I have been working in tech since ~1995. I also have been in a hiring position since 2002 and own the top firm in our field. Here is my advice; lie.
Let me clarify. A lie is only problematic if by the time you start in that new position, you do not have the skills to back it up. If you can do the job and do it well, no manager will ever give a fuck about what you put in your resume.
PS: In most cases, the school you graduated from will only matter for your first job. In most cases, your GPA will never matter.
I’ve been working in tech since 2000 and have been in a hiring position since ~2008. I’ve done very well for myself, and continue to do well, and I’ve never had to lie. I’ve always just treated most of the down page requirements as “nice to have” or “have something similar” rather than hard requirements, and have always been upfront about it in interviews about the actual amount of experience I’ve had in these things. What kind of interviews are you running where you aren’t asking about the requirements for the job? One of my main goals in interviews is to discuss what the candidate has worked on so I know how well it fits into what we’re doing.
I do agree that if you do the job well, no one is going to ask questions. But if looks like you’ve lied to get the job, it makes it pretty easy decision to fire you if things are going poorly.
I think you’re missing the main context of the post, which is experience. It doesn’t matter if you were not an expert when you applied. What matters is that you are an expert when it is time to be, which includes the interview.
That said, common sense tells you that this is all about “additional skills” like specific softwares, not core technologies. If you’ve never heard about Java and you apply for a Senior Java Engineer position, you’re probably not going to do well.
Counterpoint: They already know you can’t “do” the job-specific tasks because you don’t work there yet. If you know the tools, that’s extremely helpful as they teach you what to do with them. If there’s pile A and pile B and they’re mostly the same except B already knows JIRA or Visual Studio or whatever, then that’s a legitimate differentiator.
When the existing team is forced to get new software, there’s a presumption that they already know what tasks the tools are supposed to help them do. There’s no “other pile,” so might as well suck it up and kill your productivity by ten percent for a year. It’s okay though; you can improve it by 1% from the original baseline for nine years after, because the McKinsey and Accenture people totally promised us that makes sense. Rinse and repeat.
I bring new software into my organization through two methods:
- Someone has used it before
- We are reasonably confident in our ability to use existing staff, possibly with a new expert hire or consultation
It’s pretty rare for a large org to do completely net new software. Training is usually a big deal if that happens. Massive layoffs are also a possibility (see enterprises being dumb about containers). Smaller orgs tend not to have this problem. If they do you can usually tell in an interview and just not go there. Devs are constantly experimenting with net new shit (current libs don’t do the thing; gotta find new libs). Again, smart leaders are open to this.
In general, staffing is a huge part of any of these decisions. You might not see the convo but it is most likely happening.
I have no intention of applying for a job ever again. I’ll run my own business or I’ll eat my shotgun a little earlier than planned. There aren’t enough goods, services, intellectual properties and sex acts in the worldwide economy to pay me for the nine seconds it will take you to ask me “so what would you say is your greatest weakness?”
Yeah, that’s right flop sweat. I would much rather sell hand crafted furniture on Etsy or give flying lessons out of a T-hangar at my county airport than listen to you say nine words in exchange for $The Biosphere.
The first job I had was for a dinky little 15 person company. Obviously they didn’t have loads of money and the way most corporate software contracts work is it’s a lot cheaper for a period, like 1-2 years, and then the price increases. So they would jump ship before the price increase and use another product after that. So I ended up learning loads of different digital marketing platforms. I list them on my resume when I can, otherwise I just list the big ones and put something like “various digital marketing platforms”. But thanks to all the magical algorithms that pick out what they need from all the entries, you pretty much have to have the exact platform they want on your resume in order for the bot to be satisfied. Some things I would understand, like if someone didn’t know how to use key software for their field. But all the other stuff that gets tossed around should be considered “trainable” and not part of application requirements. Yet here we are…
ATS allows the least skilled people in a company (HR) to be even less effective.
It does, however, facilitate the easy scraping of applicant data, which can be packaged and sold.
