Why must technical recruiters ask you to fill your résumé with technical jargon?

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+1 Q:

Why must technical recruiters ask you to fill your résumé with technical jargon?

I like my résumé clean and uncluttered; with a simple list of technical skills and achievements.

Why do recruiters ask me to fill my résumé with technical jargon?

Don't they know that this inherently make résumés unsightly to read for employers? Or do they know something that I don't?

+11 A:

The recruiters are not technically savvy, they use regexp match against the technical jargon to employer specification to work out if you fit the job. Seen this often enough, if the employer wants SQL skills and you write Oracle PL/SQL you will have a lower match score.

whatnick 2009-09-23 00:26:18

+1 Agreed

Byron Whitlock 2009-09-23 00:30:41

It's stuff like this that has turned me off of recruiters. How can they sell you effectively without knowing even the basics? I can't count the number of times I've gotten blind spam from recruiters. Might as well just submit your resume yourself.

James 2009-09-24 22:43:20

@James, how do you expect it to work? You want recruiters to be some kind of super-ex-developer who knows every technology? All they can reasonably do is search based on what clients tell them is needed, and follow up with a phone chat to try and shortlist people to pass to the client for technical interview.

John 2010-01-17 21:51:55

Why not have a separate section of the resume that lists keywords for criteria matching with a "do not send to prospective employer" mandate?. The idea that their need to be able to easily search the candidate list must compromise resume quality is less than reasonable.

Chris 2010-01-18 16:30:33

+1 A:

Try adding a keywords section when you submit it online. You can take it out when you print it to keep it clean.

Byron Whitlock 2009-09-23 00:30:25

+1 A:

Because they are not techies, Buffalo Bill, gets their billing up.

Nicholas Jordan 2009-09-23 00:48:16

+4 A:

The 'recruiter' is most likely hoping that your resume will have the exact right number of keywords that the clueless HR drone will need to match up with the job rec document.

BryanH 2009-09-24 22:22:56

Recruiters aren't technical and are not supposed to be. Their job is to know who is hiring and who is looking for work and match them up. If you don't like it, spend your time doing the drudgery of searching for hiring companies yourself. It's your choice.

John 2010-01-17 21:53:33

+1 for taking into account that the one hiring might not be technical as well.

Johan 2010-01-17 22:06:10

@John -- I assume that a recruiter who doesn't know the business or industry he/she is trying to hire for will probably not do a good job. How would that person be able to determine quality in a candidate? By the right words on a dead piece of paper? The sound of his/her voice on the phone?----- You call research drudgery? Hardly: that is exactly the method that works for me. I search for companies that I want to work for, find out how I can help them do a better job with my skills and convince the hiring manager that I am the right guy to do the work. P-I-E.

BryanH 2010-01-19 19:35:03

'Knowing the business' is not the same as being technical. Very few IT recruiters are developers who decided they wanted to spend all day on the phone. The _only_ real way to actually evaluate a candidate is with a technical test. A CV just lets you filter those who claim to suit the requirements, for the _client_ to interview.

John 2010-01-20 13:44:16

There may be specific terms that the people reading the resume are expecting to see, and if it isn't a 100% match then too bad your resume gets tossed aside.

I think the question is who is reading the resumes and how well do they know what they are reading. Some people may not be techincally savvy enough to distinguish between T-SQL, PL/SQL, and SQL.

Could you give some examples from your list? Do you include the version of software or is that to be assumed by employers? Just to give an example of where things can get ugly, look at the versions of something like Visual Studio or MS-SQL Server over the past 12 years or so.

JB King 2010-01-18 16:27:20

ansaurus

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Why must technical recruiters ask you to fill your résumé with technical jargon?

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