How to identify the good QA CV and applicants

Iā€™m with you on that, @testerfromliverpool. I think itā€™s possible to capture on a CV/Resume what you might want to capture on a cover letter. I like CV/Resumeā€™s that include a paragraph or two at the top that follow a pattern like this:

I believe in < this important thing related to building products for customers >
My style of testing fits in < via this thing thatā€™s important to me >
I enjoy < this thing about testing > because < reason >
Iā€™m looking for < this type of opportunity >

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I work for a psychometric assessment company (Talogy). We have loads of different tests, but the initial one I use is a combined verbal, numerical and abstract reasoning assessment. We donā€™t have a particularly high bar for entry, but have found itā€™s proven to be a pretty good first checkpoint to date.
During the further interview I have ā€œfind the bugs in this screenshotā€ and ā€œwhat would you test for this pageā€ tasks to do, which I made myself.

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Without shortlisting are you giving assessment for everyone ?

I am still not sure when you mention CVā€™s 20 page long as being sarcastic or serious? Imagine having to read through 40 20-page long CVā€™s! Thatā€™s insane. And like others said - most is just noise.

You also mentioned your CV has a loooooooooooong list of projects because you work on shorter projects. As a personal preference, to me thatā€™s also a noise - I am much more interested what skills and techniques a person knows, so you could sum up all those projects in some 10-15 lines. Iā€™d list such projects as an Appendix, to not clutter the CV too much.

Also, as Oleksandr mentioned, up-to-date skills are cruicial. I regularly delete my earlier experiences that I think do not need or know anymore. For example, I have been programming in Delphi 15 years ago but sure as heck I will not put that on my CV nowadays because I forgot all about it :smiley:

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I do in some instances yeah, sometimes weā€™ll have an external recruiter doing a first fix on who gets the test but itā€™s mostly automated. The system allows people to register and take the test, they see their own results in a report, and I get an email to tell me when someone has completed. We donā€™t have 100ā€™s of people applying thankfully, so Iā€™ve never been overrun!

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This is an interesting topic to read through.

Iā€™m with you on this - I wasnā€™t sure how to take it! A ā€˜CVā€™ thatā€™s 20 pages isnā€™t a CV by definition, at least here in the UK. Iā€™ve read shorter books.

If weā€™re talking from a hiring managers perspective, I challenge that they would be willing to read through 20 pages of someones work-life / career over, just having a conversation with the candidate and extracting the information you need from them in that sort of setting. In doing this youā€™re getting a much better feel of the candidate as well, whatā€™s important to them, what their motivations are etc.

Iā€™m talking specifically about CVā€™s here - If someone wants 20 pages of their career and work-life on LinkedIn or their own blog / page - thatā€™s completely different, and much more appropriate to link from your CV.

Even if youā€™ve worked in tech for many, many years and could easily fill 20 pages; Your CV - your CURRENT CV - should contain relevant experience applicable for the job youā€™re applying for, and within the first 3rd of the CV there needs to be ā€˜enoughā€™ in there for the hiring manager to know that you have the relevant skills or not.

There is a good chance by the time the hiring manager is half way through the first page, theyā€™ve made a decision on whether to progress your application or not.

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I am dead serious. Still a personal preference. You guys are all talking about a 2 page CV which contains ā€œalmost no informationā€ on what they did on their projects besides a summary or things and skills. But when you have to review 100 resumeā€™s a week and all of them look the same because they are only 1 or 2 pages with a few skills on (selenium & jenkins 99% of the time)ā€¦ Then you have to make a selectionā€¦ because Iā€™m not going to talk to all of them obviously.

Exactly, I just wonder now how many resumeā€™s you see a week? If you see 100 resumeā€™s of a 1 pager when somebody only mentions Selenium & Jenkins then it will drive you crazy. But when there is a guy who mentions Selenium & Jenkins and actually talks about some challenges he had and how to tackled themā€¦ thatā€™s what I want, because doing the actual interview, the people with 1-2 pages almost always get rejected after the interview.

So personally, I rather read a fully summarized resume because he actually took the time to do it, a person whoā€™s more detailed is what Iā€™m looking for. Not another tester ā€œlike everyone elseā€. I want somebody on my team who thinks differently then others and dares to be different.

Again, itā€™s just personal preference but I am serious. If I see a guy with a 1 page resume naming Selenium and Jenkins . It doesnā€™t seem ā€œattractingā€ to me compared to a fully summarized resume.

EDIT: Donā€™t get me wrong here, there is nothing wrong with a 1-2 page resume. Iā€™m just saying; I like to recruit people who are different and dare to be different.

I appreciate your point of view, and you make a sound point about many 1-2 page CVs looking the sameā€¦ but I never once said 1 or 2 pages? - thatā€™s putting words in my mouth.

Of course a CV can be more than 2 pages, especially for people who have been in tech a long time, they may slip into 3 or even 4 pages - but after this, in my opinion, that is no longer a CV - itā€™s becoming something else.

I think weā€™re talking about two different documents. What you are describing, is not a CV, so weā€™ll have to agree to disagree on that point.

From a candidates point of view when applying roles, they may apply for many positions - especially if they have been made redundant or need to get out of a toxic workspace, they may be ā€˜less fussyā€™ as to what they apply for - I personally think itā€™s a massive risk to send a 20 page document for a job roles and claim its a CV - I think you as a hiring manager looking for long ā€œCVsā€ is rare - The candidate is looking for a new job, and guaranteed interviews and ā€˜insā€™ for the positions theyā€™re applying for, a 20 page document is not the way to do that - that is just how it is, and I believe a recruiter (if there are any around to comment here?) would back up this.

I can only speak from my experience here in the UK - things might be different elsewhere, I suppose.

Another thoughtā€¦ Flip this around again from the hiring managers perspective - if youā€™re hiring for a position, your hiring to solve a problem, fill a gap - you often have a budget and need to do this within a reasonable timescale. Your telling me here that if you get 100 CVā€™s all with relevant experience on them, you would not consider them because youā€™re waiting for ā€˜the one that dares to be differentā€™ - I challenge that, from an ethical standpoint as someone in a position to make or break peoples careers, provide them with the security of a job, these 100 CVs are ā€˜no goodā€™ ??

Every single one of those 100, 1 or 2 page CVā€™s could be an absolutely outstanding candidate.

Sorry if it sounds to harsh, not my intention at all.

All co-consultants here have 10-30 page resumeā€™s. For us here in Belgium itā€™s pretty normal.
And yea, there are good candidates that have 1-2 page resumeā€™s, itā€™s not like we donā€™t do interviews with them, we do indeed. Itā€™s just you can only do so many :stuck_out_tongue:

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