 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If I have 100 resumes, and 50 of them list Java first, and 50 of them list Java last, which pool of 50 am I most likely to find someone who knows and doesn't hate working in Java?

You're going to select 10 people out of that list of 100 because you don't have time to call everyone for three weeks to evaluate their skill.

You've also got only two hours to look through all 100 of those resumes today. You're spending about a minute and a half looking at each resume. How are you going to evaluate someone for a Java backend position who's last job was in C# and they list Java last in the list of languages they know?

	▲	whstl 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Okay, yeah, now I agree with you. The last paragraph makes a great point: if the person has been out of Java the game for long, they will definitely be second to someone who's fresh out of a Java job. And the reason is exactly as you say: limited time, excessive number of CVs. This completely changes the game.
	▲	johnnyanmac an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		>which pool of 50 am I most likely to find someone who knows and doesn't hate working in Java? The one who has actual projects or professional experience in Java? I'm surprised this is such a sticking point. I list my skills last on the resume because it's the least relevant and it was mostly to try and satisfy ATS. But reality is stranger than theory, I suppose. At least, that was my old approach. I found some advice I really liked and ultimately integrate a tech stack sub-bullet in every experience now. Seems to be a good balance of ATS and human(-skimming) readability.

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johnnyanmac 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

AI wouldn't. It'll crunch the resume in milliseconds and sort it out itself.

HR is a mixed bag, usually without technical context. I'm sure most engineers in the 00's and 10's have some experience of "Java and JavaScript are similar, right?" In a recruiter call.