Hey,

Any tips on how to apply for job, I apply to 10-15 new opportunities daily but haven't received positive response from 99% of them. I don't know what's wrong.

Currently, I am a cyber security analyst at a startup since February 2023.

My resume I use to apply for job
https://ganofins.com/ganesh-bagaria...

CV is one thing, but the cover letter (or email body) should answer two questions: Why do you want to work at that company specifically? Why should the company hire you and not someone else?

Therefore, the cover letter needs to be individual for each company. It shows that you even know where you are applying - instead of, uhm, just sending out 10-15 daily applications all over the place.

@Fast-Nop noted
Thanks

@Ganofins Typically, that also involves a brief highlight of the parts of your CV that are most relevant to this specific position, that you want to go into that direction, and how your experience benefits the company.

Don't forget you can feed chatgpt your resume and ask it to write you a CV. That's exactly what it excels at, doing inane corporate bullshit that only hrs care about.

@msdsk yeah. Just needed some real experienced people's advice too

@Ganofins
The problem is that here we're programmers, HRs that check your resume are closer in their way of thinking to chatgpt than to us.

I'd suggest adding more details on how you did some things.

Like "responsible for"... But what did you do? what did you use to do them? Did you work with others? Or by yourself? etc.

You can probably have 3 or 4 bullet point under your work experience

@iceb won't that make it too long?? As it is already 2 page long

@Ganofins yeah you don't want to do more than 2 pages.

This is where you'll have to pick and choose which item on the resume lines up more with what the job description is asking for and highlight the relevant ones

I think work experience will get valued more than your projects. so I'd take off some projects if they aren't highlighting something relevant for the job.

Also. I don't know what everyone else thinks but I'd change your bullet from arrow to the regular black dot or dash.

Think about it this way. If you were the person that was hiring for this job. What would you want to know about this person that's applying (you)

@Ganofins
It very much depends on the country. In Sweden it's normal to have one page of an overview and then in-depth project descriptions on the next pages. Mine is some 20 pages long.

@msdsk oh wow. It's interesting to learn. Isn't that a lot to go through for HR and interviewers, too?

@iceb as far as I know they shortlist people based on the first page outline and cover letter and only then look at the rest

@msdsk oh, man! I am based in India here it is about 1 or 2 pages is enough. Though i do apply to international remote jobs

I'm no expert not HR person or anything, but here's my take based on what I've heard that may be helpful for you as well:

You're kinda writing for an HR person, and those people have their values more aligned with the business higher-ups than with your fellow developers. Business people don't seem to think much in terms of your technical achievements, but how your skills could help solve the problems of a real person, so that such a person could pay money to the business for your solution.

As such, you want to put more emphasis on your work experience, phrasing it in terms of what problems you solved (from the perspective of the business, or a customer), and what role you played as a team player (HR might love this since they probably tend to value interpersonal skills more).

(continues)

@nururururu For the projects and competitons, I'd say your projects should probably take precedence over competitions, but if your achievements in competitions were really impressive, one possibility would be to mix them up with projects in the same section and, again, phrase them in terms of what problems they solve, or how you could potentially apply your projects and stuff you built in competitions. The general gist is try to impress the business people, describe yourself as a good team player who can get along with others, to impress the HR lady, and then you can impress the devs in the technical interview or something.

Since you're in security, the CVEs you discovered are probably pretty important, you can describe them in terms of how someone might lose money or get sued with them, rather than list the names (or something like that, hahah). I think those should take precedence over e.g. certificates and such.

Take my advice with a grain of salt, I'm not too experienced.

@nururururu (but hopefully my outsider perspective can provide you with some helpful insight)

@nururururu thanks man, noted need to rework on the resume from a business person perspective

A resume's job is to avoid the trash can.

Here's how automated filtering works:
* Sort by keyword matching
* Drop all but the topx

Here's how a potential interviewer's screen candidate resumes:
* If it's more than one page, get bored reading it and skip it
* If it looks like every other resume, get bored reading it and skip it
* If it looks like it's worth reading, look at work experience and see if you recognize the companies
* If it's worth reading and the companies in work experience sounds interesting, read a little more until you get bored and make your decision.

With this in mind, here's my recommendations.
* Purchase a unique template with color
* Make sure the resume has easy to distinguish sections so the reader doesn't get bored
* Filter everything into one page
* Somewhere should be a generic skills section that's not meant for a human to read to put in all the keywords in the job posting

https://resumeworded.com/assets/...

Once you solve the resume filtering issues, and get to the interview portion, you should absolutely practice interviewing.

A tech interview should feel like two friends talking about cool tech. Say you've never heard of things, and ask them if they've used tech you like.

An HR interview should focus on people skills. Try to come off as someone who won't require a lot of HR time. Being able to solve workplace issues on your own, and back it up with examples.

Each interview you should interview them as well. Ask them about the company, and be sure to ask them why you should pick this company. If you have multiple rounds of interviews and run out of questions, ask the same ones again. Don't be afraid to tell them you are to compare responses! They often don't compare notes afterwards anyway.

At the end of the day it's a numbers game. Start recording attempts and results, A/B test, keep what works and throw away what doesn't.

It might take a bad resume 100 applications to get an interview, but a good resume might get 1 in 20. Same with interviews.

Fine tuning these things means doing 50 applications vs doing 500. You will get something if you keep at it, but you might get something sooner/better if you game it.