Programming competitions and job seeking

Question

Does it help for wellrated competitors in finding good jobs? Do recruiters/HRs take into account mentions in CVs about participations in such contests? Do you think it will be a plus to write in CVs about your participation in contests having rating, for example, something about 70 percentile?

Answer 1

For graduates and young people starting their career anything that shows their genuine interest and aptitude matters.

For experienced and seniors, however, not any longer. Well, the participation in open source projects always matters.

Answer 2

In the eyes of an employer experience is always a big part of a decision making process on whether to take on a prospective employee.

If the contests are well known and have a very good reputation for high quality work etc then yes put it on your CV, The more experience you put down on your CV the more impressive it will look.

Answer 3

I depends on the company and the role.

I would say in the majority of cases especially jobs that go through recruitment agents the only questions they are asking are "Can the person do the job?" which in the case of recruitment agents is often just going through a check-list of technical requirements and matching them against evidence in the resume. The other is "Will they stay?".

This may also be the case at the interview too depending on the quality of the hiring manager. A good hiring manager would take the factors you mentioned into account. However, sometimes too much ability or ambition can count against you as it can put the answer to the "Will they stay?" question into doubt depending on the role.