Ask HN: How do I write a resume after five years of a startup?
I'm asking this for several founders on our team who are getting deeper into our thirties and starting to think about moving to a larger more stable company. We have been working together for 4 years under the same company name during which time we have done 4 major projects that we were hoping would take off. We've been profitable the entire time and we all make decent salaries, and 3 of the projects still generate modest revenues.
The problem we are facing is that our resumes and Linkedins do not look impressive (to our eyes) because you don't see a progression through multiple companies with inflating job titles (example good profile https://www.linkedin.com/in/saadkhan02).
So, how does one communicate that they are hirable after running a semi-successful startup for years? Or, perhaps, is this undesirable?
130 comments
[ 0.40 ms ] story [ 194 ms ] threadPut all 4 projects on there and try to sell them as technically as possible.
I was at an unknown company (nationally) for 7 years before I left. I had no issues whatsoever getting interviews.
Focus on growth of both top and bottom lines, and highlight margin improvements over the 4 years and 4 projects. Try to quantify your accomplishments in dollar figures since they stand out more. Statements such as "Grew revenues 50% YoY from $0 to $X million over 36 months" will quickly catch anybody's attention.
Throw in some specific, targeted technical phrases that are keyword friendly and you'll easily be an outstanding candidate.
Be prepared to explain why you'd want to join the target company and not stay at your current company.
TLDR: Hiring managers hone in on results, not only titles. Quantify your business impacts and list your technical accomplishments.
EDIT: Regarding my comment about quantifying your margin impact, for those that don't know, "margin" and "markup" are not equivalent[1]. Thankfully it's really easy for technically inclined folks to grasp this insanely useful financial concept.
[1] http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/102714/whats-differe...
A lot of them kind of don't, but you don't want to work at those places anyway. This is good advice.
Totally agree with otoburb and I'd like to add to the conversation.
boxcardavin, you bring up a common problem: traditional resumes and LinkedIn are mainly all about focusing on your tenure: the company you worked for and your job title. As you mentioned, it doesn't cater to your work history. What if we make your work front and center and push the job titles to the side? Instead of just typing, I'd like to show you what I mean:
http://www.theymadethat.com/people/p04ubn/david-hansen
boxcardavin, feel free to give me feedback. If you have a lot feedback, we can take this outside of HN.
The fact that you've held a job for more than just 6 month stints is enough to push you all the way to the front of the line. Most applicants we see just do 6 months here and there. I refuse to hire anyone that hasn't stayed at a company at least 2 years (excluding new grads). 4 years is pretty much a unicorn nowadays.
1 Devs who simply can't code and get fired/managed out/not contract renewed
2 Unlucky people who don't put up with crappy work environments
The first groups should be easy to weed out with decent interviews. The second are a goldmine as long as your company isn't as dysfunctional as the companies that drove them away previously.
3 Unlucky people who have a tendency to get hired just before the company changes course and begins laying people off
That was the case with my last employer. Right after I was hired, our revenue sources began to dry up, and we couldn't stop the bleeding, so eventually a third of the company, including me, got laid off. I lasted 15 months before the axe fell, and I was worried when applying for new positions that my resume would be thrown out because I was there less than two years.
My hypothesis: most startups don't bother advertising openings publicly while they can get by using private word-of-mouth in their network. Since I'm not well-enough-connected, none of the private word-of-mouth ever reaches me; so I only ever hear about these companies once their well of private leads has run dry—which really should be taken as a vote-of-no-confidence from their network.
There is an awful lot of terrible code out there and an awful lot of companies that are either oblivious to it or lying about it until post hire.
I can handle terrible code, but if there isn't a solid plan in place to improve it for whatever reason (or if it's getting worse) then I'm out of there.
The shortest is weeks, this is at places that have mountains of technical debt as well as other problems, like managers that don't understand the limitations of that technical debt and want everything done yesterday.
