The Stack Overflow Developer Story: A New Technical Resume

As someone who reads and writes thousands of developer resumes a year, the major problem I see is that people have a difficult time separating what is important from what isn&#x27;t, and separating day-to-day responsibilities (which are typically understood from a job title) from unique and novel achievements. I don&#x27;t know if this kind of tool solves that problem.<p>Much of my work with resume clients is extracting what they do from them and then putting it into efficient words. Many people struggle with just explaining what they do.<p>The other problem is that you have to understand that your reader often isn&#x27;t someone with a highly technical background (or even a recruiting background), so you have to define yourself quickly in order to prevent the reader from misinterpreting who you are. If a reader is looking for a &quot;Python Developer&quot;, it&#x27;s best to refer to yourself that way on the resume.<p>For senior level people length is often the issue - it&#x27;s a highlight reel - not a biography. Anyone can get to 1-2 pages max.

I was skeptical of this when they first launched the earlier versions, but I actually quite like the way they&#x27;ve done it in the final version.<p>My favorite resume of all time is Matt Hall&#x27;s stratigraphic column resume: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;static.squarespace.com&#x2F;static&#x2F;549dcda5e4b0a47d0ae1db1e&#x2F;54a06d6ee4b0d158ed95f696&#x2F;54a06d6fe4b0d158ed95fff5&#x2F;1292595536033&#x2F;Strat_column_2011.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;static.squarespace.com&#x2F;static&#x2F;549dcda5e4b0a47d0ae1db...</a> (His blog post about it is here: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.agilegeoscience.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2010&#x2F;12&#x2F;17&#x2F;resume-20.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.agilegeoscience.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2010&#x2F;12&#x2F;17&#x2F;resume-20.htm...</a>)<p>I&#x27;m a geologist, so I&#x27;m rather fond of the puns, etc that he&#x27;s made here, but the point is that a straigraphic column is a great way to lay out a resume. It gives a vertical visual depiction of what the person has been doing from most recent to longest ago.<p>That&#x27;s exactly what the developer story is. I really like that they&#x27;ve used that visual layout. It&#x27;s a very effective way to convey activities and employment history.

My recent job search lead me to the idea that the traditional resume is broken. Temporal view only gives recruiters and hiring managers the bullet points to qualify you in whatever bucket that they need.<p>Instead of a traditional CV&#x2F;Resume, I went with a single page narrative approach with a link to the temporal view on my LinkedIn profile. Initially there was some pushback as the recruiters were bellyaching over the fact that they needed to actually read my essay, but as time progressed I discovered that this format became a tool.<p>By forcing the hiring manager&#x2F;recruiter to actually read and understand your background, inbound leads were much higher quality and the initial phone screen was extremely easy. Out of 100+ job applications, i got 20 or so responses, and of those 20 responses, 10 offers.<p>Out of the 20 responses, 19 were good fits and had good hiring managers with a company that had a decent culture.<p>I am definitely using the narrative approach again for my next job hunt.

Weren&#x27;t GitHub profiles the new technical resume? How well did that work in practice, and how would this Stack Overflow approach be different?<p>I was under the impression (from reading HN&#x2F;Reddit) that while engineers do read GitHub profiles if explicitly linked in a resume, nontechnical recruiters do not. And they are the gatekeeper to said engineers.

Surprisingly, not many people know just how to write a good developer resume. The Developer Story is a good approach but even that is missing the key element that makes a resume work _when you are looking for a job_.<p>Imagine this scenario:<p><pre><code> - Farmer looking for horse to plough my fields and inspect my farm - Horse 1: &quot;I am a stallion! My coat shines in the sun, my mane is dark and glossy, and the very earth trembles as I run. I have come from the stables of Arabia, have been in the armies of Alexander, the greeks, and the mighty Theseus! I have ploughed the fields of Asphodel, and won &#x27;prettiest horse&#x27; in the Reading village fair&quot; - Farmer: &quot;Wow! You&#x27;re...impressive&quot; - Horse 2: &quot;I enjoy ploughing fields and I&#x27;m pretty strong&quot; - Farmer: &quot;Great! I can offer you two apples, four sugar cubes, a nice warm barn...&quot; </code></pre> To be effective, Resume&#x27;s shouldn&#x27;t be all about how great we are (unless we are _really_ someone standout). Rather they should be tailored to the job we want.<p>The resume needs to get through the &quot;hiring funnel&quot;. This means they must contain the keywords that the ATS and Recruiter need in addition to our technical accomplishments that the Hiring Manager and Interviewing Panel will want. This really is pretty simple but we get caught up looking inward and not paying attention to the actual audience of the resume. So most resume&#x27;s end up hit or miss.<p>For anyone interested, I&#x27;ve written a book on how to do this. The book&#x27;s description on Amazon contains the entire process so you don&#x27;t need to buy it unless you want to. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;dp&#x2F;B01KVVY9OA" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;dp&#x2F;B01KVVY9OA</a>

