QA YOUR RESUME - A Sad Story of Vile Resumes

I'm hiring 6 contractors for a major project that is made up of a significant number of small projects. I'm not looking for low-level testers; I need people who can handle analysis tasks and their "own" projects. I need a minimum of 5 years experience.

I was depressed last Friday over the state of our field, probably for the first time in my career.

I've received a deluge of resumes from consulting firms and easily spent 75% of last week wading through the worst batch of candidates I've ever seen.

Part of the issue is budget; with most QA Managers pressured to offshore what they can, it's important to keep costs down. While I can justify an analyst costing twice as much onsite, it's difficult to justify an analyst costing 3 or 4 times as much... I'm fortunate in that my management supports the model of analysis on-site; repetitive regression testing offshore, especially since it's difficult to get the right skill set offshore (I'll cover that in another blog), but cost is still an issue.

Consulting firms are sending me resumes no different from resumes I receive for offshore staff. Why would I pay an extra 50-60K for personnel I can get at less than half the price??

It's all about greed. Offshore concerns have set up shop here in the US and subcontract people to consulting firms at dirt cheap prices, who turn around and offer those resources to us at at least double the price. So you're being offered on-site personnel with the same skillsets and issues as offshore personnel.

Argh.

Seems to me that placing someone and making even a 10K profit would be preferable to not placing anyone and having us send our dollars overseas. In my opinion, consulting firms need to either change their operating model or face eventual extinction. The problem is that they want to make 40K on every single consultant.

So the first indication that I'm being offered one of these "deals" is that the resume shows their current assignment is in Nowheresville, Utah - their 18th different location in the past 4 years, but they'd be happy to move here for the job at no cost to us...

The second clue is that someone with 4 years experience has a resume at least 7 pages long. I immediately want to fling it on the floor and jump up and down on it. I have to force myself to read it. I have more than 25 years of experience. My resume is 3 pages long.

Clue #3 is that Really Important Terms are highlighted. Unfortunately, these resources dump every term they've ever heard in the past 4 years into their resume, since they have no idea what is important and just want to pass any resume-scanning process you might have in place.

Clue #4 is "Extensive experience in....". Look, as far as I'm concerned, no one with 4 years of experience has extensive experience in anything. Particularly if they've never even held a single job for as long as one year.

Clue #5 is the phrase "Extensive experience in script automation, using tools like WinRunner...". I once drove a car like a Lambourghini. It was a Gremlin. Inevitably when you force yourself to continue to read the resume, it turn out they either ran auto scripts written by someone else, or were involved in "parameterization" and "checkpointing" of scripts. I could train a 12-year-old to do that in half an hour.

Clue #6 is the Heinous Grammar. There is no understanding of tenses, plurals, spellling, punctuation, or sentence structure in these resumes. It makes them difficult and unpleasant to read. There is no understanding that a resume is a formal document and you may even see "texting" type of language, such as using "&", rather than "and". Receiving a resume written this badly really pisses me off. If someone cannot recognize these errors in a document as important and formal as a resume, how are they going to recognize similar errors on a screen? If I can't even understand their resume, how is our staff going to comprehend their defect reports? How Dare a consulting firm insult me by sending me a piece of crap they haven't even bothered to read and clean up before submittal? I'd rather spend an hour deciphering a resume written in ig-pay atin-lay. At least I'd be entertained.

And the final clue is.....(you QA Managers out there already know what it is....)......TMI (Too Much Information). Every job experience (and when you switch jobs every 3-6 months, there are a lot of them) begins with an explanation of what the company does and an overview of the project worked on by the applicant. I've worked on over 250 projects. Do you know what my resume would look like if I included an overview of every one of them in my resume? It would remble "War and Peace". I think I'd call it "The Book of Linda".

TAKE THAT CRAP OUT OF YOUR RESUME. I probably already know what the company you've listed does and if I don't, I'll ask you during your interview. The likelihood of those projects you worked on bearing any similarity to our applications is roughly slim and none.

Do not tell me every little thing you tested. You tested navigation on a screen? I could train my entire family, the neighbors, and possibly my dog to test navigation on a screen in a few minutes. You tested drop-down boxes? Argh...

To add insult to injury, the consulting firms get angry when I reject their candidates. I have to send a detailed explanation of every rejection. Even then, some of them stomp off to a VP to complain. I'd whimper at this juncture if it weren't so unattractive in a woman of my stature.

You know, I'd start talking about disastrous interviews now, but I just don't have the heart for it at the moment. I have another 47 resumes to read....

(Sigh).