The last job was 18 months. despite a lot of bad code I had a free hand to add gradual improvements. The current one is looking to be considerably shorter.
Sadly lots of places would just label you not a team player for complaining about the lack version control or whatever. This is when it is smart to switch jobs even if it has only been 6 months.
There are a two devs who fit this mold a my current job. They bounced from job to job until finally landing here for 2-3 years so far with no sign of leaving. They complain constantly and are honestly a bit annoying but are super productive. The changes they make have made hundreds of other devs more productive which more than makes up for the occasional bad attitude. The key is that they don't cross the line into being jerks, more curmudgeons than assholes.
There's also a lot of finicky people that think good code is only if it matches exactly their preferences
Also they're usually prone to believing Uncle Bob BS
So of course, company loyalty is bullshit but there's also a point where your contribution almost didn't pay off their effort and money, those are the people I'd avoid hiring.
Anywhere after 1 to 1.5 years at the same job and I'd not bat an eye, many experiences lesser than an year would not put me off instantly just by looking at a CV but I'd definitely take more time to discover what happened.
As a hiring manager it's not in my interest to hire someone who is likely to leave in 6-12 months. If I have a team that is growing, then I am already spending a considerable portion of my time recruiting, I can't afford to have to rehire my whole team every single year.
I do want people who have personal drive and high standards - who won't put up with a toxic workplace. So if you've left 1 or 2 places after 6-12 months, then that could be a good sign, and I'll probably get you in for an interview and ask about it.
But if you never stay somewhere for more than a year, then I don't like my chances of being the place that breaks the pattern, and it's unlikely that I will bring you in for what is intended to be a permanent position.
While I can absolutely understand why someone might want to jump around every 6 months for better pay, don't expect me to sign up to be the next stop on that trip.
> As developers
Developers aren't special. They are a profession which doesn't even necessitate advanced degrees/certifications like most other high-pay industries (med/law/finance/engineering). This instantly comes across as self-importance.
> we should always be looking out for our best interests
Sure, but not at the expense of my company. I'm assuming you have some experience based on your commentary. My expectation of a senior dev isn't to just hit keys and write 600 functions before they leave my company. I expect them to make everyone around them better. That doesn't happen if you spend your lunch hours looking for the next job.
> The whole idea of company loyalty is bs in my opinion
None of this is about company loyalty. It's about hiring useful employees that don't cost you money. Hiring is expensive. A rule of thumb for a medium sized company is that it takes 1 years salary to hire someone worth that salary. So If I'm paying you a salary of $100k, In six months I've actually spent $150k. When you put the numbers on paper, anyone viewing them would call me an idiot.
>not at the expense of my company.
I'm sorry, we're all mercenaries for hire. What will you do for me if your company needs to do layoffs or is closing ? Theres more cases where companies hire and layoff fast or screw over employees than those that actually care about the employees.
>It's about hiring useful employees that don't cost you money
I admit its hard to measure the direct benefit to revenue over those 6 months, but I would argue these figures.
Most people I know don't have this view. Ask around and you'll be surprised at how few people think this way. You'll probably get this perspective only if your job IS contracting, e.g. designers.
> What will you do for me if your company needs to do layoffs or is closing
Most companies have some form of severance, and it's typically more than enough to keep you going during your job search. Since you've mentioned how in demand we are, it shouldn't be of any concern.
> I would argue these figures.
Here's a good read:
http://web.mit.edu/e-club/hadzima/pdf/how-much-does-an-emplo...
My father does physician hiring. His costs run 4-5x salary.
Lets run some numbers:
Imagine I cost my company $50 an hour in salary, and earn them $150 an hour (revenue of 3-5x salary is ballpark for most companies, we'll go for the low end for some perspective). As a senior dev, I have to sit in all the interviews of people potentially joining my team. Imagine we have 10 people that make it through the HR round. I have to participate in 10 interviews, and then likely 3 more for the final round.