So I got the notice this morning that my info had been changed to this new developer story on SO. I go check, it&#x27;s literally &gt; 10 screens before a single useful piece of info appears. 70 or so open source projects I contributed to or run followed by my job experience<p>&gt; &quot;your Developer Story is the best way to share whatever it is that you take pride in. It’s your story; tell it your way.&quot;<p>Um, no, that&#x27;s not my way. My way would be to list my professional accomplishments first and then list my open source projects just to show how much of a geek I am.

At some point years ago I must have asked SO not to show me any questions with &quot;soap&quot; tag.<p>Unfortunately my shiny new developer story now has &quot;I dislike soap&quot;.

It&#x27;s an interesting idea, but I prefer to take my experience and tell a story that specifically targets the role for which I am applying. From that perspective, having a single &quot;story&quot; out there for all potential employers isn&#x27;t optimal for me.

A lot of negativity here, but I really liked my profile on stackoverflow careers, and I really like this. I felt like it was pretty different from linkedin, here are some things I like&#x2F;liked: - easy to list my favorite technologies and books. - easy to link to github to show projects, easy to link to stackexchange. - UI gave good guidance on how to write a better description<p>As someone who&#x27;s hired hundreds of software engineers over the past 15 years, it did the best job generating the kind of resumes I like to see.

I like where this is going (i&#x27;ve built something similar, if private [1]).<p>Resumes in their current form don&#x27;t work well as a source of truth about anyone&#x27;s career. The main issue being that we put summarized&#x2F;editorialized information in instead of details. It&#x27;s like discarding the data you used to generate a chart and then updating the chart directly going forward.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;jobrudder.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;jobrudder.com</a>

I&#x27;ve had success with the &quot;T style&quot; where I list the stated requirements verbatim from the job posting on one side and how specifically I meet those requirements on the other side. Combined with some narrative about relevant experience, it&#x27;s way better than just a chronology.

Wait so hiring managers who didn&#x27;t have more then 60 seconds to parse my resume now have the time to go through years of my stackoverflow activity? Sweet!

Is it really now? That sucks as I don&#x27;t really engage with SO that often; Hardly ever really. Sure, if I Google for something SO results come up, but normally I search YouTube for a talk&#x2F;tutorial or search Github for snippets of code.<p>I guess I&#x27;m screwed...

This is authored by a Jay Hanlon, &quot;VP of Community Growth&quot;. Apparently, the role includes publishing clickbait.<p>He squeezes in a humblebrag: &quot;...if you&#x27;re like me, and still just a little proud that you got off the waitlist and eked your way into a school above your intellectual weight class...&quot;<p>And he uses scarcity to scare devs into creating a profile: &quot;It only takes a few minutes, and you do NOT want some other joker snapping up the good URLs.&quot;

I don&#x27;t see anything on here that I couldn&#x27;t do with my LinkedIn profile, TBH.<p>I do kinda wish I knew the secrets of how to get 2-3 recruiting emails a day though. Unless it&#x27;s &quot;have 5 more years of experience,&quot; I think my profile could use some help.

I&#x27;ve been a contributor and top 10-20% user on SO for the last 5 years or so, and I&#x27;ve never once received a single job offer, solicitation or point of contact. I&#x27;m doubtful this will change any of that.

