Building a Resume

[00:00:00]
>> Paul DeBettignies: I don't talk a lot about resumes, I've only got two slides for it. Cuz if you had looked at tech resumes for 21 years you, too, would think they all suck. I'm being sort of funny about that and relatively serious, okay? Anything you're doing, pretend you're receiving it, and ask you if you would call or email you back.

[00:00:20]
If your email's a copy and paste and you're like, wow, this looks like I copied and pasted this 25 times then don't do it. Your email and your resume, to that employer, should be personalized just like those LinkedIn invites should be personalized. Just like I am hoping that the recruiters who will be reaching out to you in two years or four years are personalizing their information to you, yeah.

[00:00:42]
>> off screen: Yeah, I would definitely agree with that. If I see an email address that's like @comcast, some sort of ISP or Hotmail or some sort of weird.
>> Paul DeBettignies: So there are a lot of people in the tech industry who actually judge you by your email address. Mark's a judger.

[00:01:00]
>> off screen: I will, for sure.
>> Paul DeBettignies: I am not. I will gladly accept your aol.com email or resume. In the tech industry get a Gmail. But in the tech industry, yes, get something that is-
>> off screen: Just a Gmail.
>> Paul DeBettignies: Cool.
>> off screen: @Gmail.com.
>> Paul DeBettignies: See I'm trying to be not specific to a particular, but yes.

[00:01:16]
Okay, there's probably still three or four times a year I get, and this is because you all, anyone under the age of 30 has now grown up with the Internet. Anybody my age has not, so for those not familiar with Minneapolis, St. Paul or the Minnesota region, we have lots and lots of lakes.

[00:01:36]
And to the west of here is a very large lake called Lake Minnetonka. It's actually seven small lakes dredged to make one big lake. And there tends to be a lot of fun on the lake in the summertime because we get it for about three months, so you take full advantage of it.

[00:01:49]
So a year ago, I got an email from a Senior Director of Product at a big company in town and the beginning of her email address was, goodtimesusie@.
>> off screen: [LAUGH]
>> Paul DeBettignies: Like really, so again, Gmail or not, but can we at least all agree where you get your email address from to have it be professional.

[00:02:13]
Another quick side story, about a decade ago now, I got an email from a candidate. Was a VP of engineering role, was a fantastic opportunity. And that person had done their research and had said, hey, I understand you're a gopher football fan. I'm a badger fan. I'm okay, we'll see how this goes.

[00:02:33]
I'm joking. But his email address literally was sogophersuck, borrowing the S, right, gophersuck? And then badgerules borrowing the R, gophersuck_badgerule@. A and he could not figure out why would not submit him as a candidate to the client. Because the client, the CTO, had both as undergrad, his MBA and his JD from the University of Minnesota, and he was a pretty uptight dude.

[00:03:03]
So I didn't and this guy started swearing at me in an email, I still have it to this day. You do wanna start though, a lot of your email though will be templated and then a beginning and an end will be a little bit different. Right, cuz, you can't personalize 52 submissions, you just can't.