My cost for round 2 is: 10 people x 2 hours x (150 lost revenue + 50 salary paid) = $4k
My cost for round 3 is: 3 x 8 x (150 + 50) = $4.8k
My company has already dropped $8.8k on my involvement solely in the interview room for your typical entry level position. This doesn't even include my involvement in onboarding, training, pre-interview prep, post-interview review, etc. This is also JUST ME, and a very lowball figure at that. Now factor in the cost of the HR round, recruiters, background checks, the other devs in the interviews with me, etc. It adds up very, very quickly.
Moral of the story: People are expensive and it's really not all that difficult to quantify it.
What I see is that the person's salary is not the biggest part of their total cost to you as an employer, particularly in the first year or two when you're amortizing out your acquisition cost. If you're paying them $100k, six months in your total cost is $150k. If they are qualified for a job at another company that pays $150k, perhaps you should have bumped their salary to the $150k that is apparently the market value of their labor - after all, is it better to spend $150k and lose that employee to someone paying them 50% more, or to spend $175k and have that third-party offer not be attractive to them?
This is exactly why salaries are pretty negotiable.
> If they are qualified for a job at another company that pays $150k
We address this once a week on HN. People don't pay for qualifications, they pay for most recent salary. They'd still stick around for 6 months and then look for their next 10% bump. A "6 months here and there" person isn't magically going to change their perspective on life just because they finally had the opportunity to work for me! People that are willing to stick around typically aren't just using me for their "my last salary was...", and they are much more likely to get salary bumps within (which does actually happen, contrary to popular belief).
I've seen those people stick for multiple years when they found the right fit. Of course, they got paid for their time and their employers worked to keep them happy because that right fit understood their value.
I'll be real with you: from every post you've made in the thread, this isn't the employee's problem. This is a you problem. You want to hire people who actively work against their own interests. That's super gross.
And I've seen them not. I guess our anecdata cancels out.
> Of course, they got paid for their time and their employers worked to keep them happy because that right fit understood their value.
I pay people for both their time and talent. Why would they ever stick around if I treated them or their career poorly? That's just silly. Your assumption is that people who hop every 6 months have a notable difference in talent. That's a very poor assumption. Again, it's just a shitty personality trait.
> This is a you problem.
Even if it is us, it doesn't negatively affect us.
> You want to hire people who actively work against their own interests.
As I've stated, that's simply not true. I want to hire people that want to work for us, not just treat us as a stepping stone.
I'm making no such assumption. What I am saying, however, is that the idea that "I shouldn't pass up on a huge salary bump that will have reverberations through my entire lifetime's earning potential" is a "shitty personality trait" is absolutely mad. This is irrespective of skill or ability in any way, because it boils down to a simple question: why should someone incur damage to their entire life's income potential to stay at a job (unless you're, like, literally curing cancer)?
It's a business transaction between the supplier and the purchaser. Continuing to sell to you when a worker can otherwise maximize their income (and, let's be real, not suffer a bit in terms of peripherals at 90% of companies) is literally and inescapably self-harm.
> I want to hire people that want to work for us
Wanting to work for you is working against a worker's economic interests. Working for you as long as you offer the deal that is most beneficial to them is not. And in the current market, that means moving on when you can move up the ladder. You are a stepping stone, unless you take active measures to the contrary (pay top-of-market, make people want to be there).
If you don't want to be a stepping stone, then be the desired destination. There are companies that figure this out (your Apples, Googles, etc.), and they don't have silly policies like "must have been at a company for two years."
How do you feel about that?
I hire for back end web-dev/dev-ops. We do long term contracting with brick and mortar businesses building internal efficiency web apps. Web-dev tends to be more of a "startup of the week" field, so it's harder to find people that fit my "formula". Part of it is that my background is originally in finance, where the formula is 2 years at Bank A, 2 years at Bank B, 2 years at Bank A, etc. taking a 20% pay boost each time you switch.
However, I am about to move to Bloomberg.