I thought the &quot;new resume&quot; was Stack Overflow Careers, which I spent USD$29 for back in the day. To SO&#x27;s credit at the time, they offered a full refund if one was ever not satisfied. I never took them up on it, though I should have considering that it was a waste of $29 for all the value I got out of it. I spent a fair bit of time sprucing up that profile, got very few hits, and the quality of the leads was no better or worse than what I&#x27;d get off LinkedIn. IOW, random recruiters spamming.<p>So when the recent email hit my inbox, it was with a healthy dose of skepticism that I just immediately deleted it.

This would probably not be the most proud feature shipped to date (if I worked at SO). - It looks just average and does make use of the white space - It has this section where you &quot;DISLIKE&quot; technology? wtf really? - Who cares what you recommend as a book to read? This is a resume right, not your blog. - I somehow feel this is too leaderboard-y and not something i would use for a resume - but sure, it IS a cool thing to have if you&#x27;re into StackOverflow (like a LOT), just not a resume..

It&#x27;s not the new resume by a long shot. But it does point to some large flaws resumes have.<p>Resumes in their current form don&#x27;t work well as a source of truth about anyone&#x27;s career. The main issue being that we put summarized&#x2F;editorialized information in instead of details. It&#x27;s like discarding the data you used to generate a chart and then updating the chart directly going forward.<p>You also can&#x27;t manage the things you put on a resume. You can&#x27;t easily search, tag, sort, view by company, position etc. You&#x27;re doing all that in your head and then putting the result on paper.<p>There should be tools to help with this stuff (I built one [1]) and those tools should put the resume in it&#x27;s proper place, as an output of some other more comprehensive source of truth.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;jobrudder.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;jobrudder.com</a>

<i>_ is the new resume</i><p>Oh please - not again.

StackOverflow as a company may have grown a little too quickly; I wonder how much $$ they make from this and whether they should just focus on their core which is community and maintaining a decent community rather than these marketing-led stunts.

I see some other comments about preferring other ways to tailor your application or have specific approaches when you apply for particular jobs and I definitely agree with both:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=12687415" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=12687415</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=12686741" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=12686741</a><p>But I don&#x27;t think this is really aimed at supplanting that. It&#x27;s really just trying to put a better face on the &quot;passive&quot; approach to things and I like it for that.

I&#x27;m trying to get hired as a junior front end developer. Suck at writing resumes.<p>This is my worst one so far. Also I&#x27;ve been applying but no responses, I have a defeatist mentality and also I think I do accept that I don&#x27;t meet the requirements.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;oCdvU" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;oCdvU</a><p>I have changed the format some as the bullets as titles doesn&#x27;t make sense. Still I have to condense and overall my &quot;achievements&quot; are pretty basic. Probably will have to find another menial job. Oh well

<i>&quot;your Developer Story is the best way to share whatever it is that you take pride in. It’s your story; tell it your way.&quot;</i><p>Are people still relying on third party companies marketing to both sides of the market, to attract employees? You don&#x27;t really need them. The Internet and contributions to open source [0] is your developer story, use it. [1]<p>reference:<p>[0] I realise not everyone can&#x2F;will want do this.<p>[1] offer from google engineering (SRE) on basis of newsgroup questions and code.

Does anyone have a security@ contact address for stackoverflow that they know is monitored?<p>Unfortunately there is no way to opt out of this service right now. (edit: I don&#x27;t want to email security to ask for an opt-out, it would just be nice to opt out until they fix the actual security issue.)<p>Edit: Found a web form they use on security.stackexchange.

I have seen numerous versions of the &quot;New Resume&quot; in the last ten years or so. It&#x27;s really hard to replace something universal that everyone understands, even if it&#x27;s antiquated. I doubt this will fair much better.

Why does everything need to be a stream? Is my resume a twitter feed now?

The traditional resume works because it&#x27;s easy to scan visually quickly. It&#x27;s easy to print out and share. This is not.

I like the use of 2 columns.

That lady&#x27;s resume is very impressive. Is she looking?

Obviously this is marketing fake from stack overflow.<p>There is nothing more unreadable than a Stack Overflow resume. Well... except a project on github that doesn&#x27;t have a readme.

Ugh.