Transcript from the "Application Materials Q&A" Lesson
[00:00:00]
>> Paul DeBettignies: Questions, thoughts, comments? Yes?
>> Speaker 2: What's your opinion on the length of what a cover letter should be?
>> Paul DeBettignies: How long should a cover letter be? Let's call it three to five paragraphs, an intro, right? The hi and the bye, about you, here is what you've researched about them, and how you can benefit them.
[00:00:23]
So let's call that four paragraphs. Nothing more than a page. Someone will undoubtedly ask if I can piggyback on this one. How long should my resume be? I still want to do this. Jesse and I actually spoke about this a number of years ago. I wanna get seven of our recruiter and HR friends in a room, on a round table.
[00:00:41]
I wanna get nine or 10 bottles of wine. I wanna get them loaded with a video camera and hit record, and say, how long should a resume be? Cuz I guarantee you seven people will give me 11 answers. There's not a rule to this. My one rule is this, it shouldn't be one line longer than it takes you to talk about yourself.
[00:01:00]
>> Paul DeBettignies: If you're under the age of 25, I'm broadly speaking, and you've either been in college or you've had a couple, three jobs, it can be a page. If, however, you're 22 years old and you've done four internships, and you're in grad school, you're already to two. But really, a two-page resume is fine.
[00:01:24]
Somebody's gonna go, you should only be one. Who cares? For the love of. As long as it's interesting and giving the right amount of info, that's okay. I did receive a 14-page resume back in August, 14. This person went back to 1968, no joke, and you could tell they condensed it.
[00:01:41]
There actually were, like, no one needs to know how you coded that thing in 1974.
>> Paul DeBettignies: But some of you, though, will take and do 10 bullet points on that hourly job when you were 16, and you don't need to do that. So that first example is funny, but someone listening to this might go, [LAUGH] crap, I did that about that one job I had, my first job.
[00:02:06]
So don't. That help? Other questions, Mark, is there anything else back there? That's it? Sticking out?
>> Speaker 2: We just had a debate about email addresses.
>> Paul DeBettignies: [LAUGH]
>> Speaker 2: I was like, don't use @yahoo, don't use-
>> Paul DeBettignies: So how many people were for you, and how many people were like me and they don't care?
[00:02:27]
>> Paul DeBettignies: Like a poll.
>> Speaker 2: What do you mean?
>> Paul DeBettignies: How many people were on your side, and how many were on mine? You're a judger, and I'm not.
>> Paul DeBettignies: [LAUGH]
>> Speaker 2: Well, I think specifically around web developers, and specifically around CTOs, we look at that kinda thing. If you're like, firstname@yourdomain.com-
[00:02:43]
>> Paul DeBettignies: And that's why I said that in the very beginning.
>> Speaker 2: Like, for instance, brian@brianholt.com, that's a respectable thing.
>> Paul DeBettignies: Yep.
>> Speaker 2: Like, moreso than even a Gmail. But if I see anything like AOL, or Yahoo, or whatever, it's just, like, come on.
>> Paul DeBettignies: So this is why, though, I said at the beginning, go get your domain name, where you'll never have to have this conversation or the debate.