* 1.5 years - Startup I joined crashed and burned
* 0.5 years - Contract work for web design firm while I went back to university, they couldn't get their clients to pay their invoices
* 1.0 years - Worked for the university while I finished my degree
* 1.0 years - Startup I joined crashed and burned
* 1.5 years - Small company that was doing well, but proceeded to have one of its worse years as it lost all but one of its clients, eventually laid off 75% of its staff
* 0.75 years - Contract work for department in enterprise corporation that decided to cancel its own internal development and fire everyone after the lead developer quit
* 1.1 years - Current job, Fortune 500 corporation, still going well for now, but I'm expecting the sky to fall at any minute considering my luck.
* 5.5 yrs of contract work as proprietor of Cableshaft Technology
I don't care about jobs. I just like to build things. 99% of my projects I work until delivery. Even when I hate it.
This is the reason I always say don't like to the time I worked for something. I finnish and deliver.
The company I'm going to even highlighted that me being somewhere for 6 years was unheard of today, especially to have put up with everything I went through at that place.
I've been at my company for >= + years, but I can tell you that 4 years is not necessarily a good thing. Sometimes people that stay for a long time are people who are no good and know it, they have found a safe environment that tolerates their incompetence so they never leave! I say this as someone who has interviewed people with 10+ yrs experience and who have stayed at once location for a long time. Most of them had no idea what is currently going on in the industry, heck, they didn't even have the fundamentals down or claim to have forgotten it all. I rather get a solid programmer for 1 year than an incompetent one for 5.
Companies come and go very fast. Move fast break things means breaking companies some times, and fail fast means fail to be able to keep the good people you went through so much effort to get and afford.
All of these new companies starting up look greener to devs and a lot of the time they are. As a developer, you can hitch your wagon to a fair bet, or take a risk and go to the place that might be awesome. It's a real big ask to assume everyone who's good gets only long term jobs at great places. Good people don't stay long if the job isn't good - they don't need to.
The logical reason to want someone who stays at a job a long time is that you want to feel like your investment in that person is going to pay off. I challenge that and say that you don't really need to invest in a developer (up front I mean) if it's a good development job. You point them at the problem, help them understand the business case, and if they need more than a week to ramp up in the code base with your team, either A. they suck, or B. your code base sucks.
I'm not in the US, and not an American citizen, but I got a similar trajectory from moving around globally.
(Not a criticism of you, just saying that you made your choice.)
I took my marriage with me. But she knew from the start what she was in for.
That said, I feel you on the lack of remote gigs; a big part of why I went towards consulting is the opportunity to go screw off to somewhere warm for a month or two--I don't have a wife or kids at the moment--and work remotely. If it fits your skillset and your temperament, it might be worth a shake.
^ This is why nepotism is so strong. I got my job through my brother, which was effectively free for my employer. Beyond just that cost, it makes me more likely to stay. The next hire cost us 70k, and he ended up leaving after... you got it! 6 months.
I create a lot of value--in much less than six months, at my last full-time job by the time six months had elapsed I'd built out a deployment system that reduced developer time for every deployment by literally seventy percent and gotten an "attaboy, maybe at the next perf review", which never happened because I got a new gig with a sixteen percent comp increase, before options in a publicly traded company no less, that would never have been matched by that perf review. This is why I consult now, as it happens: because I can parachute in and create a lot of value, because I don't need a bunch of ramp-up time, and I can get paid literally double per-hour to do it. (And it's why I can work three-ish days a week and make more money than my last full-time job.)
Sounds like you've had a shitty work career. None of what I'm talking about is anything like that.
> You are trying to turn economic transactions into "personality traits" and it's kind of really disgusting.... I create a lot of value--in much less than six months...
You talk about it as an economic transaction, but you fail to actually acknowledge the economic transaction that's actually taking place. You don't just magically spring into existence into my company when you drop your resume at the door. The cost to hire you is significant. You simply haven't recouped that cost of hiring you within 6 months, regardless of whether or not you're God's gift to programming.
