99% of bullet points containing numbers in a resume are made up, hamfisted BS, the other 1% cannot be attributed to a single individual so putting them in a personal resume is silly.
99% of bullet points containing numbers in a resume are made up, hamfisted BS, the other 1% cannot be attributed to a single individual so putting them in a personal resume is silly.
I agree with the sentiment, but not the conclusion. Sure, numbers can be abused, just like anything else, but they provided specificity which you can then interrogate and call bullshit on. I won't necessarily fault someone for leaving off the numbers and just speaking qualitatively to the large scale system rewrite they did, but it's harder to evaluate whether such an effort was indeed warranted or was just a lateral move post-hoc rationalized by an engineer who didn't understand the original system and needed to rewrite it just to achieve that understanding. Again, if someone is satisfying the business with such efforts, more power to them. As a hiring manager, I don't want to get into a subjective evaluation of the relative engineering value of specific work at an external company that I have no first-hand context on, but I do want to know that candidates understand the highest level goals they are hired to contribute to. Metrics, however flawed, give a good entry point into such conversations.
I don’t blame people for doing so. That’s what they have been told by recruiters to do to increase their chance of their resume not being thrown into the trash or be invisible. If there is someone to blame for this, it’s the recruiting industry.
Not you specifically, but as an industry response, that seems too pat.
The recruiters will do and react to what the hiring managers ask for. When one too many candidates slip thru who bullshit, or there is weak signal that such and such method of candidate selection seems to result in marginally stronger candidates, then everyone rushes to do that thing and it eventually becomes sludge. Leetcode interviews are a classic example.
We (individuals) get poor candidates because we (industry) encourage and reward poor recruitment practices. Time for us all to look in the mirror, honestly.
I've seen 300k salary hiring managers punching down on a recruiter making 60k who doesnt know her C# from her C++. That sort of behavior says more about the flaws of the hiring manager than the recruiter. If you never talk to the recruiter but once a year when you have budget to hire someone, never take the time to educate them on your business, well then you're going to get crappy candidates.
It’s so dumb. There is no way to verify the numbers, and yet, this stupidity weaseled its way into the LinkedIn cinematic universe of corporate bullshit. The same point but without the “X by Y%” hits the same for me— besides I know what questions to ask to judge if you are actually capable of moving the needle, which is all I care about as a conductor of interviews.
the problem is CVs are screened by non-tech HR/recruiters, who lack the capacity to screen candidates. Because it is much easier to apply online with one click, each position is spammed with millions of CVs.
in response, for HR it is much easier to filter out CV if it lacks style, not substance. Therefore they look at bullet points like "Done X by Y%".
The proper way should be to limit the intake funnel: accept only a few applications per job, so that they can be screened properly by HRs by calling them, and talking to them and properly screening (old school style), instead of tossing their resume to the bin after 15 sec quick review