> I don't need a bunch of ramp-up time, and I can get paid literally double per-hour to do it.
Sounds like you're living the dream, congrats. Most people aren't as talented as you are. Using your experiences to make hiring decisions for the other 99% of society would seem silly, don't you think?
Then you're selecting for people that care more about a paycheck than the work they're doing
Also, I was let go after a couple of months in a small company because they closed the office I worked on, my fault I guess
Of course it's a bonus, but different locations may pay less
You can only go through so many companies before you need to acknowledge: "maybe it's me, not them".
otherwise, give yourself a different title for different periods of time, and list your co-founders or customers as references.
If no, work on that.
There're so many unqualified job candidates out there, you can rise above the crowd just by being good at what you do.
This is pretty similar to the elevator pitch for a startup. I'm amazed that anybody has a hard time keeping their resume to a single page when any founder can describe their startup in a paragraph. In both cases, you're just trying to get a meeting, not tell your life story.
It's not enough to be good, you have to be able to say why you're good.
I like that.
Last time I did that I got complaints that my CV was not detailed enough
I don't consider a resume and a CV to be equivalent, though. A CV is generally a lot more exhaustive than a resume. I would put together a CV if and only if applying for a research or academic position.
Even if he knows his stuff he'll most likely have problems getting an interview and then he needs that the people interviewing him are capable of recognizing his expertise.
That's a lot of compounded ifs.
Awesome Great Company I started: 2014 - Present
CEO/HR - I was responsible for ...
CEO/VP Sales - I successfully sold 4 large projects which resulted in ... sales ...
CTO/Tech Lead - I designed, built, tested ... Also, created a complete automated test suite... using NoSQL, Android...
But like many have said here if you write on your resume what you have actually been building over the last couple years you should be fine. Being able to clearly talk about your experience is more important.
I could almost guarantee what we were shipping was more fragile than your printers, (not a pissing contest) but it was precision instrumentation that needed to not get jittered around. Pelicans worked great for us. http://www.pelican.com/us/en/
And they arent even that expensive.
Product looks really cool!
Also, there is a typo in your FAQ, second question (Can I print without adding the printer as a friend?), account is misspelled in the answer.
As an aside, not everyone is on LinkedIn, and those of us who aren't apparently can't see the profile you linked.
Also, full disclosure, it sounds like I'm a bit older than you but my background is somewhat similar, so my views here may be biased. But having sat on the hiring side of the table in various roles, I'd take demonstrated ability to get things done and build successful projects over some random progression of short term jobs with increasingly impressive-sounding job titles any day of the week.
If you are looking for a certain job, you don't want a resume with a bunch of empty titles. You need a strong resume addressing the specific requirements of that particular job, in terms of skills and relevant experience.
Large organizations need both people that take care of the "ordinary business" and people that take care of "special projects", that are the doers, that figure things out by themselves: your startup experience automatically qualifies you for all the activities that require this second type of people.
Technical
* Implemented xyz process to reduce pdq by x%
Leadership
* Developed market strategy for team of y teams to improve market share by z% in 3 months
etc
Thanks for answering.
When my startup failed and I was looking for a new role most hiring managers I spoke to were impressed enough with my resume but also had reservations about hiring me as they thought I'd get bored and want to do another startup within a year or two. Playing up the co-founder title might not be such a good idea. Everything else is spot on though - experience is far more important than anything else.
If you didn't pick up any coding or tech skills during running your start-ups you may or may not have issues.
For me my start-ups were like going to school to pick up a new/in-demand skill that I could fall back on if my startup dreams fell flat.
Ran a semi-successful web / mobile app development company. We were a small team of four, hitting early to mid thirties. From the outside anyone would have thought our company was successful. Good brand recognition in our geographic region, finding clients was easy. They found us.
We paid ourselves decent salaries, paid the bills on our dev infrastructure, we all worked in the trenches, at our own pace, and we all generally loved what we were doing.
However, after about five years we got that itch. In a way we were too comfortable. Our finances looked the same year after year. We purposely weren't growing. Or maybe we just didn't want to take that risk. I guess we peaked early and got comfortable staying there.
At first no one really talked about it. You could feel it though. As we got older. Being so close to the business administration became a chore. Planning summer vacations with a small team became a chore. Riding out December became a chore. Maintaining apps over a five+ year lifecycle became a chore. Dealing with dev infrastructure maintenance became a chore. Wearing too many hats became a chore.
Life outside of work becomes more important as you get older. Family and that sort of thing.
So we decided to shut it down. Lots of emotion, soul searching, panic, joy.
Anyhow ...
I personally had the same feeling you did. Does co-founder look good on a resume? What the hell did I do for the past five years? Will I fit in with corporate culture? How do I transfer my skills to the corporate world?
What I learned is that you've got nothing to worry about.
Working on a small team, and staying profitable, and paying the bills means that you understand the value of money. You wear multiple hats. You're skilled at sticking to a budget and meeting deadlines. You had to "show up" every day. You worked the trenches and enjoyed getting your hands dirty. You worked twice as hard and twice as fast. You stayed the course for four years. You're loyal. You're reliable. You understand the entire lifecycle of building something from start to finish. And you've done it successfully multiple times over. You understand failure too, and know how to bounce back. You have an amazing combination of business savvy and technical smarts that's difficult to find. You're entrepreneurial. You've got vision. You're an ideas person. You've got real-world experience. And a track record of success. Most startups crash and burn early, you didn't, and you're leaving it on your own terms. Knowing when to exit is an extraordinary skill in itself. You understand how it all works. You haven't lost touch.
Don't scare potential employers with big fake C-level job titles. In a company of four you never really had a specific job title anyways. Use that to your advantage.
Custom tailor your resume for different roles. You've got so much to offer your challenge will be figuring out what to "leave out". You've got volumes of specific examples and accomplishments to draw from, which you can talk about for hours.
You're still young. In fact you're in your prime. You'll be a massive positive addition to any team.
Look for a larger (than yours) company that hasn't lost their entrepreneurial spirit. You'll be right at home. Don't settle and don't be surprised if five or six years from now you get the itch to embark on another startup.
It's all good.
You don't need to show a ton of progression. You just need to know how to market the skills and experience that you have. If you've been profitable and are getting paid well, and have four substantial projects over four years, you're marketable.
Feel free to inquire if you'd like professional help.
If you find a position you like, send an email. Tell them why you're interested, what you could bring to the table. You can mention your history if it's relevant, casually, just like you wrote it up here.
If they don't like it, fck them, their loss, try a different company.
edit: Just to be clear, i'm not suggesting you skip the resume because of your specific history, rather because the whole concept of presenting resumes is utterly inhumane and counter-productive.
I need some formalized experience document, even if your resume just looks like bullet points. It gives me discrete items/events/projects/education/skills that I can consider and discuss with you. If I don't have that as a reference point when talking with you, all I can say is "So, tell me why you're awesome", which is not useful.
If I'm not starting out with some idea of what we can drill down into, some table of contents, I have too little to work with and I'm not going to bother. Perhaps more relevantly, HR probably won't even bring you to my attention.
you don't you have something to talk about with people applying, coming from the same industry?
I believe if I see your job posting, research your company a bit and get in touch describing why I'm interested in that specific position and what I think I could bring to the table, that's a better starting point for a discussion than me sending a generic list of buzzwords, positions, qualities, etc. trying to sell myself.
And maybe the next step could be grabbing a coffee rather than an overly formal interview where we're both trying to see through each other's distortion of reality.
We're human after all.
Shamelessly, don't hesitate to reach out if you might be interested - we're hiring in all areas, and I would especially love to chat if you or your co-founders are looking for engineering, PM, or marketing roles :)